{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","uuid":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","normalized_title":"timeforthingslaborleisureandtheriseofmassconsumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","isbns":["9780674250529","9780674250536","9780674979512"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":355,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%20for%20Things%20Labor%2C%20Leisure%2C%20and%20the%20Rise%20of%20Mass%20Consumption","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/search"},"page":{"printed_page":126,"pdf_page":134,"physical_index":134,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"4369fce18cdcb8b5a0412da3314707cd277926b3dfc150396b13693e16703130"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"To complicate matters further, before the nineteenth century the word fair primarily had an aesthetic, rather than an ethical, meaning. As a noun, the word could mean beautiful, agreeable, clear and distinct, smooth, even, free of irregularities, well-proportioned, and in balance. The word could be used as a verb, to mean to smooth, to make even, to beautify. It was perhaps as much by virtue of the aesthetic meanings of fair as it was of the procedural sense associated with fair play, that the word came to be extended to economic matters to mean substantively equal exchange. For the aesthetic sense of fair can more readily capture the idea of commensuration implicit in fair / equal exchange than can the narrowly procedural fair play. This is because the notions of balance and symmetry involved in the aesthetic meaning of fair entail a kind of commensurability. For something to be symmetrically arranged, proportional, or well balanced, clearly it must have some property—weight, for example, or area, or shape, or shade—in terms of which it can be seen, or otherwise sensed, as proportional, in balance, or symmetrical. In order to judge, for example, whether a figure is symmetrical, it must be possible to compare the area and shape of diferent parts of that figure. Similarly, in order to gauge whether a symmetrical object is well balanced, the distribution of its weight around its axis of symmetry—how the weight on the one side compares to that on the other—must be discerned. An objectively fair exchange is one in which exchanged goods or services are in balance, while to be in balance they must be commensurable. The aesthetic sense of fair, as balanced and well-proportioned, thus gets at that concept of fair exchange. In addition, the aesthetic meaning of fair, when extended to denote substantively equal exchange, suggests that whether or not an exchange is objectively fair is something that can be perceived in the objective form of the exchange—in the degree to which the substances being exchanged are self-evidently balanced and in proportion. The aesthetic denotations of fair thus work well to convey the idea that legitimate economic exchanges are characterized by equal exchange of commensurable substances—an idea deeply embedded in market justifications of wage labor.\n\n126\n\nTime for Things","previous_page":125,"next_page":127}