Paternalism

Paternalism most typically refers to behavior, by a person, organization or state, which limits some person's liberty or autonomy for her good, or the liberty or autonomy of some group of people for their good. Some definitions of paternalism require in addition that the behavior is against the will of this person or persons, or that it is undertaken regardless of that will. Some definitions require in addition or instead that the behavior expresses an attitude of superiority towards the person or persons.

The word paternalism is from the latin pater for father, though paternalism should be distinguished from patriarchy. Paternalism is sometimes thought appropriate towards children and paternalism towards adults is sometimes thought to treat them as if they were children.

Examples of paternalism include laws requiring the use of motorcycle helmets, a parent forbidding their children to engage in dangerous activities, and a psychiatrist confiscating sharp objects from someone who is suicidally depressed.

Soft and Hard Paternalism

The terms soft and hard are used in two quite different senses in this context. Philosophers, following Joel Feinberg's influential book Harm to Self (1986), usually use "soft paternalism" for paternalism towards a person whose action or choice is insufficiently voluntary to be genuinely hers. Hard paternalism in this usage mans paternalism towards a person whose action or choice is sufficiently voluntary to be genuinely hers. Soft paternalism in this usage may also refer to interference with a person aimed to establish whether or not her action or choice is sufficiently voluntary. In contrast, economists and lawyers usually use "soft paternalism" for mild paternalism, that is paternalism that is not coercive, or not very "heavy-handed". For example, libertarian paternalism is soft paternalism in this sense. Hard paternalism in this usage is coercive paternalism.

Historical and Philosophical background

Ancient political familialism

"Family as a model for the state" is an idea in political philosophy that originated in the Socratic-Platonic principle of Macrocosm/microcosm, which identifies recurrent patterns at larger and smaller scales of the cosmos, including the social world. In particular, monarchists have argued that the state mirrors the patriarchal family, with the subjects obeying the king as children obey their father, which in turn helps to justify monarchical or aristocratic rule.

Plutarch records a laconic saying of the Dorians attributed to Lycurgus. Asked why he did not establish a democracy in Lacedaemon (Sparta), Lycurgus responded, "Begin, friend, and set it up in your family". Plutarch claims that their government resembled the family in its form.

Aristotle argued that the schema of authority and subordination exists in the whole of nature. He gave examples such as man and animal (domestic), man and wife, slaves and children. Further, he claimed that it is found in any animal, as the relationship he believed to exist between soul and body, "which the former is by nature the ruling and the later subject factor". Aristotle further asserted that "the government of a household is a monarchy since every house is governed by a single ruler". Later, he said that husbands exercise a republican government over their wives and monarchical government over their children, and that they exhibit political office over slaves and royal office over the family in general.

Arius Didymus in Stobaeus, 1st century CE, wrote that "A primary kind of association (politeia) is the legal union of a man and woman for begetting children and for sharing life". From the collection of households a village is formed and from villages a city, "So just as the household yields for the city the seeds of its formation, thus it yields the constitution (politeia)". Further, he claims that "Connected with the house is a pattern of monarchy, of aristocracy and of democracy. The relationship of parents to children is monarchic, of husbands to wives aristocratic, of children to one another democratic".

Modern political familialism

Some modern thinkers, such as Louis de Bonald, have written as if the family were a miniature state. In his analysis of the family relationships of father, mother and child, Bonald related these to the functions of a state: the father is the power, the mother is the minister and the child as subject. As the father is "active and strong" and the child is "passive or weak", the mother is the "median term between the two extremes of this continuous proportion". Like many apologists for political familialism, De Bonald justified his analysis on biblical authority:

"(It) calls man the reason, the head, the power of woman: Vir caput est mulieris (the man is head of the woman) says St. Paul. It calls woman the helper or minister of man: "Let us make man," says Genesis, "a helper similar to him." It calls the child a subject, since it tells it, in a thousand places, to obey its parents"

Bonald also sees divorce as the first stage of disorder in the state, insisting that the deconstitution of the family brings about the deconstitution of state, with The Kyklos not far behind.

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn also connects family and monarchy:

"Due to its inherent patriarchalism, monarchy fits organically into the ecclesiastic and familistic pattern of a Christian society. (Compare the teaching of Pope Leo XIII: 'Likewise the powers of fathers of families preserves expressly a certain image and form of the authority which is in God, from which all paternity in heaven and earth receives its name—Eph 3.15') The relationship between the King as 'father of the fatherland' and the people is one of mutual love".

George Lakoff has more recently claimed that the left-right distinction in politics reflects a different ideals of the family; for right-wing, the ideal is a patriarchal family based upon absolutist morality; for left-wing, the ideal is an unconditionally loving family. As a result, Lakoff argues, both sides find each others' views not only immoral, but incomprehensible, since they appear to violate each sides' deeply held beliefs about personal morality in the sphere of the family.

Opponents of paternalism

See also: Social engineering (political science) and Nanny state

In his Two Treatises of Government, John Locke argues (against Robert Filmer) that political and paternal power cannot be identified. John Stuart Mill opposes state paternalism on the grounds that individuals know their own good better than the state does, that the moral equality of persons demands respect for others' liberty, and that paternalism disrupts the development of an independent character. In On Liberty he writes:

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. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. 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.

Contemporary opponents of paternalism often appeal to the ideal of personal autonomy.

See also

• Adultism
• Obscurantism
• Soft paternalism
• Industrial paternalism
• Rule according to higher law

References

• ^ Plutarch: The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, trans. by John Dryden and revised by Arthur Hugh Clough, The Modern Library (div of Random House, Inc). Bio on Lycurgus; pg 65.
• ^ Politics, Aristotle, Loeb Classical Library, Bk I, §II 8-10; 1254a 20-35; pg 19-21
• ^ Politics, Bk I, §11,21;1255b 15-20; pg 29.
• ^ Hellenistic Commentary to the New Testament, ed. By M. Eugene Boring, Klaus Berger, Carsten Colpe, Abingdon Press, Nashville, TN, 1995.
• ^ Hellenistic Commentary to the New Testament, ed. By M. Eugene Boring, Klaus Berger, Carsten Colpe, Abingdon Press, Nashville, TN, 1995.
• ^ On Divorce, Louis de Bonald, trans. By Nicholas Davidson, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, 1993. pp 44–46.
• ^ On Divorce, Louis de Bonald, pp 88–89; 149.
• ^ Liberty or Equality, Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, pg 155.
• ^ George Lakoff, What Conservatives Know That Liberals Don't, ISBN 0-226-46796-1

1. * ^ Klein, Daniel B. "Status Quo Bias" (August 2004). [10]

External links

• Paternalism, by Peter Suber. From Philosophy of Law: An Encyclopedia, edited by Christopher Berry Gray, Garland Pub. Co., 1999, vol. II, pp. 632–635.
• Paternalism, by Gerald Dworkin. From The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• Counting the Dragon's Teeth and Claws: The Definition of Hard Paternalism by Thaddeus Mason Pope. From 20 Georgia State University Law Review 659-722 (2004)
• Monstrous Impersonation: A Critique of Consent-Based Justifications for Hard Paternalism by Thaddeus Mason Pope. From 73 UMKC Law Review 681-713 (2005)
• Is Public Health Paternalism Really Never Justified? A Response to Joel Feinberg by Thaddeus Mason Pope. From 30 Oklahoma City University Law Review 121-207 (2005)