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On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice, and Other Essays in Political Philosophy
G. A. Cohen was one of the most gifted, influential, and progressive voices in contemporary political philosophy. At the time of his death in 2009, he had plans to bring together a number of his most significant papers. This is the first of three volumes to realize those plans. Drawing on three decades of work, it contains previously uncollected articles that have shaped many of the central debates in political philosophy, as well as papers published here for the first time. In these pieces, Cohen asks what egalitarians have most reason to equalize, he considers the relationship between freedom and property, and he reflects upon ideal theory and political practice.
Included here are classic essays such as "Equality of What?" and "Capitalism, Freedom, and the Proletariat," along with more recent contributions such as "Fairness and Legitimacy in Justice," "Freedom and Money," and the previously unpublished "How to Do Political Philosophy." On ample display throughout are the clarity, rigor, conviction, and wit for which Cohen was renowned. Together, these essays demonstrate how his work provides a powerful account of liberty and equality to the left of Ronald Dworkin, John Rawls, Amartya Sen, and Isaiah Berlin.
Included here are classic essays such as "Equality of What?" and "Capitalism, Freedom, and the Proletariat," along with more recent contributions such as "Fairness and Legitimacy in Justice," "Freedom and Money," and the previously unpublished "How to Do Political Philosophy." On ample display throughout are the clarity, rigor, conviction, and wit for which Cohen was renowned. Together, these essays demonstrate how his work provides a powerful account of liberty and equality to the left of Ronald Dworkin, John Rawls, Amartya Sen, and Isaiah Berlin.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
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About the author
G.A. Cohen
28 books113 followersGerald Allan Cohen FBA, known as G. A. Cohen or Jerry Cohen, was a Canadian Marxist political philosopher who held the positions of Quain Professor of Jurisprudence, University College London and Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory, All Souls College, Oxford.
Born into a communist Jewish family in Montreal, Quebec, on 14 April 1941, Cohen was educated at McGill University (BA, philosophy and political science) in his home town and the University of Oxford (BPhil, philosophy) where he studied under Isaiah Berlin and Gilbert Ryle.
Cohen was assistant lecturer (1963–1964), lecturer (1964–1979) then reader (1979–1984) in the Department of Philosophy at University College London, before being appointed to the Chichele chair at Oxford in 1985. Several of his students, such as Christopher Bertram, Simon Caney, Alan Carter, Cécile Fabre, Will Kymlicka, John McMurtry, David Leopold, Michael Otsuka, Seana Shiffrin, and Jonathan Wolff have gone on to be important moral and political philosophers in their own right, while another, Ricky Gervais, has pursued a successful career in comedy.
Known as a proponent of analytical Marxism and a founding member of the September Group, Cohen's 1978 work Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence defends an interpretation of Karl Marx's historical materialism often referred to as technological determinism by its critics. In Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality, Cohen offers an extensive moral argument in favour of socialism, contrasting his views with those of John Rawls and Robert Nozick, by articulating an extensive critique of the Lockean principle of self-ownership as well as the use of that principle to defend right as well as left libertarianism. In If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich? (which covers the topic of his Gifford Lectures), Cohen addresses the question of what egalitarian political principles imply for the personal behaviour of those who subscribe to them.
Cohen was close friends with Marxist political philosopher Marshall Berman.
Cohen died on 5 August 2009.
Born into a communist Jewish family in Montreal, Quebec, on 14 April 1941, Cohen was educated at McGill University (BA, philosophy and political science) in his home town and the University of Oxford (BPhil, philosophy) where he studied under Isaiah Berlin and Gilbert Ryle.
Cohen was assistant lecturer (1963–1964), lecturer (1964–1979) then reader (1979–1984) in the Department of Philosophy at University College London, before being appointed to the Chichele chair at Oxford in 1985. Several of his students, such as Christopher Bertram, Simon Caney, Alan Carter, Cécile Fabre, Will Kymlicka, John McMurtry, David Leopold, Michael Otsuka, Seana Shiffrin, and Jonathan Wolff have gone on to be important moral and political philosophers in their own right, while another, Ricky Gervais, has pursued a successful career in comedy.
Known as a proponent of analytical Marxism and a founding member of the September Group, Cohen's 1978 work Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence defends an interpretation of Karl Marx's historical materialism often referred to as technological determinism by its critics. In Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality, Cohen offers an extensive moral argument in favour of socialism, contrasting his views with those of John Rawls and Robert Nozick, by articulating an extensive critique of the Lockean principle of self-ownership as well as the use of that principle to defend right as well as left libertarianism. In If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich? (which covers the topic of his Gifford Lectures), Cohen addresses the question of what egalitarian political principles imply for the personal behaviour of those who subscribe to them.
Cohen was close friends with Marxist political philosopher Marshall Berman.
Cohen died on 5 August 2009.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 7, 2021
Mike Otsuka is a wonderful teacher. Glad he edited this!
February 7, 2017
This is a collection of papers and lectures by the Egalitarian political philosopher G.A.Cohen. It might seem slow and pedantic (especially in the beginning) but the point of his work isn't to provide a radical new theory to upend everything, but rather a careful study of major figures including Marx, Rawls, Nozick, Berlin, and Dworkin, to reveal conceptual missteps and nuance. That isn't to say that there's only negative work here- Cohen defends at length luck egalitarianism, which is the position that justice involves the equal access to "advantage" for all unless the inequality is a result of choice.
The most important argument of the book, as it appears to me, is the rebuttal of a commonly accepted claim that (Nozick-style) libertarians care about freedom, while the Left recognizes that other virtues like equality are sometimes important enough to override freedom. Cohen argues that equality is, in fact, a way of enhancing freedom. This alone justifies reading this book:
"The Right profess to be hostile to interference, as such, but they do not really oppose interference as such. They oppose interference with the rights of private property, but they support interference with access by the poor to that same private property, and they consequently cannot defend property rights by invoking the value of freedom, in the sense of noninterference.
...Philosophers have construed the words ‘freedom,’ ‘free,’ and so forth in two contrasting ways. As some, including the present author, construe them, one may say that A is (pro tanto) unfree so long as B successfully interferes with his action, and, therefore, irrespective of the moral rights enjoyed and lacked by A and B. On that latter understanding of ‘freedom,’ it is as clear as noonday that an arresting police officer renders a trespasser unfree, whether or not the officer is morally justified in doing so. Alternatively, and flying in the face of ordinary language, others construe B’s interference with A as freedom-reducing only where A has the moral right to do what he is doing and/or B has no moral right to stop him. But such a rights-laden understanding of freedom, whether or not it is otherwise acceptable, renders impossible a defense of the legitimacy of private property by reference to freedom, since, on the rights-laden view of it, one cannot say what freedom (so much as) is until one has decided (on, perforce, grounds other than freedom) whether or not private property is morally legitimate.
Accordingly, neither the rights-laden nor the rights-free understanding of freedom allows private property to be vindicated through a conceptual connection between private property and freedom."
The most important argument of the book, as it appears to me, is the rebuttal of a commonly accepted claim that (Nozick-style) libertarians care about freedom, while the Left recognizes that other virtues like equality are sometimes important enough to override freedom. Cohen argues that equality is, in fact, a way of enhancing freedom. This alone justifies reading this book:
"The Right profess to be hostile to interference, as such, but they do not really oppose interference as such. They oppose interference with the rights of private property, but they support interference with access by the poor to that same private property, and they consequently cannot defend property rights by invoking the value of freedom, in the sense of noninterference.
...Philosophers have construed the words ‘freedom,’ ‘free,’ and so forth in two contrasting ways. As some, including the present author, construe them, one may say that A is (pro tanto) unfree so long as B successfully interferes with his action, and, therefore, irrespective of the moral rights enjoyed and lacked by A and B. On that latter understanding of ‘freedom,’ it is as clear as noonday that an arresting police officer renders a trespasser unfree, whether or not the officer is morally justified in doing so. Alternatively, and flying in the face of ordinary language, others construe B’s interference with A as freedom-reducing only where A has the moral right to do what he is doing and/or B has no moral right to stop him. But such a rights-laden understanding of freedom, whether or not it is otherwise acceptable, renders impossible a defense of the legitimacy of private property by reference to freedom, since, on the rights-laden view of it, one cannot say what freedom (so much as) is until one has decided (on, perforce, grounds other than freedom) whether or not private property is morally legitimate.
Accordingly, neither the rights-laden nor the rights-free understanding of freedom allows private property to be vindicated through a conceptual connection between private property and freedom."
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