“Paternalism” & “Moralism” on Limiting Citizen’s Freedoms

What does moral paternalism entail? What about moralism? How do moral paternalism and moralism differ? In paternalism, at least in one interpretation, the aim is to prevent people from inflicting harm on themselves, not necessarily others. However, in moralism, the aim is to prevent people from committing what society regards as a wrongdoing to secure society’s understanding of morality. Some accounts of moralism argue that these wrongdoings ought to be criminalized. It is rather intuitive to claim that applying moral paternalism and moralism shall restrict people’s liberty. Which one of these two approaches is plausible to be applied by states? In this paper, we argue that moralism restricts people’s liberty unjustifiably, hence implausible. We will begin by explaining what paternalism amounts to. Next, we will critically evaluate moralism. We conclude by arguing that moralism is not a dependable approach. Keywords: “Paternalism”; “Moralism”; “Legal Enforcement of Morality”; “Morals”; “Conventional Morality”; “Legal Moralism”; “Lord Patrick Devlin”; “Immoral”; “Amoral”; “Normative Ethics’; “The Harm Principle”; “Freedom”.