This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Notes
For the classic statement of the latter challenge see John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, revised edition (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999/1971), pp. 19–26.
See Amartya Sen, “Rights and Agency,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 11, No. 1, (1982); David Sosa, “Consequences of Consequentialism,” Mind, Vol. 102, No. 405 (1993); John Broome. Weighing Goods: Equality, Uncertainty and Time (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1995); Fred Feldman, “Adjusting Utility for Justice: A Consequentialist Reply to the Objection from Justice,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. LV, No. (3) (1995); Fred Feldman, “Justice, Desert and the Repugnant Conclusion,” Utilitas, Vol. 7, No. 2 (1995) and Douglas W. Portmore, “Can an Act-Consequentialist Theory Be Agent Relative?” American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 4 (2001).
See Franz Brentano, The Origin of Our Knowledge of Right and Wrong trans. Roderick M. Chisholm and Elizabeth H. Schneewind (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009/1889), p. 100; G.E. Moore, Principia Ethica, revised edition. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993/1903), pp. 263–264; W.D. Ross, The Right and the Good, Phillip Stratton-Lake ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002/1930), pp. 57–58, 72, 138. For a more recent defense of that view see Thomas Hurka, “The Common Structure of Virtue and Desert,” Ethics, Vol. 112, No. 1 (2001) and Shelly Kagan, The Geometry of Desert (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 628–634.
See Ross, op. cit., p. 35.
Feldman’s proposal has been defended and further developed by Neil Feit and Stephen Kershnar, “Explaining the Geometry of Desert,” Public Affairs Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 4 (2004); Richard Arneson, “Desert and Equality,” in Nils Holtug and Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen eds., Egalitarianism: New Essays on the Nature and Value of Equality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 282–283 and Bradford Skow, “How to Adjust Utility for Desert,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 90, No. 2 (2012).
See Peter Vallentyne, “Taking Justice Too Seriously,” Utilitas. 7(2) (1995); Erik Carlson, “Consequentialism, Distribution and Desert,” Utilitas, Vol. 9, No. 3 (1997); Owen McLeod, “Adjusting Utility for Justice: A Re-examination of the Connection between Desert and Intrinsic Value,” in Kris McDaniel, Jason R. Raibley, Richard Feldman, and Michael J. Zimmerman, eds., The Good, the Right, Life and Death: Essays in Honor of Fred Feldman (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2006); and Gustaf Arrhenius, “Desert as Fit: An Axiomatic Analysis,” in Kris McDaniel et al, eds., The Good, the Right, Life and Death: Essays in Honor of Fred Feldman (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2006).
On the contrast between rule-utilitarianism and justicized act-utilitarianism see Brad Hooker, “Feldman, Rule-Consequentialism, and Desert,” in Kris McDaniel, et al., eds., The Good, the Right, Life and Death: Essays in Honor of Fred Feldman (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2006) and Brad Hooker, “Ideal Code, Real World: A Rule-Consequentialist Theory of Morality,” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 104–107.
Feldman, “Adjusting Utility for Justice,” p. 573.
On this point see Arrhenius, op. cit., pp. 5–6 and Hurka, op. cit., pp. 10–11. Elsewhere Feldman defends the view that the intrinsic value of pleasure is unconditional. See Fred Feldman, “On the Intrinsic Value of Pleasures,” Ethics, Vol. 107, No. 3 (1997). Not surprisingly, therefore, he now explicitly accepts the view that desert and utility represent two independent sources of intrinsic value. See Fred Feldman, “Return to Twin Peaks: On the Intrinsic Moral Significance of Equality,” in Serena Olsaretti ed. Desert and Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 148.
See Ingmar Persson, “Ambiguities in Feldman’s Desert-adjusted Values,” Utilitas Vol. 9, No. 3 (1997).
Note that Carlson, op. cit., Arrhenius, op. cit., and Skow, op. cit. outline how the axiology may be consistently formulated based on the fit interpretation.
Fred Feldman, “Desert: Reconsideration of Some Received Wisdom,” Mind, Vol. 104, No. 413 (1995).
See Feldman, “Justice, Desert and the Repugnant Conclusion,” pp. 194–195.
Ross, op. cit., p. 138.
See Feldman, “Justice, Desert and the Repugnant Conclusion”.
Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), chap. 17.
Feldman, ibid, pp. 201–203. Compare with Gustaf Arrhenius, “Feldman’s Desert-Adjusted Utilitarianism and Population Ethics,” Utilitas 15(2) (2003).
Feldman, “Justice, Desert and the Repugnant Conclusion,” p. 198.
Although see Vallentyne, op. cit.
See Skow, op. cit.
Feldman, “Adjusting Utility for Justice,” pp. 582–583.
Feldman, “Justice, Desert and the Repugnant Conclusion,” p. 203.
For further clarification of the moderate deontological view see Shelly Kagan, Normative Ethics (Boulder, Co.: Westview, 1998), pp. 79–84.
See, for example, Parfit, op. cit., pp. 329–345.
See Sosa, op. cit.
See Christine Korsgaard, “Two Distinctions in Goodness,” Philosophical Review, Vol. 92, No. 2 (1983).
See also Feldman “Desert: Reconsideration of Some Received Wisdom,” p. 63 and “Justice, Desert and the Repugnant Conclusion,” pp. 196–197.
A similar line of argument is presented by E.F. Carritt in The Theory of Morals: An Introduction to Ethical Philosophy (London: Oxford University Press, 1928), pp. 72–73.
Feldman, “Adjusting Utility for Justice,” pp. 573–574.
Moore, op. cit., pp. 78–80.
See, for example, Hurka, 2001, pp. 10–11.
Derek Parfit, “Equality or Priority?” in Andrew Mason ed. Ideals of Equality (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998).
See, for example, Rawls, op. cit., pp. 87 & 254.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Wigley, S. Justicized Consequentialism: Prioritizing the Right or the Good?. J Value Inquiry 46, 467–479 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-013-9361-5
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-013-9361-5