Mr David Axelsen

This course is available on the MSc in Human Rights and MSc in Political Theory. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course is capped at two groups. The deadline for enrolments will be 12 noon, Monday, 3 October 2016. You will be informed of the outcome by 12 noon, Wednesday, 5 October 2016. 

Basic familiarity with concepts and methods in normative political theory.

The concept of freedom is often invoked in political life. Many policies and broader political agendas are justified in its name. In fact, an entire political ideology, ‘liberalism’ (arguably the dominant one in the Western world) appears to be built around the idea of freedom. But what, exactly, does freedom mean? Is freedom best understood in terms of absence of interference or in terms of non-domination? Is one made unfree only when one’s rights are violated? Does poverty constitute a constraint on freedom? And could citizens of an authoritarian regime be described as free? These are some of the questions addressed in this module. Depending on the particular year in which the module is taught, the approach taken may be either historical or contemporary-analytic or a combination of the two. Consequently, authors discussed may include key historical thinkers such as Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Kant, as well as contemporary scholars such as Isaiah Berlin, Charles Taylor, Philip Pettit, Quentin Skinner, Amartya Sen and others. 



The overall aim of the course is to enable students to assess the quality and strength of different theorists' conceptions of freedom and to deploy those conceptions in the analysis and justification of some core institutions within the liberal state.

20 hours of seminars in the LT.

Two-hour weekly sessions in the LT.

There will be a reading week in week 6 of the LT for advice and feedback.

All students are expected to submit one formative (non-assessed) essay.

Isaiah Berlin, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ in Berlin, Liberty (edited by Henry Hardy); Gerald MacCallum, ‘Negative and Positive Freedom’, in Philosophical Review, 76 (1967); Phillip Pettit, A Theory of Freedom; I. Carter, ‘The Independent Value of Freedom’, Ethics, 105 (1995), 819-45; Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia; G. A. Cohen, ‘Capitalism, Freedom and the Proletariat’ in Miller (ed.) Liberty; John Stuart Mill, On Liberty; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract; Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan; John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals.

Essay (100%, 4000 words).

The extended essay will be based on a topic examined in the course.