Debate: State Paternalism, Neutrality and Perfectionism

Journal of Political Philosophy

Volumn 14, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 111-121

  Clarke, Simon ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CANTERBURY   (New Zealand)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33645156555     PISSN: 09638016     EISSN: 14679760     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9760.2006.00243.x     Document Type: Review

References (41)

1. Among the voluminous literature see John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993)
2. and Brian Barry, Justice as Impartiality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995)
3. and George Sher, Beyond Neutrality; Perfectionism and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)
4. for defences of perfectionism. The 'natural case' for perfectionism is from Joseph Raz, 'Facing up: a reply', Southern California Law Review, 62 (1989), 1153-235 at p. 1230.
5. Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 37.
6. Joseph Chan, 'Legitimacy, unanimity, and perfectionism', Philosophy and Public Affairs, 29 (2000), 5-42 at pp. 14-5.
7. For a discussion of the incompatibility of paternalism and autonomy, see Douglas Husak, 'Paternalism and autonomy', Philosophy and Public Affairs, 10 (1981), 27-46.
8. Steven Wall, Liberalism, Perfectionism, and Restraint (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), ch. 6.
9. Raz, The Morality of Freedom, p. 394.
10. Wall also argues along similar lines at Liberalism, Perfectionism, and Restraint, p. 168.
11. Raz admits this at The Morality of Freedom, p. 189, n. 1.
12. See Wall, Liberalism, Perfectionism, and Restraint, p. 172 for the same admission.
13. W. J. Norman, 'The autonomy-based liberalism of Joseph Raz', Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, 2 (1989), 151-62 at p. 155;
14. David MacCabe, 'Joseph Raz and the contextual argument for liberal perfectionism', Ethics, 111 (2001), 493-522 at pp. 506-7.
15. Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 248;
16. Will Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community, and Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p. 12,
17. and his Contemporary Political Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 203;
18. Raz, The Morality of Freedom, pp. 291-2.
19. Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, p. 269.
20. T. M. Wilkinson, 'Dworkin on paternalism and well-being', Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 16 (1996), 433-44 at pp. 439-40.
21. Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, p. 270.
22. ibid., pp. 270-1.
23. For further criticism of the endorsement constraint, see T. M. Wilkinson, 'Against Dworkin's endorsement constraint', Utilitas, 15 (2003), 175-93.
24. For a defense see Colin Macleod, 'Agency, goodness, and endorsement: why we can't be forced to flourish", Imprints, 7 (2003), 131-60.
25. Thomas Hurka, Perfectionism (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 64.
26. "Joseph Raz, 'Duties of well-being', in his Ethics in the Public Domain, rev. edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), p. 8.
27. The latter example is from Raz, ibid., p. 14.
28. Hurka, Perfectionism, p. 65.
29. These intentions may be unconscious, pp. 125-6.
30. ibid., p. 153. This has an affinity with the Lockean argument that religious conversion cannot be achieved by the use of coercion since it would not result in genuine belief.
31. Hurka makes the latter suggestion at Perfectionism, pp. 155-6. I am grateful to an anonymous referee of this journal for pointing out the distinction.
32. See Rawls, Political Liberalism, pp. 214-5
33. and Barry, Justice as Impartiality, pp. 143-4.
34. Simon Clarke, 'A definition of paternalism', Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 5 (2002), 81-91.
35. There could be more complex cases: what about interventions that restrict options in one way but expand them overall? State action might block A but thereby open up B and C. I'm inclined to count such an intervention as paternalistic, but there is not space here to discuss the issue.
36. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 250.
37. David Richards, A Theory of Reasons for Action (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), pp. 192-3;
38. 'Commercial sex and the rights of the person', University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 127 (1979), 1263-81.
39. If some people hold conceptions of the good that involve consuming unregulated food, then a neutral state would have to try to find some way of exempting them from the regulations.
40. For such a view see Dan W. Brock, 'Paternalism and autonomy', Ethics, 98 (1988), 550-65.
41. See Rawls's discussion on intuitionism in A Theory of Justice, sec. 7.