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When whatever you do, you get what you least deserve

In this post, David Benatar (U. Cape Town) discusses his article recently published in the Journal of Applied Philosophy on the paradox of desert, exploring the issues that arise from ‘acting rightly’ and the costs it may incur.


(C) David Benatar. Camondo Stairs, Galata, Istanbul, 2022

Imagine that you are a soldier fighting a militia that is embedded within an urban civilian population. You face situations in which, in the fog of war, you are unsure whether the person you confront is a civilian or a combatant, not least because the combatants you are fighting often dress like civilians. You can either shoot and ask questions later, or you can pause, even momentarily, to take stock, and risk being shot.

Depending on the precise circumstances, pausing may be either a moral requirement or merely supererogatory (that is, a case of going beyond the call of duty). Either way, the soldier who pauses is morally superior to the soldier who shoots without hesitation. However, there will be situations in which a soldier is killed precisely because he acted in the morally better way.

Understanding the paradox

This is only one example of what I call the “paradox of desert”. This paradox is not the familiar observation that “bad things happen to good people”. Instead, it is that the very thing, namely acting rightly, that incurs the cost, also makes the cost (especially) undeserved.

The paradox arises is various ways. It is not always the case that the person who fails to act rightly deserves the fate suffered by the person who does act rightly. This is partly because the phrase “acting rightly” can mean either “doing one’s duty” or “going beyond the call of duty”.

If, for example, pausing before shooting is supererogatory and not a moral requirement, then we certainly cannot say that the soldier who shoots deserves to die. However, even in such circumstances we can say that the soldier who pauses, least deserves to die.

Another reason why a person who does not act rightly may not deserve the fate that befalls the person who does act rightly, is that nobody may deserve that fate. For example, it is clearly unreasonable to think that somebody who fails to act as a whistle-blower deserves to die, even if that is the fate that befalls the person who is a whistle-blower. However, it remains the case that the whistle-blower is especially undeserving of paying the price of acting rightly.

The paradox of desert manifests very often, and not only in extraordinary circumstances such as war or whistleblowing. For example, extremely charitable people may give away so much of what they have, that they later find themselves unable to afford some important good, such as health care.

Similarly, a person who assiduously avoids contributing to global warming may, for that reason, be deprived of benefits, such as reunions with geographically distant but emotionally proximate relatives. By contrast, the person who flies without compunction thereby gains those benefits.

The paradox of desert has both retrospective and prospective manifestations. Retrospectively, we simply observe that somebody got what they least deserved. Prospectively, the paradox generates a dilemma for the person who is deciding whether to act rightly. Should you act rightly and pay the price, or should you not act rightly and thereby avoid a cost by not acting rightly? What you deserve is not fixed until you act, but however you act, you will get what you least deserve. That is paradoxical.

Responding to the paradox

One possible response to the paradox is to deny that the costs of acting rightly are net costs. This response will be effective in some situations. For example, charitable contributions can benefit not only the recipients of charity but also the givers.

However, while it is reasonable to think that acting rightly brings some reward, enough reward sometimes to outweigh the costs of acting rightly, it is implausible to think that the rewards of acting rightly always outweigh the costs. This is because of how severe the costs sometimes are. They might include death, considerable suffering, imprisonment, and social ostracism.

The paradox of desert does not have to arise in every circumstance. It need arise only sometimes, which it does when the costs of acting rightly are greater than any benefit of doing so. Indeed, it is very likely that the paradox of desert arises with great regularity. If we look carefully at the human world, we find that although it sometimes does pay to be good, the reverse is also often the case. This is not a license to act wrongly, although it may sometimes be a valid reason not to go beyond the call of duty. Recognizing the paradox of desert can itself have value. Although some instances of the paradox of desert are not avoidable, others are. At least collectively, we can limit the situations in which acting rightly is a net cost, and acting wrongly is a net benefit. Thus, if we recognize the paradox of desert, we can go some way to meliorating its manifestations.

What’s really at stake with Open Access research? The Case of Sci-Hub and the “Robin Hood of Science”

A mural dedicated to Sci-Hub at UNAM. Txtdgtl, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

This is a guest post by Georgiana Turculet (Universitat Pompeu Fabra).

In his recently published “More Open Access, More Inequality in the Academia”, Alex Volacu aptly criticizes present Open Access (OA) policies for giving rise to structural inequalities among researchers, and increasing revenues only for publishers. His analysis is aimed at contextualizing some recent academic events, that is, the board of the well-known Journal of Political Philosophy resigning due to pressures from publishers to increase the intake of open access publications. However, it would benefit from considering the wider context of recent alternative form of resistance to corporate publishers’ pressures.

Beyond the Ivory Tower Interview with Dana Mills

This is the latest interview in our Beyond the Ivory Tower series, an interview between Dana Mills and Zsuzsanna Chappell about Mills’s activist work in Israel-Palestine. Dana Mills is a writer, dancer, and peace and human rights advocate. She received her DPhil from the University of Oxford in 2014. As an academic, she has held posts, among other institutions, at the University of Oxford, NYU, Northwestern University, American Dance Festival, Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance, University of Amsterdam and the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. Since 2021 she has been working in Israeli-Palestinian civil society on a variety of issues. Mills has written many articles and three books: Dance and Politics: Moving beyond Boundaries (MUP, 2016); a biography of Rosa Luxemburg (Reaktion, 2020) and Dance and Activism: a century of radical dance across the world (Bloomsbury, 2021).

An inverted verification principle for political theory

What do these four countries have in common?

Protecting Territorial Minorities: Defensive Federalism

In this post Marc Sanjaume-Calvet (Universitat Pompeu Fabra), discusses the role of federalism as a way of protecting from the tyranny of the majority, safeguarding both against the ills of centralised power and territorial self-government. The reflections in this post stems from his recently published book, coedited with Professor Ferran Requejo (UPF), Defensive Federalism Protecting Territorial Minorities from the “Tyranny of the Majority” (2023, Routledge).

Image by George Becker from Pexels
Image by George Becker from Pexels

Disney’s Frozen: Acceptance, Passing and Covering (Part 2)

In this two-part blog post, Zsuzsanna Chappell examines the issues Disney’s Frozen films raise about the possibilities and problems faced by people who do not conform to our idea of “normal” or “usual”. The story raises hopes for those of us who are “unusual” or living with “difference”, but she argues that in the end we just end up with new forms of discrimination and new demands to fit in with the majority. Part 1 (“Otherness, Masking and Control”) can be found here.

Disney Frozen two film banner. Anna, Elsa, Kristoff, Sven, Olaf, wintery forest background

How the animal industry undermines consumers’ autonomy

In this post, Rubén Marciel (UPF and UB) and Pablo Magaña (UPF) discuss their article recently published in the Journal of Applied Philosophy on the ethical legitimacy of misleading commercial speech for ‘green’ or ‘ethically produced’ animal products.

Photo by Mae Mu with Unsplash Licence.

Disney’s Frozen: Otherness, Masking and Control (Part 1)

In this two-part blog post, Zsuzsanna Chappell examines the issues Disney’s Frozen films raise about the possibilities and problems faced by people who do not conform to our idea of “normal” or “usual” . The story raises hopes for those of us who are “unusual” or living with “difference”, but she argues that in the end we just end up with new forms of discrimination and new demands to fit in with the majority.

More Open Access, More Inequality in the Academia

For many political philosophers, the beginning of 2024 has turned out to be – in one respect – rather disconcerting, as it ushers in the widespread boycott of one of the community’s leading publications. Many readers of this blog will no doubt be familiar with the unfolding situation. In April 2023, Wiley decided to remove Robert Goodin from his position as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Political Philosophy at the end of the year. This in turn led to swift resignations from the Editorial Board of the journal, and a statement of non-cooperation signed by more than a thousand political philosophers, pledging not to submit or review papers for the journal, or to join its editorial ranks, unless Goodin is reinstated. Since this has not happened, with JPP’s website not indicating any editorial composition as of the moment when this article was published, the boycott is now in effect. The likely demise of the Journal of Political Philosophy as a consequence of these developments is profoundly distressing. But the wider context which led to it is even more worrying, not only for political philosophers and not only in regard to research quality, but also in regard to the deepening of academic inequality in both philosophy and many other research fields as well.

Good Friendships for Real People

In this post Simon Keller (Victoria) discusses his recently published article in the Journal of Applied Philosophy, in which he asks what it means to be a good friend in non-ideal circumstances.

Image by efes from Pixabay

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