Real freedom for all turtles in Sugarscape? - Presses universitaires ...

C a r t e r – D i s t r i b u t i n g f r e e d o m o v e r w h o l e l i v e s 137freedom at older ages ‘against the weakness of their will at younger ages’(Van Parijs 1995: 47). This solution is unsatisfactory, however, because theassumed temporal unity of persons, combined with our respect-basedreason for being interested in their freedom, makes it difficult to justifypaternalism. By explicitly embracing paternalism (however ‘mild’), VanParijs effectively admits defeat in the search for a ‘real libertarian’, respectbasedjustification for his preference for basic income over basic capital.In what follows, I shall gesture in the direction of a solution to Van Parijs’sproblem. To show why that solution is necessary as well as possible, I mustfirst introduce some technical distinctions.Conceptions of ‘Freedom over whole lives’The concern of Van Parijs, and of many other egalitarians, is with thefreedom people enjoy over their whole lives. But what is it, exactly, to enjoyfreedom ‘over one’s whole life’? The answer to this question is complicatedby the fact that freedom necessarily pertains to the future. Indeed, unlike inthe case of other possible distribuenda (such as welfare or resources), anyascription of freedom includes, at least implicitly, two time indexicals: thetime at which the freedom in question is enjoyed by the agent, and the timeof the occurrence the agent is free to bring about (Carter 1999: ch. 7; Kramer2003: 76-91). For example, I am free now, at the time of writing, to leave mystudy in one hour’s time (for it is true now that, were I to try to do so in onehour’s time, I would not be obstructed). Suppose, however, that someonewere to lock my study door from the outside right now, for a period of twohours. Then we should say that I am unfree right now to leave in one hour’stime, but am free right now to leave in three hours’ time.An explanation of what it is to enjoy ‘freedom over a whole life’ mightinvolve aggregating over either or both of these two temporally specificphenomena: the freedom enjoyed, and the hypothetical actions. Thus, wecan distinguish two different conceptions of ‘freedom over whole lives’. Ishall call these the ‘starting-gate conception’ and the ‘end-state conception’.On the starting-gate conception of ‘freedom over whole lives’, the amountof freedom you enjoy over your whole life is identical to the amount offreedom you enjoy at the beginning of your life. Although this claim might atfirst seem surprising, it immediately gains plausibility once one considersthat it is only at the beginning of one’s life that one’s future coincides withthe whole of one’s life. Each person begins life with a tree of spatiotemporallyspecific action possibilities, branching out through all of themany alternative possible lives the person is free (at the beginning of herlife) to lead. On the starting-gate conception, the freedom one enjoys over