Visceral objections typically exist to policies seen as “paternalistic.” Terms like “Big Brother” and the “nanny state” invoke the dire specter of government intrusion into individuals’ thoughts, feelings, and behavior (Blumenthal & Huang, 2009). Indeed, “paternalism” itself is often a term of opprobrium, used to disparage or reject policies without necessarily addressing their merits or demeri...

The present paper revisits the ethical models of patient--physician relationship from the perspective of patient autonomy and values. It seems that the four traditional models of physician--patient relationship proposed by Emanuel & Emanuel in 1992 closely link patient values and patient autonomy. On the other hand, their reinterpretation provided by Agarwal & Murinson twenty years later emphas...

This paper defends a distinctly liberal approach to public health ethics and replies to possible objections. In particular, I look at a set of recent proposals aiming to revise and expand liberalism in light of public health's rationale and epidemiological findings. I argue that they fail to provide a sociologically informed version of liberalism. Instead, they rest on an implicit normative pre...

In recent years, a number of critics of liberalism have focused on its supposed dependence on a voluntaristic and impoverished conception of the self and its inability in consequence to recognise and do justice to those moral phenomena – ideas regarding allegiance, desert and responsibility in particular – that are connected to the situatedness of embodied selves. Samuel Scheffler’s strategy in...

The aim of this article is to examine the moral justifiability of paternalism in the case of active voluntary euthanasia (assisted suicide) as represented in the Pretty v UK decision of the European Court of Human Rights. There are three approaches towards the justification of paternalism, corresponding to the three main trends of normative ethics. Deontological theories place personal autonomy...

Today liberalism (or neoliberalism) is blamed for the growing inequality and poverty in the world as well as for ideological fundamentalism. Since such discussions are wide-ranging, held at universities and in political bodies, the author makes a distinction between liberalism as political philosophy and liberal – or as is now often called neoliberal – practical politics. According to him, libe...