The Morality of Freedom

1. Introduction

The Morality of Freedom is Joseph Raz’s most systematic statement of his political and legal philosophy. Published in 1986, it develops a unified framework that links a general theory of reasons and value to an account of political authority, personal autonomy, and liberal institutions. The work is often described as the classic articulation of liberal perfectionism, a family of views according to which political institutions may legitimately promote objective values and worthwhile forms of life.

Two ideas organize the book. First, Raz advances a distinctive theory of practical reasons, including the notions of exclusionary reasons and second‑order reasons, which he uses to explain both individual moral deliberation and the binding force of authoritative directives. Second, he argues that personal autonomy—understood as individuals’ authorship of their own lives through choice among valuable options—is an intrinsic component of well‑being and a central political value.

From these foundations Raz develops a service conception of authority, on which legal and political institutions are justified when they help people better conform to the reasons that already apply to them. He also offers an interests‑based theory of rights, and a non‑maximizing account of state perfectionism constrained by autonomy and value pluralism.

The book is written within the Anglo‑American analytic tradition but engages with broader liberal debates, particularly disputes about state neutrality, egalitarianism, and the proper scope of coercive law. It has become a focal point for discussions about how far a liberal state may go in endorsing and promoting controversial ideals of the good life while claiming to respect citizens as free and equal agents.

2. Historical and Intellectual Context

Raz’s project in The Morality of Freedom emerged against the backdrop of late twentieth‑century debates in Anglo‑American political philosophy, especially those prompted by John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (1971). While Rawls’s work helped entrench a neutralist image of liberalism, Raz’s book contributed to a revival of perfectionist currents that had earlier roots in thinkers such as T. H. Green and John Stuart Mill.

Liberal Theory in the 1970s–1980s

The period in which Raz wrote was marked by disputes over:

Raz’s earlier jurisprudential work on legal positivism and authority—developed partly in response to H. L. A. Hart and critics of positivism such as Ronald Dworkin—fed directly into The Morality of Freedom’s analysis of authority and political obligation.

Influences and Interlocutors

Commentators typically identify several major influences:

• Analytic jurisprudence: Hart’s legal positivism provided a methodological and conceptual backdrop, even as Raz moved toward a more explicitly normative account of authority.
• Liberal political theory: Raz engages critically with Rawls, Dworkin, and later neutralist liberals, while also drawing on Mill’s defense of individuality and experiments in living.
• Value pluralism and realism: His account of objective yet plural values resonates with themes in Isaiah Berlin and, more distantly, G. E. Moore’s non‑naturalist ethics.

The book also appeared in a period of renewed interest in political obligation and the legitimacy of the state, alongside works by Robert Nozick, A. John Simmons, and others. In this setting, Raz’s insistence that authority must be justified by its service to subjects’ reasons offered a distinctive alternative to both consent‑based and purely instrumental accounts.

3. Author and Composition

Joseph Raz (1939–2022) was an Israeli‑born legal and political philosopher who spent much of his career at the University of Oxford and later at Columbia and King’s College London. Trained under H. L. A. Hart, he became a leading figure in analytic jurisprudence and moral philosophy, known for his contributions to legal positivism, the nature of authority, and theories of practical reason.

Development of the Book

The Morality of Freedom was composed roughly between 1979 and 1985, during a period in which Raz was refining ideas first sketched in earlier writings, particularly Practical Reason and Norms (1975) and essays on authority. The treatise consolidates and extends that earlier work by:

• Generalizing his theory of reasons and norms into a comprehensive moral framework.
• Applying his account of authority beyond law to political institutions more generally.
• Integrating these with a positive theory of autonomy, value, and rights.

Raz reportedly developed portions of the argument through lectures and seminars in Oxford, revising them in light of critical discussion. The final text, published by Clarendon Press / Oxford University Press in 1986, is dedicated to his parents, Nissan and Regina Raz.

Position in Raz’s Oeuvre

Within Raz’s corpus, the book is often seen as the central link between his:

Later writings, including The Authority of Law (2nd ed.) and collections of essays on value and normativity, frequently revisit and refine themes first fully systematized in The Morality of Freedom.

4. Structure and Organization of the Work

The book is divided into five main parts, each building on the previous to construct an integrated theory of morality, authority, and liberal institutions.

Overall Architecture

Internal Progression

• Part I lays the meta‑ethical and normative groundwork. Raz analyzes the structure of reasons, including first‑order and second‑order (especially exclusionary) reasons, and addresses how moral conflicts are to be understood.

• Part II uses this apparatus to construct a theory of authority. Raz formulates the normal justification thesis and explains how authoritative directives function in practical reasoning.

• Part III turns to autonomy and value theory, arguing for an objective yet pluralist picture of the good and elaborating the conditions under which autonomy is possible and valuable. This part contains the explicit defense of perfectionist liberalism.

• Part IV extends the framework to rights, interests, and equality, developing an interests‑based account of rights and exploring how liberal states should respond to social and economic inequalities in light of autonomy.

• Part V concerns institutional design: constitutional limits on power, forms of democracy, and ways of managing pluralism of values and cultures while upholding the autonomy‑centered perfectionist outlook.

The structure is cumulative: the technical theory of reasons in Part I underpins the account of authority in Part II, which in turn conditions the treatment of autonomy and state power in the later parts.

5. Raz’s Theory of Reasons and Morality

Part I of The Morality of Freedom presents Raz’s general account of practical reasons, which underlies his later discussions of authority, autonomy, and political institutions.

Types and Structure of Reasons

Raz distinguishes among:

• First‑order reasons: ordinary considerations that count in favor of or against actions.
• Second‑order reasons: reasons about reasons, which include:
  • Exclusionary reasons: reasons not to act on (or even to consider acting on) certain first‑order reasons.
  • Other higher‑order reasons that may direct how agents should weigh or organize their first‑order reasons.

This layered structure is intended to model complex deliberation and, later, the way authority pre‑empts some individual reasoning.

Moral Conflicts and Incommensurability

Raz uses this framework to analyze moral conflict:

• He maintains that conflicts between reasons are common, but they do not always imply that values are commensurable on a single scale.
• He allows for incommensurable values, where no precise ranking is possible, while still holding that agents can act on decisive reasons in many cases.

This approach underpins his later pluralism of values, important for his account of autonomy and the diversity of valuable life options.

Morality and Social Practices

Raz connects reasons to social practices and institutions without reducing morality to convention:

• Many reasons arise from or are shaped by institutions (e.g., roles, legal systems), yet they are assessed by independent standards of value and well‑being.
• Moral principles are understood as general reasons that apply across persons and contexts, though their weight and interaction with other reasons may vary.

Objectivity and Normativity

Raz defends a broadly objectivist view: there are facts about what counts as a reason, grounded in features of persons, activities, and relationships that contribute to well‑being. At the same time, he emphasizes that individuals must deliberate on the basis of reasons that apply to them, which sets the stage for his later claim that legitimate authorities must “serve” their subjects’ reasons rather than inventing new ones arbitrarily.

6. Authority, Legitimacy, and the Service Conception

In Part II, Raz develops a systematic theory of authority and political legitimacy built upon his account of reasons.

The Service Conception of Authority

The core idea is that an authority is justified when it serves its subjects by helping them better comply with the reasons that already apply to them. Raz formulates this through the Normal Justification Thesis (NJT):

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The normal way to establish that a person has authority over another person involves showing that the alleged subject is likely better to comply with reasons which apply to him (other than the alleged authoritative directives) if he accepts the directives of the alleged authority as authoritatively binding, than if he tries to follow the reasons which apply to him directly.

— Raz, The Morality of Freedom, ch. 3

On this view, authorities do not create basic reasons ex nihilo; rather, they mediate and structure existing reasons.

Exclusionary Reasons and Pre‑emption

Authoritative directives are modeled as exclusionary reasons:

• A directive gives a subject a reason to perform some action.
• It also provides a second‑order reason not to act on some competing first‑order reasons.
• This explains the pre‑emptive dimension of authority: subjects are to follow the directive instead of re‑weighing all underlying considerations themselves.

Legitimacy, Obligation, and Consent

Raz distinguishes several claims:

This yields a non‑voluntarist but consent‑sensitive account: actual consent can be a powerful reason to recognize authority, but is not the fundamental basis of legitimacy.

Coercion and Law

Raz considers how coercive enforcement fits within the service conception:

• Coercion is sometimes necessary to ensure conformity with reasons (e.g., preventing harm).
• However, coercion itself must be justifiable by reference to the same underlying reasons authorities are meant to serve.

These ideas later inform his treatment of constitutional limits, democracy, and the proper domain of state action.

7. Autonomy: Conditions, Value, and Limits

Part III centers on Raz’s conception of personal autonomy and its political significance.

The Three Conditions of Autonomy

Raz argues that autonomy requires three main conditions:

1. Adequate range of options: Individuals must have access to a sufficiently diverse set of objectively valuable life options.
2. Mental abilities: They must possess the cognitive and volitional capacities necessary for understanding options and forming long‑term plans.
3. Independence condition: Their choices must be free from coercion and manipulation that would undermine genuine self‑authorship.

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“A person is autonomous only if he is part author of his life.”

— Raz, The Morality of Freedom, ch. 14

These conditions link autonomy tightly to Raz’s broader value theory and to social structures that shape available options.

Autonomy as a Component of Well‑Being

Raz treats autonomy as an intrinsic component of well‑being, not merely an instrument. Autonomous lives are valuable because they reflect the agent’s authorship among worthwhile possibilities. At the same time, he holds that autonomy’s value depends on the value of the options from which one chooses; autonomy in pursuing worthless or degrading options does not contribute positively to well‑being.

Limits and Non‑Universal Value

Raz emphasizes that autonomy is not an absolute or universally overriding value:

• Some individuals may reasonably live non‑autonomous lives (for instance in traditional communities) without necessarily wronging themselves, provided their lives are otherwise valuable.
• Children, persons with certain impairments, or those in emergency situations may not meet autonomy conditions, yet they still have moral claims and may be protected paternalistically.

Raz also stresses that the political pursuit of autonomy is constrained:

These nuances inform his later arguments for a non‑maximalist form of perfectionist liberalism.

8. Perfectionist Liberalism and the Critique of Neutrality

In the later chapters of Part III, Raz articulates his perfectionist liberalism and contrasts it with liberal neutrality.

Perfectionist Liberalism

Raz’s perfectionism rests on two main claims:

1. There are objective values and worthwhile ways of life, independently of individual preferences.
2. The state may legitimately promote these values, provided it respects the conditions of autonomy and the pluralism of values.

Perfectionist liberalism, as Raz develops it, is intended to justify familiar liberal institutions—not to replace them with an overtly paternalist order—by grounding them in a substantive view of human flourishing.

Critique of Liberal Neutrality

Raz targets versions of neutrality associated with Rawlsian and other liberal theories. He portrays neutrality roughly as the doctrine that the state must not:

• Intentionally promote any particular conception of the good life, or
• Base its laws and policies on the view that some valuable options are superior to others.

He argues that such neutrality is:

• Impracticable, since many laws (e.g., concerning education, culture, speech) unavoidably shape citizens’ options and endorse values.
• Normatively unappealing, because if some activities or relationships are more valuable, it is unclear why the state should systematically ignore this in its policies.

Non‑Maximalist Perfectionism

Raz limits his perfectionism in several ways:

Proponents of Raz’s view see it as reconciling a robust commitment to value with liberal respect for persons as autonomous agents, while critics (discussed later in this entry) question whether the autonomy‑based constraints adequately contain state perfectionism.

9. Rights, Interests, and Equality

Part IV applies Raz’s framework to rights, their grounding in interests, and questions of equality.

Rights as Reasons and Interests

Raz develops an interests‑based theory of rights, sometimes called an “interest theory”:

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“X has a right if and only if X can have rights, and, other things being equal, an aspect of X’s well‑being (his interest) is a sufficient reason for holding some other person(s) to be under a duty.”

— paraphrasing Raz’s formulation in The Morality of Freedom, ch. 7

On this view:

• Rights are not primitive moral atoms; they are structured reasons grounded in important interests.
• To say someone has a right is to say that their interest is weighty enough to justify imposing duties or institutional obligations on others.

Raz emphasizes especially those interests connected to autonomy and the conditions for leading valuable lives.

Individual, Group, and Institutional Rights

Raz allows for:

• Individual rights, protecting personal autonomy, physical security, expression, etc.
• Group rights, where the interests of groups as such (e.g., cultural communities) justify correlative duties.
• Institutional rights, grounded in the role of institutions (e.g., courts, legislatures) in serving individuals’ interests.

This framework aims to explain how rights can be both robustly protective of individuals and embedded in complex social structures.

Equality and Autonomy

On equality, Raz links its importance to autonomy rather than to a strict ideal of distributive sameness:

Critics have suggested that this autonomy‑centered approach may underplay structural injustices, while defenders see it as retaining the moral core of equality without committing to strong leveling doctrines.

10. The Role of the State and Institutional Design

Part IV (and the transition into Part V) considers the proper role of the state in light of Raz’s perfectionist and autonomy‑based framework, and what this implies for institutional design.

Functions of the Liberal Perfectionist State

Raz envisions the state as having several key roles:

• Securing autonomy‑enabling conditions: ensuring peace, basic security, education, and a legal framework that protects rights and an adequate range of valuable options.
• Promoting valuable forms of life: supporting cultural, educational, and social practices that contribute to citizens’ well‑being, consistent with pluralism.
• Regulating and limiting coercion: using coercive powers only when they can be justified as serving subjects’ reasons (e.g., preventing harm, protecting autonomy).

The state is expected to shape the social environment in ways that make autonomous, valuable lives widely possible.

Non‑Maximalist and Indirect State Action

Raz stresses non‑maximalist and often indirect state action:

The design of institutions—courts, legislatures, administrative bodies—is evaluated by how well they can enact such a limited perfectionist agenda over time.

Interaction with Civil Society

Raz treats civil society—associations, communities, markets, and informal practices—as central to autonomy:

• Many options necessary for autonomous lives are provided by non‑state actors.
• The state should often act as an enabler and regulator (e.g., protecting freedom of association, setting fair market rules) rather than a direct provider.
• However, where social or economic structures systematically deprive some groups of adequate options, state intervention may be required to correct these deficits.

These themes lead naturally into Raz’s discussion of constitutionalism, democracy, and pluralism in Part V.

11. Democracy, Constitutionalism, and Pluralism

Part V draws out the institutional implications of Raz’s framework for democracy, constitutional structures, and managing pluralism.

Democracy and Authority

Raz does not treat democracy as intrinsically authoritative; rather, it is appraised through the service conception:

• Democratic institutions are valued insofar as they help subjects better conform to reasons that apply to them, including by incorporating their knowledge and perspectives.
• He emphasizes representative democracy and the role of public deliberation, while also recognizing that some non‑democratic elements (e.g., independent courts, central banks) may be justified if they better serve citizens’ reasons in specific domains.

This yields an instrumental yet normatively constrained defense of democracy.

Constitutionalism and the Rule of Law

Raz argues for constitutionalism as a way of structuring and limiting political power:

He also connects these structures to a robust conception of the rule of law, which safeguards predictability, stability, and respect for legal processes as preconditions of autonomy.

Pluralism of Values and Cultural Diversity

Raz’s pluralism of values has direct political implications:

• The state must accommodate many incompatible yet valuable ways of life.
• Cultural and religious pluralism are seen as sources of valuable options but can also generate conflicts with autonomy and rights.

Raz allows that group rights and special protections for minorities may sometimes be justified where they sustain valuable cultural options and serve members’ interests. At the same time, he holds that group claims are constrained by the autonomy and rights of individuals within and outside those groups.

Managing pluralism thus involves a complex balance between:

• Supporting diverse ways of life,
• Maintaining common legal and constitutional frameworks, and
• Ensuring that no group’s practices seriously undermine the autonomy or basic rights of its members.

12. Famous Passages and Central Formulations

Several passages from The Morality of Freedom have become canonical reference points in political and legal philosophy.

The Service Conception and Normal Justification Thesis

The clearest formulation of Raz’s service conception of authority and the Normal Justification Thesis appears in Part II:

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“[T]he normal way to establish that a person has authority over another person involves showing that the alleged subject is likely better to comply with reasons which apply to him… if he accepts the directives of the alleged authority as authoritatively binding, than if he tries to follow the reasons which apply to him directly.”

— Raz, The Morality of Freedom, ch. 3

This passage is widely cited as a succinct statement of his view that authority is justified by its service to subjects’ reasons.

Conditions of Autonomy

Part III offers a much‑discussed definition of autonomy and its conditions:

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“Autonomy is a feature of persons, and it is a feature of their lives when they make their own choices and are, within the limits of the proper constraints of morality, the authors of their own lives.”

— Raz, The Morality of Freedom, ch. 14

Raz’s elaboration of the adequate range of options, mental abilities, and independence is often summarized with reference to this formulation.

Adequate Range of Options and Diversity

Raz’s argument that autonomy requires a rich diversity of valuable options is encapsulated in passages that stress:

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“The autonomous person must have an adequate range of options and his life must be to a large extent his own creation.”

— Raz, The Morality of Freedom, ch. 15

These sections are frequently invoked in discussions about the relationship between autonomy, cultural pluralism, and social policy.

Perfectionism vs. Neutrality

In his explicit rejection of liberal neutrality, Raz writes in Part III that:

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“There is no reason to be neutral between the good and the bad.”

— Raz, The Morality of Freedom, ch. 18

This stark formulation is often quoted to capture his perfectionist stance, even though the surrounding text articulates substantial constraints and qualifications.

Together, these passages crystallize the book’s core contributions: a service‑based account of authority, a structured conception of autonomy and its social conditions, and an autonomy‑constrained but openly perfectionist liberalism.

13. Philosophical Method and Style

Raz’s method in The Morality of Freedom is characteristically analytic, combining conceptual clarification with normative argument.

Conceptual Analysis and Systematic Theory

The book proceeds through careful distinctions and definitions:

• It introduces a technical vocabulary of reasons, exclusionary reasons, and second‑order reasons.
• It systematically develops the service conception of authority and the conditions of autonomy, aiming for precise formulations.

Raz frequently tests his concepts against detailed examples and counterexamples, especially in discussions of authority and rights.

Integration of Jurisprudence and Political Philosophy

Methodologically, the work bridges:

Raz uses jurisprudential insights about legal norms and institutional roles to structure his political theory, and vice versa.

Realism about Value and Reasons

Raz adopts a realist stance about reasons and value:

• He generally assumes that there are objective truths about what counts as a reason, though accessible only through reflection and argument.
• This contrasts with constructivist or purely procedural approaches, and shapes both his perfectionism and his critique of neutrality.

Stylistic Features

Stylistically, the book:

• Uses a dense but relatively clear prose, with extended argumentative sequences rather than short, self‑contained essays.
• Relies more on logical structure and cumulative argument than on rhetorical appeals or historical narrative.
• Employs limited but strategically placed quotations from other authors, engaging them primarily through reconstruction and criticism rather than exegesis.

Readers and commentators often note the combination of technical precision in Parts I–II with more programmatic and policy‑oriented discussions in Parts III–V, while maintaining a unified methodological approach throughout.

14. Major Criticisms and Debates

The Morality of Freedom has generated extensive debate across political theory, moral philosophy, and jurisprudence. Criticisms tend to cluster around several themes.

Perfectionism and Neutrality

Defenders of liberal neutrality, influenced by Rawls, Dworkin, and others, argue that Raz’s perfectionism:

• Risks state paternalism, even with autonomy constraints.
• May fail to respect citizens who reasonably reject the state’s favored values.
• Undermines the idea of public justification on terms acceptable to all reasonable persons.

Perfectionist liberals respond that some substantive account of value is unavoidable and that Raz’s autonomy‑based limits prevent overreach.

Autonomy and Cultural Diversity

Some critics, especially from communitarian or multiculturalist perspectives, contend that Raz’s conception of autonomy is:

• Too individualistic, underestimating the role of communal identities in shaping agency.
• Culturally specific, reflecting Western liberal assumptions that may not be universally appropriate.
• Too demanding as a political standard, potentially devaluing non‑autonomous but meaningful lives.

Others argue that his pluralist value theory and recognition of valuable non‑autonomous lives partially address these concerns, but may not go far enough.

Equality and Social Structures

Egalitarian theorists question whether Raz’s autonomy‑centered approach to equality:

• Underestimates the importance of distributive justice and structural inequalities.
• Lacks clear criteria for when inequalities are autonomy‑undermining.
• Provides insufficient guidance on issues such as poverty, class, and systemic discrimination.

Some critics propose that a more robust egalitarianism is necessary to make Raz’s autonomy ideal practically realizable.

Authority and Legal Obligation

In jurisprudence, debates focus on whether the service conception of authority:

• Over‑justifies existing legal authority by assuming that legal systems generally help subjects track reasons.
• Under‑justifies authority where citizens have good independent reasoning capacities.
• Adequately captures the normativity and social character of law, as opposed to viewing it mainly through individual reasons.

Alternative accounts emphasize consent, associative obligations, or democratic procedures as rival or complementary bases of legitimacy.

Rights and Interest Theory

Raz’s interest theory of rights has prompted discussion about:

• Whether it can account for seemingly “trump‑like” aspects of rights.
• The status of rights whose justification is contested or whose underlying interests are hard to specify.
• The relationship between rights, autonomy, and collective goods.

These debates have helped shape subsequent literature on rights and political morality, even among those who diverge sharply from Raz’s conclusions.

15. Legacy and Historical Significance

Since its publication, The Morality of Freedom has come to be regarded as a landmark in late twentieth‑century political and legal philosophy.

Influence on Liberal Theory

The work significantly shaped discussions of:

• Autonomy as a central liberal value, influencing both supporters and critics of autonomy‑based theories.
• Perfectionist liberalism, providing a sophisticated alternative to neutrality that later theorists have developed, refined, or opposed.
• The idea that liberalism can be grounded in an objective, pluralist value theory rather than in purely procedural or contractarian frameworks.

Subsequent debates about multiculturalism, civic education, and state promotion of values often engage Raz’s arguments directly.

Impact on Jurisprudence and Authority

Raz’s service conception of authority and his account of exclusionary reasons have become standard reference points in:

Even critics of legal positivism or of Raz’s particular view of authority often frame their positions in relation to his.

Interdisciplinary Reach

The book’s ideas have also influenced:

• Constitutional theory, particularly debates over judicial review, entrenched rights, and the rule of law.
• Applied ethics, including bioethics and professional ethics, where the concepts of autonomy, authority, and rights play central roles.
• Philosophy of education and culture, in discussions of how institutions can foster or hinder autonomy and valuable options.

Place in the Canon

Scholars generally classify The Morality of Freedom alongside works by Rawls, Nozick, and Dworkin as one of the key English‑language contributions to post‑1970 liberal thought. Its combination of rigorous analytic method, detailed normative theory, and institutional application has ensured its continued use as a touchstone in teaching and research on autonomy, authority, and the moral foundations of the liberal state.