ABSTRACT
In his book Offense to Others, the political philosopher Joel Feinberg gives a memorable example of the traditional liberal understanding of the law’s relationship to the senses. In thirty-one imaginative and often hilarious short stories, Feinberg imagines the various ways that a bus rider could be offended by her fellow passengers. What if they smelled as if they had not bathed in a month? What if they intentionally ran their finger nails over a blackboard? What if they noisily defecated on the seat right next to you? These are all cases in which the law might potentially offer a remedy for an offense that might not actually rise to the level of harm. Law itself is nowhere to be sensed here. Rather, it is the order that hopes to structure how we sense one another.
