ABSTRACT
The exclusion of the issues from freedom-talk leads to a distorted and misleading understanding of them within the theory of social justice. Freedom evaluability is itself valuable, and the destruction of one person's freedom evaluability by the actions of another is an urgent issue. The problem, then, is that Impure Negative theory recognizes two ways in which an agent can lack freedom: through external interference, or through lack of the needed powers or resources. The impure theory of freedom would seem to be in a better position, in that it both recognizes a variety of ways in which people can lack freedom and allows that any of these ways are potentially issues of freedom. For Richard Flathman, one reason is that freedom-talk must be about agents and their actions: "In the absence of attempted actions, there is nothing of which freedom or unfreedom can be predicated.
