Abstract

There are many ways to distribute burdens and benefits. One of them is to opt for fairness. In this book, Nicolas Rescher purports to explain what this means. The book turns against the tendency to conflate the fairness of a distribution with other valuable properties of them. Frequently a distribution is said to be fair just because it maximizes the satisfaction of preferences or minimizes costs. The point made abundantly clear in this book is that fairness is different. A fair distribution is, Rescher argues, one that has taken all legitimate claims into account in proportion to their strength. Fairness means claim proportionality. Achieving fairness is to treat everyone’s legitimate claim alike, and this means securing neither preference satisfaction, happiness nor wealth. In fact, Rescher does not seem to believe that fairness realizes any moral ideal at all! In Rescher’s view fairness is “not so much a matter of justice as one of mere rationality”.