Ethics

Is it ethical to force people to do the right thing?

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This question is particularly troubling when it comes to Good Samaratan Laws, laws that would penalize persons who do not aid those in trouble. Some have argued that aiding others should be a matter of freely exercised virtues like courage (or exercising the good of compassion) rather than coercion. But in many cases, especially in life and death situations, we do in fact think it proper to force people to do the right thing. We expect persons to drive carefully, to not murder other people, to not steal from others, to pay taxes, and so on, and it seems difficult to conceive of a community in which there are no enforceable rules. I do not think any philosopher from Plato and Aristotle onward have thought it was possible for there to be a human society without enforceable laws of some kind. Philosophers have differed, however, as to the underlying foundation and extent of such laws. Hobbes, famously, located the justification for law in terms of social contracts, while philosophers like Aquinas saw the basis of such laws in human nature itself and the self-evident eternal law that we should do good and not evil. If you want to explore a well argued case for minimal state interference with individual liberty, check out Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Oxford, 1974). For a careful case for limited paternalism (interfering with the autonomy of others), there may be no better work than the four volume, brilliant achievement of Joel Feinberg: The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law (also published by Oxford, from 1984 to 1988).

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