Against Fairness

A polymath philosopher shares lighthearted examples of humanity's unspoken instinct toward favoritism to argue against zealous pursuits of fairness.

A polymath philosopher shares lighthearted examples of humanity's unspoken instinct toward favoritism to argue against zealous pursuits of fairness.

This title was first published in 2000: A systematic analysis of the concept of fairness as a moral notion. The work critically examines and rejects several familiar accounts of fairness - fairness as equality of treatment, as not taking advantage of another, as adherence to rule, and as respect for others - the author proposes an alternative account of fairness as fidelity to social practice. Drawing on examples from a variety of social practices, ranging from the requirement to do one's fair share to the fairness of lotteries and bargaining, this book outlines a new moral theory of fairness and offers insight into the various roles fairness considerations play in our lives and their limitations. Reflecting on the place of fairness and fair mindedness in moral, social, and political thought, this book will be of interest to moral, social and political philosophers as well as those in related areas such as political science and sociology.

This book offers a major new analysis of the political economy in Britain over the past 1,000 years. The author demonstrates an impressive and thorough knowledge of law, economics, politics, medicine and social history. The assessment of the privatisation of the public income and its consequences represents an astonishing tour-de-force.On fairness and efficiency:engages in a wide-ranging sweep of history from pre-Norman times to the present;gives a lucid explanation of the complex economic and political history of Britain that has given rise to the present state of Welfare Capitalism;has great contemporary relevance.·[vbTab]The fundamental links between the distributions of health and wealth in society is of concern to the medical profession, public health professionals, welfare economists, political scientists/politicians, moralists and philosophers.

This book analyzes the 2018 and 2019 men's and women's World Cups to understand how the use of Video Assistant Referees (VAR) affected each tournament. Unlike goal technology, where the decision is entirely left to the machine's algorithm, the VAR still has a human component, making it prone to errors and controversies. Building on the theories of justice, the book quantitatively reviews event-level data while using a historical perspective to depict a novel approach to the effects of VAR in major soccer tournaments. The six chapters examine the use of VAR, discuss when it was not used (but maybe should have been used), and explore how the World Cup evolved with the new technology. Combining the VAR events of 2018 and 2019 with comparable situations from past World Cups guides the reader into debating the meaning of justice and the potential of ever achieving fairness in soccer.

From a New York Times bestselling author, a fresh and detail-rich argument that the best way to lead is to be fair Can you succeed without being a terrible person? We often think not: recognizing that, as the old saying has it, “nice guys finish last.” But does that mean you have to go to the other extreme and be a bully or Machiavellian to get anything done? In The Art of Fairness, bestselling author David Bodanis uses thrilling case studies to show there's a better path, leading neatly in between. He reveals how it was fairness, applied with skill, that led the Empire State Building to be constructed in barely a year––and how the same techniques brought a quiet English debutante to become an acclaimed jungle guerrilla fighter. In ten vivid profiles featuring pilots, presidents, and even the producer of Game of Thrones, we see that the path to greatness doesn't require crushing displays of power or tyrannical ego. Simple fair decency can prevail. With surprising insights from across history––including the downfall of the very man who popularized the phrase “nice guys finish last”––The Art of Fairness charts a refreshing and sustainable new approach to cultivating integrity and influence.

Reconstructing Rawls has one overarching goal: to reclaim Rawls for the Enlightenment—more specifically, the Prussian Enlightenment. Rawls’s so-called political turn in the 1980s, motivated by a newfound interest in pluralism and the accommodation of difference, has been unhealthy for autonomy-based liberalism and has led liberalism more broadly toward cultural relativism, be it in the guise of liberal multiculturalism or critiques of cosmopolitan distributive-justice theories. Robert Taylor believes that it is time to redeem A Theory of Justice’s implicit promise of a universalistic, comprehensive Kantian liberalism. Reconstructing Rawls on Kantian foundations leads to some unorthodox conclusions about justice as fairness, to be sure: for example, it yields a more civic-humanist reading of the priority of political liberty, a more Marxist reading of the priority of fair equality of opportunity, and a more ascetic or antimaterialist reading of the difference principle. It nonetheless leaves us with a theory that is still recognizably Rawlsian and reveals a previously untraveled road out of Theory—a road very different from the one Rawls himself ultimately followed.