Matthew H. Kramer (Churchill College, Cambridge University) has posted Paternalism, Perfectionism, and Public Goods on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Jonathan Quongʼs "Liberalism without Perfection" is a highly impressive defense of the Rawlsian thesis that governments are morally obligated to remain neutral among all reasonable conceptions of the good. Quong pits his neutralism against the sundry varieties of liberal perfectionism, whose proponents all reject the Rawlsian thesis. In the present article, I will challenge some of Quongʼs claims about the paternalism of the subsidies that are recommended by most liberal perfectionists. Although I am wary of many aspects of the doctrines that have been varyingly propounded by perfectionists in recent decades, Quongʼs anti-perfectionist strictures are generalizable mutatis mutandis to virtually all perfectionist doctrines -- including the aspirational-perfectionist doctrines which I elsewhere champion. Hence, notwithstanding my doubts about the perfectionist theories that have abounded heretofore, this articleʼs parrying of the charges of paternalism leveled by Quong will help to pave the way for my advocacy of a very different kind of perfectionism.
Recommended.
