The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. -- John Stuart Mill<\/p>\r\n
We, the People, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which only asks what's in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense. -- Barack Obama<\/p>\r\n
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual. -- Thomas Jefferson<\/p>\r\n
Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others. -- John Rawls<\/p>\r\n
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. -- Martin Luther King, Jr<\/p>\r\n
Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. -- Eleanor Roosevelt<\/p>\r\n
As we have seen\u00a0in a variety of contexts, one way of understanding ethics is as an attempt to justify certain restrictions on our freedom. In general freedom is a good thing. But then there are some things that we just shouldn\u2019t do. The most obvious things we shouldn\u2019t do are things that involve deliberately hurting others. For example, we would think that a bus driver who deliberately ran his bus full of passengers off of the side of a cliff did something that he shouldn\u2019t have done. It also seems clear that he would be morally and legally responsible for hurting others if he were to get drunk before showing up for work as a bus driver since he would be endangering the lives of the passengers as well as of other people who happened to be driving on the road with him. In such cases we seem to have every right to restrict the driver\u2019s freedom to do things like this. But what if this same driver decides to risk his own life by driving alone across a vast road-less area of the Sahara desert without enough fuel in the bus? Or what if he decides to get drunk while driving alone across the uninhabited desert where no one besides himself could possibly get hurt? These two cases might be cases of just plain stupid behavior, but can we, or should we, be able to restrict his behavior simply on the grounds that he himself might get hurt? These kinds of questions are at the root of the current controversy about the use of illicit drugs. Depending on how we would answer them, we will either end up siding with one of two different positions: libertarianism or paternalism. Libertarianism is the view that we should have the maximum amount of individual liberty possible \u2013 whatever we see fit to do, for whatever reasons, we should be permitted to do, as long as it harms nobody but ourselves. Paternalism, on the other hand, is the view that we need protection from ourselves and that there are others, such as experts, legislators and policy-makers, who know what is best for us, and should decide for us the limits of our individual liberty even in such cases where we are the only ones likely to get hurt.<\/p>\r\n
One way to address\u00a0these alternatives is in terms of a number of different principles for limiting liberty. These principles have been endorsed by various philosophers and political thinkers over the centuries.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
Anti-Vaxxers, Conspiracy Theories, & Epistemic Responsibility: Crash Course Philosophy #14<\/strong><\/a> (9:47)\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\r\n[embed]https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=AYkhlXronNk&list=PL8dPuuaLjXtNgK6MZucdYldNkMybYIHKR&index=15[\/embed]\r\n