Cages without bars. Philip Pettit and freedom as non-domination

What Berlin had not seen

This is the question from which the philosophical reflection of Philip Pettit, Irish political theorist, now Professor of Human Values at Princeton University, begins. What does it mean, Petttit asks, to live exposed to a will that we cannot control? A will that does not take the form of an open constraint, an explicit command, but which, nonetheless, is subtle and pervasive and makes us dependent on others.

For a long time in the wake of Berlin's work, the lexicon of contemporary political philosophy has oscillated between the two poles of 'negative' freedom, understood as the absence of interference, and 'positive' freedom, thought of as self-determination. Philip Pettit does not question this traditional distinction, he simply complements it. There is in fact a third way of understanding freedom, older than the modern dispute and perhaps even more demanding, the idea of freedom as 'non-domination'.

It is not enough to say that a person is free when no one conditions him. One must also ask whether someone else has the power to interfere with his action at will, without having to answer for it, without offering justification and without being bound to consider the interests of those subject to that power. It is in this sense that Philip Pettit formulates his thesis in Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government: 'An agent dominates another if and only if he has some power over him, in particular a power of interference on an arbitrary basis'. (1997, p. 52).

The decisive word here is 'arbitrary'. It does not mean simply capricious. It does not mean that the powerful act hysterically or unpredictably. It means something more precise: that his power is not compelled to follow the interests and ideas of those under him. 'Interference will take place on an arbitrary basis,' Pettit continues, 'to the extent that it is controlled by the arbitrium - by the will or judgement - of the interferer; to the extent, in particular, that it is not compelled to follow the interests and ideas of those who suffer the interference' (p. 55). One can see why Pettit's republicanism is not satisfied by the simple absence of coercion. The well-treated slave is not free. The employee favoured by the boss is not free. The creator rewarded by the algorithm is not free if everything depends on a power that owes no explanation to anyone. Benevolence may make domination more bearable, but it certainly does not transform it into freedom.

Freedom is not primarily a psychological fact, nor is it a purely internal condition. It is a social status. One is free when one lives among others without being at anyone's mercy. When one has a public, visible, shared protection that removes one's existence from the mood of the powerful. In On the People's Terms, in this regard, we read that citizens should be able to 'walk with their heads held high, live without shame or indignity, and look each other in the eye without any cause for fear or deference' (2012, p. 2).

This sentence is almost like a moral definition of freedom. Not freedom as isolation, but freedom as a civilised position. Not the right to be left alone, but the possibility of being in the common space without having to bow down, or having to blandish and predict the moods of those who matter more than us. To be free, in this sense, means not having to live in the good graces of others. Those who live under arbitrary power soon learn to modulate their behaviour. Avoid friction. He measures words. He intuits the desires of those who might strike him. He becomes cautious, accommodating, sometimes servile. Not because he necessarily suffers continuous coercion, but because the mere possibility of that coercion conditions his conduct. It is a form of unfreedom that works in advance, conditioning choices even before an explicit command is issued.

The power that owes no explanation

This is why Pettit's theory is so fruitful even outside the classical terrain of political philosophy. In the economic sphere, for instance, it forces us to look not only at exchanges but more at the power relations that exchanges presuppose. A signed contract is not enough to guarantee freedom if one party can unilaterally redefine the terms of the game. A market can also produce efficiency, and yet leave intact or even strengthen structures of domination. The problem is not so much the existence of asymmetry as such. Asymmetries exist in all complex organisations. The problem is when such asymmetries result in arbitrary power, i.e. power that cannot be challenged, that is not transparent, that cannot be justified.

The same applies to information, for example. There is a huge difference between being publicly criticised and depending on an information system that can obscure you without clear criteria. There is a difference between being regulated by unpopular but contestable laws, and instead living under a web of opaque decisions, impersonal only in appearance, for which you wouldn't even know who to call to account. Pettit's reflection helps us, in this sense, to recognise the importance of the distribution of that power which has the possibility of defining the conditions of our lives.

And it is here that his thinking opens up to justice. Not in the sense, yet, of a complete distributive theory, but in the sense of a decisive premise: a just society is not just a society that allocates goods in an acceptable manner. It is a society that protects people from subjection to arbitrary power. In On the People's Terms Pettit states that 'The recent revival of republican thought is based on this idea: that there is an ideal that the state must promote - freedom understood as non-domination - that is both personally motivating and politically realisable' (2012, p. 3). This is an important passage, because it clarifies that non-domination is not the only human good, but is a threshold-good, a gateway-good, the condition of access to many other goods. Where there is domination, even the good life becomes fragile. In The Robust Demands of the Good. (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2015) Pettit insists, from another angle, that some goods only really count if they are 'robust', that is, if they do not depend on favourable circumstances or the convenience of those who grant them. Respect, trust, attachment are not fully worthwhile if they evaporate as soon as the wind changes or the nature of relations with others changes. The same, after all, applies to freedom. It is not enough to enjoy it today, one must be able to count on it not to depend on reversible clemency. This also explains why Pettit's republicanism never blossoms into simple anti-statism. If the threat were only interference, then any public power would be suspect as such. But if the threat is domination, then the question changes. The issue is not to have or not to have common institutions. The issue is whether they can protect citizens from subjection to an arbitrary private power without themselves becoming arbitrary public powers. This is a difficult balance, and it is a subject we will dwell on in the coming weeks. For now, suffice it to reiterate the starting point that freedom does not flourish in a vacuum. It needs institutional construction. It needs laws that are really laws and not just the long arm of a will. It needs procedures, appeals, countervailing powers. In a word, it needs a politics that not only does not interfere, but prevents others from dominating.

The digital creator, the worker, the editor of the newspaper. No one received an order. No one has been threatened. Yet, all three know, and this is the right word, 'know', that there is someone on whom they depend and whom they cannot hold to account. Philip Pettit tells us that this awareness is not a subjective feeling, an excess of caution, a form of contemporary anxiety. It is the exact perception of a real condition. To call it by its name, 'domination', is already this, in a sense, an act of freedom.