| Description |
In this paper, I consider one justification for people's sincere, daily choices - G.A. Cohen's ethos of justice - that seeks to (a) discourage people from demanding incentives for choosing highly productive lines of work and (b) motivate them to do choose the most socially useful occupation. Cohen formulates the ethos in response to John Rawls' claim that, if incentives are necessary, then the inequalities they create can be justified. The ethos, Cohen believes, achieves a distribution of goods that is both equality-preserving and Pareto-efficient, in that it renders everyone better off. On my view, the ethos produces an illiberal outcome where agents acting under it must choose a conception of the good they would not otherwise choose; the duty of the ethos is rationally non-optional. I propose an alternative justification - Kantian self-perfection - that is superior because it makes good on "what characterizes humanity," that is, on people's special moral status, which owes to their rational agency, and is a near-perfect duty that sacrifices nothing in the way of Pareto-efficiency. |
