[3] Feinberg studied at the University of Michigan, writing his dissertation on the philosophy of the Harvard professor Ralph Barton Perry under the supervision of Charles Stevenson.
Feinberg's most important contribution to legal philosophy is his four-volume book, The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law (1984-1988), a work that is frequently characterized as "magisterial.
"[4] Feinberg's goal in the book is to answer the question: What sorts of conduct may the state rightly make criminal?
In the process, he defended standard liberal positions on topics such as suicide, obscenity, pornography, hate speech, and euthanasia.
He also analyzed nonmaterial concepts such as harm, offense, wrong, autonomy, responsibility, paternalism, coercion, and exploitation, conceding in the conclusion to the final volume that liberalism may not be fully defensible[6] and that liberals ought to concede that there are rare cases where certain kinds of moral harms and harmless immoralities should be outlawed.
[7] In Offense to Others, the second volume of The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, Feinberg offers one of the most famous thought-experiments in recent philosophy: a series of imaginary scenarios he calls "a ride on the bus."
Feinberg invites us to imagine a bus ride in which you, a passenger rushing to an important appointment, are confronted by a series of deeply offensive but harmless acts.
More precisely, it raises the question "whether there are any human experiences that are harmless in themselves yet so unpleasant that we can rightly demand legal protection from them even at the cost of other persons' liberties.
"[8] Feinberg argues that even left-leaning, highly tolerant liberals must recognize that some forms of harmless but profoundly offensive conduct can properly be criminalized.
In a paper prepared in 1958 for the benefit of students at Brown, Feinberg seeks to refute the philosophical theory of psychological egoism, which in his opinion is fallacious.