What Is a Child?  

Oleh:

Schapiro, Tamar

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Ethics: An International Journal of Social Political and Legal Philosophy vol. 109 no. 4 (Jul. 1999), page 715-738.
Topik: Anak; Dewasa; Adult; Distinction; Passive Citizen; Normative; Immature; Childhood

Ketersediaan

Perpustakaan Pusat (Semanggi) Nomor Panggil: EE44.9 Non-tandon: 1 (dapat dipinjam: 0) Tandon: tidak ada

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Treating someone like a child is prima facie wrong, unless, of course, the person in question really is a child. By 'treating someone like a child' I mean interacting with her on the basis of more paternalistic standards tahan those which apply to adult-adult relations. To treat someone like a child is, roughly, to treat her as if her life is not quite her own to lead and as if her choices are not quite her own to make. I want to know what features of a person's condition can in principle justify us in treating a person's condition can in principle justify us in treating a person this way. What is a child, such that it could be appropriate to treat a person lke one? We have conventional norms for applying the concept " adults" and "child," but they do not always match our intuitions about how to treat people. Positive laws may stipulate, for example, that anyone under the age of seventeen counts as a child from the point of view of the state. But we can ask in any particular case whether this stipulation is reasonable from a moral point of view. Question about when to treat children as adults, and when to treat adult's as children, bring out the fact that there can be gap between our conventional applications of these terms and their proper application for moral purposes. Indeed I think one of the most difficult decision parent and child reares have to face on a daily basis is the decision whether or not to treat a child like a child in a given situation. When is a parent justified in preventing a child from acting according to her will? When is achild entitled to make her own choices and face the consequences? Such quetion force us to think more deeply than usual about what the adult-child distinction is supposed to pick out. And yet two dominant moral theories appear, at least at first glance, to deny any basis for this distinction is supposed to pick out. And yet two dominant moral theories appear, at least at first glance, to deny any basis for this distinction. Kantianism tells us that each person is a sovereign autohority whose consent is not to be bypassed, so the kingdom of endstends to look like a realm of adults.

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