G. A. Cohen

Gerald Allan Cohen ( KOH-ən; 14 April 1941-5 August 2009) was a Canadian political philosopher who held the positions of Quain Professor of Jurisprudence, University College London and Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory, All Souls College, Oxford.

He then attended McGill University, obtaining a BA in philosophy and political science, and the University of Oxford, where he studied under Gilbert Ryle (and was also taught by Isaiah Berlin) and obtained a BPhil in philosophy. == Academic career == Cohen was assistant lecturer (1963-1964), lecturer (1964-1979), then reader (1979-1984) in the Department of Philosophy at University College London, before being appointed to the Chichele chair at Oxford in 1985.

In History, Labour, and Freedom and Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality, Cohen offers an extensive moral argument in favour of socialism, contrasting his views with those of John Rawls and Robert Nozick by articulating an extensive critique of the Lockean principle of self-ownership as well as the use of that principle to defend right as well as left-libertarianism.