Survivable Freedom: Republican Non‐Domination under Existential Vulnerability

ABSTRACT

This article argues that existential risk is not only a threat to welfare or survival, but also a problem for political freedom. It begins with gene‐length nucleic‐acid synthesis, a socially valuable technology whose misuse could contribute to catastrophic biological risk. Harm‐based views explain why such risks matter, and negative‐liberty views explain why regulation may burden researchers and firms. Yet both miss the standing dependence that arises when publics must rely on the restraint, competence, and secrecy practices of actors whose catastrophic capabilities they cannot meaningfully control. Republican theory identifies this condition as domination. The article develops survivable freedom, the claim that under sufficiently high, agent‐mediated existential vulnerability, a durable baseline of collective survival is constitutive of robust non‐domination rather than a merely external precondition of liberty. The claim is conditional and empirically modest. It applies where catastrophic leverage is agent‐mediated, structurally persistent, institutionally reducible, and insufficiently contestable. The article then sketches republican capability governance through ex ante controls, public authorization, democratic contestation, auditable expertise, legally governed secrecy, review, and remedy. Such governance seeks neither libertarian complacency nor unchecked guardianship, but survival‐oriented institutions constrained by non‐domination.