Chandran Kukathas - 'The Labour Theory of Justice: A Critique of G.A.Cohen'

Chandran Kukathas holds the Chair in Political Theory in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics. He previously taught at the University of Utah and at the Australian Defence Force Academy. He is the author of Hayek and Modern Liberalism (1989), Rawls: A Theory of Justice and Its Critics (with Philip Pettit 1990) and The Liberal Archipelago (2003).

G.A.Cohen has defended a conception of justice as equality, according to which departures from equality are warranted only when people are rewarded for making greater effort or undertaking more burdensome work. This talk presents a critical analysis of this view of justice, and of the presuppositions that underpin it. The Q&A following the talk is below.