Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T13:42:56.146Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

George Sher Desert. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1987.Pp. xiii + 215.

Review products

George Sher Desert. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1987.Pp. xiii + 215.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Richard Keshen
Richard Keshen*
Affiliation:
University College of Cape Breton, Sydney, NS, Canada, B1P 6L2
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Critical Notice
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , December 1990 , pp. 601 - 615
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 This structural unity was noted by both Joel Feinberg and John Kleinig in their ground-breaking papers on desert. See Joel Feinberg, ‘Justice and Personal Desert’ in his collection Doing and Deserving (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1970) 55-87. See also John Kleinig The Concept of Desert,’ American Philosophical Quarterly 8 (1971) 71-8. Relevant, too, is Kleinig's book, Punishment and Desert (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1973). There are other places where Sher echoes Feinberg and Kleinig. Sher's book, however, is a genuine advance over this earlier work, both in its comprehensiveness and in the new territory it explores.

2 In this regard, we might think of Sher's work as closer to what Rawls calls moral theory than to moral philosophy. See John Rawls, ‘Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory,’ The Journal of Philosophy 77 (1980) 554. I should note that in my text I do not distinguish between moral theory and moral philosophy.

3 Herbert Morris, ‘Persons and Punishment’ in Morris, On Guilt and Innocence (Berkeley: University of California Press 1976)

4 G.E.M. Anscombe, ‘Modern Moral Philosophy,’ Philosophy 33 (1958) 1-19

5 Robert Nozick, Philosophical Expla11atiolls (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1981) 452-9

6 Of interest here are articles by James Rachels and Norman Daniels. See James Rachels What People Deserve’ and Norman Daniels ‘Meritocracy’ in John Arthur and William H. Shaw, eds., Justice and Economic Distribution (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall 1978) 150-63 and 164-78 respectively.