G. A. Cohen

G. A. Cohen
G. A. Cohen; FBA
Born	Gerald Allan Cohen; 14 April 1941; Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Died	5 August 2009 (aged 68); Oxford, England
Nationality	Canadian
Other names	Jerry Cohen
Alma mater	McGill University; New College, Oxford;
Notable work	Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence (1978)[1]
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Analytical Marxism; left-libertarianism[2]; egalitarianism;
Institutions	University College, London; All Souls College, Oxford;
Academic advisors	Isaiah Berlin[3]; Gilbert Ryle[4];
Doctoral students	Cécile Fabre; Will Kymlicka; Michael Otsuka; Seana Shiffrin;
Other notable students	Simon Caney; Jonathan Wolff;
Main interests	Political philosophy; ethics; philosophy of history; social theory;
Notable ideas	Distinction between a strict and lax interpretation of the difference principle[5]; egalitarian ethos[6];
	Influences Louis Althusser; Isaiah Berlin; Karl Marx; John Rawls; Gilbert Ryle; ;
	Influenced Alan Carter; Will Kymlicka; John McMurtry; Michael Otsuka; John Roemer; Euclid Tsakalotos; Jonathan Wolff; ;

Gerald Allan Cohen FBA (/ˈkoʊən/; 1941–2009), known as G. A. Cohen or Jerry Cohen, was a Canadian 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. He was known for his work on Marxism, and later, egalitarianism and distributive justice in normative political philosophy.

Life and career

Born into a communist Jewish family in Montreal, Quebec, on 14 April 1941,[7] Cohen was educated at McGill University (BA, philosophy and political science) in his hometown 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 went on to be important moral and political philosophers, while another, Ricky Gervais, has a successful career in comedy.

Known as a proponent of analytical Marxism[8] 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 called technological determinism by its critics.[9] 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 hold them.

Cohen was close friends with Marxist political philosopher Marshall Berman.

Cohen died on 5 August 2009.

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 Ronald 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)

Rosen, Michael (2010). "Jerry Cohen: An Appreciation". Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University. p. 5. Retrieved 9 January 2019.
Vallentyne, Peter (2014). "Libertarianism". In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University.
Rosen, Michael (2010). "Jerry Cohen: An Appreciation". Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University. p. 2. Retrieved 9 January 2019.
Rosen, Michael (2010). "Jerry Cohen: An Appreciation". Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University. p. 2. Retrieved 9 January 2019.
Frank Vandenbroucke, Social Justice and Individual Ethics in an Open Society: Equality, Responsibility, and Incentives, Springer, 2012, p. 149.
Alexander Kaufman (ed.), Distributive Justice and Access to Advantage, Cambridge University Press, 2014, p. 52.
O'Grady, Jane (10 August 2009). "GA Cohen". The Guardian.
"The Labour Theory of Value and the Concept of Exploitation".
Singer, Peter (2000). Marx: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 105. ISBN 978-0-19-285405-6.

Academic offices
Preceded by Charles Taylor	Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory 1985–2008	Succeeded by Jeremy Waldron
Preceded by Ross Harrison	Quain Professor of Jurisprudence 2008–2009	Succeeded by John Tasioulas

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September Group
Members	G. A. Cohen John Roemer Jon Elster Adam Przeworski Erik Olin Wright Philippe Van Parijs Robert Jan van der Veen Robert Brenner Hillel Steiner Samuel Bowles Joshua Cohen
See also	Analytical Marxism Left-libertarianism Game theory Marxism Karl Marx John Rawls Robert Nozick Self-ownership Exploitation