Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit Subscriptions.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

You can register for a free account to have four complimentary articles per month. We will occasionally email you a newsletter, from which you can unsubscribe at any time. We do not sell personal data or otherwise disclose personal information to other organisations.

The Human Condition

Can Addicts Help It?

Piers Benn can’t resist finding out.

Are you an addict? Or do you just enjoy a certain substance or activity, and spend a lot of time indulging in it? What is the difference, and how could we tell? And if you are an addict, does that mean you literally cannot resist the things you are addicted to? These are important matters, since they relate to whether you’re responsible for succumbing to the addiction, or the misdemeanours you commit when in its grip. So they are also relevant to questions of legal and social policy.

Take an example. Sometimes you hear of people winning huge damages against tobacco companies for persuading them to smoke, thereby harming their health. But can this be right? The courtroom defence, “Your Honour, I shoplifted because a friend persuaded me to,” would be derided.

…