Everyday Ethics

In the previous week, we have looked at the philosophically liberal foundations of our government, in order to better understand why we have the laws that we do.  We also evaluated the role of the harm principle in determining what sorts of activities we can rightly ban in a liberal society.  Before applying these considerations to several difficult social problems for a proponent of liberalism, it is worth mentioning two additional philosophical principles that are pertinent to our discussion of what laws our society has, and why.

In addition to political liberalism, our society places some degree of relevance on the role of paternalism in our social decision-making.  Paternalism is the view that under certain conditions, the government can ban an activity because it is harmful to the individual engaging in it, and individuals ought to be protected from harming themselves.  The idea behind paternalism is basically that sometimes the government knows what is best for you, and can therefore act on your behalf even if this violates your autonomy.

Paternalism would seem to fly directly in the face of the liberal principle of valuing autonomy.  Paternalism is controversial whenever it is adopted by a liberal government, but a liberal can justify paternalistic policies in some cases.  First, there might be instances where you freely choose to give up your autonomy to either a substance or another person.  The liberal can ban this activity on the basis of protecting your autonomy, even though this requires violating that same autonomy to some extent.  A liberal can also argue that the harm to the individual is simply too great in certain cases.  The harm principle allows that harmful actions, even autonomous ones, can be banned when the harm is great enough.

Another important component of our social decision-making and a subspecies of paternalism is that of legal moralism.  Legal moralism is the view that certain actions are immoral, and can therefore be banned on that basis.  This is a close relative of paternalism because it also allows the government to violate individual autonomy for a person’s own good.  Legal moralism is, however, distinct in its reasoning for banning certain activities.  While paternalism generalizes that protecting the individual from harming themselves is a good reason to ban something, legal moralism focuses more narrowly on preventing a person from debasing themselves by acting immorally.

Both paternalism and legal moralism seem to be at odds with a liberal society that values autonomy and equality.  In both cases, the government is granted the right to violate individual autonomy under the guise that the individual is not a good judge of what is best for them in all cases.  It’s worth noting that valuing autonomy does not necessarily mean that we must allow people to always do whatever they choose.  In certain cases, autonomy is best preserved when we do limit what sorts of activities people can engage in.  And it is certainly not obvious that people really are the best judge of what is best for themselves.  Sometimes they clearly are not.

As we consider several important, and challenging social problems for a liberal government to deal with, we ought to remain aware of the societal dialectic taking place between the values associated with liberalism and the significant role that is nonetheless granted to both paternalism and legal moralism.  Even if our society values liberty to a great extent, it seems that liberty is not the only thing we value.  In some cases, perhaps our liberal government is not all that liberal.

About the Author

Elijah Weber is a graduate student at Bowling Green State University. He holds a Master's degree in philosophy from Colorado State University, and Bachelor’s degrees in sociology and philosophy from Chapman Univerity. He currently lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with his wife Laura, his son Brandon, age two and a half, and two cats, both of whom are mentally deranged.