Joel Feinberg – författare

This book focuses on the 'harm principle', the common-sense view that prevention of harm to persons other than the perpetrator is a legitimate purpose of criminal legislation, and presents a detailed analysis of the concept and definition of harm, which it applies to a host of practical and theoretical issues.

Offense to Others is the second volume of Joel Feinberg's magisterial work, The Moral Limits of Criminal Law, a four-volume work that addresses the question: what kinds of conduct may the state make criminal without infringing on the moral autonomy of individual citizens? In volume I, Harm to Others (also available in paperback), the author illuminated the moral implications of the `harm principle' and demonstrated how it must be interpreted if it is to be a plausible guide for legislation. In this second volume, he focuses on the `offence principle', the principle that preventing shock, disgust, or revulsion is always a morally relevant reason for legal prohibitions. Early chapters clarify the concept of an `offended mental state' and further contrast the concept of offence with harm. The law of nuisance is then considered as a model for statutes creating `morals offences' and the author shows its inadequacy as a model for understanding `profound offences'. The differences between minor and profound offences are examined in detail as well as the conceptual, moral, and judicial problems raised by obscenity, pornography, and `dirty' words.

The Moral Limits of Criminal Law is a four-volume work that answers the question: what kinds of conduct may a legislature make criminal without infringing the moral autonomy of individual citizens? Volume three, 'Harm to Self', tackles the riddles associated with the commonly proposed principle called 'legal Paternalism'. It evaluates (and rejects) the principle that it can be right to impose coercion on a person 'for his own good', whatever his own wishes in the matter. Chapters in this section discuss the concept of personal autonomy (or 'sovereignty'), voluntariness, and assumption of risk, as well as 'failures of consent' because of duress, fraud, and other factors incompatible with voluntary behaviour.

This is the fourth and final volume of Feinberg's magisterial work, The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law. In it Feinberg examines the philosophical basis for the criminalization of so-called `victimless crimes' such as pornography and consensual sexual activity. The first three volumes of the work, Harm to Others, Offense to Others, and Harm to Self, are also available in paperback.

Feinberg is one of the leading philosophers of law of the last forty years. This volume collects recent articles, both published and unpublished, on what he terms "basic questions" about the law, particularly in regard to the relationship to morality. Accessibly and elegantly written, this volume's audience will reflect the diverse nature of Feinberg's own interests: scholars in philosophy of law, legal theory, and ethical and moral theory.

Dealing with a diverse set of problems in practical and theoretical ethics, these fourteen essays, three of them previously unpublished, reconfirm Joel Feinberg's leading position in the field of legal philosophy. With a clarity and humor that will be familiar to readers of his other works, Feinberg writes on topics including "wrongful life" suits in the law of torts, or whether there is any sense in the remark that a person is so badly off that he would be better off not existing at all; the morality of abortion; educational options; free expression; civil disobedience; and the duty of easy rescue in criminal law. He continues with a three-part defense of moral rights in the abstract, a discussion of voluntary euthanasia, and an inquiry into arguments of various kinds for not granting legal rights in enforcement of a person's acknowledged moral rights. 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.

This volume of essays by one of America's preeminent philosophers in the area of jurisprudence and moral philosophy gathers together fourteen papers that had been published in widely scattered and not readily accessible sources. All of the essays deal with the political ideals of liberty and justice or with hard cases for the application of the concept of a right. Originally published in 1980. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This volume of essays by one of America's preeminent philosophers in the area of jurisprudence and moral philosophy gathers together fourteen papers that had been published in widely scattered and not readily accessible sources. All of the essays deal with the political ideals of liberty and justice or with hard cases for the application of the concept of a right. Originally published in 1980. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.