from Part II - An Alternative Model of Desert
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 May 2021
The best defense of the traditional 3-place model of desert is offered by Kristján Kristjánsson, who argues that our common concern-when making desert claims-is for an apportionment of overall virtue/viciousness to overall fortune. On his account, deserved treatments, or outcomes, as substitutable: one good/bad outcome serves as well as any other correspondingly good/bad outcome, in satisfying the demands of desert. And he references the idea of poetic justice in defending this conclusion. However, a closer look at the examples he offers, as well as my own examples from Chapter 4, shows my own model of desert to be more plausible. Rather than a concern for "cosmic justice," the core concern behind desert claims is for the shared acknowledgment of someones traits and actions, and how these have affected others within a community. Clues from our language support this conclusion, such as the phrase that a person has gotten "exactly what she deserves"-a phrase we reserve for those times when we think a person has unmistakably been faced with the truth about how she has impacted others.
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