ABSTRACT
In ‘The Values of Freedom’ Serge Kolm offers an extremely compressed and wide-ranging discussion of freedom, its meanings, its values, and its centrality to justice. He argues that justice is essentially concerned with the distribution of freedom. Indeed justice obtains if and only if individuals have equal (and maximal) liberty. This thesis is more a framework into which to cast controversies concerning justice than a substantive theory of justice, because all competing theories of justice can claim to defend equal liberty. Freedom itself is a certain kind of structure of causality-determination of action by features intrinsic to a person, such as will or reason. Freedoms can be distinguished along a number of different dimensions-‘cause, agent, nature, extent, constraint, value, action, use and conditions’ (p. 24). The main kinds of freedom are ‘act freedom’ (or, closely related, ‘process freedom’) and ‘means freedom.’ Though Kolm never defines what an ‘act’ (in contrast to an ‘action’) is, act freedoms resemble what are often called ‘negative liberties’—the absence of legal and social obstacles to doing certain kinds of things. ‘Means freedoms’ in contrast would not be called freedoms by many philosophers and economists. Means freedoms appear to be simply means (p. 31)—individual capacities, tools, resources, sources of social power, and so forth. Means make possible not only particular actions, but existence and agency itself, and hence they are clearly relevant to freedom. Finally, freedoms are of value for a variety of reasons that cluster around two issues: first, they are means to achieve ends and to exercise capacities. Second, freedoms are essential prerequisites for agency, dignity, and social recognition.
