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On March 29, 2004, Joel finally succumbed to the Parkinson's disease that had been slowly destroying him for 15 years. Those of us who knew him in the early days of Academy Village remember a tired man who would occasionally break into the conversation with a flash of great insight or a biting repartee. In earlier and better times, Joel Feinberg was a towering figure in the field of political and social philosophy, an exceptionally brilliant mind. He published widely on moral issues such as capital punishment, the treatment of the mentally ill, civil disobedience and environmental ethics. He also specialized in philosophical scholarship and the teaching of philosophy. He was Regents Professor of Philosophy and Law, Emeritus, at the University of Arizona.
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Joel is survived at the Village by his wife, Betty Feinberg. We are all with you, Betty, at this most painful time, and we shall do everything we can to support you with love and any help you need.
Joel's many books had an enormous impact and they constitute an especially
important legacy. Here is what Stuart P. Green, Professor of Law at Louisiana
State University, has to say about Joel's 4-volume series "The Moral Limits
of the Criminal Law" :
“Joel Feinberg’s epic work, The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law,
consists of four closely reasoned, marvelously inventive, and deeply humane
volumes, in which the author sets out to describe the moral conditions necessary
to justify coercive legislation in a liberal society. In its impact on contemporary
analytic philosophy, few works can compare. Practically everyone who thinks
or writes about liberalism, legal moralism, autonomy, paternalism, coercion,
and a host of other concepts in moral, legal, and political philosophy owes
a debt to Feinberg’s Moral Limits.”
Joel was a very important bridge between the Philosophy Department and the Law School at the University of Arizona. When he retired from full-time teaching in 1994, both entities honored him, first with a reception on May 10, then with a two-day symposium on September 30 and October 1 titled "Issues in the Philosophy of Law". The following appreciations were written for these occasions and were subsequently published in the Arizona Law Review, vol. 37, no. 1.
"Not all people who dazzle us with their writing — as Joel does in ways that have made him such a powerful and nationally recognized scholar — do so with their real presence. It is no secret that Joel has so dazzled me. And I know from the graduate students we have shared and from my colleagues that I am not alone.
"For Joel Feinberg is — remarkably and virtually uniquely — precisely what one would hope he would be from reading his work: someone who believes in moral discourse — who argues from a position of liberal toleration, from a position of profound respect for other's right to disagree, from a position of respect for others, period. He talks the talk and walks the walk. Moreover Joel is rare, staggeringly rare, in that despite his stature he is modest, unassuming, and generous-spirited. He is quite simply a great man, not just a man with great talents.
"I have watched him teach our own law students and been amazed at what he draws from them. He does the honor of “Regents Professor” proud. He guides the discussion to a higher plane, always present yet still allowing them to try out their own ideas. He listens to them, he respects their ideas; he pushes them. In short he treats them exactly as he does his colleagues. His are vigorous, fun, exciting, and collaborative classes. Watching Joel teach, I thought of Buber's aphorism that teaching is authentic communication. Joel's teaching illustrates the sense and power of Buber's observation." (Toni M. Massaro, Professor and Dean of the University of Arizona College of Law)
"To describe Joel Feinberg's scholarship the last 38 years as at the top of the field of moral philosophy and law does not describe the whole individual. To his colleagues Joel Feinberg is a unique scholar, teacher, humanist, and friend. He cares deeply about people and society. He has touched the lives of thousands of students and hundreds of faculty colleagues. It is the individual, perhaps more than the volumes of published works, who is so remarkable, so uncommon.
"Unique, remarkable, uncommon, gifted, engaging, renowned. These words used throughout this celebration aptly describe Joel Feinberg. He has given us grand philosophy with a great persona. At Arizona we are proud to call this modest individual a friend and a colleague." (E. Thomas Sullivan, Professor and former Dean of the University of Arizona College of Law)
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By Eric Swedlund
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Wednesday March 31, 2004
Joel Feinberg, a philosopher and UA professor emeritus known for his prolific writings and textbooks that have long been standards in college courses, died Monday from complications of Parkinson's disease. He was 77.
First published in 1965, "Reason and Responsibility" is “probably the most widely used textbook in the history of philosophy,” said J. Christopher Maloney, philosophy department head at the University of Arizona. “ Feinberg had the ability to write in the most simple, straightforward and direct way to convey ideas of extraordinary complexity. He presented examples that would just distill the essence of a point in a way that was quite memorable.”
Feinberg, who wrote with a fountain pen and yellow notebook even as his colleagues switched from typewriters to word processors and computers, came to the UA in 1977 after teaching at Brown, Princeton and Rockefeller universities. He retired in 1994 as a Regents Professor of law and philosophy.
“ He was admired all around the English-speaking world for his breathtakingly original, highly analytical work in both social philosophy and especially the philosophy of law and jurisprudence,” Maloney said. “He was a fantastically prominent person, known all over the world. He attracted prominent national figures to the department. It became at that time a fantastic place for philosophy and has remained so ever since, largely because of Joel's presence. We all are greatly indebted to him here.”
Feinberg wrote extensively about moral issues and how morality relates to law, including capital punishment, the treatment of the mentally ill, civil disobedience and environmental ethics. Another major work was the four-volume "The Moral Limits of Criminal Law," published between 1984 and 1988.
“ Here on campus, he was famous for his teaching and mentoring of students,” Maloney said. “He was a wonderfully witty person, with a very dry but unfailing sense of humor. He had the ability to laugh at himself that was admirable.” An engaging teacher and mentor, Feinberg constantly had students in his office. “He had the tiniest office on campus and the tiniest desk in the entire universe,” Maloney said. “He was this towering figure in philosophy and law, and you'd think he was parked in a broom closet. But he was completely without pretense.”
Born in Detroit, Feinberg joined the Army after graduating high school in 1944 but was in officer-training school when the war ended. After his discharge in 1949, he hitchhiked from Detroit to Mexico City. He earned his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Michigan, finishing in 1957. He married his wife, Betty, in 1955.
A baseball fan, Feinberg could still recite the 1934 Detroit Tigers lineup until just before he died. That year, the Tigers lost in the World Series, and 1934 “was the year that stuck with him,” said his son, Ben. “ He was warm, and he taught me a great deal, generally by example,” he said. “He allowed his children to make their own decisions and teach through the wonderful example he led.”
Feinberg is survived by his wife and son; a sister, Lois Kozlow; daughter Melissa; and three grandchildren.
A memorial service is scheduled for 2 p.m. Saturday at Academy Village, 13701 E. Old Spanish Trail.
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By Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
NEW YORK TIMES
Monday April 5, 2004
Joel Feinberg, a political and social philosopher who did groundbreaking work in the fields of individual rights and the authority of the state, died March 29 at a nursing home in Tucson. He was 77 and lived in Tucson. The cause of death was complications of Parkinson's disease, said his son, Benjamin Feinberg.
Professor Feinberg, who taught for years at the University of Arizona, was recognized for his writing on moral, social and legal philosophy. His major work was "The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law" (Oxford University Press), which was published in four volumes. His approach in that work was explained by Jody S. Kraus, a former student of Professor Feinberg's and a professor of both law and philosophy at the University of Virginia Law School:
“Following John Stuart Mill, Feinberg believed that political philosophy begins with a normative presumption in favor of individual liberty. The task of justifying political coercion, then, consists in identifying so-called liberty-limiting principles, which set out the conditions under which that presumption is overridden and the state is justified in exercising coercion. Each volume of "Moral Limits" is devoted to an extensive analysis of one of four such principles that might justify the imposition of criminal sanctions.”
In each volume — "Harm to Others" (1984), "Offense to Others" (1985), "Harm to Self'" (1986) and "Harmless Wrongdoing" (1988) — Professor Feinberg found the state's justification for setting limits on freedom “less and less persuasive,” Professor Kraus said. “He had a unique and unsurpassed ability to identify conceptual distinctions that organized and illuminated previously obscure questions,” Professor Kraus said. “He changed the way people thought about things.”
As Jules L. Coleman, another former student who is a professor of philosophy at Yale University Law School, put it, “Feinberg defends the view that the state's power can be employed against individuals primarily only if their actions are likely to be harmful to others and not, for example, if they are merely offensive or morally repugnant to a powerful majority.”
Thomas Nagel, a professor at New York University Law School, called "The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law" “one of the most profound works on legal philosophy.”
Professor Feinberg was widely admired for the simple concreteness with which he described abstract issues. In "Offense to Others," he weighed the balance between individual and community rights by asking his readers to imagine they were riding in a bus they could not leave and being subjected to a series of potential offenses — loud music, scratching on a metallic surface, the handling of what looked like a real grenade, overt sexual behavior. He then drew precise distinctions and arrived at what he saw as correct principles.
Joel Feinberg was born in Detroit on Oct. 19, 1926. He briefly attended the University of Illinois in 1944 and then joined the Army, where he served in an officer training program in Chicago. After leaving the Army in 1946, he went on to earn three degrees from the University of Michigan: a B.A. in 1949, an M.A. in 1951 and a Ph.D. in 1957. In May 1955 he married Betty Grey Sowers. They had two children, Melissa, of Alexandria, Va., and Benjamin, of Asheville, N.C. His wife and children survive him, along with three grandchildren and a sister, Lois Kozlow of Birmingham, Al.
Professor Feinberg began teaching at Brown University in 1955 and moved to Princeton in 1957 and the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1966. He was a professor of philosophy at Rockefeller University from 1967 to 1977. In 1978 he joined the faculty of the University of Arizona, Tucson. After retiring in 1994, he was Regents Professor of Philosophy and Law, Emeritus, until his death. He lectured at many other universities throughout the world.
His first book, "Reason and Responsibility: Reading in Some Basic Problems of Philosophy" (Dickenson, 1965), which he edited and for which he wrote the section introductions, is in its 12th edition. It remains, according to its publisher's records, one of the top-selling anthologies of philosophical writings. Professor Feinberg edited many other books, jointly and alone, among them "The Problem of Abortion" (Wadsworth, 1973), for which he wrote the introduction. He also contributed articles to many publications. He was a past president of the American Philosophical Association.
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