I. Self-respect paternalism

Paternalism according to the disrespect objection may be understood as follows:

X acts paternalistically towards Y by Φ-ing (or omitting to Φ), if and only if

1. (i) X's Φ-ing (or omitting to Φ) interferes with Y, that is, infringes Y's autonomy

2. (ii) X Φs (or omits to Φ) in order to promote the interests, good, or well-being of YFootnote ⁷ and

3. (iii) X Φs (or omits to Φ) on the grounds of X's negative belief regarding (a) Y's capacity to make appropriate judgements regarding what is good for them [and/or] (b) Y's choice-following ability (or their willpower) [and/or] (c) the likelihood that Y will in fact exercise their abilities of this kind in ways that are conducive to their own good.

As captured by this definition, paternalism involves the notion that Y will (or X believes that Y will) – in the absence of X's intervention – fail to respond to certain reasons that apply to Y. Putatively, X's Φ-ing (or omitting to Φ) promotes Y's well-being (or X believes that it will promote Y's well-being), where this includes preventing it from deteriorating. X takes this as a reason for Φ-ing. Furthermore, X's intervention infringes Y's autonomy. That is, X seeks to influence Y by the use of means other than rational persuasion.Footnote ⁸

Condition (iii) fleshes out the content of X's negative beliefs regarding Y. The negative beliefs should be seen against the backdrop of X's Φ-ing (or omitting to Φ), that is, X's acting on the beliefs in question. That is, paternalism and its wrongfulness latch on to actions thickly described.Footnote ⁹ The nature of the negative beliefs is this. They concern Y's ability to tell what is in their own interest, Y's willpower to pursue what is in their own interest, and the likelihood that Y shall exercise such abilities appropriately in concrete decision-making contexts. The beliefs do not concern Y's self-respect or Y's concern for Y's own good. Traditional paternalism presumes that this is not an issue. Perhaps it need not work on this presumption. The definition could easily be modelled such as to include this particular concern also. Yet there is a point in defining traditional paternalism in the way I do. The mentioned presumption appears to be ingrained in how we traditionally understand paternalism: as a tool for aiding people better to promote their own good (assuming that their own good figures prominently among their concerns).Footnote ¹⁰ The presumption that people are not deficient in their concern for their own good has a long pedigree. It is represented, for example, in the works of John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant. Consider Kant to this effect: “To secure one's own happiness is a duty (at least indirectly) … But here also do men of themselves already have, irrespective of duty, the strongest and deepest inclination toward happiness, because just in this idea are all inclinations combined into a sum total …”Footnote ¹¹ And Mill: “No reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness.”Footnote ¹²

On the conception of paternalism as characterized by the definition above, there is not a sharp distinction between the disrespect and the autonomy objections to paternalism: paternalism always infringes autonomy, and the disrespect it involves is intertwined with this infringement.Footnote ¹³ This is related to the point that the morally objectionable features of paternalism do not attach to certain negative beliefs in themselves but to (autonomy infringing) actions on the basis of those beliefs. Yet even on my view paternalism need not be understood to infringe any distinct autonomy right.Footnote ¹⁴ For example, we may for paternalistic reasons decline to assist a person in certain ways (e.g., because we believe that it would benefit this person to deal with the matters in question themselves) where this person has no right to our assistance. We may still though, I suggest, have reasons pertaining to autonomy not to decline assistance on the indicated ground; and we infringe the person's autonomy if we do. Similarly, it might be wrong for me to decline to assist you on racist grounds, even though you have no right to my assistance to begin with.Footnote ¹⁵

As indicated “traditional paternalism” consists of acts and policies that satisfy conditions (i)–(iii). “Self-respect paternalism,” in contrast, is attentive to a specific type of reason (amongst the array of reasons that an agent, unassisted or unhindered, may fail to respond to in appropriate ways). This type of reason pertains to Y's self-respect; hence its name. Specifically, as we shall see, self-respect paternalism seeks to correct for two kinds of deficiencies in a person's self-respect. First, a person may fail to see that they enjoy moral standing on a par with others in the moral community. Second, they may fail to act appropriately given their equal standing (and their knowledge of this), for example by refraining from voting or asserting or exercising others of their equal rights. Traditional paternalism, in contrast, is preoccupied with other reasons to which the agent is not appropriately responsive.

To highlight this relatively narrow concern of self-respect paternalism, I suggest the following more specific version of condition (ii):

Defining self-respect paternalism requires furthermore a new formulation of condition (iii). This must reflect the fact that the negative beliefs self-respect paternalism involves are distinct from those involved in traditional paternalism. In self-respect paternalism X does not deny that Y has the abilities mentioned in condition (iii), nor that Y would be likely to exercise those abilities in ways conducive to Y's good (were Y in fact committed to Y's own good or found it equally important as that of others). The negative beliefs of self-respect paternalism are exhausted by X's negative beliefs regarding Y's lack of attention to their own good in one of the ways alluded to above (i.e., cases where Y does not regard themselves as equal or act accordingly). On the other hand, negative beliefs of this kind are, as noted, exactly those that are absent from traditional paternalism. The requisite new formulation of condition (iii) is this:

Here is an example that may help us see the difference between traditional and self-respect paternalism. A person may have a “born to run” lifestyle in which they operate “suicide-machines” (i.e., drive fast and recklessly on a motorcycle without wearing a crash helmet).Footnote ¹⁶ Such a person is a paradigmatic case for traditional paternalistic intervention (e.g., a helmet mandate). For example, a traditional paternalist may take issue with the excessive weight this person assigns to experiencing temporary thrills or intense feelings of freedom vis-à-vis the insufficient weight they assign to avoiding considerable risks to their health and well-being. Yet people with such a high-risk lifestyle may not harbor any doubt in their hearts or minds that they have worth and rights on a par with others. Moreover, they may not be afraid to use such rights. Accordingly, they do not fall within the purview of self-respect paternalism. Another example that allows us to see the difference between traditional and self-respect paternalism is the one I mentioned in the introduction concerning women's potential lack of a sense that they have rights to political influence on a par with men. As I have defined the two conceptions of paternalism the former neglects such a case, whereas it is key to the latter.

It might seem crucial to my concerns in this article that self-respect paternalism as described apparently steers clear of the kind of disrespect that proponents of the disrespect objection have associated with traditional paternalism. This is the disrespect associated with the negative judgement regarding the features of Y mentioned in condition (iii)'s sub-conditions (a)–(c). Yet as condition (iii)* brings out, self-respect paternalism involves its own negative judgement and self-respect paternalism also infringes people's autonomy on the basis of this belief. Accordingly, it is not my claim that self-respect paternalism, in contrast to traditional paternalism, avoids the disrespect objection or that this objection is weaker regarding the former. My argument below shall be that unlike traditional paternalism, self-respect paternalism – due to its prominent and inherently egalitarian credentials – is capable of identifying clear instances of paternalism in which the reasons for finding paternalism disrespectful are outweighed by egalitarian considerations.

Paternalism of any variety is usually taken to be either pro tanto or prima facie wrong (and I agree that it is at least prima facie wrong; in fact, I affirm that it is pro tanto wrong).Footnote ¹⁷ Why? Because by making a negative judgment regarding certain of the paternalized agent's capacities and/or their exercise of those capacities, and acting on this judgment by way of bypassing, or in part taking over, their agency, the paternalistic agent casts themselves as superior in a certain sense to the agent they paternalize. The latter is conceived as inferior when it comes to running their own life in a way that is appropriately and sufficiently sensitive to the relevant reasons pertaining to them. Accordingly, paternalism introduces a dimension of inequality between the paternalizer and the paternalized. The former, by virtue of their act, appears to deny the latter's status as a person with appropriate and sufficient capacities for running their own life.

This flies in the face of the notion that citizens uniformly possess (and exercise), to a certain minimal degree, such capacities. One way of expressing this notion is to say that each citizen shares with others a range-property that forms an important ground for their moral equality or equal standing.Footnote ¹⁸ Proponents of the disrespect objection believe that there is a weighty moral reason against paternalistic acts because of the aspect of superiority they imply. I admit that paternalistic acts – including self-respect paternalistic acts – imply an aspect of the mentioned kind, and that this constitutes an objection to them. Yet, as indicated, self-respect paternalism shows how this objection can be outweighed by countervailing considerations. Before putting forward my argument, it would be helpful to state in brief two facets of self-respect paternalism that supplement the characterization of it provided above.

II. Why self-respect paternalism is not insulting all things considered

In this section, I shall argue that self-respect paternalism is not insulting all things considered. My argument can be represented in the following way:

Consider first P1. I understand conditions (i) and (ii) as being jointly sufficient for an infringement of autonomy not to be insulting all things considered. Regarding (i), establishing or preserving autonomy may take several forms, including promoting autonomy-congenial beliefs, putting in place constraints that cater to personal security, and preventing people from undertaking very dangerous, and potentially autonomy-undermining, activities (e.g., doing drugs that hinder their ability to form complex intentionsFootnote ³¹). If the goods in question could be achieved by the use of non-coercive or non-autonomy-infringing means, it would be wrongful, in part because disrespectful, to infringe people's autonomy. In such circumstances, we should abide by what Gerald Dworkin refers to as the principle of the least restrictive alternative.Footnote ³² Why? Because infringing people's autonomy is never an innocuous matter. When we infringe people's autonomy, we act in a way that is pro tanto impermissible.Footnote ³³ Respecting people's autonomy is an important part of respecting persons.Footnote ³⁴ That is, (recognition) respect requires that X does not make judgements that disparage “Y's capacity to make choices as an autonomous agent” and recognizes that because Y is an autonomous agent, Y is “capable of deciding how to act for herself.”Footnote ³⁵ To infringe people's autonomy for no reason, or where there are viable alternatives to doing so compatible with still achieving the important goods at stake, is plausibly disrespectful. It would show that we are not in an appropriate sense attentive to valid pro tanto reasons against infringing people's autonomy. We would fail to recognize in an appropriate sense autonomy as an important aspect of the person – a feature of the person that requires us to act (or refrain from acting) in certain ways towards them.

Consider now P1 (ii). It can be motivated in the following way. Respecting persons requires more than respecting their autonomy. It requires also that we respect their equal moral worth.Footnote ³⁶ This was the aspect of recognition respect I focused on above. In the present context, we may say that in order for an autonomy-infringing policy (for example, taxing people to ensure various autonomy-congenial goods and services to all) to be respectful or non-insulting all things considered, it must be justified in a way that is compatible with respecting people as free and equal. The notion of people's equal worth should, we may say, form the ethical foundation of the measure in question.

Anderson's juxtaposition of the rationale of a paternalistic policy, and policies justified in accordance with her favored doctrine of democratic equality emphasizing people's equal moral worth, is instructive here. The former, she suggests, is disrespectful, whereas the latter is not:

I agree with Anderson that autonomy-infringing policies of the sort we are considering hereFootnote ³⁹ will be insulting all things considered unless they are justifiable on the grounds that people have equal worth or on grounds consistent with the idea that people have equal worth.Footnote ⁴⁰ I disagree, however, that this implies that paternalistic policies (including mandatory social insurance schemes justified paternalistically) are necessarily ruled out as reasonable and, importantly, as policies that are respectful all things considered.Footnote ⁴¹ I shall argue that at least an important subset of paternalistic policies, namely self-respect paternalistic policies of the kind I have presented above, is respectful all things considered: it is both necessary to support people's autonomy and may be seen to rest on a sturdy, respectful egalitarian foundation.

Let us turn now to “P2. Self-respect paternalism infringes people's autonomy: (i) in ways necessary to establish and/or preserve important aspects of their autonomy; and (ii) in accordance with a respectful egalitarian rationale.” Let us begin with (i). First, in some circumstances, self-respect paternalism may be required to cater to people's self-respect or help them develop an appropriately (equal) conception of their own worth. In fact, we could simply say that self-respect paternalism applies only to cases in which (i) is true and leave open whether the argument extends to various real-life social and political cases. Yet, as indicated above, there are important actual cases where people lack self-respect and where more familiar, non-paternalistic, policies have not proved effective.Footnote ⁴²

Second, according to plausible accounts of (relational) autonomy, people need to have appropriate (recognition) self-respect to have and/or preserve their autonomy. For example, according to what Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen calls the “content-focused relational account,” facts about the content of a person's mental states are crucial: “An agent is autonomous only if, presently, she holds certain autonomy-congenial beliefs and desires about the social relations in which she and (relevant) others are involved.”Footnote ⁴³ A person's having recognition self-respect and associated egalitarian beliefs is arguably congenial to their autonomy. This is so in part because a person with self-respect can see, and persist in seeing, their good as something that is worth pursuing.Footnote ⁴⁴ Without such a sense, the adequacyFootnote ⁴⁵ of the agent's range of options is under threat. As John Rawls memorably stated, in the absence of self-respect “nothing may seem worth doing.”Footnote ⁴⁶

This might seem too strong: for example, even if a person lacks self-respect, they may have various impersonal concerns, for example, to preserve biodiversity for its own sake. In this way, at least something might seem worth doing even in the absence of self-respect. Yet it seems justified and important to emphasize, as Rawls does, that an important array of doings and beings (i.e., various personal concerns) has meagre value for the person who does not have appropriate recognition self-respect. The meagre value relates to the fact that, in order to derive value from certain activities, a person must endorse them.Footnote ⁴⁷ A person's endorsement, or the so-called endorsement constraint, is, of course, usually weaponized against paternalism. Paternalism is taken to give people what they do not want, and hence what is not valuable to them. Yet in principle, nothing rules out that paternalism can be conducive to engendering endorsement of the kind alluded to, and this is exactly what self-respect paternalism, inter alia, does (or aims to do). In this way, self-respect paternalism may promote people's well-being in the fundamental sense that it creates the necessary background for a person to benefit from some of their plans and projects. Self-respect paternalism does so with an important inbuilt egalitarian constraint in that it is concerned with promoting a state of affairs in which people endow their own worth with an appropriate equal weight.Footnote ⁴⁸ This also explains why catering to people's autonomy qua catering to their self-respect is key to self-respect paternalism: catering to people's self-respect and their autonomy is ultimately conducive to people's well-being.

We have established that restricting people's autonomy may be necessary to promote their (recognition) self-respect. The latter, in turn, is required for their autonomy on the content-focused relational account of autonomy. Moreover, autonomy is crucial to people's well-being. The implied notion in this train of thought that restricting people's autonomy in certain respects may promote their autonomy all things considered sounds paradoxical. Yet it is familiar from other contexts, and plausible, I think. For example, restricting people's liberty to undertake very dangerous activities may help to preserve important aspects of their autonomy.Footnote ⁴⁹ Likewise, restricting the liberty of everyone in a society may be crucial to securing autonomy for everyone.Footnote ⁵⁰ Still, it may be more precise and illuminating in this context to distinguish between different notions of autonomy.Footnote ⁵¹ First, autonomy may be seen as a right. A right of this kind is infringed when we, for example, restrict people's liberty to make important decisions or, in general, when we use means other than rational persuasion to influence them in important regards, even when we do so for their own good. Second, autonomy may be seen as a certain consideration (or set of considerations) that gives us reasons to act or not to act in certain ways toward others. Third, autonomy may be understood along the lines of the content-focused relational account of autonomy where the nature of the person's mental states is key. Against the backdrop of those distinctions, self-respect paternalism may be seen to involve, first, an infringement of autonomy rights or of certain autonomy considerations. Yet this infringement may promote autonomy of the distinct third form. That is, the infringement of autonomy may have as a consequence that the person whose autonomy is interfered with has mental states that are more congenial to autonomy than this person would have had had their autonomy not been interfered with.

Let us turn now to the defense of P2 (ii), that is, the claim that self-respect paternalism infringes people's autonomy “in accordance with a respectful egalitarian rationale.” Yet what I have already said regarding P2 (i) bears in part on P2 (ii). It does so because my defense of the former brings out significant egalitarian features of self-respect paternalism, including that it (a) promotes egalitarian mental states (namely beliefs that one's good is just as important as the good of others, and a basic sense that one's good has equal value of this kind) and (b) caters to people's well-being associated with people's endorsement of their own plans and projects, correcting inequality-generating shortfalls in recognition self-respect in the process. In addition, I want now to supplement (a) and (b) with two additional egalitarian features pertaining to self-respect paternalism, namely (c) valuable egalitarian relations; and (d) intrinsic egalitarian features of self-respect paternalism.

Concerning (c), as we have seen, self-respect paternalism promotes autonomy through furthering equal relations between people and promoting and enhancing people's recognition self-respect. These egalitarian relations are arguably of significant value, including for persons who relate in this way. To explain, relating to others as equals, interpersonally speaking, demands of us that we regard and treat ourselves as equals. As Anne-Sofie Greisen Hojlund puts it: “for X and Y to believe (and act in accordance with their belief) that their rights and interests are, at a fundamental level, equally morally important requires that they each consider their own rights and interests to be just as important as those of the other.”Footnote ⁵² Self-respect paternalism, as we know, seeks to support considerations of this kind. Respect and self-respect are arguably mutually supportive. If one appropriately respects others, then one ought to extend, it seems, this respect to oneself (a being who has the very respect-worthy features that make the respect of others appropriate).Footnote ⁵³ Likewise, self-respect may be seen to involve respecting oneself as an equal among persons,Footnote ⁵⁴ where this, I take it, implies that one respects others as equals just as one respects oneself.

Relating as equals is arguably non-contingently good, and in part so for the people relating in this way.Footnote ⁵⁵ It contrasts favorably with relations characterized by hierarchy in which underlings bow and scrape to those at the top. Relating as equals may also be contingently good by virtue of, for example, promoting community, trust, and the important good of health.Footnote ⁵⁶

Concerning (d), acting on the basis of a recognizable egalitarian attitude or disposition is part of what self-respect paternalism is. A person who performs a self-respect paternalistic act is in part motivated by a thought with a certain non-trivial egalitarian content (i.e., that the paternalized person's interests are just as important as others’ interests), or has appropriate attitudes of this kind towards the paternalized agent. If X acted in ways that might be conducive to Y's self-respect but did not do so out of a concern with Y's recognition self-respect, X would not, on my account, be a self-respect paternalizer. So egalitarian attitudes of the kind emphasized here are part of the definition of self-respect paternalism as I conceive of it.

The takeaway when we contemplate self-respect paternalism's egalitarian features (a)–(d) is that it is a doctrine with considerable egalitarian virtues. Those features provide reasons in favor of the claim that self-respect paternalistic policies rest on a solid respect-based egalitarian foundation. Yet it should be clear that there are countervailing reasons for thinking that self-respect paternalism is insulting. First, the paternalist implies that the person whose self-respect they cater to is either (i) insufficiently enlightened regarding their own worth and rights, or (ii) reluctant to respond in appropriate ways to the fact that they enjoy standing on a footing of equality with others (a fact about which they are well informed) out of laziness, timidity, or in order to obtain a minor advantage (or to avoid a minor inconvenience). In both cases, X (the paternalist) sees themselves as more knowledgeable than Y (the person X treats paternalistically) or more adept than Y at responding to reasons that pertain to Y. Second, on the basis of those beliefs, X intervenes in matters ordinarily considered to be within the legitimate control of Y.

Whilst those countervailing reasons for thinking that self-respect paternalism is insulting should certainly not be neglected, they seem to me, in a range of cases,Footnote ⁵⁷ less weighty than the reasons suggesting it is not. Self-respect paternalism, we may say, is justifiable all things considered. It is fair to ask here whether traditional paternalism could (also) be justified on the grounds that people have equal worth. My response is that it might. My core claim in this article is that there are especially strong reasons to think that self-respect paternalism meets the indicated justificatory burden. Those reasons pertain perhaps especially to the egalitarian feature (d) that I have just mentioned. Self-respect paternalism, we may say, wears its egalitarianism on its sleeves. That is, it promotes directly the fundamental egalitarian idea – what Dworkin refers to as the abstract egalitarian thesis – that people have a right to be treated with equal respect and concern. In this way, it clearly expresses to those subjected to the measures in question that they have worth on a par with others and that they ought to believe and act accordingly. This seems to be significant, expressively speaking. Whereas people lacking in self-respect do not affirm their moral status openly, as Hill has it, self-respect paternalism does exactly this, and does so in the hope that it will rub off on citizens.Footnote ⁵⁸

More traditional forms of paternalism may be shown to be consistent with – or to be plausible interpretations of – the notion that people are free and equal and ought to be treated as such (and regard themselves as such and act accordingly). Yet the egalitarian foundation is less manifest than is the case in self-respect paternalism.

Here is a case that brings to the fore the competing considerations relevant to assessing whether self-respect paternalism is all things considered insulting.Footnote ⁵⁹ Imagine a woman with anti-egalitarian beliefs who decides to join a religion, a core tenet of which is that men's interests count for more than women's interests. Let us presume that her deliberations satisfy stringent procedural autonomy-related conditions. Apparently, this woman is an apt target for self-respect paternalism as I conceive of it. Yet subjecting her to self-respect paternalistic measures would very likely be a source of insult to her. Accordingly, we may question the plausibility in saying, as I apparently do, that self-respect paternalism towards this woman is all things considered respectful.

In response, I affirm first that, on my view, the woman is an apt target for self-respect paternalism. If she, for example, is reluctant to participate in politics because she believes that women's interests matter less than men's, I hold that measures aimed at altering her anti-egalitarian beliefs are appropriate.Footnote ⁶⁰ Second, I do not regard this as an unwelcome or implausible implication. As explained above, I regard the idea that each person is an equal among equals as fundamental for a highly valuable form of moral community, that is, one in which people relate as free and equal, and I do not consider it implausible that this idea in certain circumstances outweighs opposing values and beliefs. Third, I find the substantive egalitarian conception of autonomy I rely upon here compelling. According to this, in order to be autonomous, people must entertain certain egalitarian beliefs. For example, if women entertain views to the effect that they and their worth should, to a higher degree than it is true of men's worth, be assessed on the basis of their appearance – and that they do not have value as persons on a par with men – this plausibly constrains their freedom in ways that are incompatible with, or severely reduce, their autonomy.Footnote ⁶¹

Fourth, it is likely, as the objection points out, that the woman in question will feel insulted by self-respect paternalistic measures. Yet this does not imply that there is not a satisfactory respect-based egalitarian foundation for the measures in question. Hence, self-respect paternalistic measures are not insulting all things considered on what I think is an appropriate objective conception of insult. According to this conception, whether something is insulting or demeaning does not hinge on whether or not people think that they have been insulted or feel insulted, but on whether they have good reasons to think that they have been insulted and feel insulted.Footnote ⁶²

All in all, then, self-respect paternalism seems to handle well a critical case of the kind just considered.

III. Conclusion

In this article, I have introduced a novel form of paternalism, to wit, self-respect paternalism. This form of paternalism, I have argued, is easier to justify than traditional paternalism is. Self-respect paternalism is characterized, first, by involving an infringement of the autonomy of the person who is subjected to it (it shares this feature with traditional paternalism). Second, the infringement in question is undertaken with a view to promoting the well-being of the person interfered with by helping them to have appropriate self-respect. Third, the self-respect paternalist is motivated by a certain negative belief regarding the self-conception or self-worth of the person interfered with. The justificatory advantage of self-respect paternalism vis-à-vis traditional paternalism relates to the transparently egalitarian nature of the former, to wit, its clear message that the person whose autonomy is infringed for their own good has value on a footing of equality with others.