G. A. Cohen

1941-2009 · Canadian-British · Political Philosophy, Marxist Theory, Egalitarian Justice, History of Political Philosophy, Ethics

If you're an egalitarian, how come you're so rich?

G. A. Cohen grew up in Montreal's Jewish communist milieu — his parents were garment-trade unionists, his first school a Yiddish institution raided by Quebec's Red Squad in 1952. That childhood shaped a life's work: testing socialist commitments against the sharpest available philosophical tools, following the argument wherever it led.

Topics G. A. Cohen addresses

• historical materialism
• functional explanation
• productive forces and relations of production
• self-ownership
• the libertarian challenge to Marxism
• luck egalitarianism
• brute luck vs option luck
• the currency of egalitarian justice
• the site of distributive justice
• the egalitarian ethos
• the interpersonal test
• the camping trip
• community and equality
• the Wilt Chamberlain argument
• Rawls's difference principle
• the incentives argument
• fact-insensitive principles
• Rawlsian constructivism
• ultimate principles vs rules of regulation
• the basic structure of society
• capitalism and freedom
• freedom and money
• exploitation
• the Marxist factual carapace

Converse with G. A. Cohen on Symposium. Every reply is grounded in G. A. Cohen's own writing and cites the page it came from. The corpus is public-domain text.