Fair Governance: Paternalism and Perfectionism

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But the disagreement between George and Finnis should be seen, I believe, as a disagreement about the ends of the state: In this essay I argue, with Finnis and George, that coercion is not itself the problem; however, I argue with Finnis that the political common good does not include the moral character of citizens as such. It would thus be within the authority of the state to legislate against such immorality, and to promote upright moral character in other ways as well.

Such a robust perfectionism might seem to threaten religious liberty. In addition to this principled, religious, restriction on the scope of pure paternalist perfectionism, most paternalists acknowledge prudential limits to paternalistic legisla- tion. The regulation of some vices might be so time-consuming, or involve such expense or invasion of legitimate privacy, that it would be better for the state to refrain from the enforcement of morality in such cases.

Apart from caveats concerning transcendent ends, and practical possibilities, though, the scope of the moral and the scope of the legislatively permissible in a perfectionism that embraced pure paternalism would appear to be co-extensive. Thomas Aquinas, which moves his position away from the stereotype depicted above, and in beginning to clarify the principled objections to the stereotype that are available to perfectionism.

It requires families, networks of friends, and cooperative social structures for the pursuit of goods. Pursuit of the good of religion too is typically communal, and, in developed forms with traditions of revelation, awareness of the full range of options of understanding and worship requires access to the tradition in the form, e.

Each such community, we should note, properly has its own common good—a shared point, commitment to which binds a multiplicity of agents even as few as two into some one reality—a community. In a robust friendship, that shared point just is the mutual willing and pursuit of the good for and with each other; in less robust forms of friendship, the good might be the conditions necessary for each participant to be empowered to achieve his or her more or less independently construed good a business friendship ; or it might be the shared activity itself, and the enjoyment taken from that activity a friendship of play.

Each of the cooperative social structures described in the previous paragraph is a community, with its own shared point, its own common good. But such cooperative social structures—groups, as I shall call them— a cannot coordinate themselves in relation to other groups in the absence of a common authority; nor b can they, absent such coordinative authority, provide for a common defence against outsiders; nor c can they justly—i. This authority may come to exist simply because some person or group has taken upon themselves the responsibilities of authority and are in fact followed; there is no myth of consent undergirding the picture.

But there are clearly forms of authority more and less adequate to the initial needs, and to the condition of the persons with those needs. The authority must, for example, use the coercive force of the sword, and make judgments regarding the good and bad, right and wrong, guilty and innocent within the overlap- ping set of societies. So an ideal of authority can develop in which the agents of authority are themselves governed by the impersonal authority of law, and, even further, in which those agents are at the same time, both authorities and subjects, who take their turn ruling and being ruled.

We are here quite close to the ideals of liberal democratic politics. But those ideals, it is worth noting, insofar as they are liberal and democratic, enter into the picture later than the need for political authority just as such. The needs that govern the creation of political authority are the needs of all human beings within the set of overlapping communities, including those who are proximate, but for whatever contingent reason not currently cared for by some particular community.

The ideals of liberal democracy, and of democratic citizenship, on the other hand, are not foundational needs for political authority, but a constraint on how that authority most reasonably should be constituted. There is a need for such constraints, and for a democratic mode of politics; but it is a need of citizenship. In several places, Finnis has detailed how the impersonal and general character of the law, and the procedural safeguards of constitutional government, protect persons against both deliberate injustice—against, e. The state is thus doubly instrumental: First, the state is not neutral as regards what forms of life and activities are genuinely worthwhile; the state need not provide instrumentalities suitable for worthless forms of life, such as a life of constant intoxica- tion, or for depraved activities, such as indulgence in pornography; and the state may refuse such provisions precisely because of the worthlessness or depravity of such forms of life and activities.

Moreover, Finnis has argued that the state should support religion, although not in ways that would transcend its authority. Means I shall argue in the next section that the state is limited in the scope of its legislation to a interpersonal matters, and b external actions, in virtue of the form of perfection- ism just described.

This dispute primarily concerns the means it is permissible for the state to use in pursuit of its perfectionist ends; yet it naturally leads, as I shall show, to questions about the legitimate ends of state action. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self- protection.

That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others.

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In the part which merely concerns himself, his independ- ence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

This seems to represent a departure from earlier claims denying the legitimacy not just of the neutrality principle, but also of the harm principle, in CEJF III. Raz gives two reasons for this: First, it violates the condition of independence and expresses a relation of domination and an attitude of disrespect for the coerced individual. Second, coercion by criminal penalties is a global and indiscriminate invasion of autonomy. It is not too big a step from this to the claim that an agent who willingly chooses wrongly in fact harms himself, for he thereby misses opportunities to pursue worth- while options thus, he is worse off than he otherwise would have been , and he habituates himself to worthless options.

Free choice of any option, whether morally upright or not, tends to have the effect of disposing an agent to further choice of that, and similar, options. The eventually formed and settled dispositions do not remove the possibility of free choice in the future—upright agents can go on to choose immorally, and wastrels and scoundrels can turn their lives around. But from a commonsense perspective, the perfectionist paternalist could surely argue that self- regarding immoralities are a threat to autonomy; thus, the argument that such pater- nalism would in fact show respect to the wrongdoer by preventing harm is strengthened, rather than the reverse.

We could put 30 Raz, The Morality of Freedom, But this is not a problem particular to morals legislation but to all uses of judgment and the sword, and the answer, where morals legislation is concerned, is surely the same answer as in other cases: There is some bluntness to the law, here as elsewhere.

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But this, as George points out, is a prudential consideration, and not a principled reason to oppose paternalistic morals legislation. The Raz-George-Finnis disagreement concerning the harm principle turns centrally on the question of means—is the use of coercion by the state somehow a specially problematic means where only the moral well-being of the coerced agent is at stake?

But that question surely cries out to be answered at precisely this juncture. He claims that in our society, coercion possesses, by convention, a symbolic quality expressive of disrespect. But one might equally claim that the law, and coercion carried out by means of law, possesses the opposite symbolic quality. What is essential is the nature of the ends to which the state is instrumental. It is important to note that the need for a state—for political authority—arises at precisely the point at which individuals and social groups are no longer capable of adequately pursuing their well-being, and this inadequacy arises for the following reason: Please enter recipient e-mail address es.

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Fair Governance

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Francis H. Buckley

You already recently rated this item. Your rating has been recorded. Write a review Rate this item: Preview this item Preview this item. F H Buckley Publisher: Oxford ; New York: English View all editions and formats Summary: Paternalism and Perfectionism asks when the state might reasonably interfere with individual preferences, either to make us better off paternalism or to prevent us from making immoral choices perfectionism. The book canvasses the literature in law, economics, psychology, and philosophy, and examines recent empirical studies of judgment biases and happiness.

Throughout, technical issues are discussed with clarity and wit.

While resisting dogmatic solutions, F. Buckley upholds a prudential autonomy and argues that there are few circumstances in which an intrusive interference with personal preferences is justified.

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