Weighing unjust lives

Abstract

Are the lives of those fighting on the unjust side of a war worth less than the lives of those fighting on the just side? It is tempting to answer yes. There is a powerful and popular rationale for this verdict: Things are intrinsically better when people get what they deserve. According to this view, the goodness of a life is the product of one’s desert-adjusted welfare. In this chapter, I highlight the troubling implications that adjusting for desert has in the context of war. The implausibility of these implications calls into question the core idea of the desert-adjusted account: namely, that there is some level of welfare that each person deserves, and things would go best if everyone were at these levels.