Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality

Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality PDF Author: G. A. Cohen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521477512
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
In this book, G. A. Cohen examines the libertarian principle of self-ownership, arguing that it cannot deliver the freedom it promises to secure thus undermining the concept that lovers of freedom should embrace capitalism & its accompanying inequality.

Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality

Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality PDF Author: G. A. Cohen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107393434
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
In this book G. A. Cohen examines the libertarian principle of self-ownership, which says that each person belongs to himself and therefore owes no service or product to anyone else. This principle is used to defend capitalist inequality, which is said to reflect each person's freedom to do as he wishes with himself. The author argues that self-ownership cannot deliver the freedom it promises to secure, thereby undermining the idea that lovers of freedom should embrace capitalism and the inequality that comes with it. He goes on to show that the standard Marxist condemnation of exploitation implies an endorsement of self-ownership, since, in the Marxist conception, the employer steals from the worker what should belong to her, because she produced it. Thereby a deeply inegalitarian notion has penetrated what is in aspiration an egalitarian theory. Purging that notion from socialist thought, he argues, enables construction of a more consistent egalitarianism.

Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality

Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality PDF Author: G. A. Cohen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521477512
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Get Book

Book Description
In this book, G. A. Cohen examines the libertarian principle of self-ownership, arguing that it cannot deliver the freedom it promises to secure thus undermining the concept that lovers of freedom should embrace capitalism & its accompanying inequality.

Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality

Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality PDF Author: Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory Oxford University and Fellow G A Cohen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781107398665
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Defenders of capitalism claim that its inequality is the necessary price of the freedom that it guarantees. In that defense of capitalist inequality, freedom is self-ownership, the right of each person to do as he wishes with himself. The author shows that self-ownership fails to deliver the freedom it promises to secure. He thereby undermines the idea that lovers of freedom should embrace capitalism and the inequality that comes with it. In the final chapter he reaffirms the moral superiority of socialism, against the background of the disastrous Soviet experiment.

Rescuing Justice and Equality

Rescuing Justice and Equality PDF Author: G. A. Cohen
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674029658
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
In this stimulating work of political philosophy, acclaimed philosopher G. A. Cohen sets out to rescue the egalitarian thesis that in a society in which distributive justice prevails, people’s material prospects are roughly equal. Arguing against the Rawlsian version of a just society, Cohen demonstrates that distributive justice does not tolerate deep inequality. In the course of providing a deep and sophisticated critique of Rawls’s theory of justice, Cohen demonstrates that questions of distributive justice arise not only for the state but also for people in their daily lives. The right rules for the macro scale of public institutions and policies also apply, with suitable adjustments, to the micro level of individual decision-making. Cohen also charges Rawls’s constructivism with systematically conflating the concept of justice with other concepts. Within the Rawlsian architectonic, justice is not distinguished either from other values or from optimal rules of social regulation. The elimination of those conflations brings justice closer to equality.

On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice, and Other Essays in Political Philosophy

On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice, and Other Essays in Political Philosophy PDF Author: G. A. Cohen
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9781400838660
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
G. A. Cohen was one of the most gifted, influential, and progressive voices in contemporary political philosophy. At the time of his death in 2009, he had plans to bring together a number of his most significant papers. This is the first of three volumes to realize those plans. Drawing on three decades of work, it contains previously uncollected articles that have shaped many of the central debates in political philosophy, as well as papers published here for the first time. In these pieces, Cohen asks what egalitarians have most reason to equalize, he considers the relationship between freedom and property, and he reflects upon ideal theory and political practice. Included here are classic essays such as "Equality of What?" and "Capitalism, Freedom, and the Proletariat," along with more recent contributions such as "Fairness and Legitimacy in Justice," "Freedom and Money," and the previously unpublished "How to Do Political Philosophy." On ample display throughout are the clarity, rigor, conviction, and wit for which Cohen was renowned. Together, these essays demonstrate how his work provides a powerful account of liberty and equality to the left of Ronald Dworkin, John Rawls, Amartya Sen, and Isaiah Berlin.

Libertarianism Without Inequality

Libertarianism Without Inequality PDF Author: Michael Otsuka
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199280186
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
Michael Otsuka sets out to vindicate left-libertarianism, a political philosophy which combines stringent rights of control over one's own mind, body, and life with egalitarian rights of ownership of the world. Otsuka reclaims the ideas of John Locke from the libertarian Right, and shows how his Second Treatise of Government provides the theoretical foundations for a left-libertarianism which is both more libertarian and more egalitarian than the Kantian liberal theories of John Rawls andThomas Nagel. Otsuka's libertarianism is founded on a right of self-ownership. Here he is at one with 'right-wing' libertarians, such as Robert Nozick, in endorsing the highly anti-paternalistic and anti-moralistic implications of this right. But he parts company with these libertarians in so far as he argues that such a right is compatible with a fully egalitarian principle of equal opportunity for welfare. In embracing this principle, his own version of left-libertarianism is more stronglyegalitarian than others which are currently well known. Otsuka argues that an account of legitimate political authority based upon the free consent of each is strengthened by the adoption of such an egalitarian principle. He defends a pluralistic, decentralized ideal of political society as a confederation of voluntary associations. Part I of Libertarianism without Inequality concerns the natural rights of property in oneself and the world. Part II considers the natural rights of punishmentand self-defence that form the basis for the government's authority to legislate and punish. Part III explores the nature and limits of the powers of governments which are created by the consensual transfer of the natural rights of the governed. Libertarianism without Inequality is a book which everyone interested in political theory should read.

Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality

Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality PDF Author: Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory Oxford University and Fellow G A Cohen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781107390249
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
In this book G. A. Cohen examines the libertarian principle of self-ownership, which says that each person belongs to himself and therefore owes no service or product to anyone else. This principle is used to defend capitalist inequality, which is said to reflect each person's freedom to do as as he wishes with himself. The author argues that self-ownership cannot deliver the freedom it promises to secure, thereby undermining the idea that lovers of freedom should embrace capitalism and the inequality that comes with it. He goes on to show that the standard Marxist condemnation of exploitation implies an endorsement of self-ownership, since, in the Marxist conception, the employer steals from the worker what should belong to her, because she produced it. Thereby a deeply inegalitarian notion has penetrated what is in aspiration an egalitarian theory. Purging that notion from socialist thought, he argues, enables construction of a more consistent egalitarianism.

The Oxford Handbook of Freedom

The Oxford Handbook of Freedom PDF Author: David Schmidtz
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199989427
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Book Description
We speak of being 'free' to speak our minds, free to go to college, free to move about; we can be cancer-free, debt-free, worry-free, or free from doubt. The concept of freedom (and relatedly the notion of liberty) is ubiquitous but not everyone agrees what the term means, and the philosophical analysis of freedom that has grown over the last two decades has revealed it to be a complex notion whose meaning is dependent on the context. The Oxford Handbook of Freedom will crystallize this work and craft the first wide-ranging analysis of freedom in all its dimensions: legal, cultural, religious, economic, political, and psychological. This volume includes 28 new essays by well regarded philosophers, as well some historians and political theorists, in order to reflect the breadth of the topic. This handbook covers both current scholarship as well as historical trends, with an overall eye to how current ideas on freedom developed. The volume is divided into six sections: conceptual frames (framing the overall debates about freedom), historical frames (freedom in key historical periods, from the ancients onward), institutional frames (freedom and the law), cultural frames (mutual expectations on our 'right' to be free), economic frames (freedom and the market), and lastly psychological frames (free will in philosophy and psychology).

Marx and Locke on Land and Labour

Marx and Locke on Land and Labour PDF Author: Gerald Allan Cohen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780856725470
Category : Labor theory of value
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Book Description


Self-ownership, Freedom, and Equality

Self-ownership, Freedom, and Equality PDF Author: Gerald Allan Cohen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780511962448
Category : Capitalism
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description