Giving Desert its Due1

T. M. Scanlon
Joel Feinberg wrote, In respect to modes of treatment which persons can be said
to deserve, then, we can distinguish three kinds of conditions. There are those whose
satisfaction confers eligibility (eligibility conditions), those whose satisfaction confers
entitlement (qualification conditions), and those conditions not specified in any
regulatory or procedural rules whose satisfaction confers worthiness or desert (desert
bases) (Feinberg 1970, 58). Feinberg goes on to say that desert bases must be some
possessed characteristic or prior activity of the person in question.
Similarly, Derk Pereboom, describing the idea of basic desert that he takes to be
presupposed by the variety of moral responsibility that has been at issue in debates about
free will, writes, The desert at issue here is basic in the sense that the agent, to be
morally responsible, would deserve to be the recipient of the expression of such an
attitude just because she has performed the action, given sensitivity to its moral status;
not, for example, by virtue of consequentialist or contractualist considerations
(Pereboom 2012, 189; Sher 1987, 7).
Following Feinberg and Pereboom, I will say that what is distinctive about a
desert-based justification for treating a person in a certain way is that it claims that that
treatment is made appropriate simply by certain facts about that person, or what he or she
has done. The simply in this formulation is intended to exclude justifications by appeal
to the effects of treating the person in that way and justifications that appeal to the fact

I am grateful to Erin Kelly, Samuel Scheffler, and two anonymous readers for
Philosophical Explorations for helpful comments on earlier drafts.

2
that this treatment is called for by some institution (that is itself justified on some basis
other than an appeal to desert.) So, for example, to discipline a child by depriving him of
a treat because he deserves it is a different thing from doing this because this will
improve his character or make him likely to behave better in future. Claiming that people
who have worked hard all their lives deserve a good pension is also different from
claiming that they are entitled to pension benefits according to the regulations of the
Social Security System, or the pension scheme of their employer.
My aims in this paper will be to examine this idea of desert-based justification
and to consider the role of such justifications in answering questions about legal
punishment, moral blame, and economic justice.
In defending some desert-based justifications, I will be departing from positions I
have taken in earlier work, in which I expressed skepticism about justifications of this
kind (Scanlon 1988, 149-216; Scanlon 1998, chapter 6). There were two reasons for this
skepticism. First, because I identified moral desert with the idea, which I regard as
morally repugnant, that it is good that people who have done wrong should suffer, I was
inclined to reject the idea of desert altogether. Second, interpreting and commenting on
Rawls views on distributive justice, I endorsed the idea that the only sense of desert
relevant to questions of distributive is what I called institutional desertthe sense in
which a person deserves a form of treatment if a justified institution specifies that he or
she should be treated in that way. I expressed skepticism about desert in a preinstitutional sense that is independent of what particular institutions require and can
serve as a basis for assessing whether institutions are just. Each of these skeptical views

3
now seems to me to require some modification, which I will discuss in the course of this
paper.
Even though there is a difference, as Feinberg noted, between claims of desert and
claims of institutional entitlement, institutions can have a role in determining desert bases.
For example, a person who has achieved a certain score on a test is entitled to the grade
that this makes appropriate. But, as Feinberg also recognizes, it makes sense to say that a
person who did less well on the test deserved a higher grade than he received. This can be
explained by the fact that the point of an institution of grading may be to make as
accurate as possible an appraisal of the degree to which [the person or thing graded]
possesses some skill or quality (Feinberg 1970, 65). And it may be, in a given case, that
a persons performance on a test is not an accurate indication of the degree to which that
person possesses the relevant skill. She may have just had a bad day. She therefore
deserved a higher grade (the purposes of the system of grading would be better served if
she had a higher grade) even though she is not entitled to this grade. This desert claim
depends on the institution of grading (that is to say, on what the purposes of that
institution are) even though it is not a claim of institutional entitlement. It is quite
different from a claim that a person deserved to do better on the test because he tried so
hard. Trying hard does not entail having a higher level of the skill that the test is intended
to measure and that grades are intended to represent.
The example of grading illustrates one way in which certain forms of treatment
can be made appropriate simply by what a person is like or what he or she has done.
Awarding a grade or a prize is an act of expression. As Feinberg says, it is intended to
communicate that the subject has a particularly high level of some skill or other quality.

4
Awarding such a grade or prize is therefore inappropriate if the subject does not possess
this quality. So the possession of this quality is at least part of the justification for such an
act of expression.
It need not be a full justification, however.2 There are many ways of expressing
facts about a persons level of skill, and these modes of expression have costs. Awarding
grades and prizes in certain ways, with certain kinds of fanfare or ceremony makes some
people feel good but makes others feel sad and disappointed. Inflicting these costs on
people is not justified simply by the fact that the message thereby conveyed is accurate. If
the distinctions marked by the system of grading are pointless, then the costs of publicly
awarding them with great fanfare may be unjustifiable. Similarly, expressing moral
blame often involves psychological pain for those who are blamed, even if inflicting this
pain is not the purpose of that expression (as the infliction of pain is part of the purpose
of acts of punishment) (Feinberg 1970, 67; compare Pereboom 2012, 193). So something
needs to be said about when and why such costs are justified.
Broadly speaking, these costs might be justified in two ways. The first is by
appeal to the beneficial consequences of the policy that has these costs. The second is by
arguing that, for one reason or another, the individuals who bear these costs cannot object
to them. Desert may play a further role in arguments of the latter kind. These two forms
of justification are not simply alternatives: they can be employed in tandem and in many
cases an adequate justification will involve both in some form. This is illustrated by the
case of legal punishment.
Legal Punishment
2

The limitations of veracity as a justification for responding to merit with good

treatment are noted by (Sher 1987, 113-122).

5
Legal punishment has two aspects: it condemns certain actions as wrongful and it
involves some form of hard treatment, such as a fine or loss of liberty (von Hirsch 1992,
55-98 & 73-74). Both elements figure in the positive case for having an institution of
punishment. Governments owe it to their citizens is to affirm their rights by condemning
serious rights violations (whether or not this makes those violations less likely to occur)
and they also owe it to their citizens to discourage violations by condemnation and,
insofar as this is necessary, by threatening wrongdoers with forms of hard treatment
(Scanlon 2003, 219-233). But these two elements are separable: a public response to
wrong doing could express condemnation without involving any form of hard
treatment, so a justification for the former need not also justify any particular form of
the latter.
Both of these aspects of punishment have costs: individuals have good reasons to
want not to be condemned as well as reasons to want not to be subjected to fines or
imprisonment. These costs play different roles in the two arguments for punishment that I
just mentioned. Threats of condemnation or of hard treatment deter because they are
things most individuals want to avoid. But condemnation of wrong doers is owed to
victims simply because of its expressive content, not because those who are condemned
have reason to dislike it. The question we are concerned with, however, is how these
costs can be justified.
Fines, imprisonment and other forms of hard treatment are not justifiable unless
they are necessary and effective means to protect citizens against serious wrongs. But an
appeal to consequences alone is not sufficient justification. Policies of vicarious
punishment of the members of criminals families, or exemplary punishment of innocent

6
people chosen at random and framed, might deter, but would not thereby be justified.
This might be explained by appeal to the expressive content of punishment: those who
would be subjected to hard treatment under such policies would not be properly
condemned, since they have done no wrong. But this does not seem to me to be the whole
story. There is also the important fact that these individuals would have no opportunity to
avoid being treated in this way by choosing appropriately. Insofar as a policy of inflicting
hard treatment on wrong doers is justified this must be not only because it is an effective
way to protect others from being wronged but also because this policy inflicts this
treatment only on individuals who have had a fair opportunity to avoid being subject to it
(Hart 1968, 1-27).
This dual justification of the costs of punishment involves both of the forms of
argument I mentioned above: an appeal to consequences and appeal to factors that
undermine the objections of those who are punished. An idea of desert might, however,
be invoked to play the latter role. It might be said that wrongdoers cannot complain of the
hard treatment involved in punishment because these forms of treatment are deserved:
given what a wrongdoer has done, these forms of treatment are appropriate, and even
good things to occur, in part because wrongdoers have reason to dislike them. And, it
might be added, this is so only if only if these wrongdoers could have avoided doing what
they did. Such a claim seem to me quite false. It is never a good thing, morally speaking,
for anyone to suffer, no matter what they have done, and this is so quite independent of
whether those who might be made to suffer have free will or not.
I was earlier led to reject desert altogether because I identified desert with the
thesis that it is a good thing for people who have done wrong to suffer, or at least that this

7
is less bad than the comparable suffering of people who have done no wrong.3 It now
seems to me a mistake to identify desert with these retributivist ideas. But even if
retributivism is properly rejected, desert-based arguments still have a role in the
justification of moral blame and the condemnatory aspect of punishment. It is reasonable
to dislike having ones moral faults publicly acknowledged. But those who have done
wrong cannot object to bearing this cost. They have no moral claim that their faults
should be ignored in order to spare them this psychological discomfort, because this
public acknowledgement is an appropriate response to what they have done. This does
not mean that just any form of public condemnation is justified. Some practices of
shaming may involve unjustifiable levels of humiliation. The point is just that official
public acknowledgement of the faults of wrong doers is made appropriate by these faults
themselves (it is deserved on this basis alone), and they therefore have no moral claim
against it. (By the costs of the condemnatory aspect of punishment I will henceforth
mean just the costs of such official acknowledgment.)
Earlier, I distinguished between two kinds of arguments in support of punishment:
arguments appealing the consequences of a policy of punishing wrong doers and
arguments that undermine the objections that individuals may have to bearing the costs of
being punished. The latter category includes both appeals to desert and appeals to the fact

George Sher defends this idea, on the ground that (1) those who seek value are therefore
of greater value themselves; (2) the wicked are of lesser value than those who are morally
good; and (3) the value of the happiness of an individual varies with the value of that
individual (Sher 1987, chapter 8). I have doubts about the idea of value in terms of which
this argument is stated (On this see: Scanlon 1998, chapter 2). So I am somewhat unclear
about claims (1) and (2). There might be a way of understanding value in terms of which
these claims would be correct. Claim (1) might be, for example, that those who seek
value are therefore more to be admired and emulated. But claim (3) would not follow.

8
that individuals have a fair opportunity to avoid being punished, but these two forms of
argument are distinct and independent.
The fact that those who suffer a harm will have had a fair opportunity to avoid it,
by choosing appropriately, may make a policy that allows such harms to occur more
defensible.4 But it does not presuppose, or do anything to show, that it is in any way good
that people who have taken the risk of such harms should suffer them. By contrast,
desert-based arguments of the kind I am considering maintain that certain kinds of
response are made appropriate by what a wrong doer has done: that others are justified in
responding in these ways simply by the faults displayed in the wrong doers conduct.
It might, however, be said that the faults in questionthe features of the agent
and what he or she has done that make blame appropriateintrinsically involve doing
certain things, or having certain attitudes, freely; so a version of opportunity to avoid is
built into the relevant desert bases. Whether this is so depends on the kind of freedom
that is supposed to be in question. Here Hume seems to me to have been basically right
(Hume, Book II, Part III, Sections I & II).5 If someone did wrong only because he was

This is not true only of punishment but holds quite generally of policies that allow harm
to occur. See (Hart 1968, 28-53; Scanlon 1988, Lecture 2; Scanlon 1998, chapter 6).
5
I say that Hume was only basically right because it seems to me that lack of liberty is
a misleading way of describing the cases in which, as he puts it, an agent lacks the
liberty of spontaneity. A lack of liberty may seem to be the crucial element in cases like
that of a person who reveals a secret but does so only because she was threatened with
serious harm. It may seem that such a person is not blameworthy for revealing the secret
because she did so unwillingly. But this is misleading. The threat may undermine
blameworthiness because it makes it the case that revealing the secret was justified, and
therefore not blameworthy. And even if it does not justify revealing the secret, the threat
changes the meaning of the agents action, by altering the reasons she had, or believed
herself to have. The general phenomenon at work in such cases is that blameworthiness
depends on a full picture of an agents reasons. Saying that an agent acted willingly or
unwillingly is a way of referring to facts about these reasons, but it is misleading

9
forced to do this by threats or by the lack of acceptable alternatives (if he lacked what
Hume called the liberty of spontaneity), then this can change the kind of response that is
appropriate because it changes facts about the attitudes reflected in the agents action. It
is one thing to harm another person out of carelessness or spite and something different
(even if perhaps still wrong) to do so only because one believed this was necessary in
order to avoid a greater harm to oneself. But the fact that an agent lacked what Hume
called the liberty of indifference, that is to say, the fact that his psychological make up
was determined by conditions in the past, over which he has no control, and that, given
this make up, it was inevitable that he would act the way he or did, does not change the
attitudes he in fact has. Purely condemnatory responses (as distinct from hard
treatment) are justified simply by what an agent is in fact like, psychologically, as
revealed in his or her actions.6 This justification does not require that the agent had
control over (was responsible for) becoming such a person. If an agent does have some
control over this, then he or she may be open to additional criticism for failing to exercise
it properlyfailing to take due care in regard to his or her own moral development. But
such control is not required in order for their present dispositions to be ones that are
appropriately condemned. In Feinbergs terms, a desert basis need not itself be deserved.
To sum up this discussion of legal punishment: the hard treatment aspect of
punishment requires justification that appeals both to beneficial consequences and to fair
opportunity to avoid, but the cost of the condemnatory aspect of legal punishment (at

because it suggests that what is crucial is the agents will, or liberty, rather than the
reasons the agent had and those he or she acted upon. For a similar point see Kelly, 2012.
6

For discussion of how this applies in the case of young children and the mentally ill, see
(Scanlon 2008, chapter 4, esp. 156ff, 178-179, 197-198).

10
least the costs of its basic content) does not require justification of either kind. The cost
simply of being (properly) condemned can be justified simply on the ground that this
condemnation is deserved.
If, however, it is claimed that a certain form of treatment is appropriate simply
because of what a person in question is like, or what he or she has done, then some
explanation of the relevant idea of appropriateness is called for. Earlier, I offered one
explanation of this kind in terms of the expressive content of the treatment in question. If
the point or purpose of a system of grading, for example, is to represent the degree to
which various people possess a certain skill, then what makes a certain grade appropriate
is that is an accurate representation of this kind. As I noted, however, this falls short of a
full justification for an act or policy of assigning grades, since these assignments have
costs, such as embarrassment of those who get low grades. It is natural to find further
justification for these costs in the beneficial consequences of a system of grading, as a
source of information or a way of providing incentives. The condemnatory aspect of legal
punishment might be justified in a similar way. But I have suggested that this is not the
case, or at least not the whole story. The costs of the condemnatory aspect of legal
punishment can be justified purely on the basis of desertthey are made appropriate by
what a wrong doer has doneand this is even more obviously true of the costs of moral
blame. So I need to provide an account of the idea of appropriateness that is being
appealed to here that goes beyond the expressive account I sketched above, and to do
this I will turn to the case of moral blame.
Moral Reactive Attitudes

11
Suppose a person in your neighborhood has treated his wife very badlyabused
her physically, treated her in humiliating ways, and gambled away her inheritance. What
responses by his wife, or by you and other neighbors, does this make appropriate? To
begin with, it is appropriate to conclude that he is a morally bad person. In addition,
according to the most widely held accounts of blame and moral responsibility, it would
be appropriate to suspend, at least temporarily, friendly feelings toward the person,
replacing them by angry feelings of resentment and indignation.7 I would not deny that
these emotional responses are common and appropriate, but I believe that other responses
are also called for, including such things as:
1. Withdrawal of trust
2. Decreased readiness to enter into special relations such as friendship with the
person
3. Decreased willingness to help the person with his projects
4. Decreased tendency to take pleasure in things going well for the person and to
feel sad or regretful when they do not
I count all of these responses as forms of blame (Scanlon 2008, chapter 4). This
thesis is controversial, but I need not argue for it here. The claim that is relevant for
present purposes is that, whether or not they are forms of blame, they are all responses
that are made appropriate simply by what the person is like and what he or she has done.
The point of listing them here is to see whether, by focusing on this range of responses,
we can understand more about the relevant idea of appropriateness.

(Strawson 2003) is the classical statement of this view, which has later been developed
by many others. See, especially: (Wallace 1993).

12
All of these responses are reactive attitudes in Strawsons sense: attitudes
toward a person that are reactions to that persons attitudes toward others, including the
modification or withdrawal of attitudes toward the person that one would normally have
held. To say that these are reactions to the attitudes of this person is not merely to say
that they are caused by his or her attitudes but also that they are seen by those who hold
them as made appropriate by those attitudes. More specifically, they are seen as made
appropriate by the fact that that persons attitudes are deficient as measured by to the
standards of morality or some relevant interpersonal relationship.8 Two aspects of this
claim of appropriateness need to be explained: why the person toward whom they are
directed cannot object to this modification or withdrawal of normal attitudes, and what
positive reason others have for modifying or withdrawing their attitudes in these ways.
Withdrawal of trust might be justified prudentially, since trusting such a person
puts one at risk. Although this withdrawal has a cost to the person who is not trusted, the
cost of continued trust is more than the rest of us can reasonably be asked to bear. We do
not owe trust unconditionally, but only to the trustworthy. This explanation seems right
as far as it goes, but does not seem to capture all that is going on. Its prudential character
seems too limited.
Prudential considerations aside, the attitudes that are withdrawn in these
responses are not owed unconditionally, but only given the presence of attitudes that this
persons actions show him not to hold. So the cost to him of our changed attitudes
consists only in the loss of something that we are not obligated to provide. It is thus a cost

The importance of such relationships was emphasized by (Strawson 2003). For fuller
discussion see: (Scanlon 2008, chapter 4; Scanlon 2012, 84-99).

13
to which he has no valid objection. Moreover, we have good non-prudential reasons to
withdraw trust and the other normal attitudes that I have listed.
Consider first the reasons that the victim of the subjects wrongdoing has. For her
simply to ignore the indifference to her interests that his actions indicate would show a
failure to take seriously her own moral status as someone entitled not to be treated in that
way. This would be inappropriate, servile and demeaning. And for us, as third parties,
simply to ignore the attitudes toward the victim (and perhaps others) that are indicated by
the agents actions would show a lack of regard on our part for the moral standing of
these people.9
It might be said in response that not resenting those who have wronged one, and
not reacting to them in any of the other ways I have listed, would not be inappropriate but
in fact particularly saintly: it would be good to respond to wrongs in this way if we could
manage it, even though most of us cannot. But reacting in this fashion seems saintly only
because it is more than is owed to the agent, and involves overcoming strong contrary
reasons. So on further examination the objection confirms, rather than undermines, the
points I have been making about our reasons for reacting to wrongs in the ways I have
described and about wrongdoers lack of standing to object to these reactions.
Moreover, simply overlooking the agents wrongs and faults would not be saintly.
This is clearest in the case of third parties. A saintly person cannot simply ignore the
wrong done to victims and the objectionable attitudes toward them manifested in an
agents actions. A saintly response must acknowledge these factors while somehow
moving beyond them. This may be less obvious when the saintly person is the victim,
9

For fuller discussion of the impermissibility, and blameworthiness, of failures to blame

wrongdoers see: (Scanlon 2008, 166-179).

14
since she is in a position to forgive the wrong. But forgiving serious wrongs cannot be
simply ignoring them, lest it be self-demeaning (Hieronymi 2001, 529-555).
According to this account of appropriateness, what is appropriate is in the first
instance some attitude.10 In the examples I have listed, these attitudes are mainly
described negatively, as the withdrawal or diminution of other attitudes. My claims thus
have the following form: normally, a person would be open to moral criticism for failing
to have certain attitudes, such as a disposition to trust others, to help them, and to be
pleased when good things happen to them. But when others have themselves behaved in
ways that evince certain kinds of morally faulty attitudes, this makes it no longer
inappropriate to fail to have the attitudes just listed toward them, and one has good reason
not to have these attitudes.
These negative responses have positive analogs, for example in forms of gratitude.
If a person has gone out of her way to help us (in ways not morally required) then we are
open to moral criticism for not being more disposed to help her in return (in ways that we
would not be morally required to help someone who had not helped us.)
Many, although not all, of the responses I have been discussing involve intentions
that are appropriate only if the actions that flow from them would be appropriate. So the
ideas of appropriateness and desert that I am defending apply to these actions as well. We
can say, for example, that people who have behaved in certain ways do not deserve to be
trusted, or even that they deserve not to be trusted, where being trusted involves both
intention and, under the relevant conditions, certain actions. It is worth noticing, since it
10

As Feinberg says, Responsive attitudes are the basic things persons deserve and
modes of treatment are deserved only in a derivative way, insofar perhaps as they are
the natural or conventional means of expressing the morally fitting attitudes (Feinberg
1970, 82).

15
will be important is further discussion, that my fifth examplea reduced tendency to take
pleasure in good things happening to a person, and to be sorry when they do notis an
exception to the point just made. The response in this case is centrally a matter of attitude
and affect, rather than action. I will return to this point in the next section.
Earlier, I explained the appropriateness of grades in terms of their expressive
content. Because grades are intended to represent the degree to which a person has some
skill or quality, the appropriateness or inappropriateness of a grade depends on the
presence or absence of this property. The explanation I have just been offering of the
appropriateness of various reactive attitudes goes beyond this simple expressive model.
Unlike grades, the reactive attitudes I listed are not primarily expressive in intent. But
part of their contenttheir reactive characterinvolves the idea that they are responses
to attitudes of others that are deficient, relative to the standards of relevant interpersonal
relationships.11 They would thus be inappropriate if the person toward whom they are
directed did not have attitudes that were deficient in this way. But a judgment that a
reactive attitude is not inappropriate in this way does not carry us all the way to the
conclusion that that reaction is appropriate. For that to be the case it has to be positively
justified, rather than merely not being based on faulty assumptions. It is therefore
important that victims and others have reasons of the kind I have mentioned for reacting
in these ways.
As the frequent occurrence of the phrase subject to moral criticism in the
preceding discussion indicates, the claims of appropriateness which underlie the idea of
desert I am defending are first order moral claims, about the kinds of consideration and
11

As Feinberg points out, these responses have ostensible desert logically built into
them (Feinberg 1970, 70-71).

16
concern, and the degree of consideration and concern, that we owe to others. A
divergence between my view and Strawsons similar view illustrates this point.
The responses I listed above might all be described as instances of what Strawson
called withdrawals of good will toward an agent in response to that agents attitudes
toward oneself or others. This is particularly true of the fifth entry on my list, a decreased
tendency to hope that things go well for a person and to be sad or regretful if they do not.
Strawson says, however, that withdrawal of good will can involve modification of the
general demand that another should, if possible, be spared suffering and a preparedness
to acquiesce in that infliction of suffering on the offender which is an essential part of
punishment (Strawson 2003, 90).
It makes a big difference what kind of suffering is envisaged here. Decreased
sympathetic concern of the kind I have just described, as well as other reactions such as
withdrawal of trust, withdrawal of affection and concern, and refusal of some kinds of aid
and association, all involve willingness to acquiesce in forms of loss for the person
toward whom they are directed, since they all involve withholding things that person has
reason to want. In my view, as I have said, willingness to acquiesce in such losses is
made appropriate simply by a persons deficient attitudes toward others. But readiness to
inflict the kind of suffering typically involved in the hard treatment aspect of punishment
is an entirely different matter. It can be justified only on some basis other than pure
desert, such as the beneficial consequences of a policy of threatening and inflicting
treatment of this kind. This divergence between my view and Strawsons is a first order
moral disagreement about which kinds of concern are owed to others unconditionally and
with are conditional upon their having the relevant moral attitudes toward others.

17
It is also a first order moral question whether responses of the kind I have been
discussing are appropriate responses to an agents attitude toward others only if that
attitude is under the agents control. It seems to me clear that this is not the case. We do
not owe it to others to trust them, to enter in to relations of friendship and cooperation
with them, or to help them with their projects, no matter what their attitudes toward us
and toward others may be. If they are prepared to manipulate and mistreat others
whenever this is to their advantage, this fact alone about what they are like makes it
appropriate for us to suspend or modify our normal attitudes toward them. How they
came to be that way, and whether they had any control over this, is another matter.
(Again: a desert basis need not itself be deserved.) We may owe them help in overcoming
their deficiencies of character. But this is different from owing them the continuation of
normal interpersonal relations.
I realize that this claim is controversial. When I focus clearly on the particular
responses that are in question, it seems to me an obvious moral truth. But its obviousness
depends heavily on what these responses are. As I just indicated in discussing Strawson, I
believe that desert-based justification alone can justify some responses, but only so much.
Beyond that, an appeal to beneficial consequences and perhaps to fair opportunity to
avoid is be required.12

12

When fair opportunity to avoid is required in order for a form of treatment to be

justifiedas in the case of legal punishment and of some other forms of legal and
economic treatmentit is a question whether this involves an ability to do otherwise that
is incompatible with agents actions being caused by forces outside them over which they
have no control. I argue that it does not, but that this answer is more difficult to defend
than the corresponding negative answer about the preconditions for moral blame. For
further discussion, see: (Scanlon 1998, Chapter 6; Scanlon 2008, Chapter 4, esp. pp. 204214).

18
Whether such appeal is required is a moral question about what conditions must
be satisfied in order for a particular form of moral response to be justified. In order to
arrive at a considered judgment about such a question about the conditions of moral
responsibility it is essential to first be clear exactly what response is in question. But
discussions of moral responsibility are often not very clear about this. As the quote from
Strawson illustrates, there is often a failure to distinguish clearly between responses of
the kind I have been discussing, on the one hand, and punishment (involving forms of
hard treatment) on the other. The term blame is often used, unhelpfully, to encompass
both, or to cover a slide from the one to the other. So I conjecture that part of the
disagreement between compatibilists and incompatibilists about moral responsibility may
arise from unclarity of this kindfrom the fact that various participants in debates about
moral responsibility may be thinking about the preconditions for different moral
responses to wrong doing.
Unclarity of this kind is particularly likely in regard to the fifth type of reaction I
listed above: a decreased tendency to take pleasure in something good happening to a
person, and a decreased tendency to feel sadness or regret when something bad happens
to them. A person is generally open to moral criticism if he is not pleased, or is even
displeased, when he hears of good things happening to others, and open to criticism if he
does not react with regret at bad things happening to them. But when someone has treated
others very badly it can cease to be morally criticizable to fail to be pleased when good
things happen to him or to regret it when he suffers some misfortune. To change ones
attitudes toward a person in these ways might be called, in Strawsons phrase, withdrawal
of goodwill.

19
But not being sad or regretful when something bad happens to a person is not the
same thing as thinking it to be a good thing, or justified, that the person should suffer this
fate, or even thinking that it is less bad that he should suffer in this way than that the
same thing should happen to some innocent person. Attitudes such as hoping and being
pleased, or regretting or being sad, need not involve or presuppose judgments about what
is good or justified.
The difference between these sets of attitudes is illustrated by our appropriate
responses to what happens to our friends. It is entirely appropriate to hope that ones
friend wins the lottery, and to regret it when she does not win. But it this need not involve
believing that it would be a better thing if she wins rather than some other equally needy
person. The latter attitude would reflect the implausible view that what happens to ones
friends is, morally speaking, more important than what happens to others.
Failing to draw this distinction can lead one to think that blaming a person
involves not only feeling less sad when something bad happens to her but also holding
the retributivist attitude that it is a good thing that she should suffer this loss, given what
she has done. But the idea that it can be a good thing that something bad should happen
to a person who has done wrong, even if she could not have avoided being the kind of
person who would act in that way, is very implausible. Given the assumption that blame
involves this retributivist attitude, this implausibility can then lead one to the conclusion
that it can be appropriate to blame people for evil actions only if they have free will. The
error in this line of thought lies at the beginning: in a failure to distinguish between not
regretting it when bad things happen to a person who has done wrong and the retributivist
attitude of taking this to be a good thing. The forms of blame that can be justified on a

20
pure desert basis involve only the former attitude. Forms of blame that involve the latter,
retributivist, attitude are morally inappropriate, whether those who would be the subjects
of these attitudes have free will or not.
Desert and Distributive Justice
In earlier writing, I distinguished between pre-institutional desert and institutional
desert, by which I meant what Rawls calls legitimate expectations (Rawls 1971, section
48). This is the idea that if justified institutions specify that those who do certain things,
or have certain qualifications, should be given certain forms of treatment, then those who
meet these conditions should have the specified forms of treatment.
The term desert is often used to express claims of the latter kind, but I would
now reserve that name for claims to certain treatment that are justified simply by what the
person in question is like, or has done, without need for further justification. My reason
for doing this is just to isolate a particular form of justification, which needs to be
explained and distinguished from other forms. Claims of institutional entitlement need
not be justified in this particular way. That is, they will not be justified in this way unless
the justification for these features of the institution are in turn based on desert. When this
is not so, these entitlements will not be desert-based in the sense in which I am now using
the term.
In earlier writings I also expressed skepticism (and interpreted Rawls as
expressing skepticism) about the idea that there is a pre-institutional notion of desert
relevant to questions of distributive justice. Samuel Scheffler has raised reasonable
objections to this interpretation of Rawls, and he also interprets me as expressing
skepticism about a pre-institutional notion of desert relevant to the justification of

21
punishment.13 As I hope is clear from what I have said, I do believe that a preinstitutional idea of desert is relevant to the justification of an institution of punishment,
even though it does not provide a full justification for such institutions. In this final
section of my paper I want to re-examine the idea of pre-institutional desert and, consider
drawing on the positive account of desert that I have outlined, whether such a notion is
relevant to questions of distributive justice.
First I need to say something about the sense in which the idea of desert that is
relevant to the justification of punishment is pre-institutional. I have said that because
punishment expresses a condemnation of certain actions, it is appropriate only when
those on whom it is inflicted have done something condemnable. In many cases, such as
murder, this idea of what is condemnable is pre-institutional in an obvious sense: the
actions in question are wrong quite independent of any institution that forbids them. But
this does not seem to be true of the condemnatory content of all instances of justified
legal punishment. People are properly condemned for tax evasion, for example. But there
is no such thing as taxes, or tax evasion, in the absence of institutions of a particular kind.
This is even true of some cases of theft, since property is a purely institutional notion. (I
say in some cases since some instances of theft interfere with the victims life in a way
that is wrong quite apart from any institution of property.)
Is there a pre-institutional wrong that is condemned by punishment for crimes of
the latter kind? The natural candidate is a failure to abide by the requirements of just legal
institutions. This general wrong is pre-institutional in one sense: it is not wrong because

13

(Scheffler 2001, 173-190). This is a fair criticism of what I said in my 1986 Tanner
Lectures (Scanlon 1988). I corrected this error in later writing. See: (Scanlon 1998, 266267; Scanlon 2003, 219-233).

22
forbidden by such an institution. On the other hand, its content (which things are wrongs
of this kind) depends on such institutions. Moreover, whether or not this wrong (and the
appropriateness of condemning it) is pre-institutional, it is not pre-justicial, in Schefflers
phrase (Scheffler 2001, 185). Refusing to obey the requirements of some institution is
properly condemned for the reason I described only if that institution is just (or
sufficiently close to being just.) So the wrong that is said to deserve punishment depends
on a prior conception of justice. The same is true in cases of what Rawls called
institutional entitlement, where the property on the basis of which a person is said to
deserve a certain form of treatment is the property of being entitled to this treatment
according to a just institution. So desert is not is not a basic determinate of justice in these
cases, not because it depends on some institution but because it depends on some
independent conception of justice.
If, then, desert is to have a fundamental role with regard to distributive justice this
will be because, as a matter of justice, certain forms of economic advantage are made
appropriate simply by facts about what individuals are like, or what they have done,
where these facts (what Feinberg called the desert basis) do not themselves depend on a
conception of justice. Such claims about justice would be individualistic in the sense
distinguished by Scheffler: their desert basis is some characteristic of or fact about the
deserving person (Scheffler 2001, 189).
This is not yet enough to distinguish a desert-based view, however. It might be
claimed that everyone who has a certain need should, as a matter of justice, be provided
with certain kind of benefit (for example, that every child should have access to a certain
level of education.) These claims seem individualistic, and they might be put in terms of

23
desert (that all citizens deserve to be treated equally and that all children deserve an
education.) But they do not seem to me to be based on desert in any distinctive sense.
So, narrowing this account, we might say that according to a desert-based view of
distributive justice the appropriateness of some economic benefits depends on the degree
to which individuals themselves, or their actions, meet certain standards of merit (in a
broad sense of merit.)14 The relevant standards could be moral or non-moral, specifying
as desert bases such things as:
1. Moral character
2. Degree of effort expended in productive or other labor
3. Special talents
4. The contribution that a person has made to society, in the form of economic
productivity or in some other form.
This seems to fit better with the ordinary idea of desert. If we say, for example,
that a child deserves a scholarship because of her distinctive academic talent this claim
seems to use the notion of desert in a more substantial way than the general claim that all
children deserve an education.
How might one argue against the idea that distributive justice is, at least in part,
based on desert in this sense? Scheffler suggests that what he calls Liberal Theorists
reject claims of desert in distributive justice on the basis of the conviction that whereas
desert is individualistic, distributive justice is holistic in the sense that the justice of any
assignment of economic benefits to a particular individual always dependsdirectly or

14

These would be claims of what Michael Rosen calls desert as merit. See: (Rosen
2003, 118-124).

24
indirectlyon the justice of the larger distribution of benefits in society (Scheffler 2001,
190).
This seems to me correct as a description of theories of distributive justice of the
kind that Scheffler, Rawls, and I myself hold. But as a reason for rejecting desert-based
claims of justice the thesis that distributive justice is holistic may seem question begging,
since it simply rules out desert-based views. Scheffler goes on, however, to offer three
more specific reasons for taking distributive justice to be holistic.
First, peoples productive contributions are mutually dependent in the sense that
each persons capacity to contribute depends on the contributions of others.
Second, the economic value of peoples talents is socially determined in the sense
that it depends both on the number of people with similar talents and on the needs,
preferences, and choices of others. Third, peoples expectations of material gain
are linked in the sense that virtually any decision to assign economic benefits to
one person or class has economic implications for other persons and classes
(Scheffler 2001, 191).
A satisfying argument against desert-based accounts of distributive justice needs
to consider and respond to the reasons for thinking that justice depends on desert. The
general idea that justice consists in giving people what they deserve may seem initially
plausible. But this plausibility is undermined from two directions: first by the recognition
that much of what people are due is determined by institutional entitlements, and second
by the recognition that (as discussed above) there are many forms of desert that it is not
the function of basic economic institutions to recognize (such as desert based on various
forms of excellence in games and contests.)

25
This leads me to conclude that the appeal of desert-based ideas of justice is more
piecemeal. It derives from the plausibility of claims that economic distribution should be
sensitive to particular forms of merit such as the four I have listed, rather than on the
general idea that justice depends on desert. If this is correct, then a satisfying argument
against desert-based views will also be piecemeal, consisting of arguments that
undermine claims of desert of these particular forms. So in the remainder of this section I
will examine why these properties of individuals and their actions might be thought to
make differences in economic benefits appropriate. Drawing on the account of desert
presented earlier in this paper and on the three points highlighted by Scheffler, I will
argue that the appeal of these claims of desert is largely illusory. I will be concerned only
with claims that desert has a fundamental role in the justification of significant
differences in economic benefit (leaving aside the role it may have, for example, in
making small monetary prizes appropriate.)
Consider first the idea that economic advantages should be distributed in
accordance with moral merit. Rawls argued that such a distributive norm was
impracticable, because there is no way to determine whether what seems to be
meritorious conduct really reflects greater moral merit or is due to other factors (Rawls
1971, 312). The difficulty might be that the moral merit of a persons action depends on
the motives with which he or she acted, which are often difficult to discern. But Rawls
goes beyond this, and appeals also to the fact that a persons superior character may
depend in large part on fortunate family and social circumstances for which he can claim
no credit. (Rawls 1971, 103-104)

26
This objection may seem to depend on the idea, which I have rejected above in
discussing moral blame, that a desert basis must itself be deserved. But there is another
way of understanding Rawls point. Suppose that one persons good character is indeed
due to her fortunate family and social circumstances and that another persons bad
character is similarly due to the unfortunate circumstances in which he grew up. Each of
these individuals would have had a different character, I am supposing, if they had been
placed in different circumstances as children. I believe, as I have said, that this does not
mean that they cannot be blamed (or praised) for actions expressing the character that
they in fact have. Leaving the question of blame aside, however, there is a further
question whether this difference in their character is an appropriate basis for assigning
them different levels of economic benefits. If the unfortunate circumstances in which one
of these people grew up were in fact unjust, this would undermine the degree to which
the effects of this injustice on the persons character can then be taken to justify the
states denying him benefits that he otherwise would have been entitled to.15 So the case
for economic rewards based on individuals moral character, if there is such a case,
would not be independent of the justice of the background institutions that lead people to
develop such characters.
A more direct argument against distributing economic reward in accord with
moral merit even in a fully just society is that rewarding moral merit is not the function of
economic institutions. But this claim about function needs to be backed up in some
way. One argument in support of this idea begins from the third way in which Scheffler

15

For a fuller discussion of the parallel case of how wrongful treatment of a person can
undermine someones standing to blame that person for what he does, see: (Scanlon
2008,175-179).

27
says that distributive justice is holistic. A justification for a claim that it is just for some
to have more than others needs to provide some reason why those who have less should
accept this distribution. But there is no reason for other individuals to accept less than
others simply because these others are morally more meritorious. Moral merit calls for
respect, admiration, and other responses, but not obviously for economic sacrifice.
This connects with a point I made earlier in discussing moral blame and legal
punishment. According to the idea of appropriateness discussed there, what is made
appropriate by a desert base, and hence deserved, is always in the first instance some
attitude. So we need to distinguish between the attitude (of respect, admiration, or
whatever) that is made appropriate by a given form of merit and the justification for a
specific means by which this attitude is expressed. In the case of blame and punishment
the need for further justification was raised by the further costs for those who are blamed
or punished. In the case of distributive justice what requires justification is the cost to
those who would have less as a result of a distribution accord with merit. The moral merit
of those who are given more does not, by itself, provide such a justification for
significant differences in economic reward.
Consider next the idea of effort as a ground for special economic reward. There
are a number of ways in which the reasons for rewarding effort might be understood. One
rationale might be that willingness to exert oneself (for the public good) is morally
meritorious, and therefore should be rewarded. This rationale for rewarding effort is open
to the objections I have just discussed. In addition, it is limited to cases in which effort is
exerted for non-self-interested reasons, and so would not apply to many cases of
economic interaction.

28
Another possible rationale is that exerting effort involves a sacrifice for which
someone should be compensated. This presupposes some background just distribution
(egalitarian or not), which is disrupted by the welfare lost due to exertion and therefore
needs to be restored by compensating for this loss. So it is this background standard that
is doing the justificatory work rather than an idea that effort intrinsically deserves
reward.16
A third rationale is that a person who has exerted greater effort has done this for
some reason, presumably in the expectation of some gain. It is therefore appropriate that
the person be rewarded with this gain, for the sake of which he or she has sacrificed. But
this is just the idea that it is wrong to disappoint legitimate expectations, rather than an
idea that effort, in itself, deserves special reward. So none of these reasons for holding
that effort deserves special economic reward supports a compelling desert-based claim.
Consider now the idea that those who have special talent deserve economic
reward for these talents, or for using them. I will assume, for purposes of this discussion,
that a persons talents belong to that person, in the sense that it is up to him or her to
decide whether to develop these talents and whether or not to use them in a particular
way. There may be cases in which a person is obligated to develop a talent or to use it for
some particular purpose. But I will set this question aside since it does not seem to
involve claims of desert. Given that a person is free to decide not to develop or use his or
her talent, if a person is willing to use a talents only if offered a certain reward for doing
so, and if such a reward is offered, then the person is entitled to keep the results of this
transaction to whatever degree this is allowed by the applicable (just) laws governing
16

As Feinberg pointed out in the appendix to Justice and Personal Desert (Feinberg
1970).

29
employment, contract, taxes and so on. This argument depends, however, on the justice
of those laws. The question presently at issue is what role the idea that a talent deserves
special reward should play in determining what a legal framework of this kind would
have to be like in order to be just.
Some forms of talent, such as artistic and intellectual abilities, are distinctive
forms of valuable human excellence. This makes certain attitudessuch as admiration
appropriate responses to their exercise. But it does not follow that these attitudes are
appropriately expressed by making those who have them significantly better off
economically, or that those who do not have these talents should accept this excellence as
a justification for their having less. This, again, is just the distinction between the
appropriateness of an attitude and the justifiability of a particular mode of expressing it.
In any event, the talents that receive special reward in a market economy are not
necessarily excellences but rather those abilities that are in demand and in short supply.
So insofar as a claim that talents deserve special reward is thought to justify rewards of
this kind, the relevant desert base is scarcity, which determines which abilities, among
those that are in some demand, will receive greater reward. As Scheffler put it, the
economic value of peoples talents is socially determined in the sense that it depends both
on the number of people with similar talents and on the needs, preferences, and choices
of others (Scheffler 2001, 191).
Here the relevant critical point was made by Rawls, in his remark that no one
deserves his place in the distribution of native endowments (Rawls 1971, 104, emphasis
added). This remark is often read as presupposing the idea that a desert basis must itself
be deserved. But this is not the correct interpretation. Rawls point is not that no one

30
deserves to have endowments that are scarce (although that may be true), but rather that
no one deserves any special reward simply because his abilities are scarcethat mere
scarcity is not a desert basis at all. This is not to deny that institutions that assign
premium prices to scarce talents and resources may not be justifiable, perhaps on grounds
of greater efficiency. If such an institution is justified in this way, and is just, then
individuals with scarce talents are entitled to the rewards that this institution provides.
This, however, is not a desert-based argument but rather an argument for institutional
entitlement, based on a prior conception of justice.
The last claim of desert that I will consider is the claim that individuals deserve to
be rewarded in proportion to their contributions to society. Contributions to the public
good can deserve gratitude. But this is so only if those contributions are made for the
right kind of reasonsroughly, reasons that are not self-interested. Moreover, the
appropriateness of gratitude does not entail the appropriateness of significant economic
reward, or justify the cost of such reward to those who would as a consequence have less.
It may be claimed that, quite apart from gratitude, individuals are entitled to a
reward proportional to their marginal contribution. But as Rawls and Scheffler point out,
an individuals marginal productivity depends on the demand for what he or she can do
and on the contributions others are making, or could make, to the process of production
(Rawls 1971, 271; Scheffler 2001, 191). It depends on the overall productive system and,
I would add, on the justifiability of the form of cooperation that this system involves.
Contribution in this sense is therefore not a distinct property of the individual that is a
basis for a claim of desert.
Conclusion

31
I have identified desert with a particular form of justification: a claim that treating
a person in a certain way is made appropriate simply by what that person is like or has
done, without reference to the good consequences of this treatment, or to the fact that this
treatment is licensed or required by justifiable institutions. After examining some ways in
which the idea of appropriateness can be understood, I have maintained that a certain
(limited) range of attitudes in response to moral wrongdoing can be deserved in the sense
I describe. This idea of desert also plays a role, although not a conclusive role, in the
justification of legal punishment. But, I have argued, a pre-justicial concept of desert has
no role to play in the justification of significant differences in economic benefits.
My claim here is not just that the particular conception of desert that I have
examined earlier in the paper, based on the ideas of appropriateness that I have
explored, plays no role in distributive justice. It is rather that initially plausible claims
that individuals deserve certain economic benefits turn out, on closer examination, either
to be invalid or to reduce to claims of justice of some other identifiable sort.

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