Abstract
What constraints should be imposed on individual liberty for the sake of protecting our collective security? A helpful approach to answering this question is offered by a theory that grounds political obligation and authority in a moral requirement of fair contribution to mutually beneficial cooperative schemes. This approach encourages us to split the opening question into two—a question of correctness and a question of legitimacy—and generates a detailed set of answers to both subsidiary questions, with a nuanced and plausible set of implications. The plausibility of its treatment of the issues surrounding liberty and security, I argue, helps to confer credibility on the fairness-based theory that carries these implications.
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Notes
The first point is the central theme of John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, Ch. 2. For the second point, consider the way in which vibrant public spaces rely on people’s perceptions of personal safety.
This is the classical liberal view we get from Mill: “Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.” (On Liberty, p. 14.).
Hobbes embraces this second alternative—his answer to the question is that they cannot. In talking of liberty, men “mistake that for their private inheritance and birthright which is the right of the public only.” (Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Ch. 21.).
Proponents of this type of theory include George Klosko, "The Principle of Fairness and Political Obligation", The Principle of Fairness and Political Obligation, and Political Obligations; Richard Dagger, "Membership, Fair Play, and Political Obligation"; and Samantha Besson, The Morality of Conflict: Reasonable Disagreement and the Law, pp. 477–89.
We owe the name to John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, pp. 111–2. Compare the "principle of mutual restriction" in H.L.A. Hart, "Are There Any Natural Rights?", p. 185; and for an important antecedent to Hart, see C.D. Broad, "On the Function of False Hypotheses in Ethics", pp. 384–90.
For fuller development and defence of these points, see my “Moral Free Riding" and "Public Goods and Fairness”.
Rawls, A Theory of Justice, pp. 111–2.
Compare Richard Dagger, Civic Virtues: Rights, Citizenship, and Republican Liberalism.
For further discussion, see my Concern, Respect, and Cooperation, pp. 143-4.
Objections to consent accounts begin with David Hume, "Of the Original Contract"; see also Hanna Pitkin, "Obligation and Consent"; and A. John Simmons, Moral Principles and Political Obligations, Chs 3 and 4. Replies to the objections are made by Harry Beran, The Consent Theory of Political Obligation; and Mark Murphy, "Surrender of Judgment and the Consent Theory of Political Obligation".
However, see Calvin Normore, "Consent and the Principle of Fairness", p. 231, for the criticism that this makes a PF-based theory of political obligation unduly conservative.
See Rawls, A Theory of Justice, pp. 97, 308; Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 93–95; M. B. E. Smith, "Is There a Prima Facie Obligation to Obey the Law?"; A. John Simmons, "The Principle of Fair Play", and Moral Principles and Political Obligations, pp. 129–39; Daniel McDermott, "Fair-Play Obligations"; Craig Carr, "Fairness and Political Obligation"; and Normore, "Consent and the Principle of Fairness".
Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, p. 95.
See the authors cited in note 4; also Richard J. Arneson, “The Principle of Fairness and Free-Rider Problems”.
The PF is not an attempt to explain what the property of fairness is. It specifies a set of sufficient conditions for one, contributional, kind of obligation of fairness; these conditions make reference to other, structural (ii) and distributional (iii) kinds of fairness. I attempt a more general account of fairness in “Public Goods and Fairness”, §1.
For further discussion of condition (ii), see “Moral Free Riding”, pp. 14–19, 28–30.
As I see it, this principle concerning cooperation to produce a mutually accessible benefit derives its justification from an underlying principle that is more general still: the principle that joining in is a fitting response to worthwhile collective action (where collective actions can be worthwhile because of what they do for those outside the cooperating group, not just because they benefit the group members). See Concern, Respect, and Cooperation, Section 3.3.
This might be a sensible way to proceed: that depends on whether this is worth its cost. See §IV below, at note 23. And it does not help as a response to a deeper, secessionist opponents of all proposals for participating in whole-of-village activities.
This leads to a regress, since higher-level applications of the PF can be controversial too. But the regress is not vicious. Sometimes, it is indeed true that we ought to conduct a constitutional convention to resolve our disagreements concerning the fairness of our political decision-making procedures. For further discussion, see “Public Goods and Fairness”, p. 16.
In this respect, this is importantly different from the case of individual decision-making, where decisions do not bootstrap themselves into reasons. There are no reasons of fairness to yourself to do what you should not have decided to do. For further discussion, see my “Decisions, Reasons and Rationality”, §III.
See, e.g., Joel Feinberg, Harm to Self, Ch. 19; Danny Scoccia, "Paternalism and Respect for Autonomy"; and Daniel Groll, "Paternalism, Respect, and the Will".
This does not cover the whole of PF’s condition (i), since it does not specify that the scheme has a positive Cost–Benefit Assessment. That is covered in condition (4).
Notice that the naysayers are still wrongly free riding in these cases, according to the first-level application of the PF. However, there is no higher-level application that will generate an obligation on them to recognize our authority to use coercion against them.
For full discussion, see Patten, Equal Recognition.
Compare Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 112; Klosko, The Principle of Fairness and Political Obligation, p. 66.
While one can have an obligation to respect a morally imperfect decision-making practice, its imperfections remain moral flaws, which morally ought to be fixed.
It is necessary for unsituated correctness that there be some possible decision process meeting (5) and (6) through which this decision could be reached. But as far as I can see, there is no scheme meeting conditions (1)-(4) that fails to satisfy that further condition, so adding it is redundant.
—Including by further substantive principles of procedural and distributional fairness, governing the application of its conditions (ii) and (iii). See note 15.
See note [12] above.
For discussion and written comments that have helped to improve this paper, I am grateful to Robert Audi, Piero Moraro, Lachlan Umbers, Daniel Halliday and two anonymous readers for The Journal of Ethics.
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Cullity, G. Liberty, Security, and Fairness. J Ethics 25, 141–159 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-021-09361-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-021-09361-7