Against Equality of Opportunity

by Matt Cavanagh

Overview

These days almost everyone seems to think it obvious that equality of opportunity is at least part of what constitutes a fair society. At the same time they are so vague about what equality of opportunity actually amounts to that it can begin to look like an empty term, a convenient shorthand for the way jobs (or for that matter university places, or positions of power, or merely places on the local sports team) should be allocated, whatever that happens to be.
Matt Cavanagh offers a highly provocative and original new view, suggesting that the way we think about equality and opportunity should be radically changed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199243433
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	05/23/2002
Series:	Oxford Philosophical Monographs
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	8.76(w) x 5.86(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Matt Cavanagh was Lecturer in Philosophy at St Catherine's College, Oxford, 1996-2000.

Table of Contents

Introduction1. Meritocracy2. Equality3. DiscriminationConclusionsReferences, Index

Editorial Reviews

"This is a well-argued, insightful, highly nuanced book, well worth close study by anyone who is concerned to make sense of the concept of equal opportunity. It is a model of close, rigorous, analytic thinking about moral matters."—Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

"Although it does not completely succeed in its ambitious goal of undermining both meritocracy and equality as criteria for equal opportunity, this is a well-argued, insightful, highly nuanced book, well worth close study by anyone who is concerned to make sense of the concept of equal opportunity. It is a model of close, rigorous, analytic thinking about moral matters. It challenges received orthodoxies at several points, and forces all of us to reevaluate our commitment to meritocracy and equality."—Louis Pojman, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

From the Publisher

Cavanagh has undoubtedly highlighted some important areas of debate for philosophers and politicians.

Guardian

Cavanagh's argument…enables us to pierce the cloud of platitudes surrounding the idea of [meritocracy] and see through to the confusion beneath…He is a good bullshit detector… unforgiving rigour

London Review of Books

Excellent...The book fully lives up to its provocative title. In the horse-trading of meritocracy versus equality, few have had the nerve and the imagination to throw out both these ideals at once.

Spectator

Assured, punchy and tenacious… As a piece of consecutive thinking about the goals of defensible public policy in a modern democracy, [t]his book gives an object lesson to anyone who cares about its politics and acknowledges the responsibility to try to understand what is really at stake in them.

Times Higher Education Supplement

this is a well-argued, insightful, highly nuanced book, well worth close study by anyone who is concerned to make sense of the concept of equal opportunity. It is a model of close, rigorous, analytic thinking about moral matters. It challenges received orthodoxies at several points, and forces all of us to reevaluate our commitment to meritocracy and equality.

Notre Dame Philosophical Review

Against Equality of Opportunity is a contrarian book - and all the better for that... In setting out clearly the argument that equality in distribution has no inherent moral importance, the book performs a valuable service.

Independent Tuesday Book