Rawlsian Incentives and the Freedom Objection

In a hugely significant and much discussed series of writings, G. A. Cohen attacks John Rawls's “justice as fairness” for permitting morally arbitrary inequalities. On Cohen's view, these inequalities are at odds with the egalitarian ethos that ought, by Rawls's own lights, to govern the attitudes and actions of agents in a Rawlsian society.1 One potential reply which Cohen canvasses on behalf of Rawlsians, and then proceeds to attack, is the “Freedom Objection.”2 The Freedom Objection has received some attention, but there is much more to say about it. In my view, the Freedom Objection constitutes an important line of the Rawlsian's defense against Cohen's criticisms, and it remains underappreciated why and how Cohen's responses to it are unsatisfactory.3 The article unfolds as follows. Section I deals with necessary points of exposition: I supply some brief background to Cohen's general critique of Rawls's justice as fairness, and then I go on to outline the Freedom Objection, which comes in two versions. In section II, I outline and then assess Cohen's response to the “First Version” of the Freedom Objection, which has received comparatively little examination thus far. Then, in section III, I outline and assess Cohen's way of dealing with the “Second Version” of the Freedom Objection. A notable inconsistency between Cohen's treatment of the First Version and his treatment of the Second Version is also identified in section III. The discussion concludes, in section IV, with a further suggestion of why Cohen may find it more difficult than he thinks to escape commitment to the legal enforcement of occupational choice.