Defending Equality Through Cohen’s Value of Community
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Community, which occupies a central place in Gerald Allan Cohen’s political philosophy, is characterized by the mutual care that individuals extend to each other. This study illustrates this often-overlooked value across different contexts and proposes a new conceptual model of how the (in)equality of economic distribution influences its viability. I argue that the realization of the value of community can be undermined by two interrelated elements: an objective element, the hierarchical stratification of life experiences, and a subjective element, the perception among the disadvantaged that the better-off choose not to assist them. Building on this, I contend that, compared to alternative distributive principles such as utilitarianism, sufficientarianism, limitarianism, maximinism, and prioritarianism, egalitarianism most robustly sustains the community value. Accordingly, community itself furnishes a powerful rationale for endorsing egalitarianism over competing distributive principles, a conclusion further corroborated by the core insights of relational egalitarianism.
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