My response to Shelly Kagan’s book, The Geometry of Desert, is to raise both
general and more specific issues. I criticise Kagan’s way of setting up his project. I will
suggest many factors other than desert better explain Kagan’s cases. I then examine more
particular aspects of the project. I investigate Kagan’s discussion of what he calls the
V-shaped skyline. According to Kagan, the V-shaped skyline represents the idea that it is
more important that the very vicious and the very virtuous get what they deserve than that the
morally neutral get what they deserve. He finds this view attractive. I will suggest that the
V-shaped skyline does not represent Kagan’s idea, and that there are independent reasons to
reject the V-shaped skyline. Finally, I explore the possibility that Kagan’s account of desert
implies that we have reasons not only to alter people’s levels of well-being to fit their levels of
virtue, but also reasons to alter people’s levels of virtue to fit their levels of well-being.
Kagan’s way of representing desert suggests that we have such reasons. However, I argue that
it is implausible that we do. This casts doubt on Kagan’s way of understanding desert.

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Available

• Moving Mountains: Variations on a Theme by Shelly Kagan