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Credible Coercion, Oren Bar-Gill, Omri Ben-Shahar
Credible Coercion, Oren Bar-Gill, Omri Ben-Shahar
Articles
The ideal of individual freedom and autonomy requires that society provide relief against coercion. In the law, this requirement is often translated into rules that operate "postcoercion" to undo the legal consequences of acts and promises extracted under duress. This Article argues that these ex post antiduress measures, rather than helping the coerced party, might in fact hurt her. When coercion is credible-when a credible threat to inflict an even worse outcome underlies the surrender of the coerced party-ex post relief will only induce the strong party to execute the threatened outcome ex ante, without offering the choice to surrender, …
Gewirth On Necessary Goods: What Is The Agent Committed To Valuing?, Donald H. Regan
Gewirth On Necessary Goods: What Is The Agent Committed To Valuing?, Donald H. Regan
Book Chapters
In this chapter I shall be concerned with stage I of Gewirth's argument, in which he argues that the agent must value her freedom and well-being as necessary goods. Stage I has attracted less criticism over the years than stages II and III, but even so, a good deal has been written about it. I do not claim to have found any brand new objection to Gewirth's argument. The core of my objection occurred to me during my first reading of Reason and Morality, and it obviously occurred to a number of other people as well. 3 But it is …
Authority And Value: Reflections On Raz's Morality Of Freedom, Donald H. Regan
Authority And Value: Reflections On Raz's Morality Of Freedom, Donald H. Regan
Articles
Joseph Raz's The Morality of Freedom1 is full of subtle, original, and thought provoking arguments. It also manifests abundantly Raz's philosophical good sense and sensitivity to the complexities of the moral life. These are reasons enough to class it with the handful of genuinely important books whose appearance in the last two decades has constituted a renaissance in political philosophy. But in my opinion, Raz has another, and even stronger claim on our attention: He comes closer to the truth about political morality than anyone has for nearly a century. (Possibly much longer, but we need not attempt to decide …
Paternalism, Freedom, Identity, And Commitment, Donald H. Regan
Paternalism, Freedom, Identity, And Commitment, Donald H. Regan
Book Chapters
Some years ago, I wrote an essay entitled "Justifications for Paternalism." That essay is here revised, and expanded by the addition of a new topic. Many readers of the original version did not understand that the two principal sections presented arguments that were quite independent. I would therefore emphasize that in the present version the three principal sections (II, III, and IV) are separable one from another. Not surprisingly, in an essay so disconnected, I reach no general conclusions I have much confidence in. I suspect the reason for the failure is that I have been insufficiently daring in rejecting …
Glosses On Dworkin: Rights, Principles, And Policies, Donald H. Regan
Glosses On Dworkin: Rights, Principles, And Policies, Donald H. Regan
Articles
A great many people have attempted to explain what is wrong with the views of Ronald Dworkin. So many, indeed, that one who read only the critics might wonder why views so widely rejected have received so much attention. One reason is that, whatever may be wrong in Dworkin's theories, there is a good deal that is right in them. But what is right is not always clear. Important passages in Dworkin can be distressingly obscure, or tantalizingly incomplete. This essay is a set of loosely connected observations on themes from Dworkin. While I shall add some criticisms of my …
Justifications For Paternalism, Donald H. Regan
Justifications For Paternalism, Donald H. Regan
Book Chapters
One of the most troublesome problems concerning the appropriate extent of government interference with individuals' activity is the problem of paternalism-that is, the problem of when, if ever, the state may compel an individual to do or to refrain from some act or activity "for his own good." One would hardly know this was a troublesome problem just from looking at the literature on political and legal philosophy. It is hard to think of an influential philosophical discussion of the matter more recent than John Stuart Mill's. But paternalism is a problem which keeps coming up in discussions among philosophers …