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COMMENTS ON RICHARD ARNESON'S “JOEL FEINBERG AND THE JUSTIFICATION OF HARD PATERNALISM”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 December 2005

William A. Edmundson
Affiliation:
Georgia State University

Extract

Richard Arneson finds that Joel Feinberg's “principled arguments against hard paternalism are defective and merit rejection.” Furthermore, Arneson concludes with a tone of finality, “there is no successful case against hard paternalism to be made.” This diagnosis seems especially dire coming from Arneson, who formerly defended hard antipaternalism against Feinberg's revisionistic “soft” antipaternalism. On Feinberg's behalf I will try to show how Arneson's critique downplays certain costs of hard paternalism. These costs may be worth paying, but (I think Feinberg believed) their magnitude itself constitutes a powerful case against paternalism.

Type
ARTICLES
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

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