"A philosophical conception of equally-held individual freedom and societal freedom"
These are usually in conflict. Maximal individual freedom is antithetical to maximal societal freedom. It is precisely the tug-o-war between these that forms the basis of the zero-sum game we call electoral politics.
For example: Does each individual person in Iraq (or Hungary or Sweden or America) have an inherent right to decide whether to march in a gay pride parade? Or do the people of Iraq (or Hungary or Sweden or America) have a collective right to decide whether to allow gay pride parades?
Nearly all modern liberals (classical or modern) would place this as an individual right. But such a claim is far from self-evident to either logic or reason or philosophy and is historically quite aberrant. Most philosophers prior to Hume and Mill would have sided the opposite way. Aristotle certainly would have, not out of a particular aversion to homosexuality (common in his day) but because he thought society existed to encourage virtuous behavior, and virtue always requires a collective definition. Jefferson et al were classically educated; my civics students really hate it when I rewrite the Declaration as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of virtue", but it's far closer to the founder's meaning than the modern version: "life, maximal individual autonomy, and the pursuit of orgasms".
The modern West calls itself a liberal-democracy, but this is an oxymoron. Liberalism holds universal principles that even popular will may not impinge upon; democracy requires the law to be rooted in the desire of the demos. This was always a shotgun marriage, mostly held together by the shared, pre-liberal, Judeo-Christian moral order. But we've burned through that now, and the messy divorce has begun.
In addition to Brian Villanueva's excellent points above, I would further add that Lowe's sketch of her preferred Lockean variant of political liberalism (the four bullet points in the penultimate paragraph of her essay) poses more questions than it answers.
Bullet point #1 -- Lowe describes Lockean liberalism's "central commitment to freedom and equality as foundational objective values, most clearly manifest in the core principle that no human being is naturally subordinate to another”. Alas, this core principle is objectively false; government officials have the power to throw me in jail if I don’t obey their laws.
Lowe also adds: "From this [i.e. the central commitment to freedom and equality] derive significant commitments to reducible objective values including consent, self-ownership, and tolerance”. But why are these values “objective”? Also, how should we define “consent”, e.g. the problem of “implied” consent -- i.e. I consent to the laws of X because I live in X; a construct that Hume destroyed in his “original contract" essay.
Bullet point #2 -- Lowe then describes Lockean liberalism's "theory of individual freedom, on which being free means being capable of making reasoned decisions about how to act or not to act, and following through on those decisions. Being a ‘free agent’, in this sense, is presented as something that sets human beings apart, morally, from creatures without this capacity”.
I hate to be “that guy”, but this formulation is empty in practice. After all, am I really “free” just because I am able to estimate the probability or threat of government coercion in my decision calculus? Of course not: a decision made under duress or the threat of coercion might be a well-reasoned one, but it is not a "free" one. In other words, what really matters is whether my “reasoned decisions” are coerced or not!
Bullet point #3 -- Next, Lowe extols Lockean liberalism's "theory of societal freedom, on which human beings should be recognised as equal free agents, as a matter of fact, and who should therefore be free to exercise their natural capacity for making and acting on reasoned decisions”. She then adds a crucial caveat: “But who can and should also therefore be held morally responsible for those actions”.
This caveat, however, has the potential of swallowing up our freedoms. Why? Because any attempt to hold me morally responsible for my actions constitutes a potential restriction of my freedom to make reasoned decisions without the fear of coercion. (See my duress comment to bullet point #2 above.) Moreover, Lowe (or Locke, for that matter) doesn’t provide a limiting principle or other well-defined criterion for deciding when we can be held morally responsible for our actions. One possibility is Mill’s classic harm-principle, but on this note, see Coase’s theory of reciprocal harms, which I discuss in my paper "Coase's Parable", available here: https://digitalcommons.law.mercer.edu/jour_mlr/vol74/iss3/9/
Bullet point #4 -- Lastly, Lowe refers to a "core set of natural rights" and to Lockean liberalism's "adherence to a full moral worldview on which natural law reflects God’s wishes and the natural freedom and equality of all human beings, and acts as a necessary moral restraint on political power and interpersonal behaviour...." But Lowe is committing the classic “natural law fallacy” here: she doesn’t tell us where this “core set of natural rights” comes from or who is supposed to provide them. Cf. my critique of Alasdair MacIntrye, who commits the same fallacy in his work: https://priorprobability.com/2025/07/10/alasdair-macintyre-commits-the-natural-law-fallacy/
Liberalism and Conservatism are context dependent rather than Absolute political philosophies such as that of the Divine Rights of Kings. Liberals are more optimistic and generous while Conservatives are more cautious.
As a matter of pragmatics, it made sense to say 'Gorbachev is Liberal, Andropov is Conservative' or 'Khatami is liberal, Khameni isconservative'.
Thus Liberalism is a context dependent descriptor rather than a moral creed or a political philosophy. Can there be a Liberalism based on some version of Utilitarianism? Harsanyi & Vickrey (a Georgist) thought so but Rawls took over their gedanken and tried to use an absurd type of risk aversion to prove that people would reject a modest social insurance scheme and embrace a crazy type of economic egalitarianism. This was simply silly as was the notion that a 'commitment' which was not also a Hohfeldian incident (obligation) meant anything at all. Why not say 'thoughts and prayers' instead? Also, foundational values don't matter if nothing is ever built on top of them. Conception is great if this means a bouncing baby comes into the world. Any other sort of conception doesn't matter at all. What matters is what actions were taken. Adhering to a world-view changes nothing. Magical thinking simply doesn't work.
Also there is no 'richness' in warmed up sick. I mean, it's funny when Amartya Sen goes in for it but he escaped famine and ethnic cleansing in his native Bengal and was subjected to horrendous epistemic rape by Dead White Men. Not everybody can be that lucky.
"A philosophical conception of equally-held individual freedom and societal freedom"
These are usually in conflict. Maximal individual freedom is antithetical to maximal societal freedom. It is precisely the tug-o-war between these that forms the basis of the zero-sum game we call electoral politics.
For example: Does each individual person in Iraq (or Hungary or Sweden or America) have an inherent right to decide whether to march in a gay pride parade? Or do the people of Iraq (or Hungary or Sweden or America) have a collective right to decide whether to allow gay pride parades?
Nearly all modern liberals (classical or modern) would place this as an individual right. But such a claim is far from self-evident to either logic or reason or philosophy and is historically quite aberrant. Most philosophers prior to Hume and Mill would have sided the opposite way. Aristotle certainly would have, not out of a particular aversion to homosexuality (common in his day) but because he thought society existed to encourage virtuous behavior, and virtue always requires a collective definition. Jefferson et al were classically educated; my civics students really hate it when I rewrite the Declaration as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of virtue", but it's far closer to the founder's meaning than the modern version: "life, maximal individual autonomy, and the pursuit of orgasms".
The modern West calls itself a liberal-democracy, but this is an oxymoron. Liberalism holds universal principles that even popular will may not impinge upon; democracy requires the law to be rooted in the desire of the demos. This was always a shotgun marriage, mostly held together by the shared, pre-liberal, Judeo-Christian moral order. But we've burned through that now, and the messy divorce has begun.
ok, I'll bite ...
In addition to Brian Villanueva's excellent points above, I would further add that Lowe's sketch of her preferred Lockean variant of political liberalism (the four bullet points in the penultimate paragraph of her essay) poses more questions than it answers.
Bullet point #1 -- Lowe describes Lockean liberalism's "central commitment to freedom and equality as foundational objective values, most clearly manifest in the core principle that no human being is naturally subordinate to another”. Alas, this core principle is objectively false; government officials have the power to throw me in jail if I don’t obey their laws.
Lowe also adds: "From this [i.e. the central commitment to freedom and equality] derive significant commitments to reducible objective values including consent, self-ownership, and tolerance”. But why are these values “objective”? Also, how should we define “consent”, e.g. the problem of “implied” consent -- i.e. I consent to the laws of X because I live in X; a construct that Hume destroyed in his “original contract" essay.
Bullet point #2 -- Lowe then describes Lockean liberalism's "theory of individual freedom, on which being free means being capable of making reasoned decisions about how to act or not to act, and following through on those decisions. Being a ‘free agent’, in this sense, is presented as something that sets human beings apart, morally, from creatures without this capacity”.
I hate to be “that guy”, but this formulation is empty in practice. After all, am I really “free” just because I am able to estimate the probability or threat of government coercion in my decision calculus? Of course not: a decision made under duress or the threat of coercion might be a well-reasoned one, but it is not a "free" one. In other words, what really matters is whether my “reasoned decisions” are coerced or not!
Bullet point #3 -- Next, Lowe extols Lockean liberalism's "theory of societal freedom, on which human beings should be recognised as equal free agents, as a matter of fact, and who should therefore be free to exercise their natural capacity for making and acting on reasoned decisions”. She then adds a crucial caveat: “But who can and should also therefore be held morally responsible for those actions”.
This caveat, however, has the potential of swallowing up our freedoms. Why? Because any attempt to hold me morally responsible for my actions constitutes a potential restriction of my freedom to make reasoned decisions without the fear of coercion. (See my duress comment to bullet point #2 above.) Moreover, Lowe (or Locke, for that matter) doesn’t provide a limiting principle or other well-defined criterion for deciding when we can be held morally responsible for our actions. One possibility is Mill’s classic harm-principle, but on this note, see Coase’s theory of reciprocal harms, which I discuss in my paper "Coase's Parable", available here: https://digitalcommons.law.mercer.edu/jour_mlr/vol74/iss3/9/
Bullet point #4 -- Lastly, Lowe refers to a "core set of natural rights" and to Lockean liberalism's "adherence to a full moral worldview on which natural law reflects God’s wishes and the natural freedom and equality of all human beings, and acts as a necessary moral restraint on political power and interpersonal behaviour...." But Lowe is committing the classic “natural law fallacy” here: she doesn’t tell us where this “core set of natural rights” comes from or who is supposed to provide them. Cf. my critique of Alasdair MacIntrye, who commits the same fallacy in his work: https://priorprobability.com/2025/07/10/alasdair-macintyre-commits-the-natural-law-fallacy/
Bottom line: I will stick with Robert Nozick.
By commitment to “equality” do you mean “equality under the law”? Something else?
How does your preferred variant of liberalism handle the “state of exception”?
Liberalism and Conservatism are context dependent rather than Absolute political philosophies such as that of the Divine Rights of Kings. Liberals are more optimistic and generous while Conservatives are more cautious.
As a matter of pragmatics, it made sense to say 'Gorbachev is Liberal, Andropov is Conservative' or 'Khatami is liberal, Khameni isconservative'.
Thus Liberalism is a context dependent descriptor rather than a moral creed or a political philosophy. Can there be a Liberalism based on some version of Utilitarianism? Harsanyi & Vickrey (a Georgist) thought so but Rawls took over their gedanken and tried to use an absurd type of risk aversion to prove that people would reject a modest social insurance scheme and embrace a crazy type of economic egalitarianism. This was simply silly as was the notion that a 'commitment' which was not also a Hohfeldian incident (obligation) meant anything at all. Why not say 'thoughts and prayers' instead? Also, foundational values don't matter if nothing is ever built on top of them. Conception is great if this means a bouncing baby comes into the world. Any other sort of conception doesn't matter at all. What matters is what actions were taken. Adhering to a world-view changes nothing. Magical thinking simply doesn't work.
Also there is no 'richness' in warmed up sick. I mean, it's funny when Amartya Sen goes in for it but he escaped famine and ethnic cleansing in his native Bengal and was subjected to horrendous epistemic rape by Dead White Men. Not everybody can be that lucky.