Philosophy Department Colloquium

Professor Pascal Brixel, Department of Philosophy, Northwestern University “Freedom, Power, and Private Property.” It is often thought that private property in the means of production promotes individual freedom, even if it may be in tension with other values such as equality and community. In this talk, I argue that private property in the means of production threatens individual freedom. We are unfree, in general, when other people steer our practical reasoning by exercising power over us. But private property in the means of production, I argue, forces people to make one another unfree in this way.