Freedom Beyond Sovereignty: Reconstructing Liberal Individualism

by Sharon R. Krause

What does it mean to be free? We invoke the word frequently, yet the freedom of countless Americans is compromised by social inequalities that systematically undercut what they are able to do and to become. If we are to remedy these failures of freedom, we must move beyond the common assumption, prevalent in political theory and American public life, that individual agency is best conceived as a kind of personal sovereignty, or as self-determination or control over one’s actions.

In Freedom Beyond Sovereignty , Sharon R. Krause shows that individual agency is best conceived as a non-sovereign experience because our ability to act and affect the world depends on how other people interpret and respond to what we do. The intersubjective character of agency makes it vulnerable to the effects of social inequality, but it is never in a strict sense socially determined. The agency of the oppressed sometimes surprises us with its vitality. Only by understanding the deep dynamics of agency as simultaneously non-sovereign and robust can we remediate the failed freedom of those on the losing end of persistent inequalities and grasp the scope of our own responsibility for social change. Freedom Beyond Sovereignty brings the experiences of the oppressed to the center of political theory and the study of freedom. It fundamentally reconstructs liberal individualism and enables us to see human action, personal responsibility, and the meaning of liberty in a totally new light.

Genres: Philosophy

272 pages, Hardcover

First published March 13, 2015

Reviews

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Krause’s book was really compelling for the first half of it, but the second half was so disappointing. Briefly, she argues in the first half that liberals need to adopt a non-sovereign approach to thinking about human agency. Instead of identifying agency only with actions that individuals choose themselves and exercise exclusive control over, liberals need to recognize that our attempts at agentic actions are dependent upon social others for their successful completion. When we act in the world, our actions disclose the kinds of selves we are. So, the meaning of the action is in some way related to the self that’s being disclosed. For members of marginalized groups who suffer from social stigma, the disconnect between how they interpret their agentic actions and how social others interpret their actions can lead to failed attempts at agency. Our agency depends upon social background conditions that allow our acts to make sense. It’s only if they make sense to social others that our attempts at agency will be successful. Recognizing that agency is socially distributed in this way requires that liberals take seriously the threat that oppression poses to both agency and freedom.

So far, so good. Then, Krause discusses four concepts of freedom: non-interference (Berlin), non-domination (Pettit), non-oppression (Krause) and freedom as collective world-making (Arendt). Drawing on Berlin’s discussion of value pluralism, she argues for “freedom pluralism”: recognition that there are multiple kinds of freedom, that they all offer something of value to human lives, that they can and do come into conflict with one another, and that there is no rank-ordering of the kinds of freedom that would allow us to settle once and for all conflicts over freedom. Still with her.

Then, though, she gets into examples of how should adjudicate conflicts between conceptions of freedom and she completely loses me. She gives the example of a white supremacist openly advocating for white supremacy. And she says that the freedom of the white supremacist to advocate for the domination of nonwhite peoples is a legitimate exercise of freedom that the principle of non-interference is required to protect. At the same time, she acknowledges that protecting the white supremacist’s right to advocate for the domination of nonwhite peoples actively contributes to the social background conditions that undermine the ability of POC to engage in successful agentic acts. The protection of white supremacists’ “right” to advocate for racial domination jeopardizes the ability of POC to be able to experience freedom as non-oppression and undermines their ability to see their identities affirmed in their actions—and yet, she argues that we have to balance the white supremacist’s right to non-interference with the POC’s right to not be oppressed.

And my issue is, if openly advocating for the domination of others—engaging in the act of world-creation that contributes to the unfreedom of others—is not sufficiently threatening to justify accepting that the trade-off must, in this case, mean the rejection of freedom as non-interference for the protection of freedom as non-oppression, then when exactly will it be okay to interfere with those who oppress others? If the interests of the oppressors must be “balanced” against those of the oppressed as though they are equally legitimate, how does a society end the oppressive power relationship? It can’t if overwhelming deference is paid to non-interference.

White supremacists should be interfered with. I just cannot understand why—in a book about how liberalism is supposed to be renewed in order to be able to fight oppression—the interests of white supremacists to engage in collective world-making with the goal of dominating others are treated as equally legitimate as the interests of those who do not want to be oppressed.

[Mark Collins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very accessible political theory book. I thought her concept of plural freedom was very interesting, although tough in practice to actually mete out. (Her applications in this section do not really provide concrete solutions, which in some ways is the point, but it still is not very satisfying as a guiding theory...mainly, because she leaves unaddressed the question of who decides which freedoms to privilege in which situation, when is consensus achieved, how does historical/social context impact our evaluations, etc.).

That said I liked her discussion of the power of imagination and other ways marginalized subjects find limited agency.

Overall, it was a fascinating way of theorizing how we are all culpable for injustice and large scale problems like climate change and white supremacy, even if we are not intentionally or directly contributing to them.

[Esha Sraboni · Rating 3 out of 5]

Krause writes in a very accessible manner, illustrating her theoretical concepts with a broad range of literary sources as well as personal experiences. She makes a compelling argument that, contrary to mainstream liberation notions of individual agency and freedom, agency is actually a non-sovereign experience, and that we need to work with a pluralistic notion of freedom.

Surprisingly, a discussion of political institutions is nearly absent from the book. Although Krause's intent is to focus less on formal political institutions, and more on social practices, these are not mutually exclusive concerns, and a reflection on the implications of non-sovereign freedom for thinking about formal institutions would have led to a richer analysis.

[John Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sheer madness. In a nutshell, author argues that a **my** freedom requires **you** to respect me, actively and continuously. It's not surprising that she says that freedom is not a matter of sovereignty. That's because she's not actually talking about freedom. Duh.

[Katie Glanz · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this book, Krause sets out to redeem liberal concepts of agency and of freedom by placing them in a post-sovereign context. She suggests that, contrary to liberal theory’s tendency to portray agency as sovereign, it is actually a non-sovereign experience. Yet, she contends that this does not mean we should abandon liberal concepts of individual identity, self awareness, and responsibility, and that these concepts can still be used when discussing non-sovereign forms of freedom. She goes on to suggest that an understanding of agency as non-sovereign actually increases our responsibility to others. Because our agency does not take place in a vacuum, we need others to receive and respond to us to be agential. Thus, social inequality, because it creates trouble for the efficacy of some people's’ agency over others, greatly harms a society’s overall goals of freedom for all. Liberalism must pay greater attention to this reality. She ends by arguing that freedom is an inherently plural experience. There are different types of freedom that will inherently conflict, but this does not mean we cannot prescribe practices aimed at establishing more balance, more justice between the different forms of freedom.