thumb|Child wearing a [[child harness]]

Paternalism is action that limits a person's or group's liberty or autonomy against their will and is intended to promote their own good. It has been defended in a variety of contexts as a means of protecting individuals from significant harm, supporting long-term autonomy, or promoting moral or psychological well-being. Such justifications are commonly found in public health policy, legal theory, medical ethics, and behavioral economics, where limited intervention is viewed as compatible with or even supportive of personal agency.

Paternalism towards adults is sometimes characterized as treating them as if they were children.

Some critics argue that such interventions can infringe upon autonomy and reflect insufficient respect for an individual’s capacity for self-determination. The terms 'paternalism,' 'paternalistic,' and 'paternalist' are sometimes used pejoratively, particularly in political or social discourse. The classical Latin equivalent was , from .

Types

Soft and hard

Soft paternalism is the view that paternalism is justified only if an action to be committed is involuntary. John Stuart Mill gives the example of a person about to walk across a damaged bridge. Because the person does not know the bridge is damaged and there is no time to warn him, seizing him and turning him back is not an infringement on his liberty. According to soft paternalism, one would be justified in forcing him to not cross the bridge so one could find out whether he knows about the damage. If he knows and wants to jump off the bridge and commit suicide, then one should allow him to. Soft paternalism is the intervention due to a person not having the rationality or ability to make decisions. If a patient in an emergency room is intoxicated or unconscious, they do not possess the rationality or ability to make decisions for themselves and any decisions made on their behalf would be soft paternalism. Hard paternalism does not rely on the absence of rationality or ability. In the emergency room example, the patient is sober or conscious and possesses the rationality and ability to make decisions about their care. Any decision that is made on their behalf would be hard paternalism.

Pure and impure forms

Pure paternalism is paternalism where the people having their liberty or autonomy taken away are those being protected. Impure paternalism occurs when the class of people whose liberty or autonomy is violated by some measure is wider than the group of persons thereby protected.

  • The concept should work within human flourishing. Generally accepted items such as nutrition, clothing, shelter, certain basic freedoms may be acceptable by a range of religious and social backgrounds.
  • The criteria should be minimally intrusive.
  • The requirements of the criteria should not be understood as exhaustive, leaving societies the ability to modify the criteria based on their own needs.
  • The supplementary considerations introduced by such more ambitious criteria of justice must not be allowed to outweigh the modest considerations.

Opponents

In his Two Treatises of Government, John Locke argues (against Robert Filmer) that political and paternal power are not the same.

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: