The Political Philosophy of G. A. Cohen

Book excerpt: Gerald Allan Cohen was Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at All Souls College, Oxford for 23 years and is considered one of the most influential political philosophers of the past quarter-century. He died in 2009. The Political Philosophy of G. A. Cohen is the first full-length study on the unity of Cohen's political thought. It proceeds thematically, studying a range of fundamental concepts such as materialism, freedom, equality, fraternity and the market, all the while revisiting Cohen's seminal treatment of Marx, Nozick, Dworkin, Rawls and Sen. Nicholas Vrousalis brings together the diverse strands of argument in Cohen's thought and critically reconstructs them in the context of contemporary debates in social and political theory. This reconstruction highlights common threads running through Cohen's numerous contributions to contemporary philosophy, without underrating the inevitable tensions between them.