NDPR T. M. Wilkinson The Ethics of Public Health Paternalism

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Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

2026.03.8 View this Review Online View Other NDPR Reviews

T. M. Wilkinson, The Ethics of Public Health Paternalism, Oxford University Press, 2025, 256pp., $100.00 (hbk) ISBN 9780198895817.

Reviewed by Catelynn Kenner, Independent Scholar and Daniel Story, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

Martin Wilkinson’s book The Ethics of Public Health Paternalism is a normative analysis of paternalistic governmental policies within liberal democracies that aim at improving adults’ health. Wilkinson is largely critical of paternalistic interventions, especially preventive interventions that restrict choice by imposing costs on or removing unhealthy options, and of arguments in favor of these interventions commonly advanced within public health. Wilkinson’s critiques primarily focus on interventions relating to tobacco, alcohol, and obesity and orbit two main points. The first is that, contrary to what is often tacitly assumed within public health, health is neither a supreme value nor the same as...