Ilkin Huseynli

I am a PhD student in political philosophy at the University of Milan under the co-supervision of Ian Carter and Nicola Riva. My research interests in political philosophy are mainly the concept of freedom and other related concepts such as ability, power, and domination. I spent a semester at the University of London, Birkbeck as a visiting PhD student under the supervision of Michael Garnett. Currently, thanks to the invitation by Matthew H. Kramer, I am a visiting researcher at Cambridge University. If everything goes as planned, I will graduate from Milan at the end of 2023.

The subject of my thesis is the analysis of political and social freedom, and my central question is whether, why, and in what ways, we can make sense of, and consider normatively relevant, the concept of interpersonal freedom, thus distinguishing between constraints that are natural or self-imposed, and constraints that are imposed by other agents. In my dissertation, I defend a form of pure negative conception of freedom which is known as bivalent social freedom, a term coined by Ian Carter and Hillel Steiner. According to this conception of freedom, only those obstacles, which are imposed by other(s) and which make one’s φ-ing physically impossible, count as unfreedom-producing constraints. In other words, in this view, the only source of unfreedom is prevention; thus, one can be free or unfree to φ without having an ability to φ because one’s abilities are not directly relevant to one’s freedom.

In addition to my current research interests, I am also interested in social, political, and cultural issues in Azerbaijan, where I grew up, and the importance of ideological commitment for active citizenship. For this purpose, I have translated into Azeri Howard Zinn’s book A Young People’s History of the United States and Henry David Thoreau’s Resistance to Civil Government, both of which were printed by a non-profit publisher organized by some friends and myself. I also write articles and blog posts in English and in Azeri for a general audience. Hence, while most pieces on this website are in English, a few subsections under More are fully or partially in Azeri, where one can find my videos, blogs, and articles.

Mən Milan Universitetində siyasi fəlsəfə üzrə doktorantam. Saytdakı kontentin əsas hissəsi ingilis dilindədir lakin More bölməsinin yarımbaşlıqlarında Azərbaycan dilində olan məqalələrim, videolarım və bloq yazılarımla tanış ola bilərsiniz. Patreon hesabımdan mənə dəstək ola bilərsiniz.