Economy and Social Freedom

在自由主义政治哲学中，市场的地位在很长一段时间内都没有争议，甚至被片面地理想化了，通常是在假设市场本身主要是提高效率的机构的基础上。然而，在过去几年里，事实证明，市场是危机频发的地方，是不平等的放大因素，也是有自身内在动力的制度，以一种有问题的方式渗透到非经济领域。这就是为什么如今的市场越来越受到批判性的哲学审视。与此同时，最近的世界经济危机不仅动摇了人们对自由市场效率的信念，还推动了社会主义概念在哲学上和公众中的复兴。在这种背景下，我的研究项目考察了约翰·斯图尔特·密尔和约翰·罗尔斯传统上所称的自由社会主义的规范基础和制度框架：一种克服市场资本主义维度、同时确保政治自由和民主权利的经济形式。该研究项目建立在黑格尔的社会自由概念基础上，以勾勒出自由社会主义的规范性理由和制度要求。根据社会自由的概念，其他人不应主要被理解为个人自由的障碍，而应被理解为一种条件，甚至是对个人自由的扩大。这一概念使人们认识到，它既不足以团结一致地重新分配经济产出，也不足以使初始经济状况趋于平衡。相反，最重要的是充分实现经济实践本身的团结。这里提出的自由社会主义仍然赋予市场以重要的作用。但它主张对市场进行结构性改革，以便显著减少其道德缺陷，例如在利用权力失衡或社会成本外部化方面。从这个角度来看，市场社会主义不仅旨在通过监管或福利政策驯服市场，而且还旨在对市场进行结构性改造：它是从内部对市场进行社会化，通过改变市场的构成规则，并加强其内部监管机制。这一研究项目不仅具有当代社会政治意义，而且将政治和社会哲学带入了更紧密的对话。通过将市场哲学与经济学和社会科学的制度建议结合起来，它还以一种果断的跨学科方法运作。

In liberal political philosophy, the status of the market remained uncontroversial for a long time, or it was even idealized in a one-sided way, usually under the assumption that markets as such are primarily efficiency-enhancing institutions. In the last couple of years, however, markets proved to be crisis-prone, amplifiers of inequality and institutions with an internal dynamics of their own, permeating non-economic spheres of life in a problematic way. This is why markets today come increasingly under critical philosophical scrutiny. At the same time, the recent world economic crisis not only shook the faith in the efficiency of free markets, it also contributed to the philosophical and public revival of the notion of socialism. Against this backdrop, my research project examines the normative foundations and the institutional framework of what in the tradition of John Stuart Mill and John Rawls is called liberal socialism: an economic form overcoming the capitalist dimensions of the market while ensuring political freedoms and democratic rights. The research project builds on the Hegelian notion of social freedom for outlining a normative justification and the institutional requirements of a liberal socialism. According to the notion of social freedom, others should not primarily be understood as barriers to individual freedom, but as a condition and even enlargement of it. This notion allows for the insight that it neither suffices to redistribute economic output in solidarity, nor to equalize the initial economic conditions. What matters above all is, instead, the adequate realization of solidarity within economic practices themselves. The liberal socialism put forward here still grants an important role to the market. But it argues for transforming the market constitutively, so that its ethical deficits can be reduced significantly, for example as regards the exploitation of power imbalances or the externalization of social costs. In this perspective, market socialism not only aims at taming the market by regulatory or welfare policies, but at transforming it constitutively: It is about socializing the market from within, by changing its constitutive rules and by strengthening its internal regulative mechanisms.The research project is not only of contemporary socio-political significance, it also brings political and social philosophy into a closer dialogue. By combining the philosophy of the market with institutional proposals from economics and the social sciences, it also operates with a decisively interdisciplinary approach.