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This chapter addresses the question why we need to rethink the idea of freedom today in the era of globality. Open societies worldwide have come under increasing pressure lately, being accused of undermining the ecological and social conditions of their own sustainability. In the view of its critics, the idea of freedom no longer offers adequate normative guidance and should be partially corrected or even entirely replaced by countervailing values. But – this is the leitmotif of this chapter – are there not yet unexhausted ways to boost the resilience of the principle of liberalism? Could one revise the principle of liberty in order to revive it? Which traditional teachings of freedom philosophy can, or ought to be, rescued? Is a metaphysical foundation of the idea of freedom still necessary or permissible these days? Trying to answer these questions, this chapter analyses how certain approaches within liberal philosophy – centered on the bifurcation of negative versus positive freedom – faltered, and why a reconstruction of the liberal idea through the lens of quantitative versus qualitative freedom promises more success.

This chapter defends the role of metaphysical arguments within contemporary philosophies of freedom. In particular, it tries to show that liberal thinkers today still have much to gain from a critically selective appropriation of the theories of Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and Karl Christian Friedrich Krause. An analysis of their contributions to the tradition of idealistic liberalism brings out a dimension of cosmopolitan responsibility as inherent to the liberal principle itself. The idea of freedom, this chapter demonstrates, can and must be the principle for both the and the of citizens’ liberties. If and where the laws that curb people’s liberties follow said principle, such regulations change their nature: from a restriction of personal freedom to its societal realization. Moreover, what legitimates people’s entitlements to civic freedoms is not the particularity of their respective individuality but their personality in general. If, however, we owe freedom to people , then to persons, including future generations, and consequently the proper limits of the liberties of each lie in the enabling conditions of the freedoms of all. Individual freedom and cosmopolitan responsibility, that is, go hand in hand.

This chapter investigates two paragons of quantitative approaches to the philosophy of freedom: Friedrich August von Hayek and John Rawls. While they are typically portrayed as occupying opposing spaces on a spectrum from conservative to progressive liberal thinking, they resemble each other much more than meets the eye. On closer inspection, one can see, though, how either thinker assiduously tries to avoid any and all metaphysical underpinnings of his theory and aims to make do with a merely quantitative conception of freedom. These endeavors, however, fail to accomplish their respective – and quite contrary – political goals. Both Hayek and Rawls can only realize their concrete liberal aspirations by tacitly taking recourse to qualitative arguments. The chapter concludes by suggesting that one better give up the pretense that a philosophy of liberty could stand on quantitative grounds alone. Rather, the covert qualitative dimensions of liberal philosophy should be rendered overt so as to facilitate a productive as well as critical engagement with its tenets.

This chapter portrays two thinkers, John Kenneth Galbraith and Amartya Sen, who set out with a qualitative conception of freedom. Both took offense at the contemporary state of affairs in economic policy and, by extension, in economic theory and business education. On their view, neoclassical economics has become myopic by hewing to merely quantitative parameters. However, by extricating from the realm of economic analysis all qualitative and normative considerations, economics has impoverished itself and has robbed economic policy of the requisite means to progress towards a more ecologically, socially, and morally sustainable order of business. As a consequence, Galbraith and Sen reject the merely quantitative conceptions of economic and political liberty buttressing conventional economic wisdom. Instead, they fend for a more self-critical notion of liberty that intellectually and practically realizes the qualitative dimension of freedom in a democratic fashion. Thus, they renew an argument that had already had much currency in metaphysical theories of freedom, i.e. that freedom must not only be pursued in substance but also in procedure. People should not only be passive recipients of the rights and benefits of liberal orders, but also, importantly, their active and transformative architects.

This chapter begins with a summary of the results of all previous chapters and continues with the main lessons to be learned for liberal economics and politics. First and foremost, no theory of freedom can succeed that does not recognize the qualitative dimension of freedom; any reduction of the idea of liberty to quantitative metrics alone results in a ‘’ or has to rely on an underhanded introjection of qualitative criteria. As a consequence, contemporary liberal philosophy should explicate these implicit qualitative dimensions of the principle of freedom so as to open their content up for academic scrutiny and public discussion. When, however, doing just this and while elucidating which reasons legitimate people’s right to liberty anywhere, we come to see that these very reasons commit us also to advance the freedom of people everywhere and at any time. In sum, individual freedom is not being curbed or curtailed by the call for cosmopolitan responsibility. Rather, through taking on this very responsibility, individuals as well as institutions come closer to the very core of the liberal idea – while at the same time making its reign more broadly acceptable and thus assuring its sustainability over time.