This book offers a new approach to a fundamental question: What is justice? In building his theory, Cupit maintains that injustice should be understood as a form of unfitting treatment--typically the treatment of people as less than they are. Justice is therefore closely related to unjustified contempt and disrespect, and ultimately to desert.

This paper considers on what basis justice may require that people be treated as equals. It begins with an examination of the argument that people are to be treated as equals because they are equals, and suggests reasons for thinking that such an argument is unlikely to succeed. The remainder of the paper considers, and tries to make plausible, the argument that justice requires people be treated as equals because they are individuals. Thus the paper offers some support for the (...) view that the proper foundation of egalitarianism is individualism. (shrink)

It is often supposed that there is a relationship between desert and responsibility: that to be deserving we must be responsible for that which makes us deserving. Indeed, there seems little doubt that a supposed relationship between desert and responsibility, combined with a growing tendency to view less and less as the responsibility of the individual, contributed to the reluctance to appeal to desert which has been a feature of much recent moral and political philosophy. Certainly, if to be deserving (...) we need to be responsible for that which makes us deserving ‘all the way down,’ it is not easy to see how anyone could ever be deserving of anything.I will argue that the claim that we can deserve only on the basis of that for which we are responsible — the desert-responsibility thesis — is false. There is no conceptual connection between desert and responsibility. Nevertheless, it is true that many claims to deserve are undermined if there is a lack of responsibility. (shrink)

Is there a connection between the values of fraternity and outcome equality? Is inequality at odds with fraternity? There are reasons to doubt that it is. First, fraternity requires us to want our ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ to fare well even when they are already better off than we are and their doing better will increase inequality. Second, fraternity seems not to require equality as a matter of fairness. Fairness requires equality, but fraternity does not require fairness.In examining what fraternity requires (...) I discuss Rawls' suggestion that the difference principle corresponds to a natural meaning of fraternity, arguing that fraternity may be even more tolerant of inequality than the difference principle. Nevertheless, I defend the claim that fraternity and equality are linked, albeit not in such a way as to make inequality inconsistent with fraternity. Fraternity is related to equality since equalizing expresses the connectedness at the core of fraternity; but inequality is consistent with fraternity since there are other ways of expressing that connectedness. (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. ;In 'Justice as Fitness' I have argued that a unifying and coherent account of the concept of justice can be given. Injustice, I have suggested, is to be understood in terms of the notion of treating someone unfittingly, that is, by treating them as if they were less, or lower, than they are. This account of justice suggests that desert is central to justice; to treat someone as less than they are (...) is to treat them in a manner in which they deserve not to be treated. It is intended that this account of the concept of justice be consistent with the various conceptions of justice, that is, with the various conceptions of what is and is not just, and that these various conceptions be illuminated by being viewed as interpretations of the 'justice as fitness' concept of justice. ;In the course of defending this view, rule-relative and nonrule-relative justice are compared and contrasted, an attempt is made to place the concept of justice in relation to such concepts as authority, merit and worthiness, degradation and value, and the view that justice is always a matter of desert is defended against the charge that considerations, irreducible to desert without conceptual impropriety, are relevant. The problematic character of people being said to deserve compensation and treatment in accordance with their contribution are explored. Accounts of the obligation to keep a promise, and the political obligation, are offered. It is argued that there is reason to believe that reasons for action are incommensurable. (shrink)

Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 90, Issue 3, Page 602-605, September 2012.