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Unfairness and fairness

a phenomenological analysis

Herbert Spiegelberg

pp. 295-332

The inverted title of this essay calls for an immediate explanation: Why does it put unfairness ahead of fairness? My main reason for this seeming paradox is that the experience of unfairness is a much more striking and stinging phenomenon than that of fairness, to which we respond much more calmly and unemotionally. Already Schopenhauer had asserted the priority of injustice (Unrecht) over justice (Recht).216 More recently Edmond Cahn has made this observation the starting point for his stimulating book-size study of The Sense of Injustice.217

Publication details

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-4337-7_17

Full citation:

Spiegelberg, H. (1986). Unfairness and fairness: a phenomenological analysis, in Steppingstones toward an ethics for fellow existers, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 295-332.

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