[lit-ideas] Re: Food for thought
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:25:15 +0000 (GMT)
Wandered here thinking this thread might concern begging-tips for recession-hit
intellectuals, but will leave a comment...
--- On Wed, 28/10/09, Phil Enns <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Walter O. wrote:
>
> "1. Why would it be illiberal for the state to outlaw
> smoking
> (cigaretes, that is)? Given its pernicious financial and
> social
> effects on individuals, families and society in general, on
> what
> grounds do we deny the state a legitimate right to employ
> punitive
> coercive sanctions against smokers - sanctions that extend
> beyond
> intolerable increases in the cost of cigarrettes?"
>
> It is illiberal for some members of a state to decide what
> is an
> unacceptable 'social effect' and then employ the coercive
> powers of
> the state to impose that belief on others.
No state is fully "liberal" of course, and one freedom _always_ exists at the
expense of another. Laws against theft and violence may be described as based
on a collective view of their unacceptable "social effect" that is backed up by
the coercive power of the state. If we suggest smoking is different because it
is only "self-harm" without further 'social effect' then this is doubtful
[secondary effects of smoking, health costs to state etc.]: it is , perhaps,
less direct, severe and obvious a harm to others than theft or violence, but
then so we might view racist abuse, sexual and violent content in the media
etc. and these may be subject to coercive restrictions. Being drunk and
incapable in a public place and begging are criminal offences, albeit
misdemeanours, yet the harm they in themselves cause to others is arguably less
than that of smoking. Being drunk and begging from people at home raise
different considerations: but using heroin at home is
no defence under Misuse of Drugs legislation, and insofar as smoking is seen
as a harmful addiction with adverse impact on others, its harm could be judged
severe enough to warrant coercive state intervention.
The upshot of these points isn't to suggest smoking should or shouldn't be
banned, either in public or privately, but to suggest the answers to these
questions cannot usefully be drawn from considerations of general principles
but require looking at the various specific aspects of the problem and the
various possible specific responses. Liberal theory is compatible with banning
smoking even in private if the vice is viewed as sufficiently harmful that it
curtails others' freedoms [e.g. freedom from society suffering economic and
other loss through individual's self-harm].
> As
> my favourite Prime Minister put it, the state has no place
> in the
> bedrooms of the nation.
This is rhetoric of course. Lots of murder and rape and assault and drug use
occurs in bedrooms [not mine obviously, at least not yet], and the state does
not therefore say such activity is beyond its coercive jurisdiction [even going
so far as to sometimes outlaw certain consensual sexual practices]. An honest
liberal will therefore have to face the, perhaps uncomfortable, fact that even
in the bedroom the state has a place.
So while respectful and sympathetic to liberal concerns and admitting that
Rawls' Theory Of Justice is in many ways an important and suggestive book,
I remain sceptical of moral philosophising untethered to a _specific problem_:-
it can soon come adrift into a kind of empty rhetoric once we move away from a
specific problem to a view guided by general principles, whose application in
the end must always be guided by judgments and values tied to specific
problems. [As W might have said "No moral principle contains within itself
criteria for its own application"].
Donal
Trying to link World 3 and Nim Chimpsky
London Zoo
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