Abstract

In his rich and stimulating book, Blake argues that comprehensive coercion triggers egalitarian obligations of distributive justice. I argue that coercion is not a necessary condition for egalitarian justice to apply; Blake’s use of a moralised conception of coercion is a mistake; coercion is a redundant member of any set of sufficient conditions that might explain why distributive justice applies; Blake’s emphasis on providing conditions for the exercise of autonomy might support a much more cosmopolitan theory of distributive justice.