Real freedom is a term coined by the political philosopher and

economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...

Philippe Van Parijs. It expands upon notions of negative freedom by incorporating not simply institutional or other constraints on a person's choices, but also the requirements of physical reality, resources and personal capacity. To have real freedom, according to Van Parijs, an individual must: :1. not be prevented from acting on their will (i.e. they must have traditional negative freedom) :2. possess the resources or capacities actually to carry out their will. Under this conception, a moral agent could be ''negatively'' free to take a holiday in

Miami Miami is a East Coast of the United States, coastal city in the U.S. state of Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade County in South Florida. It is the core of the Miami metropolitan area, which, with a populat ...

, because no-one is forcing them not to (condition 1 is met); but not ''really'' free to do so, because they cannot afford the flight (condition 2 is not met). Similarly, someone could be negatively free to swim across the

English Channel The English Channel, also known as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates Southern England from northern France. It links to the southern part of the North Sea by the Strait of Dover at its northeastern end. It is the busi ...

; but not really free, because they are not a good enough swimmer and would not be able to succeed in the task. Real freedom is, then, a matter of ''degree'' — one is more or less really free, not just either really free or not; and no-one has ''complete'' real freedom yet — no-one is currently really free to teleport to

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. It is also known as the "Red Planet", because of its orange-red appearance. Mars is a desert-like rocky planet with a tenuous carbon dioxide () atmosphere. At the average surface level the atmosph ...

, for instance.

Politics

Van Parijs uses the concept of real freedom as part of his influential argument for a

universal basic income Universal basic income (UBI) is a social welfare proposal in which all citizens of a given population regularly receive a minimum income in the form of an unconditional transfer payment, i.e., without a means test or need to perform Work (hu ...

Politics

See also

References

Further reading