Abstract

An analysis of the contemporary literature on paternalism revealed that the definitions of paternalistic actions used were too narrowly confined to cases involving the interference with the person for whom such actions were taken. Certain counterexamples demonstrated that those definitions were unsuitable. An alternative definition of paternalistic actions was proposed which clearly avoided those counterexamples. ;In light of the new definition, a sampling of contemporary theories of justified paternalistic actions was then made. It was shown that a general theory of justified actions would be required to provide the correct necessary conditions for justified paternalistic actions. A revision of just one of those theories was made to explore the possibility of whether or not such theories might instead provide the necessary conditions for paternalistic actions which are prima facie wrong to perform. The revision failed to reveal suitable necessary conditions. ;A theory providing the necessary and sufficient conditions for paternalistic actions which are prima facie wrong to perform in virtue of their paternalistic nature was then developed. The initial strategy for this theory was to capitalize on the fact that the definition of a paternalistic action depicted the recipient as vulnerable to being disregarded as a person in a morally wrong sense. The necessary and sufficient conditions for that theory were then tested against the counterexamples used in the previous analysis of justified paternalistic actions and the one revision explored. The proposed theory was found to successfully circumvent those counterexamples and was understood as acceptable on that basis. A sense of justified paternalistic actions was then seen to obtain when the necessary and sufficient conditions of this theory failed to be satisfied