PHIL 174g Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Libertarian Paternalism, Paternalism, Seat Belt
Document Summary
Today we"ll start with the reading and then move on to paternalism more generally. That the standard ways of justifying paternalism with respect to interpersonal relationships can"t easily be applied in the legal domain. What are they: 1) one was the distinction between hard and soft paternalism. One justification is that it"s okay to act paternalistically when the activity you"re preventing is a non-voluntary activity. Someone who is clinically insane and thinks they can fly from the roof of a building may not be behaving voluntarily so that the thing you"re preventing if you prevent this isn"t a voluntary activity. Or suppose that someone is addicted to drugs and you stop them from injecting themselves with the drug. This may be another example of preventing an action that is not voluntary. Consider a teenage child who wants to take solvents, and their parent prevents this, where part of the justification is that the child would thank them later.
