Paternalism
The term paternalism has long been in currency among moral and political philosophers, but its circulation became much wider, and its definitions much more precise, following the widely read debate over "the legal enforcement of morality" between Patrick Devlin (The Enforcement of Morals, 1965) and H. L. A. Hart (Law, Liberty, and Morality, 1963). Hart had endorsed the liberal doctrine of J. S. Mill, that the only legitimate reason for state interference with the liberty of one person is to prevent him from harming other persons. Mill was especially emphatic in denying that the actor's "own good, either physical or moral," is ever an adequate reason for interference or criminal prohibition ([1859], 1985, p. 9). What Mill denied in this passage is precisely what came to be called "legal paternalism" in the writings of his followers, including Hart nearly a century later. Thus, paternalism was regarded as a thoroughly unacceptable view by nineteenth-century liberals.
Physical and Moral
In his exchange with Devlin, however, Hart conceded that a certain amount of physical paternalism could be accepted by twentieth-century liberals, here departing from Mill who, he wrote, "carried his protests against paternalism to lengths that may now appear to us as fantastic" (Hart 1963, p.
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