Coercion and Instrumental Necessity

In “Freedom, Desire, and Necessity,” Pascal Brixel defends an “Aristotelian-Marxian” necessary condition for autonomous activity: “One does something freely … only if one does it for its own sake—that is, on account of its perceived intrinsic value—and not merely instrumentally”—that is, merely for the sake of some other end. Brixel argues that this necessary condition can vindicate and explain the common intuition that both volitional coercion and duress are enemies of freedom in that they both force their victims to act in such a way that they undermine their self-determination. In this discussion, I focus on volitional coercion, and I argue that Brixel’s proposed Aristotelian-Marxian necessary condition for autonomous activity is mistaken—a person can still count as acting freely even when they are acting merely instrumentally—and as a result, we need a different account of how it is that volitional coercion undermines a person’s freedom.