Ajax Dilemma: Justice, Fairness, and Rewards

Description: A leading philosopher shows how the story of Ajax and Odysseus sheds new light on the contentious issue of disproportionate rewards in contemporary American society.

Review Quotes: "The timing is excellent for The Ajax Dilemma: Justice, Fairness and Rewards...this little book makes a worthy contribution to the issue of how to distribute rewards in both government and business. In this age, the story of Ajax is sure to resonate with many."
--Nancy F. Koehn, The New York Times

"The Ajax Dilemma by Paul Woodruff, a classical scholar at the University of Texas at Austin, provides intriguing insights... It is impossible to do justice to the subtlety of Woodruff's work in such a short space but some of the main themes can be highlighted. It should be apparent that there are many contemporary Ajaxes, loyal and hardworking employees, who can feel slighted by the rewards lavished on certain colleagues."
--Daniel Ben-Ami, Financial Times

"Greek tragedies reflect about fundamental values and the sometimes agonizing tensions among them, using mythic stories of searing power. Paul Woodruff uses Sophocles' Ajax to create a gripping reflection about leadership both then and now. A classical scholar who has served as a leading administrator at the University of Texas, and who earlier served as an officer in the Vietnam War, Woodruff writes about leadership and its difficulties with both insider knowledge and poetic sensibility. Readers will argue with this book, and many will strongly disagree with Woodruff's ideas about rewards, fairness, and particular justice. But that's the great merit of the book: it is totally honest, totally open to argument and refutation, written with a passionate integrity that calls for a like integrity in the reader."
--Martha Nussbaum, The University of Chicago

"Woodruff tells a great story about why leaders need justice, compassion, and wisdom to be effective problem solvers. Everyone in a management or leadership position should read this book for the wise lessons it teaches."
--Joanne B. Ciulla, Coston Family Chair in Leadership and Ethics, University of Richmond

"In this short and unusual book Paul Woodruff shows us by example that there is more than one way to do good philosophy. Officially the book is about justice and fairness, but its real topic is leadership in all its forms -- in academia, the military, and in business. Woodruff puts the Greek legend of Ajax to wonderfully inventive use, deriving all sorts of practical lessons from it about how be a good leader, a good follower, a good loser, and a good winner. The message of The Ajax Dilemma can be put into practice, and it should be. This book should be required reading for anyone who finds themselves running anything."
--Jonathan Dancy, Department of Philosophy, The University of Texas at Austin