Sep 23, 2026 · 58 min · 9 segments
What is freedom? Benjamin Constant and Isaiah Berlin divided the answers to that question into two categories: the positive conception of the ancients (freedom to participate in political life) and…
Philip PettitGuestRyan ShinkelHost
Well, let me just begin with an anecdote which I've tried in various audiences over the years.
Take the story of Nora Antorvald, wife and husband, in Henry Gibson's play A Doll's House.
So, for example, whether Nora could, for example, go outdoors, go to the theater, what friends she might have.
whether she could have friends back to the home, all of that, how she wore, what she could eat, was all basically up to her husband Torvald.
Now, it turns out, of course, as we all know from the play, that Thorvald is utterly in love with Nora.
I mean, he absolutely worships the ground she walks on, he dotes on her, and he gives her, by almost any metric relevant, carte blanche.
She can really act just as she wishes within the sort of limits of its Norway in the 1860s.
She can act exactly according to her own will in a whole range of cases and what might think of as her personal liberties.
In fact, Torvald is extraordinarily unlikely to interfere because you might think he even wishes he didn't have the power that the law actually gives him.
Do you think that she acts as a free person in the range of choices available to her? She's not interfered with, so in the sense which freedom requires the absence of interference, no matter how you think of interference, she's certainly not interfered with.
But the question, and I almost filled it to you, but you may not wish to fill it as a question here and now, is do we really want to say that Nora is free? Because if you think that Nora really should not count us free, if you take a particular instance, Nora is allowed by Torvald to speak, for example, at dinner parties or in whatever public occasions they attend in favor of or against the government, even when he takes a different view from her.
Does she enjoy full freedom of speech? She's not interfered with in any way, is unlikely to be interfered with, Or in taking any other range, take any choice within the range of the personal liberties as you might think of them, does she enjoy freedom in those choices? And is she, in virtue of that, a free person? Now, the interesting thing that I found, and I've tried this on people really, don't want to make it too exotic, but really many, many different countries, from China to Ireland, And I get an almost unanimous response that she's not free.
Well, let me just begin with an anecdote which I've tried in various audiences over the years.
Take the story of Nora Antorvald, wife and husband, in Henry Gibson's play A Doll's House.
So, for example, whether Nora could, for example, go outdoors, go to the theater, what friends she might have.
whether she could have friends back to the home, all of that, how she wore, what she could eat, was all basically up to her husband Torvald.
Now, it turns out, of course, as we all know from the play, that Thorvald is utterly in love with Nora.
I mean, he absolutely worships the ground she walks on, he dotes on her, and he gives her, by almost any metric relevant, carte blanche.
She can really act just as she wishes within the sort of limits of its Norway in the 1860s.
She can act exactly according to her own will in a whole range of cases and what might think of as her personal liberties.
In fact, Torvald is extraordinarily unlikely to interfere because you might think he even wishes he didn't have the power that the law actually gives him.
Do you think that she acts as a free person in the range of choices available to her? She's not interfered with, so in the sense which freedom requires the absence of interference, no matter how you think of interference, she's certainly not interfered with.
But the question, and I almost filled it to you, but you may not wish to fill it as a question here and now, is do we really want to say that Nora is free? Because if you think that Nora really should not count us free, if you take a particular instance, Nora is allowed by Torvald to speak, for example, at dinner parties or in whatever public occasions they attend in favor of or against the government, even when he takes a different view from her.
Does she enjoy full freedom of speech? She's not interfered with in any way, is unlikely to be interfered with, Or in taking any other range, take any choice within the range of the personal liberties as you might think of them, does she enjoy freedom in those choices? And is she, in virtue of that, a free person? Now, the interesting thing that I found, and I've tried this on people really, don't want to make it too exotic, but really many, many different countries, from China to Ireland, And I get an almost unanimous response that she's not free.
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