Deontological Desert

Shelly Kagan

doi:10.3390/philosophies7010008

Abstract

Although the nature of moral desert has sometimes been examined in axiological terms—focusing on the thought that it is a good thing if people get what they deserve—deontologists typically think desert is more appropriately treated in terms of duties and obligations. They may, for example, prefer to talk in terms of there being a moral duty to give people what they deserve. This essay distinguishes a number of forms such a duty might take, and examines four of them more closely. (In particular, it looks at positive and negative duties with regard to both comparative and noncomparative desert). Questions about the contents of each of these duties are raised, making clearer just how much work would be involved in spelling out the relevant duties more completely. The essay concludes with a brief discussion of the possible implications of such desert-based duties for population ethics.

Highlights

The essay concludes with a brief discussion of the possible implications of such desert-based duties for population ethics
If you start pursuing thoughts like these you quickly find yourself developing what we might call an axiology of desert, an attempt to map out the ways in which intrinsic value rises or falls as people get, or fail to get, what they deserve
This might be a case where adding a positive duty to promote the overall goodness of outcomes with regard to noncomparative desert would not be redundant after all.)

Summary

Introduction

If you start pursuing thoughts like these you quickly find yourself developing what we might call an axiology of desert, an attempt to map out the ways in which intrinsic value rises or falls as people get, or fail to get, what they deserve. Armed with such an account, one might fold it into one’s theory of the good—one’s overall theory of what it is that makes one outcome morally better or worse than another. Be that all as it may, in what follows I will do my best to offer some tentative answers on behalf of the deontologist

Which Duties?

A Positive Duty to Give People What They Noncomparatively Deserve

A Positive Duty to Give People What They Comparatively Deserve

A Negative Duty with Regard to Noncomparative Desert

A Negative Duty with Regard to Comparative Desert

Creating People Who Would Not Otherwise Exist