Political Philosophy for 2018: Talking with Prof. Christopher Freiman

“…Politicians are regular people who should not be expected to be more moral in their political lives than their economic lives. If we have this assumption that people in politics are no better than people in markets, this leads to a lot less confidence that political solutions will be any better than market solutions.”

Currently serving as an associate professor of philosophy at the College of William & Mary, Dr. Christopher Freiman conducts research primarily on democratic theory, ethics, and immigration. Frequently associated with libertarian thinking, Dr. Freiman released his first book, Unequivocal Justice, last June. On July 3rd, Professor Freiman joined Merion West to discuss his book, free markets, and his take on the current national immigration debate.

Let’s start by talking about your book Unequivocal Justice. It came out about a year ago, and it’s basically your critique of “liberal egalitarianism.” I’m curious as to how you decided to write about this and what you felt most needed to be said on this topic.

It’s certainly something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I would say the original idea came to me in graduate school, but I am generally sympathetic with liberal egalitarianism at the level of the first principle. I think it’s very important that governments respect citizens’ basic liberties and that they prioritize the well-being of the poor. John Rawls is a famous political philosopher, and he said that distributive justice requires that we make the poor as rich as possible.