Abstract

One attractive view is that individuals have rights that no one may legitimately infringe, no matter the consequences---call this view 'liberalism'. Another attractive view is that the restriction of an individual for her own good is sometimes permissible---call that view 'paternalism'. It seems that liberalism and paternalism can conflict, for, given the rights that individuals are usually thought to possess, paternalistic intervention against that individual violates her rights. Several liberals in the last three decades have claimed that the alleged inconsistency is chimerical; indeed the received position is that the two attractive views do not conflict after all. In contrast, I argue that the alleged inconsistency is genuine: if individuals have the sorts of rights they are usually thought to possess then to impose restrictions against them, even for their own good, is impermissible. ;I begin by examining the canonical strategy of reconciliation, which claims that defective choices needn't be protected. The various canonical expositors differ on what defectiveness is, but they all mistakenly assume that autonomy is the liberal ideal. I argue instead that freedom should be the liberal ideal. Only rational creatures can be autonomous, but, importantly, even non-human animals, children, and the mentally incompetent can be free. Freedom is worth protecting, even that of a less-than-rational creature's defective choice. We protect an individual's freedom by respecting her choices, intervening in her life only with her consent. Not all creatures can consent, but the conviction that paternalism against non-consenters is permissible is consequentialist, not liberal. However, consent needn't come before or during the intervention; it might occur even after the intervention for which it is consent. Thus even if consent provides the only justification for intervention, a concerned paternalist may still permissibly intervene even if no consent has yet been given