ABSTRACT
Many philosophers follow Joel Feinberg in distinguishing between hard and soft paternalism. As this distinction is typically drawn, hard paternalism involves intervention in voluntary, informed choices and consequently violates autonomy. Soft paternalism, by contrast, supposedly involves intervention in nonvoluntary or ill-informed choices and does not violate autonomy. The hard/soft distinction is supposed to enable antipaternalists to explain why it is permissible to intervene on behalf of the person who is unknowingly about to cross a dangerous bridge, as in Mill’s famous example from On Liberty. This chapter critically examines several specific interpretations of the hard/soft distinction. It concludes that although the hard/soft distinction appears to be a crucially important component of most antipaternalist views, it is surprisingly difficult to draw in an intuitively satisfying way. Some possible implications of this conclusion are briefly explored.
