Justice as Fittingness

This text puts forward a theory of the nature of justice. The author maintains that injustice is to 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. Geoffrey Cupit offers a discussion of what is at issue when people take differing views on what justice requires. He demonstrates that the language of desert provides a suitable idiom in which to address substantive questions of justice, and shows why acting justly may require respect for differing entitlements, contributions, and needs. In the course of the book many important issues in moral and political philosophy are illuminated. Cupit offers an account of the nature of the obligation to keep a promise, explains how requests can generate reasons for action, and suggests an approach to solving the problem of political obligation.;This book is intended for scholars and students, advanced undergraduate and graduate, of political, moral, and legal philosophy.