Real freedom

Real freedom is a term coined by the political philosopher and economist Philippe Van Parijs. It expands upon notions of negative freedom by incorporating not simply institutional or other constraints on a person's choices, but also the requirements of physical reality, resources and personal capacity. To have real freedom, according to Van Parijs, an individual must:

1. not be prevented from acting on their will (i.e. they must have traditional negative freedom)

2. possess the resources or capacities actually to carry out their will.

Under this conception, a moral agent could be negatively free to take a holiday in Miami, because no-one is forcing them not to (condition 1 is met); but not really free to do so, because they cannot afford the flight (condition 2 is not met). Similarly, someone could be negatively free to swim across the English Channel; but not really free, because they are not a good enough swimmer and would not be able to succeed in the task. Real freedom is, then, a matter of degree — one is more or less really free, not just either really free or not; and no-one has complete real freedom yet — no-one is currently really free to teleport to Mars, for instance.

Politics

Van Parijs uses the concept of real freedom as part of his influential argument for a universal basic income.

See also

• Basic income
• Freedom Dividend
• Independence
• Individual freedom
• Intentional living
• Negative liberty
• Positive liberty
• Power (social and political)

Further reading

• Birnbaum, S. (2004). Real Libertarianism, Structural Injustice and the Democratic Ideal. Paper presented at the 10th Conference of Basic Income European Network, Barcelona, 19–20 September 2004. A revised version was presented at the annual meeting of The Swedish Political Science Association, Stockholm, October 7–9, 2004 and included in the USBIG Discussion Paper Series.