Leiden University Student Repository

Abbema, Lotte van (2025)

Neoliberalism and the Fiction of the Free Individual

Bachelor thesis | Filosofie (BA)

This thesis argues that neoliberalism, while promoting individual freedom, paradoxically constrains it by advancing a narrow, atomized concept of autonomy. By shifting responsibility for structural inequality onto individuals, neoliberalism reinforces racial, gender, and economic hierarchies, as well as co-opting radical movements and sustaining systemic power through the fiction of the ‘universal individual.’ This thesis critiques neoliberalism’s emphasis on negative liberty and market-driven resistance as mechanisms that obscure collective emancipation. The thesis concludes that true freedom requires moving beyond market individualism toward a structural, relational model of autonomy, rooted in collective action, institutional change, and state-supported human flourishing.

neoliberalism

marketisation

negative freedom

situatedness

individualism

structural oppression

Author

Abbema, Lotte van

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

Philosophy: Global and Comparative Perspectives

Supervisors

Siemens, H.W.
Haas, F.A.J. de

ECTS Credits

10

Language

en