Serena Olsaretti brings together new essays by leading moral and political philosophers on the nature of desert and justice, their relations with each other and with other values. Does justice require that individuals get what they deserve? What exactly is involved in giving people what they deserve? Does treating people as responsible agents require that we make room for desert in the economic sphere, as well as in the attribution of moral praise and blame and in the dispensing of punishment? How does respecting desert square with considerations of equality? Does desert, like justice, have a...

Does justice require that individuals get what they deserve? Serena Olsaretti brings together new essays by leading moral and political philosophers examining the relation between desert and justice; they also illuminate the nature of distributive justice, and the relationship between desert and other values, such as equality and responsibility.

Defenders of the free market argue that inequalities of income are "just" because they are deserved, and that they are what free individuals are entitled to. Far from supporting free market inequalities, this book argues that, when we examine the principle of "desert" and the notions of "liberty" and "choice" invoked by defenders of the free market, the conception of justice that would accommodate these notions calls for their elimination. The book will be of interest to readers in political philosophy, political theory, and normative economics.

Distributive justice has come to the fore in political philosophy: how should we arrange our social and economic institutions so as to distribute benefits and burdens fairly? Thirty-eight leading figures from philosophy and political theory present specially written critical assessments of the key issues in this flourishing area of research.