The Morality of Freedom

A treatise developing a perfectionist liberalism grounded in personal autonomy. Raz first sets out his service conception of authority: an authority is legitimate when people would better conform to reasons that already apply to them by following its directives than by relying on their own judgement, and its directives then replace some of their other reasons. He next rejects the view that the state must stay neutral between ideas of the good life. On rights, he defends an interest theory, on which a person has a right when an aspect of their well-being is sufficient reason to hold someone else under a duty, and he questions many arguments for equality. Later chapters develop value pluralism and the incommensurability of some options, and argue that autonomy, being the author of one's own life, requires an adequate range of valuable options supported by social forms. The state may therefore promote valuable ways of life, though the harm principle limits coercion. Critics argue that this perfectionism lets the state judge citizens' lives.

It contains the most influential modern account of legitimate authority and a demanding defence of liberalism that does not rely on state neutrality.