G. A. Cohen 1941 – 2009
Gerald Allan Cohen was a Canadian-British political philosopher and the leading figure of the school of analytical Marxism. Born to a Communist Jewish family in Montreal, he studied at McGill and Oxford and held the chair of social and political theory at All Souls College, Oxford. His Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence reconstructed Marx's historical materialism with the tools of analytic philosophy, while Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality engaged Robert Nozick's libertarianism, and Rescuing Justice and Equality and Why Not Socialism? developed his late egalitarian critique of Rawls. He was an exceptional lecturer admired for both rigor and warmth.
Key facts
- Nationality
- Canadian
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Analytic, Marxism
Selected quotes
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Attributed to G. A. Cohen:
“From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs is still the right ideal.”
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Attributed to G. A. Cohen:
“Marx's theory of history can and should be defended in plain language.”
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Attributed to G. A. Cohen:
“Equality requires the absence of unjust inequalities, not the absence of all difference.”
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Attributed to G. A. Cohen:
“Capitalism is incompatible with the community we owe one another.”
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Attributed to G. A. Cohen:
“The personal is political; the political is also personal.”