10/8/09  Simon Hampson writes on what we can learn about social justice from the late Jerry Cohen.

Last week, G.A. ‘Jerry’ Cohen, one of the greatest post-war political philosophers, died. His work hasn’t permeated into the language and arguments of politicians to the same extent as the rest of the ‘big five’ who revolutionised political theory in the 1970s; Rawls, Nozick, Dworkin, and Sen. Yet his thinking is more relevant to the current political landscape than ever.

There’s no one-stop-shop for Cohen’s views. His interests spread widely, first taking in Marxism, then an attack on right-wing libertarianism and then a final cross-examination of liberalism. This, and perhaps also his radical egalitarianism, might explain why his name is rarely mentioned by the political classes.

It shouldn’t be this way. Cohen’s later work is concerned with a problem that our politics keeps on returning to, again and again - is social justice about institutions and rules, or is it also a matter of what kind of people we are?

In the past two years, there has been increasing sense that ‘it’s within the letter of rules’ is a pretty flimsy excuse for all sorts of bad behaviour. Think of corporations exploiting tax loopholes. Or politicians pointing out that ‘flipping’ of second homes wasn’t outside parliamentary rules. Or bankers accepting huge bonuses in failing banks. The public outrage over this behaviour suggests that many aren’t convinced that justice is simply a matter of sticking to the rules.

Neither was Cohen. For him, social justice was also a matter of character. It’s about how we relate to others, our motivations, and the ‘ethos’ we live by. Rules and institutions, no matter how well conceived, are never enough. Rather, achieving justice requires us to temper our own self-interest in our day-to-day lives, and act according to values of fairness and equality. The neglect of this point, and the resulting tendency to see ‘sticking to the rules’ as the extent of our public morality, has led to recurrent crises in our political life.

Cohen’s later work is valuable not because he tells us how to fix this problem (he was, after all, a philosopher), but because it shows what a deep and urgent problem it is. The work of justice can’t be left to institutions such as laws and tax systems; it’s also down to us, to how we behave in our everyday lives. The as-yet unanswered question is how a more ethical social ethos, particularly among powerful elites, can be realised.

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