Freedom and Fulfillment: Philosophical Essays

by Joel Feinberg

Overview

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with a diverse set of problems in practical and theoretical ethics, these fourteen essays, three of them previously unpublished, reconfirm Joel Feinberg's leading position in the field of legal philosophy.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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691019246
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	12/04/1994
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	374
Product dimensions:	7.75(w) x 10.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Joel Feinberg, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona, is the author of the four-volume work The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law. Among his other collections of essays is Doing and Deserving: Essays in the Theory of Responsibility (Princeton).

Table of Contents

	Preface	vii
	Acknowledgments	xv
Chapter 1	Wrongful Life and the Counterfactual Element in Harming (1986)	3
Chapter 2	Abortion (1979)	37
Chapter 3	The Child's Right to an Open Future (1980)	76
Chapter 4	Sentiment and Sentimentality in Practical Ethics (1982)	98
Chapter 5	Limits to the Free Expression of Opinion (1975)	124
Chapter 6	Civil Disobedience in the Modern World (1979)	152
Chapter 7	The Moral and Legal Responsibility of the Bad Samaritan (1984)	175
Chapter 8	In Defense of Moral Rights: Their Bare Existence (1990)	197
Chapter 9	In Defense of Moral Rights: Their Social Importance (1990)	220
Chapter 10	In Defense of Moral Rights: Their Constitutional Relevance (1990)	245
Chapter 11	An Unpromising Approach to the "Right to Die" (1991)	260
Chapter 12	Seven Modes of Reasoning That Can Justify Overlooking the Merits of the Individual Case--When the Facts Are Right (1991)	283
Chapter 13	Absurd Self-Fulfillment (1980)	297
Chapter 14	The Absurd and the Comic: Why Does Some Incongruity Please? (1989)	331
	Index	347

Editorial Reviews

This volume collects twelve essays, all published in the last decade, by arguably the most persuasive and certainly the most lucid contemporary American liberal jurisprude.

Religious Studies Review - Dena S. Davis

This volume collects twelve essays, all published in the last decade, by arguably the most persuasive and certainly the most lucid contemporary American liberal jurisprude.
— Dena S. Davis

Religious Studies Review

"This volume collects twelve essays, all published in the last decade, by arguably the most persuasive and certainly the most lucid contemporary American liberal jurisprude."—-Dena S. Davis, Religious Studies Review

From the Publisher