1. Introduction. In a famous passage near the beginning of A Theory of Justice, John Rawls discusses utilitarianism’s notorious difficulties with justice. According to classic forms of utilitarianism, a certain course of action is morally right if it produces the greatest sum of satisfactions. And, as Rawls points out, the perplexing implication is “…that it does not matter, except indirectly, how this sum of satisfactions is distributed among individuals any more than it matters, except indirectly, how one man distributes his (...) satisfactions over time.” He concludes the passage by saying that “[u]tilitarianism does not take seriously the distinction between persons.”. (shrink)

Challenging, with several powerful arguments, some of our deepest beliefs about rationality, morality, and personal identity, Parfit claims that we have a false view about our own nature. It is often rational to act against our own best interersts, he argues, and most of us have moral views that are self-defeating. We often act wrongly, although we know there will be no one with serious grounds for complaint, and when we consider future generations it is very hard to avoid conclusions (...) that most of us will find very disturbing. (shrink)

Like American politics, the academic debate over justice is polarized, with almost all theories of justice falling within one of two traditions: egalitarianism and libertarianism. This book provides an alternative to the partisan standoff by focusing not on equality or liberty, but on the idea that we should give people the things that they deserve. Mulligan argues that a just society is a meritocracy, in which equal opportunity prevails and social goods are distributed strictly on the basis of merit. That (...) gives citizens their just deserts. In addition to its novel conceptual approach, meritocracy is distinctive from existing work in two ways. First, it is grounded in research on how people actually think about justice. Empirical research reveals that people don't think that social goods should be distributed equally. Nor do they dismiss the idea of social justice. Across ideological and cultural lines, people want rewards to reflect merit. Second, the book discusses hot-button political issues and makes concrete policy recommendations. These issues include anti-meritocratic bias against women and racial minorities and the United States’ widening economic inequality. Justice and the Meritocratic State offers a new theory of justice and provides solutions to our most vexing social and economic problems. It will be of keen interest to philosophers, economists, and political theorists. (shrink)

Fred Feldman is an important philosopher, who has made a substantial contribution to utilitarian moral philosophy. This collection of ten previously published essays plus a new introductory essay reveal the striking originality and unity of his views. Feldman's version of utilitarianism differs from traditional forms in that it evaluates behaviour by appeal to the values of accessible worlds. These worlds are in turn evaluated in terms of the amounts of pleasure they contain, but the conception of pleasure involved is a (...) novel one and the formulation of hedonism improved. In Feldman's view pleasure is not a feeling but a propositional attitude. He also deals with problems of justice that affect standard forms of utilitarianism. The collection is ideally suited for courses on contemporary utilitarian theory. (shrink)

Many people are moved by the thought that if A is worse off than B, then if we can improve the condition of one or the other but not both that it is better to improve the condition of A. Egalitarians are buoyed by the prevalence of such thoughts. But something other than egalitarianism could be driving these thoughts. In particular, such thoughts could be motivated, instead, by a combination of the belief that desert should determine how people fare and (...) the belief that, for the most part, people are equally deserving. Shelly Kagan has pushed this line of argument, suggesting that desert should replace equality as a normative ideal. He argues that desert theory and egalitarianism often agree, and when they don’t intuition favors desert theory. A number of authors have offered responses to Kagan, including Serena Olsaretti, Fred Feldman, and Richard Arneson. However, I maintain that their responses are inadequate, primarily because they simply fail to capture the compelling intuitions that Kagan appeals to in making his case. There are other responses, however, and I consider three, each of which offers an egalitarian position that is compatible with Kagan’s most compelling intuitions. Thus, I maintain that Kagan has not sufficiently established that desert should replace equality as a normative ideal. There is still room for a genuinely egalitarian position, though Kagan’s reflections helpfully force egalitarians to further develop and refine their thinking. (shrink)

Distributive justice has come to the fore in political philosophy: how should we arrange our social and economic institutions so as to distribute benefits and burdens fairly? Thirty-two leading figures from philosophy and political theory present specially written critical assessments of the key issues in this flourishing area of research.

In the past decade, three philosophers in particular have recently explored the relation between desert and intrinsic value. Fred Feldman argues that consequentialism need not give much weight – or indeed any weight at all – to the happiness of persons who undeservedly experience pleasure. He defends the claim that the intrinsic value of a state of affairs is determined by the “fit” between the amount of well-being that a person receives and the amount of well-being that the person deserves. (...) Shelly Kagan uses a similar claim to motivate the view that equality is not intrinsically valuable. Thomas Hurka argues that desert is a third-order value, which is a function of the relation between the second-order value of having a virtuous or vicious character and the first-order value of experiencing pleasure or pain. In this paper, we sketch a theory of desert as fittingness and defend a general account of the relation between desert, well-being, and intrinsic value. We then discuss various applications of our “geometry of desert,” including a solution to the problem of the Repugnant Conclusion. In so doing, we explain, revise, and extend many of these authors’ central ideas. (shrink)

I will argue that a desert-based justification for treating a person in a certain way is a justification that holds this treatment to be justified simply by what the person is like and what he or she has done, independent of (1) the fact that treating the person in this way will have good effects (or that treating people like him or her in this way will have such effects); (2) the fact that this treatment is called for by some (...) (justified) institution or practice; or (3) the fact that the person could have avoided being subject to this treatment by choosing appropriately, and therefore cannot complain of it. I will explore the implications of this understanding of desert for the role of desert-based justifications of blame, punishment, and economic reward. (shrink)

Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition.

It is often supposed that there is a relationship between desert and responsibility: that to be deserving we must be responsible for that which makes us deserving. Indeed, there seems little doubt that a supposed relationship between desert and responsibility, combined with a growing tendency to view less and less as the responsibility of the individual, contributed to the reluctance to appeal to desert which has been a feature of much recent moral and political philosophy. Certainly, if to be deserving (...) we need to be responsible for that which makes us deserving ‘all the way down,’ it is not easy to see how anyone could ever be deserving of anything.I will argue that the claim that we can deserve only on the basis of that for which we are responsible — the desert-responsibility thesis — is false. There is no conceptual connection between desert and responsibility. Nevertheless, it is true that many claims to deserve are undermined if there is a lack of responsibility. (shrink)

This book discusses problems of conceptual analysis as well as normative issues of vital contemporary concern.

Goodness -- Goodness properties -- Expressivism -- Betterness relations -- Virtue/kind properties -- Correctness properties (acts) -- Correctness properties (mental states) -- Reasons-for (mental states) -- Reasons-for (acts) -- On some views about "ought" : relativism, dilemmas, means-ends -- On some views about "ought" : belief, outcomes, epistemic ought -- Directives -- Addendum 1: "Red" and "good" -- Addendum 2: Correctness -- Addendum 3: Reasons -- Addendum 4: Reasoning.

The concept of desert, which once enjoyed a central place in political and ethical theory, has been relegated to the margins of much of contemporary theory, if not excluded altogether. Recently a renewed interest in the topic has emerged, and several philosophers have argued that the notion merits a more central place in political and ethical theory. Some of these philosophers contend that justice exists to the extent that people receive exactly what they deserve, while others argue that desert should (...) replace such considerations as rights, need, and equality as the basis for distributions. Still others argue that morality involves a fitting match between one's moral character and a degree of happiness. All of these positions have encountered opposition from egalitarians, libertarians, and those who are skeptical about the coherence of the concept of desert. The first anthology of its kind, What Do We Deserve? is a balanced collection of readings that brings sharply opposing positions and arguments together and stimulates debate over the meaning and significance of desert in current thought. The book begins with eight classical readings on desert (by Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Smith, Kant, Mill, Sidgwick, and Ross), and later turns to contemporary interpretations of the issue. The selections examine the concept itself, analyze its relationship to the ideas of freedom and responsibility, engage in the debate between John Rawls and his critics on the merits of desert, and, finally, study the wider role and significance of desert in political and ethical theory. (shrink)

In recent years, interest in desert-based theories of justice has increased, and this seems to represent a challenge to equality-based theories of justice.[i] The best distribution of outcomeadvantage with respect to desert, after all, need not be the most equal distribution of outcomeadvantage. Some individuals may deserve more than others. Outcome egalitarianism is, however, implausible, and so the conflict of outcome desert with outcome equality is of little significance.[ii] Most contemporary versions of egalitarianism are concerned with neutralizing the differential effects (...) of brute luck and not with equality of outcome. I shall argue that, in order to be plausible, a desert-based theory of justice can and must be compatible with this form of egalitarianism. There is, however, a stronger form of brute luck egalitarianism, which, as I shall explain, is concerned with equalizing the advantages from brute luck—and not merely with neutralizing the differential effects thereof. Under idealized conditions in which agents have perfect information about the outcomes that their choices generate, even this stronger form of egalitarianism, I shall show, is compatible with pure desert theory. Under conditions of incomplete information, however, strong brute luck egalitarianism is incompatible with a pure desert theory that appeals, as I shall explain, to moral, rather than prudential, desert. (shrink)

Justice requires giving people what they deserve. Or so many philosophers – and according to many of those philosophers, everyone else – thought for centuries. In the 1970’s and 1980’s, however, perhaps under the influence of Rawls’s (1971) desert-less theory, desert was largely cast out of discussions of distributive justice. Now it is making a comeback. In this chapter I consider recent research on the concept of desert, arguments for its requital, and connections between desert and other distributive ideals. I (...) suggest that desert-sensitive theories of distributive justice, though they face obstacles, have a promising future. (shrink)

Since its publication in 1965, Brian Barry's seminal work has occupied an important role in the revival of Anglo-American political philosophy. A number of ideas and terms in it have become part of the standard vocabulary, such as the distinction between "ideal-regarding" and "want-regarding" principles and the division of principles into aggregative and distributive. The book provided the first precise analysis of the concept of political values having trade-off relations and its analysis of the notion of the public interest has (...) also been significant. (shrink)

I defend a solution to the puzzle of petitionary prayer based on some ideas of Aquinas, Gregory the Great, and contemporary desert theorists. I then address a series of objections. Along the way broader issues about the nature of desert, what is required for an action to have a point, and what is required for a puzzle to have a solution are discussed.

Are inequalities of income created by the free market just? In this book Serena Olsaretti examines two main arguments that justify those inequalities: the first claims that they are just because they are deserved, and the second claims that they are just because they are what free individuals are entitled to. Both these arguments purport to show, in different ways, that giving responsible individuals their due requires that free market inequalities in incomes be allowed. Olsaretti argues, however, that neither argument (...) is successful, and shows that when we examine closely the principle of desert and the notions of liberty and choice invoked by defenders of the free market, it appears that a conception of justice that would accommodate these notions, far from supporting free market inequalities, calls for their elimination. Her book will be of interest to a wide range of readers in political philosophy, political theory and normative economics. (shrink)

What is death? Do people survive death? What do we mean when we say that someone is "dying"? Presenting a clear and engaging discussion of the classic philosophical questions surrounding death, this book studies the great metaphysical and moral problems of death. In the first part, Feldman shows that a definition of life is necessary before death can be defined. After exploring several of the most plausible accounts of the nature of life and demonstrating their failure, he goes on to (...) propose his own conceptual scheme for death and related concepts. In the second part, Feldman turns to ethical and value-theoretical questions about death. Addressing the ancient Epicurean ethical problem about the evil of death, he argues that death can be a great evil for those who die, even if they do not exist after death, because it may deprive them of the goods they would have enjoyed if they had continued to live. Confrontations with the Reaper concludes with a novel consequentialist theory about the morality of killing, applying it to such thorny practical issues as abortion, suicide, and euthanasia. (shrink)

Under what conditions are people responsible for their choices and the outcomes of those choices? How could such conditions be fostered by liberal societies? Should what people are due as a matter of justice depend on what they are responsible for? For example, how far should healthcare provision depend on patients' past choices? What values would be realized and which hampered by making justice sensitive to responsibility? Would it give people what they deserve? Would it advance or hinder equality? The (...) explosion of philosophical interest in such questions has been fuelled by increased focus on individual responsibility in political debates. Political philosophers, especially egalitarians, have responded to such developments by attempting to map out the proper place for responsibility in theories of justice. This book both reflects on these recent developments in normative political theory and moves the debate forwards. (shrink)

In Chapter 17 of his magnificent Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit asks what he describes as an ‘awesome question’: ‘How many people should there ever be?’ For a utilitarian like me, the answer seems simple: there should be however many people it takes to make the world best. Unfortunately, if I answer Parfit's awesome question in this way, I may sink myself in a quagmire of axiological confusion. In this paper, I first describe certain aspects of the quagmire. Then I (...) introduce and explain some of the elements of a novel axiological view – ‘justicism’. Justicism is derived from some ideas originally suggested by Franz Brentano. It was developed in an effort to solve certain other problems confronting utilitarianism – problems explicitly about justice. I think, however, that as a sort of happy by-product, justicism also generates a plausible answer to Parfit's awesome question. This may come as a bit of surprise, since justicism is a form of totalism, and it is widely thought that no totalistic theory can provide a satisfactory answer to Parfit's question. After presenting and explaining my proposed solution, I address some objections. (shrink)

We cannot conclude from the assumptions that justice is a virtue and desert is an ingredient in justice that desert claims themselves express a virtue. It could be that desert is morally neutral, or even immoral, and that there are other aspects of justice which make it all-in-all virtuous. We need, in other words, an independent moral justification of desert and desert-based emotions. In this paper I take on the challenge of articulating and defending a utilitarian justification of desert in (...) distributive justice. I argue, first, that while there may be ways of accommodating desert-concerns in liberal theory, this cannot, in the view of liberals themselves, be done without considerable cost to the ideals that are closest to their hearts. By contrast, I suggest that a deceptively simple utilitarian defence of desert can be made to work. Finally, I attempt to surmount various possible objections that might be raised against my utilitarian justification and conclude that none of them confutes it. (shrink)

What is justice? Questions of justice are questions about what people are due. However, what that means in practice depends on the context in which the question is raised. Depending on context, the formal question of what people are due is answered by principles of desert, reciprocity, equality, or need. Justice, therefore, is a constellation of elements that exhibit a degree of integration and unity. Nonetheless, the integrity of justice is limited, in a way that is akin to the integrity (...) of a neighborhood rather than that of a building. A theory of justice offers individuals a map of that neighborhood, within which they can explore just what elements amount to justice. (shrink)

One of the standard objections to traditional act utilitarianism is that it is insensitive to issues of justice and desert. Traditional act utilitarianism holds, for example, that it is morally obligatory to torture or kill an innocent person, when doing so increases the happiness of others more than it decreases the happiness of the innocent person. Utilitarianism is, of course, sensitive to what people believe about justice, but it is not sensitive to justice itself.

A desert-sensitive moral theory says that whether people get what they deserve, whether they are treated as they deserve to be treated, plays a role in determining what we ought to do. Some popular forms of consequentialism are desert-sensitive. But where do facts about what people deserve come from? If someone deserves a raise, or a kiss, in virtue of what does he deserve those things? One plausible answer is that what someone deserves depends, at least in part, on how (...) well he meets his moral requirements. The wicked deserve to suffer and the decent do not. Shelly Kagan (2006) has argued that this plausible answer is wrong. But his argument for that conclusion does not succeed. I will show how to formulate a desert-sensitive moral theory (and also a desert-sensitive version of consequentialism) on which this answer is correct. (shrink)

Women tend to earn less than their male colleagues. Furthermore, women tend to earn less than men who hold jobs that are nominally different but relevantly similar to their own. Advocates of ‘comparable worth’ protest these facts. Their protest sometimes takes this form: Those differences in pay between men and women are undeserved . The argument for this claim is simple. Some facts are relevant to the wage one deserves for performing a given job; some are not. In the vast (...) majority of cases, the argument continues, gender is not relevant to the wage one deserves; relevant are, say, the skill, responsibility, and working conditions required by the job. When jobs are comparable with respect to these facts, those who work in them deserve equal pay. Therefore, women and men who work the very same jobs deserve equal pay; likewise for women and men whose jobs are nominally different but relevantly similar. (shrink)

Justice is a constant and perpetual will to give every man his due. The principles of law are these: to live virtuously, not to harm others, to give his due to everyone. Jurisprudence is the knowledge of divine and human things, the science of the just and the unjust. Law is the art of goodness and justice. By virtue of this [lawyers] may be called priests, for we cherish justice and profess knowledge or goodness and equity, separating right from wrong (...) and legal from the illegal. (shrink)

Fred Feldman and, more recently, David Schmidtz have challenged the standard view that a person's desert is based strictly on past and present facts about him. I argue that Feldman's attempt to overturn this 'received wisdom' about desert's temporal orientation is unsuccessful, since his examples do not establish that what a person deserves now can be based on what will occur in the future. In addition, his forward-looking account introduces an unnecessary asymmetry regarding desert's temporal orientation in different contexts. Schmidtz (...) advances a promissory account of desert, only part of which presents a strong challenge to the received wisdom. After disambiguating the two main elements of his account, I examine Schmidtz's arguments for forward-looking desert. I find these arguments to be unconvincing because they seem to either rely on past or present facts about people, including people's dispositions, or they give us desert without desert bases. I briefly examine the relationship between desert and merit, and I argue that some dispositions might be desert bases and others might be merit bases. I conclude the paper with a summary of the arguments against desert as a forward-looking concept. (shrink)

In Smilansky (1996) I proposed an outline of a theory of responsibility and desert, which I claimed both (a) enables us to see responsibility as a condition for desert even in the major apparent counter-examples such as those proposed in Feldman (1995); and (b) represents the ordinary way of seeing the connection between responsibility and desert better than previous formulations. Behind this proposal lies a crucial distinction between two ways in which responsibility can be a condition for desert. From Feldman’s (...) reply (1996) it seems that this crucial distinction was not suffi- ciently brought out in my paper. (shrink)

Serena Olsaretti brings together new essays by leading moral and political philosophers on the nature of desert and justice, their relations with each other and with other values.

Does justice require that individuals get what they deserve? Serena Olsaretti brings together new essays by leading moral and political philosophers examining the relation between desert and justice; they also illuminate the nature of distributive justice, and the relationship between desert and other values, such as equality and responsibility.