Incentives, basic structure, and community of justification: Cohen's critique of Rawls revisited

Abstract

The article deals with two arguments used by Gerald Cohen in his critique of the justice of incentives that, according to the most common interpretation, are admitted by John Rawls’s conception of justice – in particular, by difference principle. One such argument is what Cohen anticipates in response to the basic structure objection, the objection according to which the criticism of incentives runs up against the limit that Rawls himself imposes on the applicability of the principles of justice as fairness. The other argument calls for the ideal of a community of justification in order to defend an interpretation of difference principle incompatible (at least in most cases) with incentives. The article’s thesis is that both arguments fail; the first, because there is no incongruity in postulating that a conception of justice applies to non-coercive social structures or rules, but not to the individual behaviors that constitute these structures; the second, because it presupposes a conception of justice formally different from that of Rawls.