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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
138A r g u i n g a b o u t j u s t i c eone’s whole life is calculated as an aggregation of the set of (spatiotemporallyspecific) actions one is free (at the beginning of one’s life) toperform. On the end-state conception of ‘freedom over whole lives’, bycontrast, we need to consider each and every one of the different amounts offreedom possessed at various moments extending over a single life.When we aggregate over the (spatio-temporally specific) actions a person isfree at time t to perform, we produce a judgement of the degree of overallfreedom enjoyed by that person at time t. Both of the above conceptions of‘freedom over whole lives’ aggregate over whole lives in the sense ofaggregating over available actions. It is also conceivable, however, that onemight aggregate over the degrees of freedom possessed at various timesduring a person’s life. Call an aggregative end-state conception of ‘freedomover whole lives’ a conception according to which the concern for a person’sfreedom ‘over her whole life’ amounts to a concern for the sum or the averageof all the degrees of freedom possessed by her at various given juncturesextending over her whole life. This conception coincides with what DennisMcKerlie and others have called a ‘complete lives view’. 3 But an end-stateconception of ‘freedom over whole lives’ might be aggregative or nonaggregativein the above sense, for one can still be said to be concerned withthe freedom people enjoy ‘over their whole lives’ if one says, for example,that a person has a right, at any one time in her life, to enjoy a degree offreedom that is equal to the freedom enjoyed by others at that same time.(The latter conception coincides with what McKerlie calls the ‘simultaneoussegments view’.) The starting-gate conception, on the other hand, isnecessarily non-aggregative with respect to temporally distinct degrees offreedom.Before proceeding, we should make one more distinction within the endstateconception. On a first version of the end-state conception, we divideeach life into temporal segments, and we measure the freedom a personpossesses at the beginning of each segment (call this time t1) taking intoaccount only those action possibilities that are temporally located withinthat same segment (that is, between t1, when the segment begins, and t2,when it ends). Thus, if t1 is the present and t2 is two hours later, then myfreedom or unfreedom at t1 to leave my study in three hours’ time will notshow up in our calculation of the degree of freedom I enjoy at t1. Call thisthe ‘discrete-segment’ version of the end-state conception. Alternatively, wemight measure the freedom I possess at t1 taking into account all of thehypothetical actions that are temporally located within the whole of myexpected lifetime subsequent to t1. In this case, my freedom at t1 to leave my3See McKerlie 1989, and subsequent articles.
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Marriages as assets?Real freedom an
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The guaranteed income as an equalop
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Reflections on the limits of argume
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English or Esperanto:a case for lev
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Should a Marxistbelieve in human ri
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A universal duty to careIngrid Robe
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The ideological roots of inequality
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On genetic inequalityHillel Steiner
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A federal electoral district for Be
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Lamentationin the face of historica
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Why we demand anunconditional basic
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Linguistic protectionismand wealth
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In defense of genderlessnessErik Ol
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