The research project "Equality, Freedom, and Domination" was funded by the POLONEZ BIS 3 competition, co-financed by the European Commission and the National Science Center under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND grant.

Basic information

• Project title: Equality, Freedom, and Domination
• Duration: January 1, 2023 - December 31, 2025
• Principal investigator: dr Callum Macrae (callum.macrae@uj.edu.pl)
• Mentor: dr hab. Tomasz Żuradzki, prof. UJ

Popular description

Suppose that X is Y’s slave. Y can, if they wish, command and prohibit X from doing a wide range of things. Suppose further, however, that Y chooses not to exercise this power. Although Y never actually interferes with X’s plans and actions, X’s position with respect to Y nevertheless seems importantly objectionable. Political and social philosophers refer to X’s situation with respect to Y as domination: X is said to be dominated by Y. The major goal of this research project is to work out precisely why domination is objectionable, and to explore the institutional and policy-related implications that follow.

Contemporary political philosophy provides two major competing answers to the question of why domination is objectionable. On the one hand, neo-republicans (such as Pettit and Lovett) argue that domination is bad because it is offensive to the value of freedom. When we are dominated, we are under the power of another, and somebody who lives under the power of another is not truly free. On the other hand, relational egalitarians (such as Anderson and Schemmel) argue that domination is bad because it is offensive to the value of equality. When we are dominated, there is someone who controls us, and those who control others cannot stand to those others as equals; they relate as superior to inferior, rather than on equal terms. In their shared focus on the centrality of power to political philosophy, there are significant parallels between neo-republicanism and relational egalitarianism. However, despite these parallels, there is still yet to have been a prolonged attempt to connect these areas of the political philosophy literature, and to answer the sorts of questions that emerge from such a connection.

In this research project I will fill this gap in the literature by undertaking an extensive examination of the relationships between equality, freedom, and domination. This major goal will be served by pursuing two subsidiary goals. The first will consist of investigating a series of questions regarding the relationship between the neo-republican conception of domination as unfreedom and the relational egalitarian conception of domination as inequality. Given the parallels between them, we might think that the two accounts are essentially compatible. However, each theory also appears to provide a different answer to a series of important questions, such as the precise moral character of domination, the significance of independence, and the connection between opposition to domination and alternative political values, such as solidarity. Moreover, there are important criticisms that have been pressed against each of the theories that do not appear to apply in a straightforward way to the other theory. If the two theories provide different answers to important questions, and are susceptible to different criticisms, might it be the case that the two accounts depart from one another in important ways? And if so, is there a reason to prefer one account to the other?

The second subsidiary goal is to examine the practical implications of the results obtained by researching the questions posed in the previous paragraph. Both neo-republicanism and relational egalitarianism have been used by various theorists to mount significant institutional and policy-focused arguments in recent years. Both neo republicans and relational egalitarians have generated arguments to suppose that markets are or are not compatible with avoiding nondomination and have likewise offered evaluations of economic proposals such as property-owning democracy and the universal welfare state (including Universal Basic Income, or UBI.) Similarly, both neo republicans and relational egalitarians have used the concept of domination to argue for various forms of workplace democracy, as well as other forms of economic democracy such as community wealth building. If there is a reason to prefer the relational egalitarian account of non-domination to the neo-republican account (or vice versa), what implications might that have for the force of these policy arguments?

Through a systematic investigation of these questions, this research project promises to advance and deepen our understanding of two central political values—equality and freedom—and to use that understanding to illuminate precisely what is at stakes in some of the most important contemporary policy debates of our times.

Source of funding

This research is part of the project No. 2022/47/P/HS1/02025 co-funded by the National Science Centre and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 945339.

Acronim: EFD