Against Fairness

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R3D603IVJ4POF?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

Against Fairness by Stephen T. Asma

This is a short book that argues in favor of nepotism. Author Stephen T. Asma constructs a contrarian against what he calls the “great grid of impartiality.” He argues that the modern notion that we should be fair and impartial to everyone, whether they be family members or strangers, is contrary to hard-wired human psychology. The idea that a father would not pull strings to save the life of his son is not only hard to believe, it is entirely inhuman.

Asma's interest is not in merely excusing favoritism; he wants to demonstrate that favoritism is a kind of virtue that informs other social virtues. Asma points out that favoritism creates a close bond between the subject and object of favoritism. As Johnny Cash sang, “Because your mine, I walk the line.” Favoritism is intertwined with loyalty, generosity and gratitude. These virtues, the virtues of the classical age, have fallen on rough times today. There is one thing that these virtues do which is to create a web that cements a relationship. Asma points out that Americans are bad with gratitude:

“It is hard for many of us to receive a gift. We do fine with birthday presents, wedding gifts, and other institutionalized generosities. But most other gifts come with strings attached, and Americans in particular are uncomfortable with the binding entanglements that strings bring. If we're raised on an ideology of self-reliance, and if our money-based economy has “freed” us from family dependence, then being grateful may not be regular exercise for us.”

Friendship implies favoritism which implies generosity which implies gratitude which implies friendship. There is a circle in the relationships that constitute partiality and favoritism. The severing of the links, perhaps at gratitude, is destructive to the formation and maintenance of friendships, which is perhaps why we have the phenomenon described in “Bowling Alone” of the death of associations and rise of loneliness.

The modern approach devalues partiality to family, friends and tribe. Asma refers to a grid of impartiality rising from Immanuel Kant's rationalism, which required that everyone reason from any particular case to a universal rule. The grid of impartiality is reinforced by the teaching of “fairness” to children, which affirms universal sharing as “fair” and promotes not a bit of envy against those with friends. The acme of this view may be found in Peter Singer who argues that one should not prefer one's parent simply because that person is one's parent. In fact, according to Singer, one should not even prefer oneself, but, presumably, should sell all one has and live at a subsistence level out of a sense of Kantian universalism.

What I found interesting in Asma's book is that he seems to be recreating the insights of Thomas Aquinas, who argued, like Asma, that one justly favors oneself over one's neighbor, one's family over one's neighbor, and one's neighbor over the stranger, although, certainly, where one has the ability to do so, then generosity and charity should be shown to others. Aquinas also understood that it was simply impossible for an embodied soul – a human – to not be particular with respect to love. In the Summa Theologica, Part II-II, Question 26, article 4, Aquinas writes:

“There are two things in man, his spiritual nature and his corporeal nature. And a man is said to love himself by reason of his loving himself with regard to his spiritual nature, as stated above (II-II:25:7): so that accordingly, a man ought, out of charity, to love himself more than he loves any other person.
This is evident from the very reason for loving: since, as stated above (II-II:25:12), God is loved as the principle of good, on which the love of charity is founded; while man, out of charity, loves himself by reason of his being a partaker of the aforesaid good, and loves his neighbor by reason of his fellowship in that good. Now fellowship is a reason for love according to a certain union in relation to God. Wherefore just as unity surpasses union, the fact that man himself has a share of the Divine good, is a more potent reason for loving than that another should be a partner with him in that share. Therefore man, out of charity, ought to love himself more than his neighbor: in sign whereof, a man ought not to give way to any evil of sin, which counteracts his share of happiness, not even that he may free his neighbor from sin.”

I liked a lot of the “Thomistic” elements of Asma's work, but while I agree with its attack on the degraded notion that men should be like angels, I did have questions and concerns with Asma's apparent defense of nepotism. Certainly, people are able to do with their own property as they wish, but when they start appropriating public goods – or the goods of others – to favor their family or friends, then we are running into strong competing concerns. It is certainly the case that cultures which normalize nepotism are more corrupt and less wealthy than those that have an anti-nepotistic tradition. Asma argues that the abuse of nepotism should not be used to condemn nepotism per se, but the problem is that policing abuses is virtually impossible where nepotism is institutionalized.

Nonetheless, I recommend this book as an accessible and interesting text on the subject of friendship and family, which are generally ignored in modern philosophy.