Being free, feeling free: race, gender and republican domination
Members of racial and sexual minorities often live in the fear of arbitrary interference from others—rogue police officers or sexual harassers. Are they unfree by dint of believing they are unfree? I draw on the republican theory of freedom—according to which we are unfree if we are subjected to a r...
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| Format: | Journal article |
| Language: | English |
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Oxford University Press
2024
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| Summary: | Members of racial and sexual minorities often live in the fear of arbitrary interference from others—rogue police officers or sexual harassers. Are they unfree by dint of believing they are unfree? I draw on the republican theory of freedom—according to which we are unfree if we are subjected to a risk of arbitrary interference—to offer a qualified positive answer. I clarify the role of probabilistic judgements about risk in republican political theory. I argue that under specific circumstances, diagnoses of republican freedom can be indexed to a certain belief about probability—what it is warranted for someone to believe in light of their distinctive epistemic perspective. |
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