Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T10:43:12.212Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Equality and Desert

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Louis Pojman
Louis Pojman
Affiliation:
United States Military Academy West Point
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

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. (Ulpian in the Digest of the Roman book of law Corpus Juris, ca 200AD)

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 72 , Issue 282 , October 1997 , pp. 549 - 570
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 John, Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Harvard University Press, 1971);Google ScholarRonald, Dworkin, ‘Why Bakke Has No Case’ The New York Review of Books, Nov. 10, 1977,Google ScholarThomas, Nagel, Mortal Questions (Cambridge University Press, 1979);Google ScholarBrian, Barry, Political Argument (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965);Google Scholar Robert Goodin states that it is morally repugnant to make distinction between deserving and undeserving people when allocating scarce resources, ‘Negating Positive Desert Claims’ Political Theory vol. 13, no. 4 (1985);Google ScholarJohn, Schaar, ‘Equality of Opportunity, and Beyond’ in Pennock, J. R. and Chapman, J., (eds) Equality: Nomos IX (Atherton Press, 1967);Google ScholarRichard, Wasserstrom, ‘Racism and Sexism’ in Today's Moral Problems, (ed. by Wasserstrom, Richard A.) (Macmillan, 1985);Google Scholar Kai Nielsen states he has reservations about the whole category of desert and holds that everyone should be treated equally as persons and, in spite of what will often be rather different moral conduct, everyone should be viewed as having equal moral worth. Equality and Liberty: A Defense of Radical Egalitarianism (Rowman and Littlefield, 1985), pp. 56, 53;Google ScholarDavid, Miller argues that each person must be treated with equal respect and is entitled to self-respect irrespective of desert, ‘Democracy and Social Justice’, British Journal of Political Science (1977),Google ScholarIris, Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton University Press, 1990),Google Scholar and Michael, Young, The Rise of Meritocracy: 1870-2033 (Penguin Books, 1958).Google Scholar

2 Brian, Barry, Political Argument (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965), p. 112f.Google Scholar

3 John, Rawls, op. cit., p. 104.Google Scholar

4 Rawls, , op. cit., p. 74. The attack on moral desert is perhaps the most radical move that egalitarians like Rawls and company have made against meritocracy, and the ramifications of their attack are far reaching. For example, since I do not deserve my two good eyes and two good kidneys, the social engineers may take one of each from me to give to persons needing an eye or a kidney—even if their organs became damaged through their own voluntary actions. Since no one deserves anything, we do not deserve pay for our labours or praise for a job well done or first prize in a race we win. The notion of moral responsibility vanishes in a system of levelling. So does the notion of self-respect, deemed the basic primary good, for if we are simply products of the Natural Lottery, how can the self deserve anything at all, including respect?Google Scholar

5 A couple in Montclair, New Jersey (Warren and Patricia Simpson) have recently declared that they're not very good at child rearing and don't much like it, so they're exercising their right to retire from it. ‘Between the crying and the fighting and asking for toys, it was getting to be very discouraging,’ Mrs Simpson said. ‘We're both still young, and we have a lot of other interests.’ They've put their three small children up for adoption, and after seven years of parenting, they ‘are moving on.’ New York Times Op-Ed ‘Retirement Fever’ by Michael Rubiner in early February 1996. This be an extreme example of the abuse of the philosophy of entitlements, but is indicative of a trend.

6 Note Rawls allows incentive but not desert to justify rewarding people. If so, then we might imagine two workers, Dennis and Ivan. Dennis works hard out of a commitment to his job, produces 50% more than the average worker, stays overtime to help out, is an inspiration to others, and never misses a day's work. Ivan bargains with his boss for every advantage he can get, produces exactly what his contract calls for—even less if he can get away with it—, but would produce more if he had incentive to do so. He takes off every time he can get away with it. Suppose Dennis and Ivan are making the same pay. On Rawls' model we are morally justified to raise Ivan's pay as an incentive to produce more, so that we can help the least best off, but we are not permitted to reward Dennis with more, since he doesn't need an incentive. He works from the spontaneous goodness of his heart. There seems something grotesque about this arrangement.

7 See George, Sher, Desert (Princeton University Press, 1987) for a defence against some of these charges. My work has been profoundly influenced by this seminal work. But a lot of work needs to be done on behalf of meritocracy, which, as my introduction indicates, has taken a serious beating in our time.Google Scholar

8 Robert, Goodin, ‘Negating Positive Desert Claims’ Political Theory vol. 13, no. 4, 11 1985; pp. 575–598.Google Scholar

9 Merit—in terms of accomplishments or present ability to carry out the traditional roles of workers—should not be the only thing that counts—role modelling (in terms of race and gender) and the goal of breaking social stereotypes themselves come to constitute a new type of merit—merit for attaining social goals which have no direct connection to the subject at hand (e.g., black or white skin is irrelevant to flying an air plane, but it might be relevant to inculcating a message about how we are to evaluate people of different races). Preferential treatment, race norming, reverse discrimination, goals and time-tables, different euphemisms for affirmative action—all flow from the undermining of the traditional meritocratic notion of justice: rendering to each his or her du

10 Derek, Parfit, unpublished manuscript: ‘On Giving Priority to the Worse-Off’ 1989. I do not have access to this manuscript, but have heard it referred to by others.Google Scholar

11 Pojman, Louis P., ‘On Equal Human Worth: A Critique of Contemporary Egalitarianism’ in Equality: Selected Readings, (ed. by Pojman, Louis P. and Robert, Westmoreland) (Oxford University Press, 1996).Google Scholar

12 See Lucas, J. R.Responsibility (Oxford University Press, 1993) for a useful, though overly simplified, version of the standard view.Google ScholarSee also Fred, Feldman, ‘Desert: Reconsideration of Some received Wisdom’ Mind, vol. 104 (01 1995).Google Scholar

13 George, Sher, Desert, p. 53.Google Scholar

14 This is not a full characterization, since temporal indexical need to be included. The reader can easily apply these. I leave them out in order to keep the discussion focused on the essential differences.

15 See Fred, Feldman, ‘Desert: Reconsideration of Some Received Wisdom’, Mind 104 (01, 1995), pp. 63–77 for an excellent essay on this type of desert.Google Scholar

16 One may even say that they have a right to the spot. In this case the language of rights (or entitlements) and desert seem to coalesce. The other runner had a right to be on the relay team because of the nature of the rules he followed, but he also deserved to be on it by his action of winning that place in fair competition. The controversy over Lewis's participation was exacerbated by the fact that Canada unexpectedly beat the United States for a Gold Medal. Could Lewis's participation have prevented that? Should it have mattered?

17 John, Rawls, ‘Two Concepts of Rules’ Philosophical Review (1955).Google Scholar

18 Emile, Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method (Oxford University Press, 1952).Google Scholar

19 Quoted in Plato's Republic 331. Although Socrates argues against Polemarchus's interpretation of this view, he holds a version of it himself.Google Scholar

20 George Caspar, Homans, Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms (RKP 1961), pp. 246 & 264.Google Scholar

21 Galatians 6:7.

22 Leibniz, , Theodicy (trans. E. M. Huggard) 1698.Google Scholar

23 Karl, Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program, published in Karl Marx: Selected Writings, (ed. by McLellan, D.) (Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 566f.Google Scholar

24 Henry, Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co.), Book III, Ch 5.Google Scholar

25 Ross, W. D., The Right and the Good (Oxford University Press, 1930), 138.Google Scholar

26 Immanuel, Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. Paton, H. J. (Hutchinson University Library, 1948), p. 59.Google Scholar

27 Richard, Arneson, Justice and Responsibility a paper delivered to the Philosophy Department at NYU 11 15, 1996.Google Scholar

28 Harry, Frankfurt, ‘Equality as a Moral Ideal’, in Ethics vol. 98 (10, 1987).Google Scholar

29 A previous version of this paper was read to the Philosophy Department at SUNY Geneseo, March 28, 1996 and to the Philosophy Department at Ben Gurion University, Beer-Sheva, Israel December 2, 1996. To the members of these departments and to Robert Audi, John Kekes, Michael Levin, and Wallace Matson, who commented on earlier versions of this paper, I am grateful.