You are kindly invited to the book launch of

Boudewijn de Bruin, The Business of Liberty: Freedom and Information in Ethics, Politics and Law (Oxford University Press, 2022), https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-business-of-liberty-9780198839675

Faculty of Philosophy, University of Groningen, Friday 8 July 2022 (room beta), 10.30-17.00

What makes political freedom valuable to us? Two well-known arguments are that freedom contributes to our desire satisfaction and to our personal responsibility. In The Business of Liberty, De Bruin argues that freedom is valuable when it is accompanied by knowledge. He offers an original and systematic account of the relationship between freedom and knowledge and defends two original normative ideals of known freedom and acknowledged freedom.

By combining psychological perspectives on choice and philosophical views on the value of knowledge, De Bruin shows how known freedom is crucial to satisfy our desires and assume responsibility. Known freedom is compromised when salespeople deploy consumer-obfuscation, or when news outlets use contextual framing techniques to steer the way their audiences process information. Conversely, carefully developed consumer protection and information disclosure regulation can foster known freedom. Acknowledged freedom, from ethical and economic perspectives, offers protection and makes our freedoms more stable. It embodies an ideal of mutual recognition that underlies informed consent and the ethics of communication, and can also contribute to a flourishing corporate culture.

This book integrates and extends cutting-edge research from philosophy, economics, psychology, and law to reorient debates on privacy, neuromarketing, sustainable finance, corporate culture, consumer protection, media violence, and freedom of speech.

Programme
1030-1130 Martin van Hees (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), ‘Exploring Possibilities: Mental Freedom’

In this presentation, I will discuss the notion of freedom that Robert Musil describes in the novel The Man Without Qualities. Whereas there are important commonalities with De Bruin’s notion of ‘known freedom’ from The Business of Liberty, Musil’s account of mental freedom is a radically different concept. Or so it seems.

1130-1230 Constanze Binder (Erasmus University Rotterdam), ‘Green Liberalism: The Business of Liberty and its Limits’

Global natural resources are depleting. A transition away from current economic systems is extremely urgent, but such transitions face a potential conflict between environmental policies and a core liberal value: non-interference in private lifestyles. In this talk, I examine how De Bruin’s The Business of Liberty sheds new light on this alleged conflict. More specifically, I argue that taking the ideals of known freedom and acknowledged freedom introduced by De Bruin seriously, new avenues open up to overcome the alleged conflict between environmental policies and liberal values.

1230-1330 break

1330-1430 Frank Hindriks (University of Groningen), ‘Freedom and Responsibility in a Social World’
In The Business of Liberty, De Bruin defends the ideals of known and acknowledged freedom. A key argument for these ideals concerns responsibility. In spite of this, De Bruin does not systematically consider the responsibility-conception of freedom. In this presentation, I consider how this affects some of his arguments.

1430-1530 Jan-Willem van der Rijt (Umeå), TBA

1530-1600 break

1600-1700 Boudewijn de Bruin (University of Groningen, University of Gothenburg), ‘More Business for Freedom: Education, Legal Certainty, Access to Justice, and a Response to Van Hees, Binder, Hindriks, and Van der Rijt’