Immigration and Freedom

by Chandran Kukathas

Should we wish to regard freedom as something that has some value, however, and consider that a reduction of freedom might be a loss, a different understanding is required. But such an understanding must then depend upon judgments about what ends count as worthwhile or what kinds of constraints are unacceptable. So, what is it that matters and makes for an unfree way of being? The temptation at this point is usually to look for that one decisive element that supplies the key to the problem—to find that freedom is, perhaps, a matter of being self-directing, or not subject to domination by others, or not being coerced, or being independent, or not forced to accept someone else’s arbitrary exercise of power. Such reductionist strategies are unsatisfying, however, because they seek a simplicity that is at odds with the more complex story that needs to be told to explain what it is to be, and what is undesirable—and indeed, unlovely—about living as, an unfree being. Moreover, they place all the emphasis on the obstacles or impediments to action and so pay insufficient attention to the subjective dimension of freedom.