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Fair Governance

Paternalism and Perfectionism

Francis H Buckley author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc

Published:26th Mar '09

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Fair Governance cover

Fair Governance: The Enforcement of Morals is a study of legal interference with individual preferences and will canvass the interdisciplinary literature in economics, psychology, philosophy, and law. It discusses the particular conditions necessary for the state to legally interfere with our freedom of choice, whether it be to either satisfy our individual pursuit of happiness (perfectionism) or to prevent us from making immoral choices (paternalism). Relatively few philosophers know much of the parallel literature on this central problem of ethics; while many legal scholars are acquainted with the psychological literature on judgment biases, they are frequently unfamiliar with the philosophical literature on perfectionism. Francis H. Buckley carefully links these two notions of state power with recent empirical literature on judgment biases and happiness studies and surveys the literature, arguing for a nuanced form of social perfectionism, one which seeks to promote the kind of liberal nationalism found in the United States.

"Frank Buckley writes with wonderful clarity and accessibility about an important subject, one that has recently become as important as ever before." -- Gerard Alexander, University of Virginia

ISBN: 9780195341263

Dimensions: 160mm x 236mm x 28mm

Weight: 522g

248 pages