LEAP 5 (2017)

Justice and the Resource of Time:  
a Reply to Goodin, Terlazzo, von Platz, 

Stanczyk, and Lim
J U L I E L . ROSE
Dartmouth College

INTRODUCTION

The contributors offer a rich collection of constructive and careful 
arguments. I am grateful for their thoughtful comments which, drawing 
on their own work and the book, broaden and advance the discussion of 
free time as a matter of justice in new and fruitful directions. W hile my 
response will in part involve clarif ying and developing my argument on 
behalf of citizens’ claims to the resource of free time, I have aimed to 
engage with their arguments in the same productive spirit, tracing 
potential avenues of future work.

I begin with Robert Goodin’s contribution, and the question of how 
free time ought to be conceptualized for a public and feasible theory of 
justice, in particular – as Goodin presses – so that it allows for empirical 
measurement. I turn then to Rosa Terlazzo’s argument, which draws our 
attention to considering the array of social conditions that must obtain to 
enable citizens to make effective use of their free time, and liberties and 
opportunities more generally. I next take up Jeppe von Platz’s argument, 
which asks whether the effective freedoms principle can support citizens’ 
claims to a fair share of free time as a matter of cooperative fairness. 
Continuing the question of fair shares, Lucas Stanczyk asks how a theory 
of social justice should respond to class disparities in access to free time, 
developing this question by asking whether harried wealthy professionals 
ought to be regarded as having (more than) their fair shares of free time. 
Finally, Désirée Lim’s argument considers the temporal dimensions of 
republicanism, examining the question of how a republican theory of 
justice might ground an entitlement to free time. 

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106 Julie L. Rose 

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1. THE REQUIREMENTS OF A PUBLIC AND FEASIBLE 
THEORY OF JUSTICE: A RESPONSE TO GOODIN

My account of the resource of free time both draws on and departs from 
Goodin et al.’s conception of discretionary time (2008), and similarly my 
response here will both highlight ways in which our two approaches are 
and may be more convergent, while also maintaining what I take to be 
some important points of divergence. 

Goodin’s central challenge to my conception of free time is how well it 
meets the requirements of empirical measurement. I share Goodin’s view 
that the operative conception of free time must allow for empirical 
assessment. To be a resource to which citizens have claims in a public and 
feasible theory of justice, I argue that it must be possible to reliably and 
verifiably know whether an individual possesses the resource, and to 
obtain this information efficiently and noninvasively (Rose 2016: 46–47). 
Goodin et al.’s conception readily allows for empirical measurement, as 
their Discretionary Time (2008), an important advance in the study of time, 
clearly demonstrates. Accordingly, in taking up this challenge, my aim is to 
show that my conception of free time meets the requirements for 
assessments that are both feasible and reliable.

On both of our accounts, free or discretionary time is to be distinguished 
from necessary time – the time that one must spend to meet the necessities 
of life (Rose 2016: 4, 42; Goodin et al. 2008: 5–6, 34). The differences in our 
approaches arise in how to conceptualize and assess this time. The 
approach Goodin et al. take – which I term the social benchmark approach 
– follows, as Goodin here notes, the standard conceptualization of a relative 
poverty line (that is, a poverty threshold set relative to a society’s median 
income, rather than an absolute measure of deprivation). Dividing one’s 
total necessary time into the categories of paid labor, unpaid household 
labor, and personal care, they assess one’s necessary time in paid labor as 
how much time it takes one to earn a poverty-level income at one’s wage 
rate, and one’s necessary time in unpaid household labor and in personal 
care, respectively, as fifty and eighty percent of the median amount of time 
people in one’s society spend in such activities, indexed, in the former, to 
one’s household structure (Goodin et al. 2008: 34–53). 

The approach I take – the basic needs approach – instead conceptualizes 
one’s necessary time as how much time it is objectively necessary for one, 
taking account of relevant circumstances, to spend to meet one’s own, and 
one’s dependents’, basic needs, which are the demands one standardly 
must meet in order to attain a basic level of functioning in one’s society 
(Rose 2016: 42 n. 5, 58). 



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von Platz, Stanczyk, and Lim

Though the philosophical conception of free time underlying the basic 
needs approach could be fully tailored to a given individual’s relevant 
circumstances (i.e. how much time it is necessary for one, given all one’s 
very particular circumstances, to meet one’s basic needs), such a maximally 
individually tailored approach fails to meet the feasibility requirements of 
a public theory of justice, as it would not be possible for a public authority 
to practically make such an assessment efficiently or noninvasively. As 
such, I argue, the basic needs approach should be only moderately tailored 
to individual circumstances, such that it more generally assesses how 
much time it takes people in a set of relevant circumstances to meet their 
basic needs (Rose 2016: 46–47, 57). 

The basic needs approach differs from the social benchmark approach 
in two key respects: First, on the social benchmark approach, as 
operationalized by Goodin et al., the assessment of necessary time is 
tailored only to wage rate and household structure, while the basic needs 
approach is tailored to any individual circumstances that a theory of 
justice or democratic decision renders relevant (Rose 2016: 60–65). Second, 
while the social benchmark approach assesses necessary time purely 
relatively, the basic needs approach has both absolute and relative 
components (following Sen 1983).1

The first distinction is not a deep one, as the social benchmark approach 
could be operationalized in a more fine-grained way, as Goodin notes, if 
there were a suitable data set (Goodin 2017: 41). Indeed, this is a potential 
point of greater convergence, as my approach indicates that more 
comprehensive circumstance-tailored time-use data must be collected in 
order to empirically operationalize the basic needs conception of free 
time. 

Goodin argues that though the two approaches could converge in this 
way, the added granularity would come at a cost, because public policy 
does and should operate through a system of general rules, and ought not 
to be unduly driven by the need to accommodate the very special 
circumstances of some small subgroup (Goodin 2017: 41). This point about 
generality is well taken, but I don’t think it obviates the need for more fine-
grained data for sound public policymaking. Consider, for instance, the 
question of where to invest in improving the speed and efficiency of a city’s 
public transportation systems. It might be the case that the city’s high-
income workers, who choose to live in its suburbs, and its low-income 

1 On whether necessary time should be measured by a relative or absolute standard, 
see the exchange between Goodin et al. (2011) and Bittman (2011); see also Williams, 
Masuda, and Tallis (2016). For a measure that relies on an absolute standard, see Hobbes et 
al. (2011).



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workers, who can afford to live only in its outer rings, spend the same 
amount of time commuting into work, but the low-income workers spend 
more necessary time commuting – a distinction that could be made only 
with more fine-grained data, and that ought to inform a just transportation 
policy. Further, when there are exceptional cases that ought to be treated 
separately from general social policy, even on a case-by-case basis, the 
basic needs approach provides the required conceptual grounds for such 
assessments. 

The second distinction is more significant. Consider the question of 
how much time it is necessary to spend grocery shopping, cooking, and 
eating. The social benchmark approach determines how much time it is 
necessary to spend on these tasks as half the median amount of time 
people in one’s society in fact spend on these tasks, tailored to some set of 
circumstances. On the basic needs approach, these relative comparisons 
are relevant – how much time people around you spend in necessary 
activities does provide meaningful guidance about what is socially 
necessary to function in one’s society – but they are not determinative. Say 
that the median amount of time that full-time employed parents spend 
grocery shopping, cooking, and eating is only five hours per week. The 
assessment of necessary time might ref lect that, but it could also be 
adjusted by democratic or expert judgment about how much time it is 
objectively necessary to spend in these tasks. Consistent with its 
underlying conceptualization, the basic needs approach allows for such 
adjustments in instances in which people generally might, due to 
competitive pressures or social norms, spend either more or less time than 
is objectively necessary to meet a basic need (Rose 2016: 55).

Beyond these questions of conception and measurement, Goodin also 
raises several points which fruitfully indicate areas of future work, and 
which I want to note here, if only brief ly. First, there is the matter of 
distinguishing and evaluating the various policy levers a society might 
engage to realize a just distribution of free time. These include, as Goodin 
notes, beyond more generally equalizing resources, reducing and 
redistributing necessary time (Goodin 2017: 37-38, 42-43). In addition, a 
society can realize a just distribution of time by ensuring that citizens have 
access to free time (e.g. counteracting overemployment, see Rose 2016: 60, 
78–81, 138–40), and entitling citizens to a greater portion of a society’s 
aggregate available free time, even if at the cost of lower rates of economic 
growth (Rose 2016: 128–34). Taken together, these means provide 
substantial scope to affect the amount and distribution of a society’s free 
time. Second, there is the question of what conditions enable citizens to 
make effective use of their free time – which I take up next in engagement 



LEAP 5 (2017)

  109
 Justice and the Resource of Time: a Reply to Goodin, Terlazzo, 

von Platz, Stanczyk, and Lim

with Terlazzo’s argument. And, finally, there is the question of how 
arguments for a claim to free time interact with those for a claim to various 
valuable goods in work. While the former might undermine the latter (if 
arguments for valuable work depend on how people must spend most of 
their time working), the arguments might instead apply in tandem, such 
that people have claims to these goods – as Goodin suggests – within and 
outside of work.2

2. THE SOCIAL CONDITIONS FOR THE EFFECTIVE USE OF 
FREE TIME: A RESPONSE TO TERLAZZO

Terlazzo generously proposes that the argumentative framework I use to 
establish citizens’ legitimate claims to free time may serve as a model to 
argue for citizens’ claims to other under-explored resources. She takes up 
this project by instructively arguing that, on the basis of the effective 
freedoms principle – which ensures that citizens possess the means that 
are generally required to make effective use of their formal liberties and 
opportunities – citizens have a claim to a distinctive internal resource: a 
sense of moral entitlement to make use of their basic liberties. 

Terlazzo's example of Irma illustrates how a lack of a sense of moral 
entitlement may compromise one’s ability to effectively exercise one’s 
freedoms.  Irma is an aff luent housewife who has ample money and free 
time, but she believes that a woman’s place is in the family, and that she is 
morally obligated to devote all of her time to taking care of her home and 
children. While Irma is aware of her formally-guaranteed freedoms and 
has the temporal and material resources to exercise them, she does not feel 
morally entitled to do so. As such, Irma does not participate in politics or 
community life, or engage in any other pursuit beyond caring for her family 
(Terlazzo 2017: 93-94). 

Terlazzo develops several alternative ways to specify this resource, but 
to take one version, we can understand it, analogous to Rawls’s primary 
good of the social bases of self-respect, as a claim to the social conditions 
that reliably foster the belief that one is morally entitled to exercise one’s 
basic liberties. Terlazzo argues that the social conditions that would 
ground this belief would likely be some standard of formal education and 
broad exposure to people living diverse lives (Terlazzo 2017: 101-102). If 

2 See, for instance, Gheaus and Herzog (2016: 80) for the suggestion that if people 
had far more free time, there would be less, if any, reason to be concerned with the 
distribution of people’s ability to realize these goods within their paid work. For a discussion 
of these argumentative possibilities, see Hsieh (2008: 76–79), and for arguments that might 
apply within and outside of work, see, for instance, Muirhead (2004) and Arnold (2012).



110 Julie L. Rose 

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Irma was not educated to consider or exposed to alternative views about 
the proper role of women in the family and in society, and therefore she has 
always held, and is not open to revising, her beliefs about women’s domestic 
obligations, she would then lack the relevant resource.3

Terlazzo takes up the argument for the resource of free time to argue, in 
parallel, for the resource of moral entitlement. In response, I will, in turn, 
take up her argument to show how a claim to this type of internal resource 
interacts with citizens’ claims to free time. 

The effective freedoms principle grounds citizens’ claims to a set of 
resources. By extension, on the same grounds, citizens also have claims to 
the social conditions that are generally required to make effective use of 
these resources for the exercise their liberties. As such, citizens have claims 
to fair shares of free time, and to the social conditions that allow them to 
make effective use of their free time to exercise their liberties (Rose 2016: 
90, 142). 

To see how citizens might possess free time under conditions that 
undermine their effective use of it, and in turn the effective exercise of 
their liberties and opportunities, consider the following cases. Ann has a 
fair amount of free time, but she is a retail employee who must work 
evenings and weekends, so she only has free time during weekdays when 
her family and friends, as well as most other people, are working. Beth is a 
live-in housekeeper and nanny and, though she too has a fair amount of 
free time, she only has free time in brief windows between meeting the 
responsibilities of her position. Chris works in a distribution center, and 
though he also has enough free time, it does not occur on a predictable 
schedule because he is regularly required to work overtime without 
advance notice; similarly for David, a restaurant server, with an on-call 
shift schedule (or zero-hours contract). Though Ann, Beth, Chris, and 
David all have a fair amount of free time, due to the constraints imposed 
by the terms of their employment, they do not have this time under 
conditions that allow them to effectively use it to exercise their liberties 
(Rose 2016: 142-143).

To address these sorts of constraints on the effective use of one’s free 
time, I argue that, in addition to having a fair amount of free time, citizens 
must enjoy their shares of free time under a set of fair conditions. In 
particular, first, one must have access to sufficient periods of shared free 
time; and second, one must either have discretion over when one’s free 
time occurs, or, if one has limited discretion, one’s free time must occur in 
generally usable periods and on a predictable schedule (Rose 2016: 143-44). 

3 For a related argument, see Ferracioli and Terlazzo (2014).



LEAP 5 (2017)

  111
 Justice and the Resource of Time: a Reply to Goodin, Terlazzo, 

von Platz, Stanczyk, and Lim

The book focuses on these specifically temporal conditions that must 
obtain for the effective use of one’s free time, but these are, of course, not 
the only ways one’s effective use of one’s free time may be constrained, nor 
are these the only conditions that must obtain for one to be able to 
effectively use one’s free time to exercise one’s liberties and opportunities. 
The effective use of one’s free time also requires, for instance, various 
social conditions related to space. Effective freedom of association calls for 
access to both private and public spaces that meet a set of conditions, 
including, as Goodin notes, public parks that facilitate social mixing 
(Goodin 2017: 44; Rose 2016: 109 n. 32), as does effective exercise of the 
political liberties. The effective use of one’s free time to more generally 
pursue a conception of the good also requires access to diverse 
opportunities in the built and natural environment, which we might think 
of as free time infrastructure (Rose 2016: 8; see also Weeks (2011: 167-171) 
on the creative potential of free time, which in turn can expand these and 
other opportunities).

Terlazzo provides the useful example of Irma to demonstrate how an 
absence of a sense of moral entitlement, like an absence of free time, can 
undermine the effective exercise of one’s freedoms. But her example also 
constructively highlights how the effective use of one’s free time can itself 
be hindered in other ways, and more broadly, how ensuring that citizens 
can make effective use of their formal freedoms requires an interlocking 
set of resources and social conditions. To illustrate how citizens’ claims are 
connected, consider education. On the basis of the effective freedoms 
principle, citizens are entitled to a system of education that fosters their 
all-purpose internal capacities, including, following Terlazzo’s argument, 
a sense of moral entitlement. In turn, such an education system serves as 
one of the social conditions that enables citizens to make effective use of 
their free time to exercise their liberties. Bertrand Russell, for instance, 
who argued that “four hours’ work a day should entitle a man to the 
necessities and elementary comforts of life, and that the rest of his time 
should be his to use as he might see fit”, was quick to add that education 
would be “an essential part of any such social system” in order to ensure 
t hat people were equipped to ma ke use of t heir f ree t ime (Russel l 2004: 
12).4

4 This aim might inform both schools’ curricula (e.g. civics education) and schedules 
(e.g. recess, school vacations), so that students have both preparation for and experience 
with the effective use of free time. I thank Tom Parr for suggesting this point. Children might 
also have a claim to free time to realize non-instrumental goods; for an argument that 
children have claims to free time, and to the means to make effective use of that time (e.g. 
playgrounds, extra-curricular opportunities), to realize distinctive childhood goods, see 
Neufeld (2018); see also Gheaus (2015); Rose (2016: 63 n. 29).



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It is essential – especially as we consider the prospect of citizens having 
far greater amounts of free time – to remember that the effective freedoms 
principle grounds citizens’ claims not only to a fair amount of free time, 
but, as Terlazzo’s argument highlights, to the social conditions that allow 
them to make effective use of it to exercise their liberties and opportunities. 
Citizens must enjoy their free time under social conditions that allow for 
its value to be realized.

3. THE SCOPE OF THE EFFECTIVE FREEDOMS PRINCIPLE:  
A RESPONSE TO VON PLATZ

The argument that the effective freedoms principle grounds a claim of all 
citizens to free time can be understood, von Platz argues, in two ways, 
corresponding to two readings of the principle. Von Platz contends that, 
while both arguments are sound and establish that free time is a proper 
subject of justice, neither establishes an additional way in which citizens 
are entitled to free time (von Platz 2017: 60). The two ways that von Platz 
argues the effective freedoms principle can be interpreted are: first, the 
basic liberties reading, on which citizens have a claim to an adequate 
amount of the resources required to exercise their basic liberties; and 
second, the general liberty reading, on which citizens have a claim to a fair 
share of the resources required to pursue their conceptions of the good, 
with “fair” meaning only that all should receive their due (von Platz 2017: 52). 

Von Platz argues that, while the first reading yields a claim to only 
sufficient free time to exercise one’s basic liberties, the fair distribution of 
free time among cooperating citizens remains an issue of justice beyond 
the point at which all have enough time to exercise their basic liberties. Yet, 
turning to the second reading, von Platz contends that it cannot support 
this stronger claim to a fair share (von Platz 2017: 54-56). In response, von 
Platz suggests a way to extend the book’s argument to establish that citizens 
have a claim of distributive justice to a cooperatively fair share of free time 
(von Platz 2017: 57-59).

I take von Platz’s argument on behalf of a claim to free time, as a 
distributive claim to the benefits of cooperation, to be compatible with my 
own, and would instead characterize his argument as one way of specifying 
the effective freedoms principle, rather than as an extension that is 
necessarily “outside the scope” of the principle (von Platz 2017: 57). 

The effective freedoms principle allows for more variation and is 
incorporated into different theories of distributive justice in a wider range 
of ways than von Platz’s description may indicate. As I argue, there is 



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von Platz, Stanczyk, and Lim

considerable diversity in the form the principle takes within different 
liberal egalitarian theories, from what grounds citizens’ claims and the 
conditions under which their claims are fair, to which liberties and 
opportunities its scope extends, as well as the currency of citizens’ shares 
and which distributive principles apply to their shares. Additionally, some 
theories recognize the principle directly, while others realize it indirectly 
through other principles (Rose 2016: 69-73, 85-89).5 The principle is, by 
construction, stated broadly – as a “legitimate claim to a fair share of the 
resources that are generally required to exercise their formal liberties and 
opportunities” – to encompass this diversity. Across these variations, the 
principle’s core is the commitment, central to liberal egalitarian theories 
of social justice, to ensuring that citizens possess the means to exercise 
their freedoms (Rose 2016: 6-7). 

One version of the effective freedoms principle is von Platz’s basic 
liberties reading, grounding a sufficientarian claim to the resources that 
are generally required to exercise one’s basic liberties. Yet, the principle is 
also developed in a variety of other ways, and these alternatives can be 
seen as different ways of specifying von Platz’s general liberty reading of 
the principle. 

Some versions of the effective freedoms principle, while grounding 
sufficientarian claims, are not limited in scope to resources for the basic 
liberties. Cécile Fabre’s (2006: 32–33) theory of social rights, for one, holds 
that citizens have “rights to the all-purpose resources they need in order to 
lead” a life in which they can frame, revise, and pursue a conception of the 
good with which they identify.6 Elizabeth Anderson’s (1999: 315–21; 2001: 
70–71) theory of democratic equality, to take another, holds that citizens 
are entitled to the social conditions, including the resources, necessary to 
have effective access to levels of functioning sufficient to stand as equals in 

5 The two principles of John Rawls’s theory of justice as fairness provide an example 
of how a theory may realize the effective freedoms principle indirectly through other 
principles. In addressing the question of how to ensure that citizens’ liberties are not merely 
formal, Rawls argues that, while the first principle requires guaranteeing the fair value of 
the political liberties, it does not specifically guarantee the fair value of all the basic liberties, 
because to do so would be “superf luous, given the difference principle” (Rawls 2001: 148–51). 
The difference principle “underwrites the worth” of the guarantees of the basic liberties and 
fair equality of opportunity principles, and so the principles of the theory taken together 
ensure that citizens enjoy the worth of their formal liberties and opportunities (Rawls 2005: 
5–6).

6 See also Fabre (2000: 18–20). In a notable exception to the general neglect of 
temporal resources in theories of justice, Fabre cites as an example of lack of means someone 
“who needs to work fifteen hours a day in order to subsist”, and so “will not be able to pursue 
his chosen conception of the good, precisely for lack of time and money; in fact he most 
probably will not able, for these very same reasons, to pursue any conception of the good 
which does not involve working fifteen hours a day” (Fabre 2006: 31).



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a democratic state and civil society, and as equal participants in a system 
of cooperative production.

Other versions of the effective freedoms principle yield, as von Platz 
favors, stronger claims of distributive equality grounded in cooperative 
fairness. Stuart White’s (2003: 26, and 25-76) account of justice as fair 
reciprocity, for instance, which is founded on a commitment to substantive 
economic reciprocity, holds that citizens have presumptively equal rights 
to the satisfaction of their opportunity interests, including their “interests 
in access to the resources necessary for pursuing the ideals that animate 
their personal lives”.

As such, the effective freedoms principle’s central commitment – to 
ensuring that citizens possess the means to make effective use of their 
freedoms – can be specified in a range of ways. Citizens’ “legitimate claims 
to a fair share” can, as von Platz advocates, be grounded in the cooperative 
norms of fairness of distributive justice, and if the principle is specified in 
this way, it can yield claims to a cooperatively fair share of free time. The 
book aims to show that any theory that holds that citizens have claims to 
the resources required to exercise their freedoms – as all liberal egalitarian 
theories of social justice do – must recognize that citizens have claims to 
free time.  From this recognition, citizens’ claims to free time ought, then, 
to be incorporated into different theories of justice, in various ways and 
with varying implications, depending on different theories’ particular 
principles – with von Platz’s proposal being one welcome way of specifying 
citizens’ claims to free time.

4. CONFRONTING THE CLASS DIVIDE: A RESPONSE TO 
STANCZYK 

Stanczyk takes up the question of how we ought to regard the claims to free 
time of wealthy professionals. Stanczyk makes two arguments: First, 
though aff luent professionals may loudly lament how little free time they 
have, they ought to be regarded, by virtue of their wealth and occupational 
opportunities, as already having (more than) their fair shares of free time. 
As such, wealthy professionals have no claim of justice to work hours 
protections (e.g. protections that entitle one to work no more than a 
maximum number of hours; to have predictable schedules; to have short 
or f lexible schedules or leave time for caregiving; or to not have to work 
during a common period of free time) (Stanczyk 2017: 67-71). Second, to 
extend such work hours protections universally, including to wealthy 
professionals, would not only be unjustified, it would conf lict with the aim 
of securing a just distribution of free time, and distributive justice more 



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broadly (Stanczyk 2017: 67, 71-73).

This is an important and complex question, and one that goes, as 
Stanczyk rightly argues, to the question of how liberal egalitarians ought to 
confront the class divide. I will take up Stanczyk’s two arguments in turn.

The first argument – that wealthy professionals ought to be regarded as 
already having their fair shares of free time – is part of the larger question 
of how choices for which one might be held responsible ought to affect the 
assessment of one’s free time (Rose 2016: 60–65). Say a corporate law yer 
has inherited, or has accumulated after enough years in her highly-paid 
position, a substantial amount of wealth, such that, if she were to quit her 
position, the terms of which require her to work long hours, she could use 
this wealth to meet her basic needs without ever working another day. Or, 
say that a psychiatrist, who hasn’t inherited or accumulated wealth but 
earns a generous income working short and f lexible hours, leaves her 
practice to work as an interior designer, and now must work long and 
antisocial hours to earn a decent income. Though the corporate law yer 
and the interior designer are required to work these hours by the terms of 
their current employment, they would not have to if they were to take 
advantage of the privileges afforded by their wealth and occupational 
opportunities. 

The book’s core argument, so that it applies broadly across different 
theories of justice, is constructed to be open to taking different positions 
on these questions of responsibility-sensitivity, and so is open to holding 
that such aff luent professionals, despite their long work hours, are properly 
regarded as having their fair shares of free time, and thus have no claim of 
justice to work hours protections. 

With respect to wealth, I argue that a society may democratically decide 
that, if one has personal wealth above some amount, any paid work one 
does ought to be treated as a use of one’s free time, rather than as necessary 
time. This threshold level might be set higher or lower, or include or exclude 
different asset types, depending on various circumstances (Rose 2016: 64). 
Stanczyk’s argument also rightly presses that this threshold should not be 
left solely to democratic decision, and is properly constrained by principles 
of distributive justice, if, for instance, it were necessary to treat the work 
hours of those above some threshold level of wealth as discretionary in 
order to meet the claims to free time of the less well off.

With respect to occupational choice, the core argument is open to 
taking the more responsibility-sensitive position, such that if one chooses 
to work in an occupation that requires longer hours than another 
occupation one could have chosen, the assessment of how much free time 



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one has would ref lect one’s occupational choice set, not the occupation 
one has in fact chosen. 

While the core argument allows for taking this position, in developing 
the argument and its implications, I instead argue that the importance of 
the interest in freely choosing one’s occupation provides a weighty reason 
to allow citizens to exercise this choice without forfeiting their claim to 
other important interests, including to free time. Nonetheless, while 
citizens do have an all things considered claim to a fair share of free time, 
because it may sometimes be impossible or prohibitively socially costly to 
guarantee this claim for particular occupations, citizens have only a pro 
tanto claim to free time in their chosen occupational position (Rose 2016: 
90-92). This pro tanto claim can be defeated by several types of reasons, 
including, as Stanczyk’s argument again presses, if guaranteeing free time 
to privileged professionals in their chosen occupations would unavoidably 
conf lict with meeting the claims of those who have less advantageous 
occupational opportunities.

As such, even if citizens do have a pro tanto claim to free time in their 
chosen occupational positions, if extending work hours protections to all, 
including the most privileged, would necessarily conf lict with realizing 
the claims to free time of the less privileged, my argument is open, and 
indeed would favor, regarding the long work hours of those privileged by 
wealth and occupational opportunities as discretionary uses of their free 
time. Time-pressed wealthy professionals who have access, by virtue of 
their wealth or occupational opportunities, to free time would – if there is 
such a conf lict – then have no claim of justice to work hours protections.

Yet, to turn to Stanczyk’s second argument, we should not be too quick 
to assume that this conf lict would necessarily arise. Stanczyk argues that 
the conf lict arises because providing work hours protections universally 
would be economically regressive: some of the aff luent professionals 
would inevitably choose to work less, resulting in lower profits and salary 
incomes, and thus a smaller tax base, diminishing the government revenue 
available to meet the claims of the less well off (Stanczyk 2017: 71-72). 

To start, it might be the case that, for empirical reasons, universal work 
hours protections would in fact better realize the claims of the less well off. 
Stanczyk grants that there may be other reasons to implement work hour 
protections universally, such as economic efficiency or political strategy 
(and, we could add, gender equality) (Stanczyk 2017: 68). But, we might 
also raise questions about the assumed economic regressivity. To pose two 
other possible dynamics, it might be the case that harried professionals, 
with their long and always-on work hours, would in fact be, in total, more 
productive, and would be productive in ways that are more creative and 



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von Platz, Stanczyk, and Lim

socially beneficially, if they had shorter and more f lexible work schedules 
(Rose 2016: 130–31). Or, the fact that the those with high social status work 
long hours might promote social norms valorizing this culture – with 
“busyness as the badge of honor for the new superordinate working class,” 
as sociologist Jonathan Gershuny puts it – with the effect that these norms 
undermine the ability of workers across society to choose not to work long 
hours (2005; see also 2009; Rose 2016: 138–39).

Further, whether extending work hours protections universally would 
conf lict with the aim of securing a just distribution of free time, or 
distributive justice more broadly, depends on the requirements and 
possibilities of the underlying theory of justice. On a theory with a 
sufficientarian distributive standard, for instance, there may easily be no 
conf lict between universal work hours protections and realizing all 
citizens’ claims to a sufficient amount of free time (and other resources). 
Or, on a theory with a more egalitarian distributive standard, there might 
similarly be no conf lict between extending work hours protections 
universally and realizing distributive justice more broadly, given that there 
would be a far less unequal distribution of wealth and occupational 
opportunities than in the society, resembling our own today, that Stanczyk 
describes.

To draw these points together, first, the core argument is straightforwardly 
open, if maximally responsibility-sensitive, to holding that the long work 
hours of wealthy professionals are discretionary uses of their free time. 
Moreover, even if citizens have pro tanto claims to free time in their chosen 
occupational positions, wealthy professionals have no claim of justice to 
work hours protections if their universal extension would necessarily 
conf lict with realizing the claims to free time of the less well off. But, 
second, whether the presumptive claim to universal work hours protections 
is defeated depends on whether this conf lict does in fact arise, and 
unavoidably so – a question that cannot be answered without looking 
further at both the potential empirical dynamics and the underlying 
theory’s requirements and possibilities. 

5. A REPUBLICAN SOCIAL JUSTICE ARGUMENT FOR FREE 
TIME: A RESPONSE TO LIM

Lim persuasively develops a republican case for an entitlement to free 
time, with a carefully constructed two-stage argument. First, republican 
non-domination requires robust checking mechanisms to ensure that 
power-holders are forced to track the interests of their power-subjects. In 



118 Julie L. Rose 

LEAP 5 (2017)

the domain of the workplace, for instance, employees must have 
mechanisms to check employers’ power, through both contestation (e.g. 
political organizations and unions to dispute decisions) and justification 
(e.g. workplace committees and employee representation on boards to 
participate in decisions). Importantly, establishing, maintaining, and 
participating in these checking mechanisms – and citizens’ checks on 
political power more generally – takes time. Thus, Lim argues, the 
protection of republican non-domination entitles citizens to sufficient 
time for political engagement (Lim 2017: 81-86). 

Second, Lim argues that providing citizens with time specifically for 
political engagement, either compulsorily or conditionally, would be 
contrary to republican commitments. For the state to ensure that citizens 
devote this allotted time to political engagement would require invasions 
of privacy, extensive surveillance, coercive enforcement, and state 
judgment about what activities are worthy, and would also likely be 
contrary to the cultivation of genuine civic virtue. To avoid these pitfalls, 
citizens’ claims to time for political engagement ought to be provided 
instead in the form of free time, for citizens to devote to any activities of 
their choosing (Lim 2017: 86-89). 

Lim argues that, unlike liberal egalitarians who can make a 
“straightforward” case for free time, this republican argument is an 
“instrumental” one (Lim 2017: 75). While Lim is right to argue that this 
republican justification for free time is less straightforward, it is perhaps 
worth clarifying that, on both accounts, citizens’ claims to free time are 
grounded in its instrumental value as a resource. To characterize the 
contrast, we might instead say that this republican argument is both more 
indirect (citizens’ claims to free time run through their claims to political 
time) and contingent (citizens’ claims to free time depend on the non-
viability of claims to specifically political time).

In examining the “temporal dimension within republicanism”, Lim 
aims to see how republicanism might ground an entitlement to free time, 
and she readily notes that the argument she develops is not necessarily the 
only republican path available (Lim 2017: 75). In the spirit of her argument, 
in response I will sketch another possible republican route to an entitlement 
to free time. To do so, I will take up Lim’s suggestion to look toward the 
connection between free time and social equality. 

To be free citizens, Philip Pettit argues, republican citizens must enjoy 
freedom as non-domination not only in their relations to the state, with 
checks against public domination, but also in their social relations with 
one another, with blocks against private domination. To protect citizens 
against private domination, the republican theory of social justice requires 



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von Platz, Stanczyk, and Lim

“a level of protection and resourcing for people’s basic liberties – a level of 
entrenchment – that would enable them to count as equals in the enjoyment 
of freedom” (Pettit 2014: 82). This ideal of equal status is grounded in the 
image of the liber, or free citizen, from the republican tradition, and 
requires that citizens can pass “the eyeball test”: they can “look one 
another in the eye without reason for fear or deference” (Pettit 2014: 82). 
Free citizens can “walk tall and assume the public status…of being equal 
in this regard with the best,” and “do not depend on anyone’s grace or 
favour for being able to choose their mode of life” (Pettit 2012: 84, 82). The 
republican theory of social justice, then, requires that, to enable citizens to 
meet the eyeball test, all citizens must enjoy a threshold level of resources 
and protections for the exercise of their basic liberties (yielding, as such, a 
sufficientarian version of the effective freedoms principle) (Pettit 2012: 85, 
and 75-129; 2014: 99, and 77-108; Rose 2016: 70n8). 

From these grounds, it is then possible to argue that republicans ought 
to be concerned with the distribution of free time, insofar as inadequacies 
in citizens’ shares of the resource of free time undermine citizens’ ability 
“to stand on an equal footing” (Pettit 2014: 80).7 To see how this might be 
the case, say that while some people have an abundance of free time, and 
devote it to social and community life, time-consuming political activities, 
and a wide array of educational and cultural forms of personal development, 
others must work very long or unsociable hours, and these time-poor 
citizens have scant opportunity to participate in such endeavors. It is not 
difficult to imagine how these deficits of free time might, like material 
poverty, undermine citizens’ equal standing. Or, consider how if one has 
very little free time, or if the terms of one’s employment render one always 
on call to work demands or exposed to unpredictable work schedules, one 
might be dependent on the favors and goodwill of others and thus liable to 
their interference.  One might well have to “bow or scrape, toady or kowtow, 
fawn or f latter” (Pettit 2012: 82) with one’s bosses and coworkers, and 
perhaps one’s family or friends, in an attempt to manage and reconcile 
one’s personal commitments and obligations with these onerous and 
intrusive work demands. Again, it is apparent how shortcomings in both in 
the amount and the conditions of citizens’ shares of free time might 

7 Though the eyeball test primarily requires that citizens possess an adequate level 
of resources and protections for the exercise of their basic liberties, it also imposes limits on 
how vast inequalities in resources can be, as citizens’ equal status depends in part in how 
their resources compare with others’, and if they “compare too unfavourably” that is likely 
to affect the “standing they can command in one another’s eyes” (Pettit 2012: 90–91). It 
seems that the eyeball test would also impose limits on how vast inequalities in free time 
could unobjectionably be, but this argument primarily yields a sufficientarian claim to free 
time. (On the relationship between social equality and distributive claims to free time, see 
Rose 2016: 85-89).



120 Julie L. Rose 

LEAP 5 (2017)

undermine their equal status as free citizens.  

In this way, it is possible to construct another republican path to a claim 
to free time, building on the idea that republican freedom is “a freedom 
that presupposes the resources required to make it effective” (Pettit 2014: 
103). On these grounds, one might argue, citizens are entitled to the 
resource of free time for the exercise of their basic liberties, to the extent 
that it enables them to enjoy equal status as free citizens. Such an argument, 
like Lim’s, provides a republican connection between free time and social 
equality, as all citizens must possess free time on terms that enable them 
to pass the eyeball test.

Following Lim’s lead in exploring the temporal dimensions of 
republicanism, there are likely other ways that republican commitments 
could yield a case for free time—and these further possible arguments, 
like the one described here, may be taken as complements to the republican 
argument developed by Lim.

6. CONCLUDING COMMENT

To have one’s work read by such excel lent a nd t houg ht f u l cont r ibutors is 
a n honor. I a m g ratef u l to t he cont r ibutors for devot i ng t hei r at tent ion 
a nd t i me to engag i ng w it h t he book, doi ng so i n such a const r uct ive 
spi r it, a nd for prov id i ng so ma ny t h reads about wh ich to cont i nue 
t h i n k i ng. I a m a lso g ratef u l to t he ed itors, i n pa r t icu la r to Tom Pa r r, for 
h is va luable com ment s a nd for br i ng i ng t h is sy mposiu m to f r u it ion.

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