Joel Feinberg : In Memoriam. Preface. Part I: INTRODUCTION TO THE NATURE AND VALUE OF PHILOSOPHY. 1. Joel Feinberg: A Logic Lesson. 2. Plato: "Apology." 3. Bertrand Russell: The Value of Philosophy. PART II: REASON AND RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 1. The Existence and Nature of God. 1.1 Anselm of Canterbury: The Ontological Argument, from Proslogion. 1.2 Gaunilo of Marmoutiers: On Behalf of the Fool. 1.3 L. Rowe: The Ontological Argument. 1.4 Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Five Ways, from Summa Theologica. (...) 1.5 Samuel Clarke: A Modern Formulation of the Cosmological Argument. 1.6 William L. Rowe: The Cosmological Argument. 1.7 William Paley: The Argument from Design. 1.8 Michael Ruse: The Design Argument. 1.9 David Hume: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. 2. The Problem of Evil. 2.1 Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Rebellion. 2.2 J. L. Mackie: Evil and Omnipotence. 2.3 Peter van Inwagen: The Argument from Evil. 2.4 Michael Murray and Michael Rea: The Argument from Evil. 2.5 B. C. Johnson: God and the Problem of Evil. 3. Reason and Faith. 3.1 W. K. Clifford: The Ethics of Belief. 3.2 William James: The Will to Believe. 3.3 Kelly James Clark: Without Evidence or Argument. 3.4 Blaise Pascal: The Wager. 3.5 Lawrence Shapiro: Miracles and Justification. 3.6 Simon Blackburn: Infini-Rien. Part III. HUMAN KNOWLEDGE: ITS GROUNDS AND LIMITS. 1. Skepticism. 1.1 John Pollock: A Brain in a Vat. 1.2 Michael Huemer: Three Skeptical Arguments. 1.3 Robert Audi: Skepticism. 2. The Nature and Value of Knowledge. 2.1 Plato: Knowledge as Justified True Belief. 2.2 Edmund Gettier: Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? 2.3 James Cornman, Keith Lehrer, and George Pappas: An Analysis of Knowledge. 2.4 Gilbert Ryle: Knowing How and Knowing That. 2.5 Plato: "Meno". 2.6 Linda Zagzebski, Epistemic Good and The Good Life. 3. Our Knowledge of the External World. 3.1 Bertrand Russell: Appearance and Reality and the Existence of Matter. 3.2 René Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy. 3.3 John Locke: The Causal Theory of Perception. 3.4 George Berkeley: Of the Principles of Human Knowledge. 3.5 G. E. Moore: Proof of an External World. 4. The Methods of Science. 4.1 David Hume: An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding. 4.2 Wesley C. Salmon: An Encounter with David Hume. 4.3 Karl Popper: Science: Conjectures and Refutations. 4.4 Philip Kitcher: Believing Where We Cannot Prove. Part IV: MIND AND ITS PLACE IN NATURE. 1. The Mind-Body Problem. 1.1 Brie Gertler: In Defense of Mind--Body Dualism. 1.2 Frank Jackson: The Qualia Problem. 1.3 David Papineau: The Case for Materialism. 1.4 Paul Churchland: Functionalism and Eliminative Materialism. 2. Can Non-Humans Think? 2.1 Alan Turing: Computing Machinery and Intelligence. 2.2 John R. Searle: Minds, Brains, and Programs. 2.3 William G. Lycan: Robots and Minds. 3. Personal Identity and the Survival of Death. 3.1 John Locke: The Prince and the Cobbler. 3.2 Thomas Reid: Of Mr. Locke’s Account of Our Personal Identity. 3.3 David Hume: The Self. 3.4 Derek Parfit: Divided Minds and the Nature of Persons. 3.5 Shelly Kagan: What Matters. 3.6 John Perry: A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality. Part V: DETERMINISM, FREE WILL, AND RESPONSIBILITY. 1. Libertarianism: The Case for Free Will and Its Incompatibility with Determinism. 1.1 Roderick M. Chisholm: Human Freedom and the Self. 1.2 Robert Kane: Free Will: Ancient Dispute, New Themes. 2. Hard Determinism: The Case for Determinism and its Incompatibility with Its Incompatibility with Any Important Sense of Free Will. 2.1 James Rachels: The case against Free Will. 2.2 Derk Pereboom: Why We Have No Free Will and Can Live Without It. 3. Compatibilism: The Case for Determinism and Its Compatibility with the Most Important Sense of Free Will. 3.1 David Hume: Of Liberty and Necessity. 3.2 Helen Beebee: Compatibilism and the Ability to do Otherwise. 4. Freedom and Moral Responsibility. 4.1 Galen Strawson: Luck Swallows Everything. 4.2 Harry Frankfurt: Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility. 4.3 Thomas Nagel: Moral Luck. 4.4 Susan Wolf: Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility. Part VI: MORALITY AND ITS CRITICS. 1. Changes to Morality. 1.1 Joel Feinberg: Psychological Egoism. 1.2 Plato: The Immoralist’s Challenge. 1.3 Friedrich Nietzche: Master and Slave Morality. 1.4 Richard Joyce: The Evolutionary Debunking of Morality. 2. Proposed Standards and Right of Conduct. 2.1 Russ Shafer-Landau: Ethical Subjectivism. 2.2 Mary Midgley: Trying Out One’s New Sword. 2.3 Aristotle: Virtue and the Good Life. 2.4 Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan. 2.5 Plato: Euthyphro. 2.6 Immanuel Kant: The Good Will and the Categorical Imperative. 2.7 J.S. Mill: Utilitarianism, Chapters 2 and 4. 2.8 W. D. Ross: What Makes Right Acts Right? 2.9 Hilde Lindemann: What Is Feminist Ethics? 3. Ethical Problems. 3.1 Kwame Anthony Appiah: What Will Future Generations Condemn Us For? 3.2 Peter Singer: Famine, Affluence and Morality. 3.3 John Harris: The Survival Lottery. 3.4 James Rachels: Active and Passive Euthanasia. 3.5 Mary Anne Warren: The Moral and Legal Status of Abortion. 3.6 Don Marquis: Why Abortion Is Immoral. 4. The Meaning of Life. 4.1 Epicurus: Letter to Menoeceus. 4.2 Richard Taylor: The Meaning of Life. 4.3 Richard Kraut: Desire and the Human Good. 4.4 Leo Tolstoy: My Confession. 4.5 Susan Wolf: Happiness and Meaning. 4.6 Thomas Nagel: The Absurd. (shrink)

This essay addresses the question: given the flattening out of the cultural hierarchy that was the vestige of colonialism and nation-building, is there anything that might be uniquely common about the common school in this postmodern age? By ‘uniquely common’ I do not mean those subjects that all schools might teach, such as reading or arithmetic. Nor do I mean just subjects that might serve a larger public purpose, but that might be taught in either publicly supported or privately supported (...) schools. Rather I mean subjects that speak to the shaping of a child’s identity as a member of a common community in the way that the common school was intended to create when its commission was to develop and maintain a single national or colonial identity and loyalty. I argue that there is a kind of connectivity that common schools should foster even as the nation-building and colonial past is rejected, and that this connectivity is what is common about the common schools. I argue that any concept of culture that merely flattens out the normative dimension of educating is deficient as an educational theory, and propose a conception of culture that is educationally productive. (shrink)

I shall be concerned in this paper with some philosophical puzzles raised by so-called “wrongful life” suits. These legal actions are obviously of great interest to lawyers and physicians, but philosophers might have a kind of professional interest in them too, since in a remarkably large number of them, judges have complained that the issues are too abstruse for the courts and belong more properly to philosophers and theologians. The issues that elicit this judicial frustration are those that require the (...) application to border-line cases of such philosophically interesting concepts as acting, causing, and the one that especially interests me, harming. I first became interested in the concept of harming in my work on the moral limits of the criminal law, where I had to come to terms with John Stuart Mill's famous “harm principle”–the principle that it is always a good reason in support of a criminal prohibition, indeed, the only legitimate reason, that it will prevent harm to persons other than the actor. I could not very well criticize that principle until I decided what the word “harm” must mean in its formulation. I gave what I took to be the requisite analysis of harm in my book Harm to Others. Here I wish to improve that analysis, examine its implications for civil as well as criminal liability, and test it on conceptually hard cases, especially cases of prenatal harming, that is, cases in which the wrongful causative conduct occurs before the victim's birth, and the harmed state that is its upshot consists in being born in an impaired condition. (shrink)

This book contains some rare combinations: first, an author who is as concerned with conceptual clarification as he is with the absolute truthfulness of the biblical text; second, an argument that avoids the common "either-ors" and contends for the importance of both divine sovereignty and divine solicitude in equal measure; third, an approach that espouses divine determinism and divine temporality. No One Like Him takes on the most intractable intellectual challenges of contemporary evangelical theology. Kevin Vanhoozer , Research Professor of (...) Systematic Theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School John Feinberg judicially reconstructs aspects of the classical view of God in a way that proves more faithful than process and openness of God theisms. Arguably, this is the best study of theology proper in print. Bruce Demarest , Professor of Theology and Spiritual Formation, Denver Seminary Feinberg reads theology with a philosopher's eye and writes it with a philosopher's sensitivity to illogic and incoherence. J. I. Packer , Professor of Theology, Regent College A magisterial work, one that truly deserves to be called a magnum opus....It reveals its author as...perhaps the only modern scholar whose work, like that of Carl. F. H. Henry, can compare in size, detail, comprehensiveness, and intellectual acuity with the accomplishments of the late Karl Barth.... It is not risky to predict that Feinberg's No One Like Him will come to be a milestone in evangelical theology. Harold O. J. Brown , Professor of Philosophy and Theology, Reformed Theological Seminary. (shrink)

In spite of enormous recent interest in the neurobiology of the self, we currently have no global models of the brain that explain how its anatomical structure, connectivity, and physiological functioning create a unified self. In this article I present a triadic neurohierarchical model of the self that proposes that the self can be understood as the product of three hierarchical anatomical systems: The interoself system, the integrative self system, and the exterosensorimotor system. An analysis of these three systems and (...) their functional features indicates that the neural hierarchy possesses features of both non-nested and nested hierarchies that are necessary for the creation of a unified consciousness and self. These functional properties also make the central nervous system a biologically unique entity unlike anything else in nature. (shrink)

In this article I will attempt to refute the claim that the mind is a radically emergent feature of the brain. First, the inter-related concepts of emergence, reducibility and constraint are considered, particularly as these ideas relate to hierarchical biological systems. The implications of radical emergence theories of the mind such as the one posited by Roger Sperry, are explored. I then argue that the failure of Sperry's model is based on the notion that consciousness arises as a radically emergent (...) feature ‘at the top command’ of a non-nested neurological hierarchy. An alternative model, one that avoids the dualism inherent in radical emergence theories, is offered in which the brain is described as producing a nested hierarchy of meaning and purpose that has no ‘top’ or ‘summit’. Finally, I will argue there remains a non-reducible aspect of consciousness that does not depend upon radical emergence theory, but rather on the mutual irreducibility of the subjective and objective points of view. This irreducible aspect of consciousness can be understood as the non-mysterious result of brain evolution and normal neural functioning. (shrink)

The neuropathologies of the self are disorders of the self and identity that occur in association with neuropathology and include perturbations of the bodily, relational, and narrative self. Right, especially medial-frontal and orbitofrontal lesions, are associated with these conditions. The ego disequilibrium theory proposes this brain pathology causes a disturbance of ego boundaries and functions and the emergence of developmentally immature styles of thought, ego functioning, and psychological defenses including denial, projection, splitting, and fantasy that the NPS patient has in (...) common with the child. I hypothesize that during brain development between approximately ages 3 and 7 immature defensive functions and fantasies tend to be replaced by mature defenses and the inhibition of fantasy a process that depends upon maturational processes within the right hemisphere. I propose a four-tiered model of the NPS that emphasizes a multifactorial approach and includes both negative and positive, bottom up and top down, and neuropsychological and psychological factors. (shrink)

This article defends the ethical theory of william wollaston against the objections of hume and later writers who uncritically accepted hume's account of what wollaston said. I then argue that the true flaws in wollaston's view that all wrongdoing is false representing are that it cannot explain why some immoral acts are worse than others, And it presupposes antecedent moral principles of a different kind. I conclude that wollaston's theory, While failing as a general account of all immorality, Can nevertheless (...) be used to explain the difference between actions that are specifically unjust and actions that are immoral in other ways. (shrink)

Contadini—peasant farmers—are central figures of belonging in a Northern Italian winegrowing community. The skills and languages in which contadini are fluent and who is recognized as one of them organize the values attached to various roles in this world. I show how the immigrant vineyard workers who maintain local landscapes engage with this identity, producing new selves through the labor of caring for vines. Earning the title of contadino allows some immigrants to cross social boundaries usually policed by strict ethnic (...) lines in Italy, generating recognition and benefits unavailable from the state. At the same time, Italian employers’ relation to the land changes as they hand off ways of knowing and doing to categorical outsiders. ‘Traditional’ labor and products are what pull these two groups into a collaborative encounter, but rather than simply keeping the past in practice, immigrants and Italians also generate new forms of personhood and value. (shrink)

The critical analysis of desire is a staple of classical Buddhist thought; however, modern scholarship has focused primarily on doctrinal and scholastic texts that explain the Buddhist understanding of desire. As a result, the contribution of _kāvya_ (poetry) to the classical Buddhist philosophy of desire has not received much scholarly attention. To address this dearth, I explore in this article the notion of _kāma_ (desire or love) in Aśvaghoṣa’s epic poem, the _Saundarananda_ (_Beautiful Nanda_). I begin by framing the poem’s (...) Buddhist interpretation of desire and highlighting the didactic and transcendental role of _kāma_ in transforming Nanda, the poem’s protagonist. Then, I examine Aśvaghoṣa’s poetic depictions of Nanda, Sundarī, and the _apsaras_es, outlining the _Saundarananda_’s phenomenology of desire. Overall, this article illustrates how Aśvaghoṣa employs the genre of _kāvya_ to express a Buddhist critique of desire that focuses on the nature of the desirable object and the state of mind of the desirous subject. (shrink)

This essay addresses the question: given the flattening out of the cultural hierarchy that was the vestige of colonialism and nation-building, is there anything that might be uniquely common about the common school in this postmodern age? By ‘uniquely common’ I do not mean those subjects that all schools might teach, such as reading or arithmetic. Nor do I mean just subjects that might serve a larger public purpose, but that might be taught in either publicly supported or privately supported (...) schools. Rather I mean subjects that speak to the shaping of a child’s identity as a member of a common community in the way that the common school was intended to create when its commission was to develop and maintain a single national or colonial identity and loyalty. I argue that there is a kind of connectivity that common schools should foster even as the nation-building and colonial past is rejected, and that this connectivity is what is common about the common schools. I argue that any concept of culture that merely flattens out the normative dimension of educating is deficient as an educational theory, and propose a conception of culture that is educationally productive. (shrink)

In this essay I explore the potential that ethnographic methods hold for philosophy of education as a form of critical pragmatism. An aim of critical pragmatism is to help to analyze the roadblocks to fruitful communication, coordination and liberation. It does so by identifying their sources and opportunities for repair. As I have argued elsewhere :222–240, 2012) an important aim of critical pragmatism is to redirect expert knowledge so it takes seriously local understanding. In this essay I do two things. (...) First I look at the other side of critical pragmatism showing how, by adopting ethnographic methods, critical pragmatism can be used to refine and expand local, common sense understanding. Second I show how philosophers can draw on ethnography to understand the ways in which normative issues are felt, defined and creatively resolved on the local level, and how they can in turn use that understanding to provide some general guidelines for addressing educational problems. I show how critical pragmatism can aid education by displaying and thematizing the innovative solutions that people, caught between different normative imperatives, devise to maintain an inclusive, educationally meaningful environment. In this part I draw on my work in a Catholic school to illustrate how ethnography can be used by philosophy to capture innovative resolutions to conflicts of value and I show how philosophy can then serve to thematize these resolutions by appropriating more general categories for addressing similar educational concerns. (shrink)

This article distinguishes and evaluates the various forms of legal moralism from a liberal vantage point. It devotes special attention to the most plausible form of the theory, That which is often called "the conservative thesis," and to that supporting argument which is based on the need to prevent "freefloating social-Change evils." freefloating evils are defined as evils that are imputable to human beings but which do not give rise to personal grievances as harms, Offenses, And "harmless exploitative injustices" do. (...) I conclude that the need to prevent such evils is a relevant, But generally inferior, Reason for coercion. (shrink)

Randomized field experiments, which in the United States has been proposed as the gold standard of educational research, is dismissed by some critics as "positivistic". Although this dismissal over identifies positivism with a specific research method, the larger point is accurate: the "gold standard" is often insensitive to local situations and human value and philosophical positivism supports and en-courages this insensitivity. In this paper I examine the way positivism is limited in terms of its understanding of the role of values (...) in educational research and I offer pragmatism as a productive alternative to these limitations. In contrast to the view of some critics I show that pragmatism would not reject out of hand randomized field experiments. Rather it would contextualize them as one of a number of valuable research tools. I argue here that pragmatism provides a more complete understanding of the research process because un-like positivism it does not dismiss value claims as meaningless, but provides a way to rationally address them. Thus its understanding of the research process is better suited to the process of educating which is inherently infused with values. I also expand on the ideas of traditional pragmatism by introducing a variation that I call critical pragmatism. (shrink)

: In this 2006 John Dewey Society Invited Address, I place Dewey in a larger philosophical and historical context. My hope is that by doing so we can learn more about the future prospects for the role of philosophy of education. I see Dewey as one of those rare canonical philosophers whose reputation as a philosopher is intricately tied to their writings on education and I want to explore why this tie makes sense with some canonical figures, such as Plato (...) and Rousseau, but not with others, such as Aristotle, Locke, Whitehead, and Russell, who have also contributed to our understanding of education. (shrink)

This paper engages with radical democratic theory in light of the so-called ‘return of the people’ taking place in contemporary political discourse. I argue that the return of the people should not be seen only as a return of politics strictly speaking, but also as a process by which elements of the social that had previously been excluded from politics enter the political sphere. Framing the problem in this way calls for a view to how politics is circumscribed, distinguished from (...) the social but also, at various moments, broken open. At the same time, I call for paying increased attention to how the notion of the people takes shape beyond the political sphere, off the metaphorical political stage. By examining how the people is constructed in cultural and social movements, off the political stage, we can better understand the form taken by the people when it appears in politics. (shrink)

This paper asks whether the criminal law can have any legitimate concern with obscene language. At most, such a concern could be justified by the need to protect auditors from offense, since it is not plausible to think of exposure to dirty words as harmful or inherently immoral. A distinction is drawn between bare utterance and instant offense, on the one hand, and offensive nuisance and harassment, on the other. Only when obscene language is used to harass can it properly (...) be made criminal. Finally, I criticize in some detail judicial reasoning in the case of F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, and conclude that obscene language on the public media is not properly subject to governmental regulation, whether- by criminal law or otherwise. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A9102008 00002. (shrink)

Participants ( N = 151) rated a fictitious student who may have cheated on an exam. The student's description varied on prior academic performance (low achieving, average achieving, or high achieving) and exam grade (65 or 95). Participants' attitudes were most negative toward the low-achieving student who was also most likely to be perceived as cheating. However, participants recommended harsher punishments for students who scored a 95 regardless of prior academic achievement. Finally, a significant interaction indicated more negative attitudes and (...) a harsher punishment for the “inconsistent student” (i.e., the student whose prior academic achievement did not match the current grade on the exam). (shrink)

In his recent book, Harm to Others, Joel Feinberg addresses the question whether a person can be harmed after his or her own death, that is, whether posthumous harm is a logical possibility. There is a very strong tendency to suppose that harm to the dead is simply inconceivable. After all, there cannot be harm without a subject to be harmed, but when death occurs it appears to obliterate the subject thus excluding the possibility of harm. On the other (...) hand, there is an inclination to believe that harmful events can indeed occur posthumously. As Aristotle observed, “a dead man is popularly believed to be capable of having both good and ill fortune—honour and dishonour and prosperity and the loss of it among his children and descendants generally—in exactly the same way as if he were alive but unaware or unobservant of what was happening”. Feinberg sides with Aristotle on this issue and develops an intriguing theory purporting to show how posthumous harms are possible. My intention in this paper is to argue that Feinberg's account meets with such serious difficulties that we must either develop an alternative theory or agree with those who claim that death logically excludes the possibility of harm. I shall begin in §2 with a brief sketch of Feinberg's provocative theory. This will be followed in §3 by my comments and criticisms. Section 4 will close with suggestions about where Feinberg's account goes wrong and how it might be repaired. (shrink)

Book review on J. G. Feinberg – I. Landa – J. Mervart (vyd.) Karel Kosík and the Dialectics of the Concrete. Leiden – Boston (Brill) 2022, 378 str.

In a very influential paper, Abortion, Joel Feinberg offers a series of arguments against four popular proposals for the criterion of moral personhood and defends a fifth proposal. In this paper, I demonstrate that two widely‐accepted arguments employed by Feinberg against the modified species criterion and the strict potentiality criterion, respectively, are unsound. Moreover, I argue that there is a general feature of his inquiry into the criteria for moral personhood which undermines his efforts to argue convincingly either (...) in favour of his own candidate or against other candidates. (shrink)

This essay explores Joel Feinberg's conception of liberalism and the moral limits of the criminal law. Feinberg identifies liberty with the absence of law. He defends a strong liberal presumption against law, except where it is necessary to prevent wrongful harm or offense to others. Drawing on Rawlsian, Marxian, and feminist standpoints, I argue that there are injuries to individual liberty rooted not in law, but in civil society. Against Feinberg, I defend a richer account of liberalism (...) and liberty, linking them to human dignity, and a more positive role for law. Feinberg justifies liberty as an instrumental welfare?interest, valuable in virtue of the way it serves the individual's ulterior goals. Drawing on the example of racism and civil rights, I argue that the value of equal liberty stems from its social role in constituting persons? sense of their own worth and dignity. Against Feinberg, I claim that liberty's value is grounded in a shared historical ideal of personhood, not in the individual's goals or desires. Feinberg also links liberalism with an extreme anti?paternalist position, on which individuals should be at liberty to alienate their very own right of personal autonomy. Drawing on the examples of slavery and drug addiction, I argue against this liberty, and the conception of liberalism and paternalism in Feinberg which leads to it. A liberalism founded upon an ideal of human dignity allows, even requires, a use of law to prevent persons from destroying the very conditions of their own autonomy and dignity. (shrink)

This leading anthology contains legal cases and essays written by the best scholars in legal philosophy, representing all major points of view on central topics in philosophy of law. This classic text is distinguished by its clarity, readability, balance of topics, balance of substantive positions on controversial questions, topical relevance, imaginative use of cases and stories, and the inclusion of only lightly-edited or untouched classics. This revision is marked by inclusion of many articles relevant to womens issues and a greater (...) emphasis on concrete legal problems. (shrink)

These four volumes address the question of the kinds of conduct may the state make criminal without infringing on the moral autonomy of individual citizens.

Originally published in 1984, this volume documents Bertrand Russelle(tm)s travels in America covering the period 1945-1970. It is presented in two halves with the first a biographical account of Russelle(tm)s involvement with the United States, with special reference to the seven visits he made there during this time period. Throughout this section the most representative of Russelle(tm)s journalistic writings are highlighted and these are presented as full texts in the second half of the book. This collection is assembled to provide (...) an understanding of Russelle(tm)s deep and many-sided involvement with the United States during his life. A documented account, it is supplemented with important letters, photographs and newspaper articles. (shrink)

In this paper we consider two major issues: conceptual–experimental approaches to the self, and the neuroanatomical substrate of the self. We distinguish content- and processed-based concepts of the self that entail different experimental strategies, and anatomically, we investigate the concept of midline structures in further detail and present a novel view on the anatomy of an integrated subcortical–cortical midline system. Presenting meta-analytic evidence, we show that the anterior paralimbic, e.g. midline, regions do indeed seem to be specific for self-specific stimuli. (...) We conclude that future investigation of the self need to develop novel concepts that are more empirically plausible than those currently in use. Different concepts of self will require novel experimental designs that include, for example, the brain’s resting state activity as an independent variable. Modifications of both conceptual and anatomical dimensions will allow an empirically more plausible account of the relationship between brain and self. (shrink)

This is the third volume of Joel Feinberg's highly regarded The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, a four-volume series in which Feinberg skillfully addresses a complex question: What kinds of conduct may the state make criminal without infringing on the moral autonomy of individual citizens? In Harm to Self, Feinberg offers insightful commentary into various notions attached to self-inflicted harm, covering such topics as legal paternalism, personal sovereignty and its boundaries, voluntariness and assumptions of risk, consent (...) and its counterfeits, coercive force, incapacity, and choice of death. (shrink)

This first volume in the four-volume series The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law focuses on the "harm principle," the commonsense view that prevention of harm to persons other than the perpetrator is a legitimate purpose of criminal legislation. Feinberg presents a detailed analysis of the concept and definition of harm and applies it to a host of practical and theoretical issues, showing how the harm principle must be interpreted if it is to be a plausible guide to the (...) lawmaker. (shrink)

This book discusses problems of conceptual analysis as well as normative issues of vital contemporary concern.

Supererogation and rules -- Problematic responsibility in law and morals -- On being "morally speaking a murderer" -- Justice and personal desert -- The expressive function of punishment -- Action and responsibility -- Causing voluntary actions -- Sua culpa -- Collective responsibility -- Crime, clutchability, and individuated treatment -- What is so special about mental illness?

In this volume, Feinberg focuses on the meanings of "interest," the relationship between interests and wants, and the distinction between want-regarding and ideal-regarding analyses on interest and hard cases for the applications of the concept of harm. Examples of the "hard cases" are harm to character, vicarious harm, and prenatal and posthumous harm. Feinberg also discusses the relationship between harm and rights, the concept of a victim, and the distinctions of various quantitative dimensions of harm, consent, and offense, (...) including the magnitude, probability, risk, and "importance" of harm. (shrink)

The final volume of Feinberg's four-volume work, The Moral Limits of Criminal Law examines the philosophical basis for the criminalization of so-called "victimless crimes" such as ticket scalping, blackmail, consented-to exploitation of others, commercial fortune telling, and consensual sexual relations.

This collection concludes with two essays dealing with concepts used in appraising the whole of a person's life: absurdity and self-fulfillment, and their interplay.Dealing with a diverse set of problems in practical and theoretical ethics, ...

Walter Feinberg; Liberalism and the Aims of Multicultural Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 29, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 203–216, https:/.