This book sets out in some detail an interesting conception of freedom, according to which being unable to do something (or its being difficult to do), and being dominated in something like the republican sense, are two kinds of unfreedom. This is a conception of freedom as ‘non-constraint’ which recognizes a broad range of constraints on our freedom. According to George Rainbolt’s theory you are unfree in more ways than you might have thought: for example, you are unfree to leap over tall buildings. But some of these unfreedoms matter more than others.

Rainbolt helpfully explains his methodology in Chapter 1. His aim is to articulate a conception of freedom worth honoring and promoting, even if that does not fit common usage (4–5). In…

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