Just Deserts
There are many slang terms such as “your just deserts” that are used to describe the idea of merit and desert. It is often said that effort deserves success, wrongdoing deserves punishment, innocent suffering deserves sympathy or compensation, virtue deserves happiness, and so on. People think that the getting of what is deserved is just, and that failure to receive what is deserved is unjust. People also believe it’s good that a person gets what they deserves, and bad if they do not, even if they deserves something bad, like punishment. It is assumed, too, that it is wrong to treat people better or worse than they deserve, and right to treat them according to their deserts. In these and other ways, the notion of desert pervades our everyday lives.
The essence of Pojman’s ideas on this subject is that whether good or bad everyone should be rewarded accordingly for their actions and achievements, that people should be held responsible for their actions whether virtuous of vice (Pojman, 1999). I agree fully with Pojman’s idea of just deserts and feel that it is the only fair and just system for interactions within humanity (Pojman, 1999). Specifically, I feel that his insistence that people adhere to a primordial Ur-justice based on merit and desert is essential to a productive society (Pojman, 1999). I also agree with him very strongly that affirmative action is detrimental to society in the end as it promotes mediocrity (Pojman, 1999). The idea of merit and desert is found in every culture, religion, and throughout history to some extent or the other. Even strict utilitarianism allows for some aspects of merit and desert (Pojman, 1999).
However, the idea of deserts can be ...