Justice Beyond Institutions: G. A. Cohen on Choice, Equality, and Moral Responsibility

This paper reconstructs and critically evaluates G. A. Cohen’s claim that justice is not exhausted by the design of social institutions but also depends on the choices individuals make within those institutions. Challenging John Rawls’s institutional focus, Cohen argues that formally just rules can coexist with substantive injustice when individuals exploit permissible inequalities for personal advantage. Central to Cohen’s critique is the idea of an egalitarian ethos—a shared moral commitment that governs personal conduct and aligns individual choice with egalitarian principles. The paper argues that Cohen offers a powerful moral insight by exposing the limitations of purely institutional accounts of justice and highlighting the role of individual agency in sustaining inequality. At the same time, it critically examines the risks of extending justice into personal morality, including increased moral demandingness, the reintroduction of individual blame, and the potential erosion of pluralism and structural responsibility. While Cohen’s egalitarian ethos cannot serve as a comprehensive or action-guiding principle of justice, it functions as an important critical ideal that illuminates the moral compromises embedded in incentive-based inequalities. The paper concludes that Cohen’s contribution sharpens the tension between moral aspiration and institutional feasibility, clarifying the stakes of egalitarian justice without displacing the central importance of structural critique.