Individual Freedom: A Pluralist Account

The paper proposes a pluralist analysis of the idea of freedom that seeks to account for its complexity. The starting point is dissatisfaction with attempts to demonstrate the superiority of one specification of the concept of freedom – negative, positive, republican, etc. – over others. According to the author, each of these specifications captures an aspect of freedom but does not exhaust its meaning. The author distinguishes six dimensions of freedom: freedom as non-subordination, freedom as permission, freedom as non-prevention, freedom of choice, freedom as non-subjection, and freedom as self-determination. According to the author, the six dimensions of freedom are not entirely reducible to one another. Only a concept of freedom that embraces them all can do justice to the idea and value of freedom.