TY - JOUR
T1 - A utilitarian justification of desert in distributive justice
AU - Kristjánsson, K.
N1 - Copyright 2011 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2005/1/1
Y1 - 2005/1/1
N2 - 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 (Millian) 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.
AB - 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 (Millian) 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.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?partnerID=yv4JPVwI&eid=2-s2.0-62449240921&md5=6917b4bfa4472a4749e70f6f96ae3fc4
U2 - 10.1177/1740468105054339
DO - 10.1177/1740468105054339
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:62449240921
SN - 1740-4681
VL - 2
SP - 147
EP - 170
JO - Journal of Moral Philosophy
JF - Journal of Moral Philosophy
IS - 2
ER -