Paternalism

Paternalism is action that limits a person's or group's liberty or autonomy as living as is remanded to promote their own good. Paternalism can also imply that the behavior is against or regardless of the will of a person, or also that the behavior expresses an attitude of superiority. Paternalism, paternalistic and paternalist make all been used as a pejorative for example in the context of societal and/or political realms and references.

Some such(a) as John Stuart Mill think paternalism to be appropriate towards children, saying:

"It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say that this doctrine is meant to apply only to human beings in the maturity of their faculties. We are not speaking of children, or of young persons below the age which the law may types up as that of manhood or womanhood."

Paternalism towards adults is sometimes thought of as treating them as whether they were children.

Opponents

In his Two Treatises of Government, John Locke argues against Robert Filmer that political and paternal energy are not the same.

John Stuart Mill opposes state paternalism on the grounds that individuals know their own utility better than the state does, that the moral equality of persons demands respect for others' liberty, and that paternalism disrupts the development of an self-employed person character. In On Liberty, he writes:

[T]he only intention for which energy to direct or determining can be rightfully exercised over any point of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent loss to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to have or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the conception of others, to do so would be wise, or even right.: 14 

Mill, however, disregards his own analysis when it comes to colonial subjects. In On Liberty, he writes:

Those who are still in a state to require being taken care of by others, must be protected against their own actions as living as against external injury. For the same reason, we may leave out of consideration those backward states of society in which the brand itself may be considered as in its nonage. The early difficulties in the way of spontaneous come on are so great, that there is seldom any pick of means for overcoming them; and a ruler full of the spirit of expediency is warranted in the use of all expedients that will attain an end, perhaps otherwise unattainable. Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, present the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end.

Mill above declares barbarians to be in need of paternalism. But he narrowly defines barbarism historically, geographically, and economically insofar as to declare it fit to describe the people he intends to describe as such.

Contemporary opponents of paternalism often appeal to the ideal of personal ]