If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich?This book presents G. A. Cohen's Gifford Lectures, delivered at the University of Edinburgh in 1996. Focusing on Marxism and Rawlsian liberalism, Cohen draws a connection between these thought systems and the choices that shape a person's life. In the case of Marxism, the relevant life is his own: a communist upbringing in the 1940s in Montreal, which induced a belief in a strongly socialist egalitarian doctrine. The narrative of Cohen's reckoning with that inheritance develops through a series of sophisticated engagements with the central questions of social and political philosophy. |
Contents
1 | |
7 | |
2 Politics and Religion in a Montreal Communist Jewish Childhood | 20 |
3 The Development of Socialism from Utopia to Science | 42 |
The Obstetric Motif in the Marxist Conception of Revolution | 58 |
God in Hegel Feuerbach and Marx | 79 |
From Fact to Norm | 101 |
A Lighter Look at the Problem of Evil | 116 |
8 Justice Incentives and Selfishness | 117 |