Desert is Shorthand for Justice: Defining desert in terms of justice rather than justice in terms of desert.

In debates about desert and justice, some philosophers endorse the claim that justice can be defined in terms of desert. Among those who endorse this claim, some give desert a limited role in determining what is just, while others equate justice with giving each person what he or she deserves. I shall in this paper argue that these views of desert and justice have the relationship backwards. Instead of defining justice in terms of desert, we ought to define desert in terms of justice. Desert, I propose, should be understood as shorthand for justice. More precisely, a desert claim should be understood as a claim about the benefits and burdens that it is just for someone or something to have. To say, “She deserves X”, is thus shorthand for the statement, “It is just that she has X”. For instance, “She deserves a raise” means “It is just that she gets a raise”. Desert cannot therefore supply a premise for determining justice, as is the common view among desert theorists. Upon my view, the proposition that justice requires each to get what he or she deserves is analytically true – hence, the proposition has no argumentative force in defining justice. Desert should rather be seen a conclusion to an argument about what justice requires, an argument that must be independent of desert in order to avoid circularity. Even though desert is without argumentative force, it is nevertheless a useful concept, because it functions as a shorthand that allows us to “zoom in” on a particular aspect of justice, namely the benefits and burdens that a person should have as a matter of justice. I consider ordinary language and philosophical conceptions of desert, and I argue that the proposed concept can accommodate typical expressions of desert.