In treating arguments against the liberal position or in favor of the legal enforcement of morality, Feinberg refrains from distorting his opponents' claims or presenting their arguments in an unfairly unfavorable light. He rarely criticizes a view before taking pains to present the strongest argument he can muster on its behalf. He does not pretend that the sole alternative to the libertarian permissiveness he espouses is an authoritarian oppression that no honorable critic of liberalism would endorse or even tolerate. Nor does he resort to questioning the motives or character of those who do not share his liberal faith. In the most ancient and best tradition of philosophy, he treats his interlocutors as partners with him in the quest for truth.
(Robert P. George, "Moralistic Liberalism and Legal Moralism," review of Harmless Wrongdoing: The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, by Joel Feinberg, Michigan Law Review 88 [May 1990]: 1415-29, at 1421)
Note from KBJ: Joel Feinberg was my teacher and dissertation director at the University of Arizona. They don't make many like him (or like Robert P. George, for that matter).
