ABSTRACT
Paternalists want to bring people to do what most contributes to their welfare, as long as that does not harm others, and consequentialists want, most typically, to maximize welfare. It looks as if the two should be entirely compatible. However, we know that the most influential of all consequentialists, John Stuart Mill, vehemently defended personal liberty of choice and opposed paternalism, and his Harm Principle has been relied upon by many who value personal liberty. In this chapter I discuss three forms of consequentialism and argue that all of them are compatible with even very strong paternalistic measures. It is true that there are arguments that hedonistic consequentialism, preference-satisfaction consequentialism, and eudaimonistic consequentialism might all require liberty of action when it comes to behavior that does no harm to others. However, I will show that, while such liberty of action might seem to be required by all these forms of consequentialism, this is not the case. When we use a modern understanding of human decision-making and its flaws we see that paternalism at times is the only way to promote individual well-being, however that may be construed.
