This brief book provides an
introductory over-view of moral paternalism: When, the author asks, should we
intervene in others’ lives, even against their wishes, for their own good?  To
answer that question, he provides a framework for weighing the costs and
benefits of proposed interventions. He considers, for example, how well such restrictions
would work, how much their enforcement would cost economically, and what threats
they would pose to individual liberties. He then applies this decision making framework
to six areas of public policy: physician assisted suicide, abortion, motorcycle
helmet laws, recreational drug use, parental refusal of medical treatment for their
children, and environmental ethics.

Intended as a supplementary text
for undergraduate ethics courses, the book’s chapters are concise, extremely accessible,
and clearly define and illustrate the technical terms they present.  Each
chapter ends with a set of discussion questions and a short bibliography. The
author notes in the book’s introduction that: "Because of the costs,
intervention in the lives of others is at best the lesser of evils" (Lee:x).
While he grants the costs such paternalism imposes, however, the author’s
application of his own decision making framework — which aims to mitigate unwarranted
incursions upon individual liberties — is uneven and inconsistent across the
six issues he addresses. 

Two chapters, those describing
physician assisted suicide and abortion, are well balanced and nuanced; even
readers who disagree with the author’s conclusions will readily see how he
reaches them, and what counter arguments he rejects along the way. While these
sections offer models of practical reasoning, those describing motorcycle helmet
laws and recreational drug use are sketchier and draw much weaker conclusions.
In these two chapters, the author systematically and inexplicably discounts the
costs to individual liberty of the restrictions he favors, costs that he takes
great pains to forestall in the previous two cases. Conversely, the sections on
environmental ethics and parental decisions concerning their children’s medical
treatment are so multi-faceted that the author’s conclusions — seemingly from sheer
lack of space in the text — appear, finally,  arbitrary. They follow directly,
that is, neither from his decision framework, nor from the other considerations
he raises.  

Those last two cases may well reflect,
especially for beginning students, the author’s own warning not to expect ready
solutions to such complex social challenges. Still, one confounding element of
using this text for any undergraduate course is the author’s claim, noted in
the preface, that: " In deciding what is right and wrong, we can do no
more than acknowledge that the value claims we make are part of the faiths we
affirm — faiths that can be religious or entirely secular in nature" (Lee:vii)
 The author insists here that these affirmations "bind us in conscience,"
yet he does not directly evaluate the role of private faith, whatever its
content, in determining public policy. At the same time, he addresses readers
from an explicitly Christian theoretical orientation, and takes for granted a
set of assumptions — particularly about the sanctity of human life — that many
readers will not share. The author acknowledges as much, noting that he does
not expect readers to agree with his conclusions. Instead, he aims to offer
them in a "thoughtful and straight-forward manner," and to engage
debate in the spirit of "respectful disagreement" (Lee:viii).

To his great credit, the author compellingly
introduces a vital element of social ethics that many contemporary textbooks do
not directly or systematically consider. He also offers a concise,
well-balanced and flexible framework for evaluating when the moral paternalism he
describes is warranted, and when it is not. Still, the author’s own faith
commitments, while acknowledged throughout, shape how the chapter material is
posed and how discussion questions are framed. That tenor may prove intrusive
to readers who do not count themselves among the "we" he often addresses
in affirming his own faith commitments. Here, especially, the text would benefit
from a systematic and sustained consideration of the role such commitments should
play in public policy. Instructors prepared to address that point more
explicitly, however, may find this text effective in stimulating class
discussion and students’ own thinking about the issues presented.     

© 2006 Lisa Bellantoni

Lisa Bellantoni is an Assistant
Professor of Philosophy at Albright College. She teaches normative and applied
ethics with an emphasis on emerging technologies. She is the author of Moral
Progress (SUNY, 2000) and several articles on bioethics, and welcomes
correspondence at Swamper99@aol.com.    

Categories: Ethics, Philosophical