Artikel

Waarom zou een ieder zijn steentje moeten bijdragen?: over free-riding, invidividuele keuzevrijheid en collectieve verantwoordelijkheid

---

Samenvatting

Public Health interventions continuously struggle with the tension between individual freedom and choices and collective aims and responsibilities. Policy makers try to find appropriate and effective means to stimulate healthy behaviour while also respecting the privacy of individuals. However, when individuals decide to neglect or refuse an offer of preventative measures, they are often considered in a negative way: as a free rider, as ignorant or as irrational. In this article I examine these claims, in particular the claim of free-riding and argue that, with respect to e.g. herd immunity against infectious diseases, one cannot simply ignore the moral and collective appeal of immunisation. On the other hand, I also claim that judgements of free-riding and irrationality are often framed in a polarised view on reasons for action: agents either act on their self-interest or on more impersonal collective interests. I suggest to take a different view, and introduce Postema’s distinction between agent-relative and agent-neutral reasons to argue that we must distinguish three types of reasons for action; private, legitimate and valid reasons. These reasons downplay the opposition between collective and personal reasons in two ways: they lay claims on individuals to transcend the private level and they appeal to the collective to acknowledge that a plurality of reasons can exist and people may be justified to act upon legitimate reasons that others need not embrace.

Hoe citeren:

Mariette A., V., (2007) “Waarom zou een ieder zijn steentje moeten bijdragen?: over free-riding, invidividuele keuzevrijheid en collectieve verantwoordelijkheid”, Ethiek en Maatschappij 10(2-3), 54–61. doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/em.94444