The paper will be published in a collective work edited by O. Favareau, Traité de codetérmination, Presses de l'Université Laval, Quebec City, Canada

This paper intends to analyze the theoretical context of workers’ participation in the management of firms in the light of some trends of contemporary political philosophy. In particular, the capabilities approach of A. Sen and the neo-republicanism of F. Pettit, provide a new legitimacy to the concept of participation: the first as an expression of a typically enabling capacity, the second, because it is an expression of non-domination in the workplaces. From its point of view, the concept of social freedom, as proposed in the philosophical-political debate by A. Honnet, allows us to reconsider the individual freedom of the worker in the enterprise and the same dimension of legal subordination as elements that are re-forged from the perspective of participation, which itself becomes the main expression of social freedom in the workplace.