The Nature of Desert Claims -- Rethinking What It Means to Get One's Due (pp. 1 - 105)

Our everyday conversations reveal the widespread assumption that positive and negative treatment of others can be justified on the grounds that 'they deserve it'. But what is it exactly to deserve something? In this book, Kevin Kinghorn explores how we came to have this concept and offers an explanation of why people feel so strongly that redress is needed when outcomes are undeserved. Kinghorn probes for that core concern which is common to the range of everyday desert claims people make, ultimately proposing an alternative model of desert which represents a fundamental challenge to the received wisdom on the structure of desert claims. In the end, he argues, our plea for deserved treatment ends up being linked to the universal human concern for a shared narrative, as we seek healthy relationships within a community. "Common language suggests that we think the concept "desert" does an enormous amount of work in justifying positive or negative treatment of others. But what is it exactly to deserve some outcome? Smith and Sidgwick emphasized that sentiments like gratitude and resentment accompany our desert claims. But desert claims carry the assumption that our sentiments are appropriate. As to what "appropriateness" amounts to, and why deserved/appropriate treatment is valuable, the received wisdom on desert is that appropriateness is a matter of proportionality, or "fittingness," between treatment and desert basis--with the obtaining itself of this proportionality having noninstrumental value. However, I argue for an alternative model for understanding desert, in which deserved treatments are instrumentally valuable in that they lead to a shared acknowledgement of a person's traits/actions and how these traits/actions have affected others within a community. I show that my model better captures the core concern common to everday desert claims: specifically, a concern for a shared narrative, which we recognize as necessary for healthy relationships moving forward"-- Provided by publisher A contribution to the growing literature on desert in moral philosophy, this book both engages with contemporary literature and offers a new approach to understanding the concept and its relationship to justice. It will be an important resource for upper-level undergraduates and graduate researchers in moral and political philosophy.