This article explores humanism in the context of the Tower of Babel.

In the grand debate between the paternalist and the libertarian, VanDeVeer sides decidedly with the libertarian. Paternalistic intervention he regards as presumptively wrong, and so the question becomes whether there are countervailing, morally relevant considerations by which paternalistic intervention can be justified. In shifting the burden of justification to the paternalist, VanDeVeer is not being innovative. H. L. A. Hart broke that ground in his Law, Liberty, and Morality in 1963, and Ronald Dworkin used the technique effectively in his 1966 (...) Yale Law Journal essay "Lord Devlin and the Enforcement of Morals." VanDeVeer's contribution, however, is in the explanation he gives for laying the burden of justification on those who would defend paternalistic intervention. Whereas Hart's explanation spoke at the societal or governmental level, VanDeVeer's speaks at the level of the individual person. He rests his argument on the essence of the libertarian position: a principle of overarching individual human autonomy. Consistent with his individualistic focus, he avoids restricting his definitions of paternalistic intervention to activities at the societal or governmental level. VanDeVeer insists that there are moral bounds to paternalistic intervention on the part of private individuals, and it is, perhaps, both the strength and the weakness of the book that he by and large joins conceptually paternalistic intervention by the government and paternalistic intervention by private individuals. (shrink)

We tend to think of the French Revolution as a good idea gone awry--idealism consumed by its antithesis in an orgy of Freudian Oedipal violence. It's difficult for us to credit the theorists of the French Revolution with genius. And yet they did possess genius. They recognized the root tension that exists between the ideals of human liberty and human equality. Individual liberty, freely exercized results in social inequality. Enforced social equality of necessity curtails individual liberty. The genius of their (...) solution to this dilemma was, of course, proudly proclaimed in the battle cry of the Revolution: Libèrté! Ègalité! Fraternité! The two inconsistent ideals of liberty and equality are reconcilable and realizable, but only in the resolving agent of fraternity. The trouble was that, as emotively effective as the word 'fraternity' may be as part of a battle cry, it is not effective as the organizing principle for a state. A less emotive, more nuanced understanding of the complex and often conflicting natures of the components that go into the making of a state was needed. It was not there, and the Revolution itself betrayed its own ideals. (shrink)