Paternalism refers to attitudes or states of affairs that exemplify a traditional relationship between father (pater) and child. Two conditions of paternalism are usually identified: interference with liberty and a beneficent intention towards those whose liberty is interfered with.^[1] Examples include laws requiring the use of motorcycle helmets, a parent forbidding their children to engage in dangerous activities, and a psychiatrist confiscating sharp objects from someone who is suicidally depressed.

Historical and Philosophical background

Among many family-state paradigms in traditional cultures, that expressed in some Greek philosophy is particularly familiar in the West. "Family as a model for the state" is an idea in political philosophy that originated in the Socratic-Platonic principle of Macrocosm/microcosm, which states that lower levels of reality mirror upper levels of reality and vice versa. In particular, monarchists have argued that the state mirrors the patriarchal family, with the subjects obeying the king as children obey their father.

The family-state paradigm was often expressed as a form of justification for aristocratic rule as justified in observations of the cosmos.

Plutarch records a laconic saying of the Dorians attributed to Lycurgus. Asked why he did not establish a democracy in Lacedaemon (Sparta), Lycurgus responded, "Begin, friend, and set it up in your family". The Doric Greeks of Sparta seemed to mirror the family institution and organization in their form of government.^[1]

Aristotle argued that the schema of authority and subordination exists in the whole of nature. He gave examples such as man and animal (domestic), man and wife, slaves and children. Further, he claimed that it is found in any animal, as the relationship he believed to exist between soul and body, "which the former is by nature the ruling and the later subject factor".^[2] Aristotle further claimed that "the government of a household is a monarchy since every house is governed by a single ruler".^[3] Later, he said that husbands exercise a republican government over their wives and monarchical government over their children, and that they exhibit political office over slaves and royal office over the family in general.^[4]

Arius Didymus in Stobaeus, 1st century CE, wrote that "A primary kind of association (politeia) is the legal union of a man and woman for begetting children and for sharing life". From the collection of households a village is formed and from villages a city, "So just as the household yields for the city the seeds of its formation, thus it yields the constitution (politeia)". Further, he claims that "Connected with the house is a pattern of monarchy, of aristocracy and of democracy. The relationship of parents to children is monarchic, of husbands to wives aristocratic, of children to one another democratic".^[5]

Modern thinkers have taken the paradigm as a given in societies where hierarchical structures appeared natural.

Louis de Bonald wrote as if the family were a miniature state. In his analysis of the family relationships of father, mother and child, De Bonald related these to the functions of a state: the father is the power, the mother is the minister and the child as subject. As the father is "active and strong" and the child is "passive or weak", the mother is the "median term between the two extremes of this continuous proportion". Like many apologists for family-state paradigm, De Bonald justified his analysis by quoting and interpreting passages from the Bible:

"(It) calls man the reason, the head, the power of woman: Vir caput est mulieris (the man is head of the woman) says St. Paul. It calls woman the helper or minister of man: "Let us make man," says Genesis, "a helper similar to him." It calls the child a subject, since it tells it, in a thousand places, to obey its parents" ^[6]

Louis de Bonald also sees divorce as the first stage of disorder in the state (the principle of macrocosm/microcosm). He insists that the deconstitution of the family brings about the deconstitution of state, with The Kyklos not far behind.^[7]

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn draws a connection between the family and monarchy.

"Due to its inherent patriarchalism, monarchy fits organically into the ecclesiastic and familistic pattern of a Christian society. (Compare the teaching of Pope Leo XIII: 'Likewise the powers of fathers of families preserves expressly a certain image and form of the authority which is in God, from which all paternity in heaven and earth receives its name—Eph 3.15') The relationship between the King as 'father of the fatherland' and the people is one of mutual love".^[8]

George Lakoff claims that the left-right distinction in politics reflects a difference between perceived ideals of the family; for right-wing people, the ideal is a patriarchal family based upon absolute morality; for left-wing persons, the ideal is an unconditionally loving family. As a result, Lakoff argues, both sides find each others' views not only immoral, but incomprehensible, since they appear to violate each sides' deeply held beliefs about personal morality in the sphere of the family.^[9]

Opponents of paternalism

In his Two Treatises of Government, John Locke argues (against Robert Filmer) that political and paternal power cannot be identified. John Stuart Mill opposes state paternalism on the grounds that individuals know their own good better than the state does, that the moral equality of persons demands respect for others' liberty, and that paternalism disrupts the development of an independent character. In On Liberty he writes:

the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right.^[2]

Contemporary opponents of paternalism often appeal to the ideal of personal autonomy.