The Concept of Paternalism

Chapter
Part of the Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy book series (LOET, volume 35)

Abstract

Since the publication of seminal articles concerning paternalism in the 1970s (e.g. Feinberg 1971; Dworkin 1972; Gert and Culver 1976; Beauchamp 1977), the debate focusses both on the conceptual question, which kinds of behaviour, action or regulation are to be understood as ‘paternalistic’ and the evaluative question regarding the moral status of paternalism. Often, both questions get confounded, e.g. taking soft paternalism to be morally acceptable or hard paternalism to be illegitimate. When we want to debate the moral status of the very different kinds of paternalism, it is helpful to identify a conceptual core of paternalism that includes all the actions and policies typically discussed under this label while excluding those that lack characteristic features. This delineation should remain neutral with regard to the moral legitimacy of such actions and policies. In what follows, I will try to shed some light on this conceptual question in developing a concept of paternalism that is designed to fulfill the function of identifying the kind of conduct that poses so many difficult moral questions, without deciding these questions right away. It should therefore be apt to serve as a basis for discussion between paternalists and anti-paternalists in order to identify the kinds of behavior which they are in dispute about. Although I will remain silent on the evaluative issue, the broad range of paternalism makes it likely that a pure paternalistic or anti-paternalistic stance cannot cope with all of its instances.

Keywords

Moral Status Moral Rule Coercion Condition Consent Condition Negative Judgment 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Centre for Advanced Study in BioethicsUniversity of MünsterMünsterGermany

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