How to Deserve

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How to DeserveAuthor(s): David SchmidtzSource: Political Theory, Vol. 30, No. 6 (Dec., 2002), pp. 774-799Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3072566Accessed: 06/08/2010 10:36

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HOW TO DESERVE

DAVID SCHMIDTZUniversity ofArizona

People ought to get what they deserve. And what they deserve can dependon

effort,on

performance,or on

excellingin

competition,even when excel-

lence is partly a function of a person's natural gifts. Or so most peoplebelieve. Philosophers often say otherwise. John Rawls famously calls it

one of the fixed points of our considered udgments hat no one deserves his place in thedistribution of natural endowments, any more than one deserves one's initial startingplace in society. The assertion hat a man deserves he superior haracter hat enables himto make the effort to cultivate his abilities is equally problematic; or his character

AUTHOR'S NOTE: My ntellectual debts regarding his essay are many. This s only a partial listof those whose input has been pivotal: David Alm, Julia Annas, Marvin Belzer, Paul Bloomfield,Gillian Brock, Tom Christiano, Andrew Cohen, David Copp, Jonathan Dancy, Peter Danielson,Stephen Darwall, Steve Daskal, John Patrick Diggins, Paul Dotson, Amitai Etzioni, Ray Frey,Allan Gibbard, Charles Goodman, Chris Griffin, Amy Gutmann, Allen Habib, Bill Haines,Richard Healey, Rosalind Hursthouse, Jenann Ismael, David Johnston, Scott LaBarge, Loren

Lomasky, Eduardo Rivera Lopez, Michael McDonald, Fred Miller, Darrel Moellendorf, Richard

Montgomery, Donald Moon, ChristopherMorris, Mark Murphy, an Narveson, Wayne Norman,David Owen, Jeff Paul, Michael Pendlebury, Guido Pincione, Steve Pink, Francis Fox Piven,James Rachels, Peter Railton, Henry Richardson, Dan Russell, Jack Sanders, Daniel Shapiro,Houston Smit, Michael Smith, Rhonda Smith, David Sobel, Horacio Spector, Christine Swanton,Fernando Teson, Mary Tjiattas, David Truncellito, David Velleman, Elizabeth Willott, MattZwolinski, and two anonymous reviewers. I thank audiences at the Rochester Institute of Tech-

nology, Chung Cheng University, Torcuato di Tella Law School, and the Universities of Michi-

gan, West Virginia, Witwatersrand, uckland, Arizona, British Columbia, Calgary, Yale, and

Bowling Green State or their hospitality. n addition to people already named, I want to I thankHahn Hsu, Rob Gressis, Joseph Tolliver, Bob Ware, Rogers Smith and Corey Robin, and MarinaOshana and Kory Swanson or arranging hose talks. I also wish to thank he Social Philosophyand Policy Center at Bowling Green State University, he Centre or Applied Ethics at the Uni-

versity ofBritish

Columbia,he Earhart

Foundation,nd the

University ofArizona

orresearch

support. Finally, I want to thank Chris Maloney. We ive in the same neighborhood and oftenwalk home together as the sun sets behind us, discussingjustice and otherphilosophical opics. Itreasure hose walks, although Chris is not to blame or how I write them up.

POLITICAL HEORY, ol.30 No. 6, December 002 774-799DOI: 10.1177/0090591702238203? 2002 Sage Publications

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Schmidtz HOW TO DESERVE 775

depends in large part upon fortunate amily and social circumstances or which he canclaim no credit. The notion of desert seems not to apply to these cases.

Eric Rakowski sees the passage as an "uncontroversial ssertion, which evenlibertarians uch as Nozick accept."2

The view is, in a way, compelling. Inevitably, our efforts are aided by natu-ral gifts, positional advantages, and sheer uck, so how much can we deserve?And if our very characters esult rom an interplay of those same factors, howcan we deserve anything at all?3 Accordingly, says Samuel Scheffler, "noneof the most prominent contemporary versions of philosophical liberalism

assigns a significant role to desert at the level of fundamental principle."4This essay begins by indicating how desert is conceived in philosophical

literature. The main objective, though, is to consider what we can do to bedeserving. In particular, argue hat there s an aspect of what we do to makeourselves deserving that, although t has not been discussed in the literature,plays a central role in everyday moral life, and for good reason.

I. THE "BIG BANG" THEORY ANDA COMPATIBILISTALTERNATIVE

Nearly everyone would say people ought to get what they deserve. But ifwe ask what people deserve, or on what basis, people begin to disagree. Afew will say we deserve things simply in virtue of being human or being inneed. Many will say we deserve reward n proportion o the effort we put intoour projects or in proportion o the real value our efforts add to those projects.

Some say we deserve on the basis of our manifest talent or our excellence incompetition.5

If we could sort out which of these alleged desert bases are genuine, it ishard to know exactly what the members of the resulting set would have incommon. However, as George Sher plausibly suggests, to judge a persondeserving s to respond o features of the person that we judge to be of value.6To judge Bob deserving of X is to judge Bob worthy of X. Intuitively(although admittedly this is less obvious), to acknowledge that there are

thingsBob can do to be

deservingX is at some level to

acknowledgehat Bob

is a person.7 Something roughly like this is implicit in normal deliberationabout what a person deserves.

The skeptics' theory, n its most sweeping form, depicts desert in such away that to deserve X, we must not only supply the sort of input that isstandardly hought o ground a desert claim; we also must be deserving of the


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776 POLITICAL THEORY December 2002

prior history of the world that caused us to be in a position to supply that

input.8Needless to say, we all have whatever we have partly n virtue of luck, andluck is not a desert maker. Every outcome is influenced by factors that aremorally arbitrary. Arbitrary as a negative connotation, but without furtherargument, we are entitled only to say luck is morally neutral or inert, and thatis how I intend he term arbitrary o be understood here.) But does the suppo-sition that some of an outcome's causal nputs are morally arbitrary ntail thatall of them must be? No. Everyone s lucky to some degree, but there s a bigdifference between being lucky and being merely lucky. The bare fact ofbeing lucky is not what precludes being deserving. Being merely lucky iswhat precludes being deserving, because to say we are merely lucky is to saywe have not supplied inputs (the effort, the excellence) that ground desertclaims. To rebut a desert claim in a given case, we need to show that inputsthat can ground desert claims (and on a nonempty conception, there will besome9) are missing in that case. The fact that there also will be inputs that donot ground desert claims (luck, the Big Bang) is both inevitable and nconse-quential and, thus, goes without saying.

Skeptics say every causal chain has morally arbitrary inks, but no onedoubts that. The idea with genuinely skeptical ramifications s that no chainhas nonarbitrary inks. The argument s that even character, alent, and otherinternal eatures hat constitute us as persons are arbitrary o long as they areproducts of chains of events containing arbitrary inks. The upshot is thatinternal eatures of persons must be uncaused, est they be reduced o the sta-tus of mere luck.

Hard determinism s the view that every event is determined, hus there s

no free will. Skeptics about desert accept an analog of hard determinism:every causal chain traces back to something morally arbitrary, herefore noth-ing is deserved. So, why not respond with an analog of what philosophers allcompatibilism?10 n other words, why not say (somewhat as a compatibilistwould say) that while every event has a cause, some causal chains work theirway through eatures nternal o persons? Such features are not all morallyarbitrary, nless everything s. If a skeptic says, "Character s arbitrary,"nonskeptic replies, "Compared o what? We are talking about features that

make persons persons. If character does not matter, what does?" We distin-guish between outcomes that owe something o a person's choices, character,talent, and effort, and outcomes that do not. 1 Desert makers, f there are suchthings, are relations between outcomes and internal eatures of persons. Ingeneral, nothing is assumed about what caused those features to come intoexistence.


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Is there anything odd or surprising about the fact that we generally makeno

assumptionsabout a desert maker's causal

history? Probablynot. What f

we had been talking about the features of nonpersons? Joel Feinbergobserves, "Art objects deserve admiration; roblems deserve careful consid-eration; bills of legislation deserve to be passed."1 John Kleinig says theGrand Canyon deserves its reputation."3 uch remarks about nonpersons areoffered as small digressions, mentioned n passing and then set aside, but theypoint to something crucial. We never say the Grand Canyon deserves ts repu-tation only if it in turn deserves the natural ndowments on which its reputa-tion is based. We never question artistic judgments by saying, "Even thegreatest of paintings were caused to have the features we admire. Not oneever did anything o deserve being caused to have those features." ntuitively,obviously, it doesn't matter.

Skeptics assume it does matter n the case of persons, but the assumptionappears o be groundless. As with nonpersons, when a person's internal ea-tures support desert claims, the support appears o come from an appreciationof what those features are, not from evidence that he features are uncaused.

Here, then, is where matters currently stand. Ordinary hought aboutdesert would be a recipe for skepticism f it were true that ordinary houghtassumes people deserve credit for doing X only when people in turn deservecredit for having the ability and opportunity o do X. However, insofar asordinary practice does not assume this, ordinary practice has no such prob-lem. We seem to have two options. First, we can say no one deserves any-thing, and that s what we will say if we assume we deserve credit or workinghard only if we in turn deserve credit for being "destined" o work hard. Thesecond option is to say we deserve credit for working hard not because we

deserve to have been destined to work hard, but simply because we did, afterall, work hard. The latter s our ordinary practice.

Neither option is compelling. We are not forced to believe in desert; nei-ther are we forced to be skeptics. We decide. If we take a fresh look, we canask whether we treat people more respectfully when we give them credit forwhat they do or when we deny them credit. Or we can ask what kind of life wehave when we live by one conception rather han another. These are differentquestions, and not the only questions we could ask. Perhaps he answers all

point in the same direction. Perhaps not. Sweeping skepticism s unattractiveto most people, but there s no denying that skepticism s an option, and thatsome do choose to be skeptics.

Refuting the skeptic and answering the question "How can we deserveanything at all?" are different tasks. This chapter answers the question, butnot by refuting skeptics. For those who want an answer-for those who do


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not want to be skeptics-this essay's objective is to make room within a

philosophically respectable heoryof

justicefor the idea that here are

thingswe can do to be deserving.

II. DESERVING A CHANCE

Suppose we know what a person has to do to be deserving. Is there also aquestion about when a person has to do it? James Rachels says, "What peopledeserve always depends on what they have done in the past."14 avid Millersays, "desert udgments are justified on the basis of past and present factsabout ndividuals, never on the basis of states of affairs to be created n thefuture."'5

I think that if we are not careful, we could interpret uch statements n away that would lead us to overlook an important, perhaps even the mostimportant, ategory of desert-making elation. It is a conventional view thatwhat people deserve depends on what they do, and surely t is a conventionalview that we deserve no credit for what we do until after we have done it.There seems to be a further aspect to academic convention, hough, namely,that when we first receive (for example) our natural and positional advan-tages, if we have not already done something to deserve them, it is too late.We are born nto our natural nd positional advantages by mere uck, and thatwhich comes to us by mere luck cannot be deserved.

This further aspect is what I reject. I said being merely lucky precludesbeing deserving. I did not say, and do not believe, that being merely ucky at t,precludes being deserving at t2. Even when action is needed to forge a con-

nection between outcome and internal eatures, I argue, the action need notprecede the outcome. In particular, we have not yet done anything o deserveour natural gifts at the moment of our birth, but that need not matter. Whatmatters, f anything at all matters, s what we do after he fact. Let me make aclaim that may at first seem counterintuitive:

We sometimes deserve X on the basis of what we do after receiving X rather han what wedo before.

Upon receiving a surprisingly good job offer, a new employee vows to workhard to deserve it. No one thinks the vow is paradoxical. No one takes theemployee aside and says, "Relax. There's nothing you can do. Only the pastis relevant, and the past is arbitrary rom a moral point of view." But unlesssuch everyday vows are misguided, we can deserve X on the basis of what wedo after receiving X.


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How can this be? Is it not a brute fact that when we ask whether a persondeserves

X,we look

backward,not forward?

Supposewe

say yes, concedingfor argument's ake that we must look back. Even so, notice we still need toask: backward rom where? Perhaps we look back from where we are but

mistakenly assume we need to look back from where the recipient was at themoment of receiving X. If we look back, a year after hiring the new

employee, wondering whether he deserved he opportunity, what do we ask?We ask what she did with it. When we do that, we are looking back even whilelooking at events that happened after X was received. From that perspective,we see we can be deserving of opportunities.16 We deserve them by not wast-

ing them-by giving them their due, as it were.'7Therefore, even if we necessarily look back when evaluating desert

claims, the crucial point remains hat he use sometimes-even when the useoccurs after the fact-bears on whether a person was worthy of the opportu-nity. Imagine another case. Two students receive scholarships. One workshard and gets excellent grades. The other parties her way through her first

year before finally being expelled for cheating. Does their conduct tell us

nothing about which was more deserving of a scholarship?Can we defend the convention (that whether we deserve X depends on

what happens before we receive X) by saying the students' conduct is rele-vant only because t reveals what they were like before receiving the award? twould appear not. When we look back at the expelled student's disgracefulfirst year, our reason for saying she did not deserve her award has nothing todo with speculation about what she did in high school. We may agree thatboth students were equally qualified or scholarships qua reward. Or supposethey were equally unqualified; both were chosen via clerical error and prior o

the award were equally destined or a lifetime of failure. The difference ies insubsequent performance, not prior qualifications. What grounds our convic-tion that one is more worthy of the scholarship qua opportunity s that one stu-dent gave the opportunity ts due; the other did not. Again, we sometimesdeserve X on the basis of what we do after receiving X rather han what we dobefore.

Needless to say, skeptics greet this conclusion with skepticism. It can lookdubious even to less skeptical philosophers. Why? Part of the problem s that

as philosophers we learn to focus on desert as a compensatory notion. Theidea is, inputs we supply prior o receiving X put a moral scale out of balance,such that our receiving X rebalances he scale. To those who see desert as nec-essarily a compensatory notion, we deserve X only if X represents a restoringof moral balance. We deserve X only if we deserve it qua reward, only if ourreceiving X settles an account.


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In ordinary use, though, desert sometimes is a promissory notion. Some-times our

receivingX is what

putsthe moral scale out of

balance,and our sub-

sequently proving ourselves worthy of X is what restores t. X need not becompensation for already having supplied the requisite inputs. There aretimes when it is the other way around-when supplying he requisite nputs swhat settles the account.

In either case, two things happen, and the second settles the account. Incompensatory ases, desert-making nputs are supplied irst, then the rewardsettles the account. In promissory cases, the opportunity s given first, thensupplying desert-making inputs settles the account. On the promissorymodel, a new employee who vows, "I will do justice to this opportunity. willshow you I deserve t" s not babbling. She is not saying future events will ret-roactively cause it to be the case that her receiving X represents he settling ofan account now. Instead, she is saying future events will settle the account.Her claim is not that she is getting what she already paid for but that she is get-ting what she will pay for.'8

So why does James Rachels assert that, "What people deserve alwaysdepends on what they have done in the past"?'9 Rachels says, "the explana-tion of why past actions are the only bases of desert connects with the fact thatif people were never responsible or their own conduct-if strict determinismwere true-no one would ever deserve anything."20 rucially, when he says,"past actions are the only bases of desert," Rachels is stressing "actions," ot"past." What Rachels sees as the unacceptable lternative s not a theory suchas mine but rather he view that people deserve to be rewarded or their natu-ral endowments. He is thinking of past actions versus past nonactions and isnot considering whether actions postdating X's receipt might be relevant.

That s why Rachels could see himself as explaining why "past actions are theonly bases of desert" when he argues that "if people were never responsiblefor their own conduct,... no one would ever deserve anything." Notice: thisargument n no way connects desert bases to events predating X's receipt. Itconnects desert to action, but not to past action.21

Rachels also says, "People do not deserve things on account of their will-ingness to work but only on account of their actually having worked."22 hereare reasons why Rachels would say this, and he may be exactly right when we

are talking about rewards. It appears analytic that rewards are responses topast performance. However, rewards are not the only kind of thing that can bedeserved. We sometimes also have reasons to say things like, "she deserves achance." We may say a young job candidate deserves a chance not because ofany work she has done but rather because she is plainly a talented and well-meaning person who wants the job and who will throw herself into it if giventhe chance.


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A more senior nternal andidate may be deserving n a different way: that

is, worthyof reward or

past performance. Yet,the idea that an

inexperiencedcandidate can deserve a chance, and for the reasons mentioned, s somethingmost people find compelling. We can be glad they do, too, because thinkingthis way helps to bring t about that opportunities o to those worthy of themin the promissory sense, that is, those who do justice to them when given achance.

If we say a job candidate deserves a chance and then, far from throwingherself into the job, she treats t with contempt, hat would make us wrong.23The promissory aspect of desert will have failed to materialize. She will havehad a chance to balance he account and will have failed to do so.24Note that fany part of the time line is relevant merely as information, t is the part beforeshe was hired, not the part after. The "before" part ustifies the hiring commit-tee's prediction hat she will supply the requisite nputs. The "after" part swhat makes the prediction true.25 We sort out applicants for a reason.Normally, the point is not to reward someone for past conduct but to getsomeone who can do the job. That s why, by the time we reach 2,the questionis not what she did before the opportunity ut what she did with it. The ques-tion at t2 need not and often does not turn on what was already settled at tl.

To further larify the nature of the promissory model, we should separateit into two elements. The first element explains what we can say about Janefrom the perspective of t2. The second element explains what we can sayabout Jane from the perspective of t,.

Element a): A person who receives opportunity X at tl can be deserving at t2 n virtue of hav-

ing done justice to it.

Element (b): A person who receives opportunity X at tl can be deserving at tl in virtue ofwhat she will do if given the chance.

What does element (a) tell us? It tells us that it can be true at t2 that theaccount has been settled. Jane supplied nputs hat did justice to X. We do notsuppose Jane already upplied hose inputs at t1. When we call Jane deservingat t2, as per element (a), we are not denying that she may have been merelylucky at t,. All we are saying is, when the chance to prove herself worthy pre-sented itself, Jane did what she needed to do.

Next consider element (b). We asked what s supposed o be true at t2. If weinstead ask what is supposed o be true at tl, that would be a question for ele-ment (b). Element (b) says Jane can deserve X at tl, but this does not meanJane has already done something such that rewarding her with X at t, settlesan account. Instead, what is supposed to be true at t1 is that Jane is choice-worthy. Specifically, a hiring committee may, at tl, judge Jane's choice-


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worthiness n terms of whether she will settle the account, given the chance.There are various

waysof

formulatinglement

(b)and none are

perfect;how-

ever, when we think of contexts like hiring decisions, it seems natural o saythe hiring committee is looking not merely for someone who theoreticallycan do the job, but for someone who will do the job given a chance, where"given a chance" means not only "if we offer her the job" but also "barringunforeseen catastrophe" nd so on. Also, our nvocation of element (b) at t, is,in effect, a prediction hat by the time we get to t2,we will be in a position toinvoke element (a). We are predicting hat by t2, he will have supplied he rel-evant desert-making nputs. However, we are not merely wagering on futureperformance. Rather, we are wagering that the person has desert-makinginternal features that will translate nto future performance barring unex-pected misfortune. We are saying she is the kind of person who will do the jobgiven the chance. (When we are confident hat a machine will perform well ifwe give it a chance, we generally do not speak of the machine as deserving achance. At very least, we do not mean the same thing when speaking of a per-son's character s when speaking of a machine's characteristics.) Finally, wecould interpret hoice-worthiness as a question of what is true of the candi-

date or as a question of what the committee knows about he candidate. Thereare pros and cons either way. The committeejustifies ts decision by citing thebest evidence it can gather regarding how she will do. Still, we might holdthat what makes t true that she is choice-worthy s the fact that she truly s thekind of person who will supply the requisite desert-makers nd thus becomedeserving at t2 n the sense of the promissory model's element (a).

What the promissory model's element (a) says is that although desert

requires a balance between what Jane gives and what Jane s given, Jane need

not move first. Element (b) says Jane can deserve opportunity X (in the senseof being choice worthy) before she does her part. In contrast, element (a)pointedly does not say Jane can deserve X before doing her part. Element (a)stresses that even if Jane deserves X only after doing her part, t still does notfollow that she has to do her part before receiving X. Element (a) therefore sthe essence of the promissory model's departure rom the idea that wedeserve X only if we deserve t as a reward or past performance. So far as our

purpose s to challenge this idea, we do not need element (b). We need some

version of element (b) only insofar as we seek to vindicate ordinary practice,and n particular ur tendency o speak of candidates as deserving a chance nvirtue of what they can and will do if given a chance.

Admittedly, f a committee nvokes element (b) in concluding that Jane schoice worthy at t,, then whether he committee udged correctly remains obe seen. Is this a puzzle? If so, it is less a puzzle about desert and more a puz-zle about prediction. To see this, consider an analogy. Suppose at t, we say


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Jane will be married t t2.Jane hen gets married. n that case, events at t2haveindeed settled the truth-value of a claim uttered at tl. Does

anyonefind this

puzzling? So far as I know, no one speaks of future events as backward-causing a prediction o be true. Future events simply settle that a predictionwas true. Events at t2can settle the truth-value f a claim like, "She'll get mar-ried, given a chance." They also can settle the truth-value of a claim like,"She'll do justice to X, given a chance." There comes a time when we can say,"You aid she'd get married; t turns out you were right," r when a committeecan say, "We said she'd do justice to the opportunity; t turns out we wereright." n either case, Jane settles what had been unsettled. "She deserves X,"meaning she will do justice to it if given a chance, s no more paradoxical han"Salt s soluble," meaning it will dissolve in water if given a chance.

Insofar as the hypothesis that Jane deserves a chance at t, is a matter ofwhether Jane has relevant dispositional properties at tl, and nsofar as the testof this hypothesis lies in the future, the promissory model's element (b)implies that moral ife sometimes nvolves decision making under conditionsof uncertainty. Hiring committees make decisions about which candidatesare most worthy with no guarantee hat they are deciding correctly. When acommittee judges at t1 that Jane deserves a chance, they are placing a bet.They also are udging her character. They may even be transforming er char-acter nsofar as their trust may inspire Jane o become the kind of person theyjudge her to be. At tl, though, it remains to be seen whether Jane is or willbecome that kind of person. Jane settles that later, in an epistemologicalsense, and perhaps n a metaphysical sense too, insofar as Jane will have todecide, not merely reveal, whether she really is that trustworthy, hat hard-working, and so on. The committee will have to wait and see. Since life trulyis difficult n precisely this way, I regard t as a virtue of my theory hat t cor-rectly depicts the difficulty. I have no wish to develop a theory that makesmoral life look simpler than it really is.26

In passing, what can the promissory model tell us about unsuccessful can-didates, or more generally about people who lack opportunity? Element (a) issilent on questions about people who never get an opportunity, ut element(b) is bolder, allowing us to go further n defending ordinary practice. Ele-ment (b) can say about unsuccessful candidates roughly what it says about

successful ones; namely, they may well deserve X in the sense that they toowould have done justice to X, given a chance. It is no part of my thesis to sug-gest that people who lack opportunities are undeserving.

Also in passing, would I entertain a promissory theory of punishment?("He may be innocent now, but if we put him in jail, he'll turn nto the sort ofperson who belongs in jail.") No. Reward and punishment are two sides of thecompensatory model's coin, but no such parallel exists between opportunity


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and punishment. The transformative ole of expectations that s, the fact thatwe tend to live

upto them, or

down,as the case

may be)can

ustifythe show of

faith involved in granting an opportunity, ut it cannot ustify punishment. fJean Valjean wrongly is imprisoned and says, "OK, if they treat me like acriminal, I'll act like one," that cannot vindicate the wrongful punishment.Indeed, that the punishment nduces further wrongs further condemns it. Incontrast, f Valjean ater is rocked by a bishop's kindness and says, "OK, fthey treat me like a decent human being, I'll act like one," hat does vindicatethe bishop's kindness.27

III. DESERVING AND EARNING

We commonly show respect for people's achievements by saying thingslike, "You deserved it." Sometimes we refer to things people did prior toreceiving a reward. Sometimes we refer to things people did since receivingan opportunity. The issue is not merely about how we happen o use words. Icontend hat he locution "You deserved t" s as apt n one case as in the other.

If we want to indulge n a bit of linguistic egislation, hough, here are dis-tinctions here worth marking. n particular, he terms deserving and earningare nearly nterchangeable n ordinary use, but there s a difference, and t willbe useful to give the difference a bit more emphasis than t gets in ordinaryuse.

A paycheck s not earned until the work is done. Upon being hired, I willdo what I need to do to earn the paycheck, but the future does not settle that Ihave earned the paycheck now. I have not earned t until I put the work in.

Thus, while we do speak of people as deserving a chance even before theysupply the requisite nputs, we do not speak of people as having earned a pay-check in advance of supplying requisite inputs. In part, this appears to bebecause what Jane deserves has relatively more to do with her character,while the question of what Jane has earned has relatively more to do with herwork. Jane's character can be manifest before she supplies the requisiteinputs. Her work cannot similarly be manifest prior o supplying he requisiteinputs since her work is the requisite nput when the question concerns what

she has earned. Jane can be deserving at t, in virtue of what she will do, ifgiven a chance. To have earned a paycheck at tl, though, she has to have donethe work at t,. Therefore, hat she would earn the check at t2 s not relevant owhat Jane has earned at t,, even though-according to element (b)-it ishighly relevant o whether Jane deserves a chance at tl. Therefore, here s noanalog of element (b) for earning. So far, then, the compensatory modelappears on target as a thesis about earning.


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Strikingly, hough, there is an analog of element (a). We acknowledgedthat I have not earned he

paycheckuntil I

putthe work n. Does it follow that I

earn the check only if I do the workfirst, before the check is issued? No! Ineveryday life, we do not doubt that a new but trusted employee, paid inadvance, can earn he money after he fact. Money is paid at t,, and then whatwas not true at t1 becomes true at t2, namely, the scale is now balanced andmoney given at t1has been earned. It becomes true at t2 hat Jane did what shewas paid to do. Therefore, we cannot save the convention that we deserve Xonly if our receiving t represents a reward or previously supplied nputs) byrecasting t as a thesis about earning.28 he concepts of deserving and earningare distinct at tl, but at t2, hey converge. We can deserve X at t2,and can haveearned X at t2, n virtue of work done after X was received.

An unearned opportunity s an unearned opportunity, but an unearnedopportunity may yet be redeemed. Though unearned, t remains possible todo justice to it. That possibility is what skeptics ignore, and that possibilityplays a central role in ordinary moral life. It is what ordinary people oftenhave in mind when they say a person deserves a chance. If any conception or-tures ordinary anguage, it is the convention that we cannot deserve whatcomes to us by mere luck. Language aside, the more important ssue is thatthe convention embodies a resolution o ignore the possibility of redemptioninvolved in working to do justice to an opportunity. That ignored possibilityis of immense moral significance. The process of redeeming opportunities sat the heart of so much of what is beneficial and even noble about ordinaryhuman commerce.

In a popular ilm about World War I, Saving Private Ryan, Captain Milleris fatally injured while rescuing Private Ryan. As Miller dies, he says to

Ryan, "Earn t!" At that moment, neither character s under any illusionsabout whether Ryan has earned he rescue. He has not, and they both know it.Neither is Ryan choice worthy in the sense of the promissory model's ele-ment (b), and they both know it.29 Still, as both characters also know, that isnot the end of the story, or it is now up to Ryan to settle whether Miller's sac-rifice was in vain.30 t is not too late for Ryan to strive to redeem the sacrificeby going on to be as worthy of it as a person could be.

If there s anything Ryan can do to earn the rescue, it will be at t2,not t,, as

analogous to the promissory model's element (a). That is, we could hearMiller's dying words as commanding Ryan to treat the rescue as if it wereadvance salary to be earned ater. Fittingly, the film ends with a scene fromdecades later. An elderly Ryan visits Miller's grave. Anguished, Ryanimplores his wife to, "Tell me I've been a good man!" The implication: fRyan has been a good man, then he has done all he could to earn the rescuethat gave him a chance to be a good man.31


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In some ways, Ryan's situation s like a lottery winner's. If Miller hands

Ryana

winning lotteryticket and

sayswith his

dying breath,"Earn t," s it

possible for Ryan to earn t? No one would say Ryan has earned t at t1,32butthat s not the end of the story because even when a windfall s sheer uck, it isnot only sheer uck. It is also a challenge, and there s a right way of respond-ing to it. Some day, there will be a fact of the matter egarding whether Ryanresponded well.

Private Ryan's situation also is like that of a person born with natural andpositional advantages. We are not born having done anything to deserveadvantages as rewards. So, the compensatory model has no resources thatcould underwrite claims of desert at the moment of birth. Also, at thatmoment, there s no basis for deeming us choice worthy, f choosing us wereeven an issue. Thus, the promissory model's element (b) likewise has noresources o underwrite laims of desert at the moment of birth. Still, regard-ing our advantages, here is something we can do later on, in the manner ofelement (a). We can do justice to them.

IV WHY ONE CONCEPTIONRATHER THAN ANOTHER?

The main issue is not whether we use the same word when referring othose who did their best before receiving rewards and to those who did theirbest after receiving opportunities. We do, but the larger question is, are wejustified in thinking desert claims are as weighty in the second instance as inthe first?

I argued hat n everyday ife we grasp he concept of deserving a chance nvirtue of what we do with it. I would not appeal to common sense to justifyour commonsense understanding, hough. To justify, we look elsewhere.This section indicates (although only indicates) where we might look.

Part of what makes it difficult even to begin such a discussion is that, intrying to justify, we risk trivializing. We risk seeming to ground a thing inconsiderations ess important han the thing itself. That could especially be aproblem with anything seen as an attempt o justify a conception of justice.

When assessing alternative onceptions of justice, we generally cannot settlethe contest by appeal o yet another ofty but contested deal of justice. How-ever, f, in trying o avoid begging the question, we appeal o something otherthan (our conception of) justice itself, we are bound to be appealing o thatwhich seems less important. But that s okay. We are not seeking the founda-tion of that which is itself foundational. We simply ask what can be said onthe conception's behalf.


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Margaret Holmgren ays justice "demands hat each individual be securedthe most fundamental benefits in life

compatiblewith like benefits for

all,"then adds, "the opportunity o progress by our own efforts is a fundamentalinterest."33 ichard Miller concurs: "Most people (including most of theworst off) want to use what resources hey have actively, o get ahead on theirown steam, and this reflects a proper valuing of human capacities."34 om-menting on Rawls, Holmgren says contractors n the original position wouldknow that, as a perfectly general feature of human psychology, people notonly want to be given stuff; they want to be involved n successful endeavors,and they want their success to be deserved. Accordingly, the most grosslyrisk-averse contractors, ocusing only on the prospects of the least advan-taged economic class, would be anxious to ensure that members of that classhave an opportunity o advance by their own effort. "Rather han focusingexclusively on the share of income or wealth they would receive, they wouldchoose a principle of distribution which would ensure that they would eachhave this opportunity."35

Holmgren's claim will seem incompatible with the difference principle(which is what risk-averse contractors n Rawls's original position are sup-posed to choose) if we interpret he principle as a ground-level mandate orredistribution. Why? Because the idea that Jane can be deserving hreatens olimit our redistributive mandate. By contrast, uppose we interpret he differ-ence principle not as a ground-level principle of just distribution that s, notas a principle that says "keep giving to the least advantaged until you reachthe point where, if you tried to give them more, they end up getting less") butrather as a meta-level criterion or evaluating basic structure, whose thrustconcerns whether society's basic structure works to the benefit of the least

advantaged that is, as a principle that says we choose between rules like"give people what they deserve" and "give everything o the least advantaged,free of charge" by asking which is best for the least advantaged n actualempirical practice). The latter s undoubtedly he principle's canonical nter-pretation.36 n that case, the difference principle, far from competing withprinciples of desert, can support he idea that people can deserve a chance. Itwould do so if Holmgren s correct o say the least advantaged want and needthe chance to prosper by their own merit. Likewise, it would do so if it is his-

torically true that the least advantaged tend to flourish within, and onlywithin, systems that respect what they and others can do to deserve rewardsand also (perhaps especially) opportunities.37 We need not be Rawlsians tosee these considerations as weighty.

Likewise, we need not be utilitarians to care about consequences.Feinberg says, "The awarding of prizes directly promotes cultivation of theskills which constitute bases of competition."38 awls seems to agree with


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Feinberg when he says, "Other hings equal, one conception ofjustice is pref-erable to another when its broader

consequencesare more desirable."39 et,

neither one sees himself as a utilitarian, and rightly so. While utility is not adesert maker, he fact remains that the things that are desert makers (effort,excellence) can make people better off, and making people better off is mor-ally significant. Rachels adds,

In a system that respects deserts, someone who treats others well may expect to be treatedwell in return, while someone who treats others badly cannot. If this aspect of moral ifewere eliminated, morality would have no reward and mmorality would have no bad con-

sequences, so there would be less reason for one to be concerned with it.40

In short, our ordinary notion of desert serves a purpose. One (if only one)key way in which a society benefits people is by distributing ruits of cooper-ation in proportion o contributions o the cooperative effort. That is howsocieties induce contributions n the first place. Desert as normally under-stood is part of the glue that holds society together as a productive venture.Respecting desert as normally understood respecting he inputs people sup-

ply) makes people in general better off. To be sure, it would be a misuse ofterms to say Bob deserves a pay raise on the grounds hat giving him a raisewould have utility. We may say Bob deserves a raise because he does greatwork, does more than his share, and does it without complaint. We do not saygiving Bob a raise would have utility. But if we ask why we should acknowl-edge that Bob is a great worker, a big part of what makes Bob's efforts worthyof recognition s that his efforts are of a kind that make us all better off. If weask why Bob is deserving, the answer should be: Bob supplied the requisite

inputs.If we ask

whywe care whether Bob

supplied nputshat

gointo mak-

ing a person deserving, one answer would be: supplying those inputs makesBob the kind of person we want our neighbors, our children, and ourselves tobe, and makes us all better off to boot.

The point need not be to maximize utility so much as to show respect forcustoms and institutions and characters hat make people better off. (Eitherway, desert tracks constructive effort rather han effort per se. Effort tokensneed not be successful, but they do need to be of a type that tends to produceworthy results.) If we are to do justice to individual persons, then when theirindividuality manifests tself in constructive ffort, we had better be preparedto honor hat effort and to respect he hopes and dreams hat uel it. We do thatwhen we regard productive workers as deserving and when we refuse to seetheir good fortune as a moral problem hat somehow discredits heir hard work.

When we say, "She deserves a chance," how does that differ from sayingshe needs a chance? Deserves suggests she has some realized or potential


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merit n virtue of which she ought to be given a chance, whereas needs sug-

gestsneither real nor

potentialmerit n

any straightforward ay. However,f

we say, "All she needs is a chance," hat comes close to saying she deserves achance. It comes close to saying she is the kind of person who will give theopportunity ts due.

Nonetheless, I agree with Gillian Brock that whatever room we make fordesert, the fact remains hat people's needs matter, at least at some level.41 nfact, I would go so far as to say desert matters partly because needs matter.That Bob needs X is no reason to say Bob deserves X for the same reason hatX's utility is no reason to say Bob deserves X. And if that s true, then need isnot a desert basis. But there are other ways for need to be relevant. Supposefor simplicity's sake that the only way to deserve X is to work hard or X. Inthat case, by hypothesis, need is not at all relevant o whether Bob deserves X.All that matters s that Bob worked hard or X. Now suppose we go on to ask afurther question, "What difference does it make whether Bob worked hard orX? Who cares?" Here is where need becomes relevant because we may saythat as a matter of empirical fact, there is a general reason why people workhard or X, and the reason s that they need X. So, although need has nothingto do with our reason or thinking Bob deserves X, it remains a reason or car-ing about desert. One reason o give people what they deserve s that t renderspeople willing and able to act in ways that help them (and the people aroundthem) to get what they need, and even to flourish. Welfare considerations(such as need, or more generally what helps us flourish) are not desert mak-ers, but they can still provide non-question-begging reasons for taking agiven desert maker seriously (e.g., for respecting people who work hard).42

When the question is whether a person did justice to an opportunity, we

typically do not look back to events occurring before the opportunity wasreceived, and often that is a good thing. I indicated how we might argue thepoint on consequentialist rounds. t may be a good thing on Kantian groundstoo. Although I will not press the point, the idea is, there s something neces-sarily and laudably ahistorical about simply respecting what people bring tothe table. We respect their work, period. We admire their character, period.We do not argue (or worse, stipulate as dogma) that people are products ofnature/nurture nd thus ineligible for moral credit. Sometimes, we simply

give people credit for what they achieve and for what they are. And some-times, simply giving people credit s the essence of treating hem as personsrather han as mere confluences of historical forces.

Part of the oddity in doubting whether Jane deserves her character s thatJane's character s not something hat happened o her. It is her. Or f we wereto imagine treating Jane and her character as separate hings, then it wouldhave to be Jane's character hat we credit for being of good character, o the


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question of why Jane per se should get the credit would be moot. In truth, ofcourse, t is

people,not their characters, hat work hard. Thus, f we

sayexem-

plary character s morally arbitrary, t is people, not merely character, hat weare resolving not to take seriously.

Martin Luther King once said, "I have a dream hat my four children willone day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skinbut by the content of their character." King did not dream his children wouldlive in a nation where their characters would be seen as accidents for whichthey could claim no credit. King asks us to judge his children by the content oftheir character, not by its causes. That is how we take character eriously. Iftheir characters re not taken seriously, hey will get neither he rewards northe opportunities hey deserve.

This is no place for lengthy discussion of desert's relations o other moraldesiderata, but these remarks indicate that the possibility of deserving achance s not mere common sense. In the end, the bottom ine is in part a prac-tical question, somewhat amenable o empirical esting: which way of talking(about what we can do to be deserving) empowers people to make use of theiropportunities?

V JUSTICE, NSTITUTIONAL ND NATURAL

To Feinberg, "desert s a natural moral notion (that s, one which is not log-ically tied to institutions, practices, and rules)."43 awls, meanwhile, con-cedes the legitimacy of desert claims as institutional artifacts. Faster runnersdeserve medals according o rules created or the express purpose of giving

medals to faster runners. However, Rawls hastens to add, such claims (1)have no standing outside the context of particular nstitutional rules, andtherefore 2) do not bear on what rules we should have in the first place.44

Other senses of desert, of course, are ess closely tied to institutional truc-tures. A medalist who trains for years deserves admiration n a way that amedalist who wins purely on the strength of genetic gifts does not, even whenthe two are equally deserving of medals by the lights of the institutional ules.Likewise, athletes prove themselves worthy of the faith of their families and

coaches by doing all they can to win and by being role models in the process,even when institutional rules are silent on the relevance of such inputs. Butsetting this aside for a moment, even if we were seeking only to understanddesert's institutional ontours, we still would need to know what can defeatclaims grounded n rules of particular nstitutions. Canadian sprinter BenJohnson ran the fastest time in the hundred-meter ace at the 1988 Olympics.He did nothing to show that he deserved his genetic gifts, or his competitive


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character, r the excellence of his coaches. All he did was run faster than the

competition,which on its face entails he deserved the

goldmedal.

However, blood tests revealed hat Johnson had taken steroids. Did it mat-ter? Yes it did. The fact that he took steroids raises questions of desert,whereas the bare fact that he had a background he had genes; he grew up inan environment) does not. Being born in the wake of the Big Bang did notstop Johnson from deserving a medal, but there is a real question aboutwhether aking steroids preempts nputs by which sprinters ome to deservemedals. We may ask whether steroids are in fact banned. That is an institu-tional question. We also may ask whether steroids should be banned. Thatquestion s straightforwardly re-institutional: ts answer 1) does not turn onparticular nstitutional ules and (2) does bear on what rules we should havein the first place.

I agree that some desert claims carry moral weight as institutional arti-facts. The point, though, is that some claims do not simply happen to carryweight as institutional artifacts. They ought to carry weight as institutionalartifacts because they carry weight pre-institutionally. We see winningsprinters s deserving when we see their excellence as resulting rom years offerocious dedication. If instead we thought the key to winning was to takelarger doses of more dangerous chemicals, we would not regard winners asdeserving. This difference s not an institutional rtifact. We see the cases dif-ferently even when the chemicals are permitted by the institutional ules.

Part of our reason or caring s that he race's point s to set an example-toshow us all how excellent a human being can be. If we have to explain successin terms of steroids rather han in terms of features of persons that grounddesert claims in a pre-institutional ense, the institution s not working. Like-

wise, if the competition inspires impressionable viewers to take steroidsrather han to develop their talents, the institution s not working. If one wayof competing risks competitors' ives and sets a dangerous example for chil-dren who idolize them, while a version that bans steroids is healthier foreveryone, then we have pre-institutional rounds or thinking t was right toestablish, publicize, and enforce the ban, and that my countryman Ben John-son did not deserve a medal.45

VI. CONCLUSIONS

This essay's purpose has been to offer a non-skeptical onception of desertto those who wish to make room within a philosophically respectable heoryof justice for the idea that there are things we can do to be deserving. Spe-cifically, it is possible for Jane to deserve an opportunity. Moreover, whether


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Jane deserved an opportunity an depend at least partly on what she did withit. It is crucial hat the scales be balanced. It is not crucial hat

componentsof

the balance be supplied in a particular rder. If X is conferred irst and thedesert base is supplied ater, that too is a balancing of the moral scale. Thispossibility, although not yet a subject of philosophical debate, is central toordinary moral life.

The import of the promissory model's element (a) is that what was oncemorally arbitrary eed not remain so. The most valuable hings we are givenin life are opportunities, nd he main thing we do to deserve hem is to do jus-tice to them after he fact. Good luck cannot rob us of the chance to act in waysthat make people deserving (although bad luck can, which is one reason whybad luck is bad).46 he import of element (b) is that we can accommodate heidea that people can deserve a chance. They can deserve a chance not becauseof what they have done but because of what they can and will do, if only wegive them a chance.

We need to keep this essay's conclusions in perspective. What I call"deserving a chance" s not the whole of desert. Desert s not the whole ofjus-tice. Justice s not the whole of morality.47 his part of a larger heory tells us

to treat opportunities s challenges and to respect those who meet their ownchallenges in fitting ways, but this part does not answer all questions. It doesnot say what Wilt Chamberlain hould have been paid or what opportunitiesWilt should have had.48 t answers one question: what can Wilt Chamberlainor anyone blessed by good fortune do to be deserving? ts answer s: when welook back on Chamberlain's career, wondering whether he deserved hispackage of natural and positional advantages, we are not restricted o consid-ering what he did before receiving that package. We can acknowledge that

what really matters, f anything matters, s what he did with that package.49I followed Rawls in assuming for argument's ake that natural and posi-

tional advantages are on a par, but we do well to hesitate here. As just men-tioned, not every mportant uestion s a question about desert, and n particu-lar, t would be a mistake o assume Wilt needs to deserve his natural ssets inorder to be entitled to them. Conceptions of desert respond to the fact thatpeople are active agents. Conceptions of entitlement respond o the fact thatpeople are separate agents. As a separate agent, it may be no one else's busi-

ness whether Wilt does justice to the potential given to him by luck of thedraw in the natural ottery. Wilt is not indebted to anyone for his naturalassets. No scale is out of balance merely in virtue of Wilt having characteris-tics that make him Wilt. Still, even if it is no one else's business whether Wiltdoes justice to his potential, he fact remains hat Wilt will do or fail to do jus-tice to it. Regardless of whether t is anyone else's business, there are thingsWilt can do to be deserving.


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This conception makes room not for honoring hose who have opportuni-ties as

comparedo those who do not but

simplyfor

honoring peoplewho do

what they can to be deserving of their opportunities. This part of the largertheory asks not whether Wilt has the right salary but whether he has the rightcharacter. More precisely, this part asks whether Wilt has internal eaturesrelating o the outcome n relevant ways, such that he outcome s not simply amatter of arbitrary uck (unless everything s). This part asks about characteras manifested in action-whether Wilt has done or will do what he can todeserve his salary, whatever his salary happens to be.

Desert is not an essentially competitive notion. The fundamental questionis whether a person has supplied the requisite nputs, not whether he personhas done more than someone else has. There are cases like the following:

1. Wilt Chamberlain has X and you have Y,2. Wilt did something to deserve X while you did something to deserve Y,3. X is more than Y, and (so far as desert is concerned)4. there is nothing wrong with X being more than Y, despite the fact that Wilt does not

deserve "more han you" under that description.

In other words, the first question about Wilt is not whether Wilt has donesomething to deserve more than you but whether Wilt has done something odeserve what he has. Perhaps here was never a time when an impartial udge,weighing your performance against Wilt's, concluded or had any reason toconclude that Wilt's prize should be larger han yours. All that happened sthat Wilt did justice to his opportunities nd you did justice to yours. At issueis not a relation between you and Wilt; rather, what is at issue is one relationbetween what Wilt did and what Wilt has and a second relation between whatyou did and what you have. That is all.

If a central distributor were charged with the task of distributing ccordingto desert, and if resources were scarce, then the central distributor presum-ably would have to make a series of comparative udgments about what peo-ple deserve, and then allocate funds so as to produce a pattern f shares rack-ing the pattern of people's relative deserts. (Thus, if the average colleaguedeserves a ten percent raise but we have only enough to give average raises offive percent, hen we cannot give everyone what they deserve, but we can giveeveryone the same percentage of what they deserve.) The situation s differ-ent if there is no central distributor. f Wilt worked hard for his salary of Xwhile you worked hard or your salary of Y, then there s something apt aboutWilt having X and you having Y. Each of you supplied desert-making nputsconnecting you to your respective shares. Perhaps t would be impossible fora central distributor o justify allocating X to Wilt and Y to you, but by


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hypothesis, here was no such allocation decision, and there s no central dis-tributor who needs to

justify makingsuch a decision. This does not mean the

difference between X and Y needs no justification (on, say, egalitariangrounds). The point is only that the difference does not need justifying in thesame way deliberately creating he difference would need justifying.

One justification or giving people credit or peacefully making ull use oftheir opportunities s that doing so helps people live peaceful and productivelives. It empowers people to make full use of their opportunities. However,our reasons to respect desert as normally understood also are reasons torespect desert's imits as normally understood. n particular, here are limitsto what a society can do, and limits to what it can expect its citizens to do, toensure that people get what they deserve. Thus, even something as funda-mental as the principle hat people ought to get what they deserve has limits.

In particular, just system works to minimize the extent to which people'sentitlements ly in the face of what they deserve, but not at a cost of compro-mising people's ability to form stable expectations regarding theirentitlements and thus to get on with their lives in peaceful and productiveways. It goes both ways, though, or desert also corrects he caprices of right-ful entitlements, and that too is a good thing. For example, a proprietor mayknow her employee is entitled to a certain wage while also seeing that theemployee is exceptionally productive and (in both promissory and compen-satory senses) deserves a raise. If she cares enough about desert, she restruc-tures her rightful holdings (her payroll) accordingly, benefiting not only theemployee but probably her company and her customers as well. A societycannot work without a "rule of law" system that secures people's savings andearned wages, thereby enabling people to plan their ives,50but neither can a

society's rule of law function properly n the absence of an ethos that deeplyrespects what people can do to be deserving.51 art of our ob as moral agentsis to do justice to opportunities mbedded n our entitlements. t is in meetingthat challenge that we make entitlement systems work.

NOTES

1. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Belknap, 1971), 104.2. Eric Rakowski, Equal Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 112. SamuelScheffler ikewise calls the passage "uncontroversial." ee Scheffler, "Responsibility, ReactiveAttitudes, and Liberalism n Philosophy and Politics," Philosophy and Public Affairs 21 (1992):299-323, here p. 307. Indeed, F. A. Hayek says, "A good mind or a fine voice, a beautiful ace or askillful hand, and a ready wit or an attractive ersonality are n large measure as independent f a

person's efforts as the opportunities r experiences he has had." Hayek insists it is neither desir-able nor practicable o ask basic structure o distribute ccording o desert. See Hayek, The Con-


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stitution of Liberty Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 94. David Gauthier ays, "Wemay agree with Rawls that no one deserves her natural apacities. Being the person one is, is not a

matter of desert," although Gauthier doubts that this fact has normative implications. SeeGauthier, Moral by Agreement Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 220.

3. Rawls's positive theory of justice is meant to apply only to society's basic structure, buthis critique of desert s not similarly constrained nd cannot be constrained merely by stipulatingthat t is constrained. When Rawls says, "the concept of desert seems not to apply" o any casewhere outcomes are influenced by natural advantages or characters), he is making a claim notabout basic structure but about the larger moral universe. In particular, e is claiming that thelarger moral universe contains nothing other han his own first principle of justice) to rein in thedifference principle as the test of basic structure's ustness.

4. Scheffler, "Responsibility," 01.5. Joel Feinberg coins the term desert base to refer o factors hat ground desert claims. The

idea is that every well-formed desert claim is a three-place elation of the form "P deserves X invirtue of feature E" See "Justice and Personal Desert," n Doing and Deserving (Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press, 1970), 58. I do not know whether t is possible to produce a completecatalog of all possible desert bases. Suffice it to say, the standard bases on which persons are

commonly said to be deserving nclude character, ffort, achievement, and (at least insofar as it isconstructively exercised) talent.

6. See George Sher, Desert (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 195. See alsoJan Narveson, "Deserving Profits," n Profits and Morality, ed. Robin Cowan and Mario Rizzo(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 48-97, esp. 50-51.

7. This idea would seem more awkward f we were thinking of what it means to deservepunishment, but it has a Kantian pedigree. See Christopher Morris, "Punishment nd Loss ofMoral Standing," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 21 (1991): 53-79.

8. Is this Rawls's view? Perhaps. Rawls repeatedly stresses, and thus evidently thinks itmatters, hat, "Even he willingness to make an effort, to try, and so to be deserving n the ordi-nary sense is itself dependent upon happy family and social circumstances" Theory of Justice,74). In any case, many authors endorse such a view, and many are inspired o do so by Rawls.Most recently, Gillian Brock, "Just Deserts and Needs," Southern Journal of Philosophy 37(1999): 165-88. See her section on "How can we deserve anything since we don't deserve our

asset bases?"For better or worse, such a theory cannot sort people out. To Rawlsians, his is good. Wantingto say inequalities hould be arranged o as maximally o benefit he least advantaged, Rawlsiansregard as unwelcome competition the idea that people deserve more-and therefore shouldreceive more-if and when and because their talents and efforts contribute more to society.Rawls's critics have responded by rejecting he premise that, to be a desert maker, an input mustitself be deserved n turn. For example, see Narveson, "Deserving Profits," 7; Sher, Desert, 24;and Alan Zaitchik, "On Deserving to Deserve," Philosophy and Public Affairs 6 (1977): 370-88,at 373. That is roughly where that debate stands.

Michael Walzer says, "Advocates of equality have often felt compelled to deny the reality of

desert." n a footnote, Walzer ays he is thinking n particular f Rawls. Walzer portrays he anti-desert argument as supposing

the capacity to make an effort or to endure pain is, like all their other capacities, only thearbitrary ift of nature or nurture. But this is an odd argument, or while its purpose s toleave us with persons of equal entitlement, t is hard o see that t leaves us with persons atall. How are we to conceive of these men and women once we have come to view theircapacities and achievements as accidental accessories, like hats and coats they just hap-pen to be wearing? How, indeed, are they to conceive of themselves?


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See Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 260.9. If, on a given conception of desert, here are no desert makers at all-no inputs we could

supply that would make us deserving-then that conception s empty. On a nonempty concep-tion, there s a real question about what a person does or does not deserve; here will be inputs hata person could supply, or fail to supply.

10. Within he context of the free will debate, a compatibilist s someone who agrees with thehard determinist hat every event has a cause but then notes, contra he hard determinist, hat hisis compatible with the free-will thesis because that thesis says not that our actions are uncausedbut rather hat our own choices are integral parts of the causal chains that culminate in ouractions. I am not endorsing compatibilism here but simply borrowing he structure f the idea.

11. I borrow he felicitous "owing something" ocution from James Rachels, "What PeopleDeserve," Can Ethics Provide Answers? (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997), 175-97,at 184.

12. Feinberg, "Justice and Personal Desert," 55.13. John Kleinig, "The Concept of Desert," American Philosophical Quarterly 8 (1971): 71-

78.14. Rachels, "What People Deserve," 176.15. David Miller, Social Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 93.16. I speak interchangeably f deserving a chance, being deserving of a chance, and being

worthy of it. Sometimes, it is more natural o describe a person as being deserving of X ratherthan as deserving X, especially when the question concerns opportunity ather han reward. Butthis is a verbal point. If a graduate tudent aid, "No one deserves anything, yet there s much ofwhich people are deserving," we would think the student was making some sort of joke.

17. Is this a sufficient condition? No. If something s wrong with the opportunity, s when wehave a chance to use stolen property, hen not wasting it does not suffice to show we deserve it.We could say the same of standard heories about deserving rewards: when we know the rewardis stolen property, qualifying for it does not suffice to show we deserve it.

18. A few writers at least hint in different ways at the idea that desert can have a forward-looking component. Most prominently, Fred Feldman argues hat a soldier who volunteers or asuicide mission can deserve a medal in advance. However, while I find much in Feldman withwhich I agree, and in particular hat there may be reason to award a medal in advance, the casedoes not fit

mymodel. The medal is not an

opportunity.t is a reward.

Feldmandoes not

arguethat people can deserve opportunities r that people can deserve them n virtue of doing ustice tothem.) See Feldman, "Desert: Reconsideration f Some Received Wisdom," Mind 104 (1995):63-77, at 70-71.

Jeremy Waldron and Fred Miller see forward-looking lements in Aristotle's discussion ofmeritocracy n distributing political offices. Aristotle (Politics, book III, chap. 12, 1282b, line30ff) says,

When a number of flute players are equal n their art, here s no reason why those of themwho are better born should have better flutes given to them; for they will not play anybetter on the flute, and the superior nstrument hould be reserved for him who is thesuperior artist.

See Fred D. Miller, "Sovereignty nd Political Rights," Aristoteles Politik, ed. Otfried Hoffe(Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2001), 107-19. Intriguingly, Waldron uggests a school might chooseamong candidates by comparing how meritorious he school would be if it hired one rather hananother. See Waldron, "The Wisdom of the Multitude: Some Reflections on Book 3, Chapter 11of Aristotle's Politics," Political Theory 23 (1995): 563-84 at 573.

19. Rachels, "What People Deserve," 176.


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20. Ibid., 180.21. In light of this discussion, should we reassess our interpretation f quotations from

Rachels and Miller with which this section began? When they say that what we deserve dependson what we have done in the past, and never on the future, should we suppose they meant onlythat what we deserve depends on what we do? Should we go even further nd suppose they werein favor of the proposition hat we can deserve an opportunity n virtue of what we will do with it?To my knowledge, nothing hey say explicitly rules out this reinterpretation, nd certainly I hopethey would accept the proposition oday, but the idea that hey had this idea in mind at the time isbaseless. At the time, they did not accept the proposition hat we can deserve X in virtue of whatwe do after receiving X. Neither did they reject it. At the time they were writing, it had notoccurred o anyone to be for it, or against t. The contribution f this essay is not to defend the

proposition against egions of committed enemies but simply to bring t to people's attention as a

possible position.22. Rachels, "What People Deserve," 185.23. Note: being wrong about what the candidate deserved n this sense does not imply that we

were wrong about other desert bases as well. It may remain rue that, say, the candidate had the

highest score on the aptitude est. It is no part of my view that all desert bases (even those pertain-ing specifically to opportunities) tand or fall with, or are reducible to, the promissory notionintroduced here.

24. If the candidate reats the job with contempt, then she has supplied neither the perfor-mance nor even the good-faith effort that he hiring committee expected. If instead he candidatefails through no fault of her own, then the committee cannot hold it against her. Furthermore, fthe reason or her failure s not something hat he committee could have foreseen-if it is simplya stroke of bad luck-then the committee cannot blame itself for having chosen wrongly either.They may correctly udge in retrospect hat although the new employee failed, it was not herfault, and they were still right to believe she deserved a chance in the sense of element (b).Although she failed to do justice to the opportunity, hat is because she did not really get theopportunity hat the committee intended. If she had really gotten the chance, she would havedone justice to it. (By analogy, suppose we decide to give salt a chance to dissolve in water, andthen through no fault of ours, what we actually end up doing is giving it a chance to dissolve inolive oil. If the salt fails to dissolve, we still can insist the salt would have dissolved in water,

given the chance.)25. Recall David Miller's claim that "desert udgments are ustified on the basis of past andpresent acts about ndividuals." can agree hat he epistemological ustification f desert claims sbackward-looking ecause hat s where he information s, while still holding hat ruth makers orsome desert claims can lie in the future. (We would say the same of predictions n general.)

26. I thank Guido Pincione and Martin Farrell or their insight on this point.27. Jean Valjean s a character rom Victor Hugo, Les Miserables (Paris: Hetzel, 1888).28. However, we might defend a version of Fred Feldman's hesis in this way. (See note 18.)

The soldier, awarded a medal n advance, does not deserve t and has not earned t. (The medal san award, not an opportunity. f it is deserved at all, it must be deserved qua award, which is to say

it must be deserved along lines specified by the compensatory model.) Even so, it can make senseto honor he soldier now for what the soldier s about o do. Moreover, after he soldier makes theheroic sacrifice, it will then make perfect sense to speak of the soldier as having earned themedal.

29. As the story goes, the reason why High Command orders Ryan's rescue has nothing o dowith Ryan's worthiness. Ryan's three brothers have just died in battle. The point of rescuingRyan s to avoid having o send a telegram o Ryan's mother aying her entire amily has ust beenwiped out.


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30. Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, one of the most moving speeches ever made,gains its rhetorical power from precisely this point, speaking as it does of the unfinished work of

those who died in battle, calling on us to make sure heir ast full measure of devotion shall not bein vain.

31. It is worth noting that Ryan's story is neutral with regard o the relative significance ofalternative desert bases. Where the elderly Ryan's wife might say the relevant basis is effort andthus that Ryan is deserving n virtue of having done all he could, Ryan himself may see achieve-ment as the relevant basis, thus concluding that despite his efforts, he has not accomplishednearly enough to make him worthy of all the lives that were sacrificed to save his.

The problem s general. If sufficiently great sacrifices were made so as to put us in a positionto flourish, we have to wonder whether here s anything we can do to be worthy of those sacri-fices. There s one easy answer, namely, that f we do all we can, then we have done all anyonecould ask. Yet, f we are reflective, we cannot help but think his answer s too easy and that hereis no guarantee hat "all we can" will truly be enough.

32. If the case were more like the kind of case covered by element (b), Miller conceivablymight say Ryan deserves the ticket. Suppose Miller needs to select someone from a list of appli-cants and sees that Ryan would move mountains o prove himself worthy. n that case, deemingRyan choice worthy, on that basis, might be Miller's best-justified option.

33. Margaret Holmgren, "Justifying Desert Claims: Desert and Opportunity," ournal ofValue nquiry 20 (1986): 265-78 at 274.

34. Richard W. Miller, "Too Much Inequality," Social Philosophy and Policy 19 (2002):275-313.

35. Holmgren, "Justifying Desert Claims," 275.36. Unfortunately, we naturally lip into thinking of bargainers s choosing a ground-level

plan for redistribution. Rawls himself slips in this way when he says,

There s a tendency for common sense to suppose that income and wealth, and the goodthings in life generally, hould be distributed ccording o desert.... Now justice as fair-ness rejects this conception. Such a principle would not be chosen in the original posi-tion. (A Theory of Justice, p. 310)

In a way, it is true hat such a principle would not be chosen, but the reason s because distri-

butional principles are not on the menu. They are not even the kind of thing that bargainerschoose. What bargainers hoose are meta-level principles or evaluating hings like distributionaccording o desert.

37. By the lights of the difference principle, t should matter hat it is the least advantagedwho can least afford he self-stifling cynicism that goes with believing no one deserves anything;neither an they afford he license for repression hat goes with the more advantaged elieving noone deserves anything.

38. Feinberg, "Justice and Personal Desert," 80.39. Ibid., 6.40. Rachels, "What People Deserve," 190.

41. Brock, "Just Deserts," 166.42. To keep this in perspective, hough, we should keep in mind that he basic concept of jus-

tice often is determinate nough that we can see what is just without needing to appeal to othergoals and values. For example, we know it is unjust deliberately o punish an innocent person. Itis analytic hat punishment s not what the innocent are due. We do not appeal o consequences odecide that. The only time we appeal o considerations xternal o the basic concept, such as con-sequences, s when the basic concept s not enough to sort out competing claims of rival concep-tions. That is all.


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43. Feinberg, "Justice and Personal Desert," 56.44. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 103.

45. This conclusion does not presuppose the promissory model. The possibility of pre-institutional desert is manifest even within the compensatory ramework.

46. For example, f Private Ryan is killed by a stray bullet within minutes of having been res-cued, then there s no fact of the matter about whether he did justice to the opportunity o live a

good life since as it happens he did not actually have any such opportunity. Bad luck robbed himof it.

47. I try to fit this into a more comprehensive heory n The Elements of Justice, n progress.48. The infamous Wilt Chamberlain xample comes from Nozick's discussion of "How Lib-

erty Upsets Patterns." Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books,1974), 160-64.

49. I have followed Rawls in assuming or argument's ake that natural nd positional advan-tages are on a par. do not intend o be relying on any such assumption, hough. I am sympatheticto the idea that t is a mistake even to ask whether people deserve their natural ssets. People arenot deserving; neither are they undeserving. nstead, he real questions about natural assets are

questions of entitlement. Because we are separate persons, our (unchosen!) representatives nthe Rawlsian original position have no right o treat our natural ssets as common property o beallocated on grounds of desert or anything else. We do not come to the bargaining able hoping towalk away with as big a piece of ourselves (and of others) as possible. If we cannot come to thetable as unquestioned elf-owners, then we do not come to the table at all. Or at least, we do notcome voluntarily but are nstead

broughto the table

againstour will, as community assets rather

than as separate persons. I thank Paul Dotson for especially helpful discussion of this point.50. Jeremy Waldron, "The Rule of Law in Contemporary Liberal Theory," Ratio Juris 2

(1989): 79-96.51. The promissory model obviously departs rom Rawls-inspired kepticism. Likewise, the

promissory model obviously departs rom Nozick's historical and unpatterned ntitlement he-

ory. Although he promissory model is historical, t also is patterned. See Nozick, Anarchy, State,and Utopia, 157.

David Schmidtz schmidtz@ .arizona.edu) s a professor ofphilosophy andjoint profes-sor of economics at the University of Arizona. He is coauthor of Social Welfare and Indi-vidual Responsibility Cambridge, with Robert Goodin), author of Rational Choice andMoral Agency (Princeton), coeditor of Environmental Ethics: What Really Matters,What Really Works Oxford, with Elizabeth Willott), nd editor of Robert Nozick (Cam-bridge). His essay for this issue is part of a larger work on The Elements of Justice.

How to Deserve

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