On Discounting Wrongdoers

Abstract We are sometimes permitted to discount the interests of culpable wrongdoers relative to other people’s interests. What explains this? One answer is that culpable wrongdoers deserve less consideration than others because of their culpable wrongdoing (the Desert View). Another is that we may be negatively partial towards wrongdoers because of our negative relationship with them (the Negative Partiality View). We reject both answers. The Desert View fails because it cannot explain how permissions to discount can be sensitive to relational facts. The Negative Partiality View fails because it cannot explain how permissions to discount can be agent-neutral, or independent of an existing relationship with the wrongdoer. We close by outlining a theory of permissible discounting that accounts for both its relationality and its agent-neutrality.