PP110 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Fornication, Political Philosophy, Leviathan
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207 left column (ie. no person should be punished for being drunk as it falls within the self- regarding category, with the exception of a soldier or police officer on duty. However, the actions committed while drunk should be punished but not necessarily alcohol in itself. Therefore, mill is against the idea of prohibition: legal moralism. Legal moralism- placing limitations on individual liberty in the interests of moral standards, usually involved the concept of decency. Ie. adultery, incest, fornication, prostitution, mistreatment of corpses, etc. The suppression of vice is as much the law"s business as is the suppression of subversive activities. It is no more possible to define a sphere of private morality that it is to define one of private subversion . 2 reasons to oppose legal moralism: no victim= no crime, there is too much disagreement about values in our society to allow the state to impose values on individuals in cases like this.
