Position
Domination
A social structure is unjust when it leaves some people subject to others' capacity for arbitrary interference, whether or not that capacity is ever used.
Classification
- Position level
- specific
- Domains
- Political Philosophy
Overview
The republican account turns on a distinction between being interfered with and being liable to interference. A slave with an indulgent master suffers no interference and is dominated all the same, because the master could act otherwise at any moment and the slave has no recourse.
Injustice therefore lies in the structure of power rather than in any event within it, which is why an arrangement can be unjust while everyone in it is being treated kindly. The remedy is correspondingly structural: not better behaviour from those who hold power, but institutions that deprive them of the arbitrary capacity itself.
Position on
References
- Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (1997)
- Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (1997), ch. 2, defining domination as subjection to another's capacity for arbitrary interference