Some theses on desert

Abstract

Consider the idea that suffering of some specific kind is deserved by those who are guilty of moral wrongdoing. Feeling guilty is a prime example. It might be said that it is noninstrumentally good that one who is guilty feel guilty (at the right time and to the right degree), or that feeling guilty (at the right time and to the right degree) is apt or fitting for one who is guilty. Each of these claims constitutes an interesting thesis about desert, given certain understandings of what desert is. After examining these claims, the paper briefly explores the idea that an offender might deserve certain forms of treatment by others. The paper concludes by contrasting the modest theses on which it focuses with a far bolder one, to the effect that if we are morally responsible, then it makes sense to suppose that some of us might deserve to suffer eternal torment. The more modest theses do not commit one to anything of this sort.

Keywords:

• blameworthiness
• guilt
• desert
• suffering
• noninstrumental good

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Zac Cogley, Stephen Kearns, two anonymous referees, and especially Michael McKenna and Michael Zimmerman for their thoughtful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Notes

It is sometimes held that one can be blameworthy without having done anything wrong, for example, if one has done the right thing for a very bad reason. I do not mean to deny this possibility, but for my purposes here it will be simpler to understand those who are guilty in the way suggested in the text. I do not think the simplification undermines any of what I have to say.

Feinberg maintains: ‘To say that a person deserves something is to say that there is a certain sort of propriety in his having it’ (1970, 56).

Feinberg (1970, 83–5) sees desert this way. Zimmerman, who holds that ‘considerations of desert are, in part, considerations of what ought to be’ (1988, 162), also takes it to be ‘a prima facie matter’ (162).

Bennett (2002, 147) takes retributivism to be ‘the thought that it is non-contingently a good thing that those who have done wrong should undergo certain forms of suffering’. (Much of my discussion here is inspired by Bennett's paper.) Scanlon states what he calls The Desert Thesis as ‘the idea that when a person has done something that is morally wrong it is morally better that he or she should suffer some loss in consequence’ (1998, 274), or, more simply, the thought that ‘it is good that the person [who has behaved wrongly] should suffer’ (277).

Scanlon regards this idea as ‘morally indefensible’ (1998, 274). However, he does hold that it can be appropriate for a guilty person to feel guilty, and that such a reaction is ‘made appropriate by the way the person has governed him- or herself’ (277). Thus, he might accept some variant of a thesis like T2.

Bennett (2002) provides an illuminating description of this process.

One might think that even if the goodness of a guilty person's acknowledging her guilt does not hinge on that state of affairs causing further stages of the process of moral reintegration, its value is nevertheless a matter of some relation to the final portion of such a process. However, insofar as the acknowledgment seems good, it would seem that way even if the process of moral reintegration were never actually completed by anyone. Hence, its value appears not to hinge on its relation to any actual completion of such a process.

It might be suggested that, while Harman accepts that actions can be wrong and that human agents sometimes do wrong, he rejects the idea that we are ever blameworthy for our misdeeds. However, were this so, he would reject the very terms of my discussion here, for I have said that by ‘the guilty’ I mean those who are blameworthy for moral wrongs.

I am not proposing that the feeling of guilt is developed from one's sympathetic sorrow at others' misfortune, or any such thing. My point, rather, is that the states are alike in these respects: each is a not-entirely-cognitive psychological state that is, by its nature, to some extent unpleasant to be in. I have suggested, further, that in each case it might sometimes be in some respect noninstrumentally good that a certain individual be in this state.

The thought need not be about any specific misdeed. One can feel guilty without knowing why. And one might reject the thought; one can feel guilty without accepting that one is guilty.

‘It is sometimes said that feeling guilty for having done something necessarily involves the belief that one should be made to suffer in some way for having done it’ (Scanlon 1998, 274). I make no such claim.

The view that there can be goods that are extrinsic but noninstrumental is advanced – I think persuasively – by Kagan (1998), Korsgaard (1983), and Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen (2000).