Abstract
The demarcation of the private and public life leads to role of the state in private life. Many individuals have been the unflinching voice for moral dissent. In the western philosophy, debate on private morality and public life was instigated by Attorney General’s Commission Report which was submitted in 1986 and recommended no blanket ban on homosexuality and prostitution. However, a contemporary liberalist, Ronald Dworkin, castigates this Report. He argues that the report has an antagonistic approach because of its permissive attitude towards pornography and the same time hospitability towards the enforcement hypothesis, which holds a preventive attitude towards pornography. In this paper, I analyse the feminists’ discourse of pornography connected with Dworkin and the Committee Report and adds more possibilities that put Dworkin’s arguments closer to the Report. Therefore, in this paper, I argue that Commission Report and Dworkin’s strategy towards pornography embodying as two sides of the same coin, and enforcement strategy is in the far away footing implies antagonistic approach.
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Notes
This is the first time when a committee was coined in 1954 to investigate the laws on homosexuality and prostitution in Britain formally. It was headed by Sir John Wolfenden, and this committee had produced a report (bestseller) after examining the issue of public and private morality before the British parliament in 1957 and reflected, a government does not have the right to coerce its citizen in their private realm.
Here freedom designates whether an individual has a right to perform an action in private without direct harming others irrespective of this individual's thought belongs to minority or majority group. If his thought belongs to the majority, then his thought is popular or good thought otherwise unpopular or wicked thought. And Dworkin represents this as a right to moral independence.
This is the first time in the US in 1985 when Attorney General William French Smith was appointed the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography. And in 1986 divulges a permissive attitude towards pornography.
Dworkin designates the Commission Reports Strategy as William Strategy because the Commission has been appointed by Attorney General William French Smith.
Andrea Dworkin places so many females’ ordnances in the introduction of his book briefly.
Here, liberal feminists' assertion towards pornography divulges their counter-productivity towards those feminists who advocate pornography as a bane for women because this assertion does not deprive women's fundamental right to speech and expression. And this liberal feminists approach bolsters the Dworkinian perspective; that also defended (as mentioned above) the right to free speech in favour of the woman after asserting pornography.
In a contemporary discussion, Berlin crops up the distinction of liberty into negative and positive. After devising the two concepts of liberty, Berlin solves the defining feature of liberty of the nineteenth century in following that differentiates political liberty from the rest of liberties. There is no necessary connection between the negative and positive notion of liberty. Both come up through the answer to the questions respectively; 'who governs me' and 'how far does government interfere with me' and 'who governs me'? The idea of the negative sense of liberty expounds the area within which a man can get unobstructed by others. And the idea of the positive sense of liberty derives from the individual's wishes to be his/her own master. For Berlin, both the negative and positive sense of liberty may overlap through the answers but not in question. He analyses both but emphasises negative sense as a better option. (See Berlin 1969).
For Berlin, the first argument shows that anyone can tell x what is good for x is a protective argument, but the second argument is inconsistent because we cannot name freedom when x is being coerced for the sake of own good.
To define, 'we are master of my own' in the positive sense of liberty, Berlin exemplifies here man pretends himself to divide lower self and higher self. Higher-self is a real or ideal or autonomous self that associates with reason. This self has a controlled desire possessing rational desire, which is an element of mediate pleasure. Lower-self is an unreal or empirical or heteronomous self that associates with passion. This self has an uncontrolled desire possessing irrational impulse, is an element of immediate pleasure. Assuming both selves, higher-self is related to the organic whole; men know about both selves so that they have to control their lower self. (See Berlin 1969, 132).
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Singh, M. Private Morality and the State. J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. 38, 507–521 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-021-00264-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-021-00264-4