Feit signs book deal with Oxford University Press

SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor Neil Feit of the Department of Philosophy has signed a contract with Oxford University Press for the publication of his forthcoming scholarly monograph, “Bad Things: On the Nature and Normative Role of Harm.”

Dr. Feit drafted the book during his 2020-2021 sabbatical leave and will deliver the final manuscript by the end of June. The book will likely appear in print in early 2023.

Feit's new book, his second with Oxford, is primarily about the nature of harm, or the metaphysics of harm. The concept of harm is of considerable interest to moral philosophers, legal philosophers and theorists, bioethicists, various medical professionals and others. Feit provides a sustained defense of the counterfactual comparative account of harm, or CCA. According to CCA, in its most basic form, an act or event harms an individual provided that he/she would have been better off, on balance, if it had not occurred.

A main theme of the book is the idea that an adequate theory of harm should imply CCA but say more. An adequate theory should allow for what Feit calls plural harm, that is, cases in which two or more events together harm an individual although neither one by itself is harmful. The book sets out and defends a detailed account of plural harm.

Although the primary focus of the book is on the metaphysics of harm, there is substantial discussion of its normative or moral relevance. It is widely held, for example, that one has strong moral reasons not to harm others, reasons that can be outweighed or overridden only if the one who is harmed consents to it, or deserves it, etc.

Feit argues to the contrary that one’s reasons against harming others per se are relatively weak, or at any rate they are less important than the exercise of one’s rights. Reasons against harming others are strong only when the others have a legitimate interest in one’s behavior.”

The book also contains applications of CCA with plural harm, new critical discussion of various competing accounts of harm, as well as new responses to objections against CCA and the notion of plural harm.