Gerald Cohen

G. A. Cohen
Born (1941-04-14)14 April 1941
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Died 5 August 2009(2009-08-05) (aged 68)
Oxford, England, United Kingdom
Alma mater McGill University
University of Oxford
Era 20th-century philosophy
Region Western philosophy
School Analytic philosophy
Analytical Marxism
Left-libertarianism[1]
Egalitarianism
Main interests
 Political philosophy, ethics, philosophy of history, social theory
Notable ideas
 The distinction between a strict and lax interpretation of the difference principle,[2] egalitarian ethos[3]

Gerald Allan "Jerry" Cohen, FBA (/ˈkoʊən/; 14 April 1941 – 5 August 2009) was a 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.

Life and career

Born into a communist Jewish family in Montreal,[4] Cohen was educated at McGill University, Canada (BA, philosophy and political science) 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[5] and a founding member of the September Group, Cohen's 1978 work Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence defends an interpretation of Marx's historical materialism often referred to as 'technological determinism' by its critics.[6] 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.

Works

  • Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence (1978, 2000)
  • History, Labour, and Freedom (1988)
  • Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1995. ISBN 978-0-5214-7174-9. OCLC 612482692.
  • If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich? (2000)
  • Chapter in Dworkin and his Critics, with replies by Dworkin (2004)
  • Rescuing Justice and Equality (2008)
  • Why Not Socialism? (2009) [Trad. esp.: ¿Por qué no el socialismo?, Buenos Aires/Madrid, Katz editores, 2011, ISBN 978-84-92946-13-6]
  • On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice, and Other Essays in Political Philosophy (2011)
  • Finding Oneself in the Other (2012)
  • Lectures on the History of Moral and Political Philosophy (2013)

See also

References

  1. ↑ Vallentyne, Peter (2014). "Libertarianism". In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University.
  2. ↑ Frank Vandenbroucke, Social Justice and Individual Ethics in an Open Society: Equality, Responsibility, and Incentives, Springer, 2012, p. 149.
  3. ↑ Alexander Kaufman (ed.), Distributive Justice and Access to Advantage, Cambridge University Press, 2014, p. 52.
  4. ↑ O'Grady, Jane (10 August 2009). "GA Cohen". The Guardian.
  5. ↑ "The Labour Theory of Value and the Concept of Exploitation".
  6. ↑ Singer, Peter (2000). Marx: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 105. ISBN 0-19-285405-4.

Further reading

  • The Egalitarian Conscience: Essays in Honour of G. A. Cohen (2006); edited by Christine Sypnowich
  • Tomey, Simon (2012), "An interview with Jerry Cohen.", in Browning, Gary; Dimova-Cookson, Maria; Prokhovnik, Raia, Dialogues with contemporary political theorists, Houndsmill, Basingstoke, Hampshire New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 74–85, ISBN 9780230303058
  • Vrousalis, Nicholas. The Political Philosophy of G.A. Cohen. Bloomsbury. ISBN 9781472532701.
  • Robeyns, Ingrid (July 2015). "On G.A. Cohen's "On the currency of egalitarian justice"". Ethics. Chicago Journals via JSTOR. 125 (4): 1132–1135. doi:10.1086/680879. JSTOR 10.1086/680879.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.