ABSTRACT OF PAPER
Title: Cohen on justice in welfare: beyond Rawls
Author:
The current debate in welfare economics can dates back to the publication of Theory of justice by Rawls in 1971. It was extended with the 1979 Sen's conference “Equality of What?”. The debates turned on what to equalize, and an additional discussion would be about what to be done for achieving such equality. This is the issue of the internal critique of Rawls by the philosopher G.A. Cohen, both on the basic structure and on the difference principle. First, Cohen discusses Rawls on the object to which the principles of justice apply, namely the basic structure. His critique turns to the distinction between rights and virtue, which does not appear in Rawls, who restricts the basic structure to the legal structure. For Cohen, it should include informal norms and individual choices as well. Then, Cohen discusses the difference principle, a general principle of justice to apply to the basic structure, and he criticizes the issue of incentives on which it is based, according to Rawls. The latter did not demonstrate that inequalities, even if they are incentive, are fair. For Cohen, if a society is based on the difference principle, including brotherhood and dignity, talented people would not need incentives.
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