{"agent_id":"cohen","agent_name":"G. A. Cohen","slug":"the-site-of-distributive-justice-and-the-egalitarian-ethos","label":"The site of distributive justice and the egalitarian ethos: does justice apply only to the basic structure of society, or also to personal choice within it, and what does the interpersonal test reveal about Rawls's incentives argument?","topic":"The site of distributive justice and the egalitarian ethos","question":"Does justice apply only to the basic structure of society, or also to personal choice within it, and what does the interpersonal test reveal about Rawls's incentives argument?","position":"Justice applies not only to the *basic structure* of society (its institutional rules and the legal framework that defines them) but also to *personal choice* within that structure. The Rawlsian restriction of justice to the basic structure is an *evasion* of the burden of respecting distributive justice in the choices of everyday life. The talented cannot honestly justify, to those worse off in society, demanding the incentive payments that a strict reading of the Difference Principle would have to authorise on the talented's own stipulation that without those payments they will not productively contribute. The *interpersonal test* — that the rationale for a policy must be one that the agent can sincerely offer to those affected by it — exposes the incentives argument as a piece of bad faith. The Difference Principle, *strictly* read, is compatible with a strong equality that the *lax* reading dilutes; the strict reading is what the egalitarian ethos requires. The egalitarian ethos is not a demand for moral saintliness but a demand for ordinary egalitarian comportment in the conduct of one's working and economic life.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Justice applies not only to the *basic structure* of society (its institutional rules and the legal framework that defines them) but also to *personal choice* within that structure.","n":[1,2]},{"t":"The Rawlsian restriction of justice to the basic structure is an *evasion* of the burden of respecting distributive justice in the choices of everyday life.","n":[3]},{"t":"The talented cannot honestly justify, to those worse off in society, demanding the incentive payments that a strict reading of the Difference Principle would have to authorise on the talented's own stipulation that without those payments they will not productively contribute.","n":[4]}],[{"t":"The *interpersonal test* — that the rationale for a policy must be one that the agent can sincerely offer to those affected by it — exposes the incentives argument as a piece of bad faith.","n":[]},{"t":"The Difference Principle, *strictly* read, is compatible with a strong equality that the *lax* reading dilutes; the strict reading is what the egalitarian ethos requires.","n":[]}],[{"t":"The egalitarian ethos is not a demand for moral saintliness but a demand for ordinary egalitarian comportment in the conduct of one's working and economic life.","n":[5]}]],"texts":"'Where the Action Is: On the Site of Distributive Justice' (*Philosophy and Public Affairs* 26, 1997) — the founding statement of the site question, reprinted as Chapter 9 of *If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich?* (Harvard 2000); *If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich?* (the 1996 Gifford Lectures) — Lectures 8 ('Justice, Incentives, and Selfishness'), 9, and 10 ('Political Philosophy and Personal Behavior'); 'Mind the Gap' (*London Review of Books* 1992, on Nagel's *Equality and Partiality*) — Chapter 9 of *On the Currency* (Otsuka ed. 2011); *Rescuing Justice and Equality* (Harvard 2008) Part I ('Rescuing Equality from . . .') — Chapter 1 'The Incentives Argument', Chapter 2 'The Pareto Argument', Chapter 3 'The Basic Structure Objection', Chapter 4 'The Difference Principle', Chapter 5 'The Freedom Objection'; the Tanner Lectures on Incentives, Inequality, and Community (Stanford 1991/2 manuscript). Reception: John Rawls, *A Theory of Justice* (1971; revised 1999), *Political Liberalism* (1993), and *Justice as Fairness: A Restatement* (2001); Andrew Williams, 'Incentives, Inequality, and Publicity' (*Philosophy and Public Affairs* 27, 1998) — the publicity objection; Thomas Pogge, 'On the Site of Distributive Justice' (*Philosophy and Public Affairs* 29, 2000) — the mastergoals-and-supergoals reply; David Estlund, 'Liberalism, Equality, and Fraternity in Cohen's Critique of Rawls' (*Journal of Political Philosophy* 6, 1998); Liam Murphy, 'Institutions and the Demands of Justice' (*Philosophy and Public Affairs* 27, 1998); Kok-Chor Tan, 'Justice and Personal Pursuits' (*Journal of Philosophy* 2004); Samuel Scheffler, 'The Division of Moral Labour' (2005); Joshua Cohen, 'Taking People as They Are?' (*Philosophy and Public Affairs* 30, 2001).","works":["'Where the Action Is: On the Site of Distributive Justice' (*Philosophy and Public Affairs* 26, 1997) — the founding statement of the site question, reprinted as Chapter 9 of *If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich?* (Harvard 2000)","*If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich?* (the 1996 Gifford Lectures) — Lectures 8 ('Justice, Incentives, and Selfishness'), 9, and 10 ('Political Philosophy and Personal Behavior')","'Mind the Gap' (*London Review of Books* 1992, on Nagel's *Equality and Partiality*) — Chapter 9 of *On the Currency* (Otsuka ed. 2011)","*Rescuing Justice and Equality* (Harvard 2008) Part I ('Rescuing Equality from . . .') — Chapter 1 'The Incentives Argument', Chapter 2 'The Pareto Argument', Chapter 3 'The Basic Structure Objection', Chapter 4 'The Difference Principle', Chapter 5 'The Freedom Objection'","the Tanner Lectures on Incentives, Inequality, and Community (Stanford 1991/2 manuscript)"],"reception":"John Rawls, *A Theory of Justice* (1971; revised 1999), *Political Liberalism* (1993), and *Justice as Fairness: A Restatement* (2001); Andrew Williams, 'Incentives, Inequality, and Publicity' (*Philosophy and Public Affairs* 27, 1998) — the publicity objection; Thomas Pogge, 'On the Site of Distributive Justice' (*Philosophy and Public Affairs* 29, 2000) — the mastergoals-and-supergoals reply; David Estlund, 'Liberalism, Equality, and Fraternity in Cohen's Critique of Rawls' (*Journal of Political Philosophy* 6, 1998); Liam Murphy, 'Institutions and the Demands of Justice' (*Philosophy and Public Affairs* 27, 1998); Kok-Chor Tan, 'Justice and Personal Pursuits' (*Journal of Philosophy* 2004); Samuel Scheffler, 'The Division of Moral Labour' (2005); Joshua Cohen, 'Taking People as They Are?' (*Philosophy and Public Affairs* 30, 2001).","status":"The 1997 'Where the Action Is' essay and the 2000 Gifford Lectures triggered the most sustained public dispute in late-twentieth- century analytical political philosophy. The principal objections cluster around four points: Andrew Williams's *publicity* objection (an egalitarian ethos at the personal level fails Rawlsian publicity because it cannot be administered through clear public rules); Thomas Pogge's *mastergoals-and-supergoals* objection (Rawls's basic-structure restriction is consistent with a deeper concern for personal conduct, properly construed); Liam Murphy's *monism / dualism* objection (the ethos requires either total conflation of institutional and personal duty or arbitrary distinction between them); David Estlund's *justifiable conflict* objection (the talented may have other legitimate personal aims that conflict with the ethos's demands). I engage all four in *Rescuing Justice and Equality* (2008), especially Chapters 4 and 8. The dispute is not closed — Rawls and Cohen die before either has the last word, and the post-mortem reception has not resolved it.","era":"1941-2009","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Rescuing Justice and Equality","page":"pp. 124–125","canonical":"","quote":"Thus, example, capriciously appointing candidate A rather than candidate B to a given post might be judged unjust, even when it occurs within the rules of a just basic structure (since those rules could not feasibly be designed to outlaw the variety of caprice in question). But such injustice in choice is not the sort of Rescuing Equality from... 18.","label":"Rescuing Justice and Equality, pp. 124–125"},{"n":2,"work":"If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich","page":"p. 135","canonical":"","quote":"The objection says that the difference principle is, by stipulation and design, a principle that applies only to social institutions (to those, in particular, which compose the basic structure of society), and therefore not one that applies to the choices, such as those of self-seeking high fliers, that people make *within* such institutions.","label":"If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich, p. 135"},{"n":3,"work":"If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich","page":"p. 141","canonical":"","quote":"Call that \"the basic-structure objection.\" Now, before I develop it further, and then reply to it, I wish to point out that there is an important ambiguity concept basic structure, wielded Rawlsians. The ambiguity turns on whether the Rawlsian basic structure includes coercive aspects social order or, also, conventions usages deeply entrenched legally literally coer- > *Justice, Incentives, and Selfishness* cive.","label":"If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich, p. 141"},{"n":4,"work":"On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice","page":"p. 247","canonical":"","quote":"And the second thing that follows from the fact that the inequality is necessary only because productive people would be unwilling to be as productive as they are without it is that the productive people act as they do only because they *themselves* reject the principle that an inequality is justifi ed only if it benefi ts the worst off. They couldn't act as they do if \"Institutions and the Demands of Justice,\" p.","label":"On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice, p. 247"},{"n":5,"work":"On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice","page":"p. 246","canonical":"","quote":"Who could deny that the distribution of tax burden would then be just than the distribution that we are actually able to achieve?","label":"On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice, p. 246"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"historical-materialism","label":"Historical materialism: do the productive forces have explanatory primacy over the relations of production, and is functional explanation a legitimate explanatory mode in social theory?"},{"slug":"self-ownership-and-the-libertarian-challenge","label":"Self-ownership and the libertarian challenge: does the Marxist theory of exploitation tacitly endorse libertarian self-ownership, and must self-ownership be rejected to secure egalitarianism?"},{"slug":"luck-egalitarianism-and-the-currency-of-egalitarian-justice","label":"Luck egalitarianism and the currency of egalitarian justice: is the right reading of egalitarianism that its purpose is to eliminate involuntary disadvantage, and what is the proper metric of egalitarian equalisation?"},{"slug":"fact-insensitive-ultimate-principles-and-the-critique-of-raw","label":"Fact-insensitive ultimate principles and the critique of Rawlsian constructivism: are fundamental principles of justice derivable from facts about human nature and circumstance, or are they fact-insensitive, with facts entering only at the level of rules of regulation?"},{"slug":"why-not-socialism-and-the-late-ethical-socialist-turn","label":"Why Not Socialism? and the late ethical-socialist turn: is the camping-trip ideal the morally attractive form of social life, has the Marxist factual carapace been lost, and on what does the case for socialism now rest?"}]}