In this book, Binder shows that at the heart of the most prominent arguments in favour of value-neutral approaches to overall freedom lies the value freedom has for human agency and development. Far from leading to the adoption of a value-neutral approach, however, ascribing importance to freedom's agency value requires one to adopt a refined value-based approach. Binder employs an axiomatic framework in order to develop such an approach. She shows that a focus on freedom's agency value has far reaching consequences for existing results in the freedom ranking literature: it requires one to move beyond a person's given all-things-considered preferences to the values underlying a person's preference formation. Furthermore, it requires, as Binder argues, one to account (only) for those differences between choice options which really matter to people. Binder illustrates the implications of her analysis for the evaluation of public policy and human development with the capabilityapproach: only if sufficient importance is ascribed to freedom's agency value can the capability approach keep its promises.

Autorentext
Constanze Binder is Assistant Professor in Philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy, Co-Director of the Erasmus Institute for Philosophy and Economics and Programme Director of the Research Master programme in Philosophy and Economics at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Constanze studied Economics and Environmental System Science at Graz University and obtained a PhD in Philosophy at the University of Groningen. She previously taught in the Philosophy Departments of Groningen and Leiden University, worked at the Economics Department of the University of Osnabrück, and contributed to projects for the Austrian Federal Ministry of the Environment and the Austrian Human Dimensions Program. Constanze's research is on the interface of philosophy and economics, with a particular focus on the analysis of freedom, responsibility and distributive justice in political philosophy and welfare economics, as well as on the ethics of individual and collective decision making in politics and economics.

Inhalt
1 Introduction.- 1.1 Philosophical Literature on (Overall) Freedom.- 1.2 Freedom Ranking Literature.- 1.3 The Capability Approach.- 1.4 Outline of the Thesis.- 2 Freedom's Agency Value.- 2.1 Overall Freedom.- 2.2 Desire Dependencies.- 2.3 The Impossibility of Paternalism.- 2.4 The Non-specific Value Neglect.- 2.5 Agency and the Importance of Values.- 2.6 The Necessity of a Value-Based Approach.- 2.7 Conclusion.- 3 Diversity Revealed.- 3.1 The Freedom Ranking Literature.- 3.2 Diversity of Options and Freedom Rankings.- 3.3 Definitions.- 3.4 Similarity Relation.- 3.5 Diversity Measure.- 3.6 Weitzman and a Restricted Domain.- 3.7 Diversity and Cardinality of Alternatives.- 3.8 Conclusion.- 4 Plural Identities and Preference Formation.- 4.1 Agency, Plural Identities and Rational Choice Theory.- 4.2 Intra-personal Aggregation.- 4.3 Identity Formalised.- 4.4 Conditions.- 4.5 Transitivity.- 4.6 Acyclicity.- 4.7 Identity Dissonance and a Domain Restriction.- 4.8 Conclusion.- 5 Freedom Rankings and Freedom's Agency Value.- 5.1 Freedom Rankings and the Value of Alternatives.- 5.2 Freedom Rankings between Scylla and Charybdis.- 5.3 Freedom's Agency Value and Preference-based Approaches.- 5.4 Identity and Procedural Reasonableness.- 5.5 Desire Dependency and the Impossibility of Paternalism, Reconsidered.- 5.6 Conclusion.- 6 Cultural Diversity and the Capability Approach.- 6.1 The Capability Approach.- 6.2 Culture and the Construction of Capability Sets.- 6.3 Culture and the Ranking of Capability Sets.- 6.4 Norms and the Value of Functionings.- 6.5 Context Dependency of Valuable Functionings.- 6.6 Limits of Capability- and Freedom-Rankings.- 6.7 Conclusion.- 7 Conclusion.- 7.1 Review of the Chapters.- 7.2 Open Questions.- Appendix 1 Diversity.- Appendix 2 Identity and Preference.- Appendix 3 Eligibility.- Bibliography.- Index