Rescuing Justice and Equality

"The title of G.A. Cohen's remarkable book suggests an obvious question. Cohen wishes to rescue justice and equality; but from whom or what are these in danger? Cohen's target will strike many readers as surprising: it is the false views of John Rawls that he wishes to combat. Rawls's famous difference principle (more exactly, the first part of it), as Rawls thinks it will apply, allows inequalities that justice properly excludes. Further, Rawls holds wrong positions in metaethics as well: he wrongly makes moral principles depend on matters of fact and he confuses the nature of justice, a question about the essence of a concept, with "rules of regulation," properly a matter for decision."