Impinging on Democracy

The Limits to Free Choice

Abstract

Prompted by a particularly striking observation of Slavoj Žižek, this article aims to discern the extent to which freedom of choice can be expanded without impinging on other democratic values (e.g., equality of opportunity, egalitarianism, social justice). This article strives to relieve the tension between such integral democratic values in three sections. In the first section, the neoliberal philosophy of David Schmidtz will be presented to expound upon the rationale behind freedom of choice. In sections two and three, the limits to collective- and individual decision-making are respectively put forward. Here, the preconditions for choice to conform to democratic values are analysed, and clarified with historical illustrations. The result is a surprisingly elegant (additional) prerequisite for expansions of individual choice, which safeguards other democratic values: unless somebody can not be assumed to be unfamiliar with the potentially harmful consequences of any particular decision, expanding the freedom of individual choice impinges on democracy.