The author writes: In this project I set out to provide an answer to two
fundamental questions of political philosophy. How can human beings
(living, as we do now, in a globalised world) live together, in
conditions of co-operation over time, enjoying what Immanuel Kant
famously called 'perpetual peace'? And how much individual freedom can
we expect to enjoy, and to what degree can we expect that individual
freedom to be equal, whilst engaged in the enterprise described by the
first question? These may be age-old questions, but I aim, in this
project, to offer a new approach to answering them. In part one of this
project, I aim to provide a groundwork upon which an answer to these
questions can be built. I argue, contrary to much contemporary (and
historical) political philosophy, that the answers to these questions
should not be provided by our representatives, a monarch, the elite, or
by a process of philosophical abstraction (or anything else) but,
instead, by each of us. That is to say, by you, me and everyone else
together. Part one argues not only why it should be each of us who are
to be engaged in this enterprise, but it also argues on behalf of a
number of changes which might support us in this ongoing, and doubtless
difficult, human project. I begin by arguing that, if we are to attempt
to provide a genuine (and free) answer to how much individual freedom we
should each be alloted in human society over time, this means that we
must begin with the concept of freedom itself which, in turn, means
detaching it from the philosophical and epistemological baggage it tends
to carry in everyday language.
