Arneson, Richard J. “Mill versus Paternalism.” In Ethics 90 (1980): 470-89.

Excerpt:

Recent discussions of paternalism have tended toward brusque dismissal of J. S. Mill’s classic opinion on the topic. Still more recent discussions have tended toward carefully considered rejection or hedging of Mill’s “one very simple” principle. I have in mind especially Gerald Dworkin’s “Paternalism,” whose conclusion is roughly that paternalistic restrictions on liberty may be justified in order to heighten a person’s ability to lead a rationally ordered life, and Joel Feinberg’s “Legal Paternalism,” which concludes that “the state has a right to prevent self-regarding harmful conduct only when it is substantially nonvoluntary or when temporary intervention is necessary to establish whether it is voluntary or not.” I take the former as a rejection and the latter as a very severe hedging of the absolute ban on paternalism which Mill meant to assert. Among variant formulations of this ban the following words of Mill are typical
and reasonably clear: “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 a sufficient warrant.” My goal in this paper is to show that Mill’s anti-paternalist principle–on the best interpretation that can be given it–is capable of meeting the objections of recent critics and at any rate has more appeal than the substitute proposals of Dworkin and Feinberg.

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