Politics (2000) 20(1) pp. 19–24 © Political Studies Association 2000. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. 19 In this paper I explore a possible response to G.A. Cohen’s critique of the Rawlsian defence of inequality-generating incentives. Much of the debate on this topic has neglected the im- portance Rawls places on the principles that apply to individuals. I explore two possible strategies. First, to argue that self-seeking high-fliers fail to fulfil the natural duty to uphold justice; secondly, to argue that such individuals fail to fulfil the natural duty of mutual respect. These two strategies allow Rawlsians to argue that justice as fairness does require an ethos that is violated by the market behaviour of self-seeking high-fliers. Introduction John Rawls’s difference principle allows for departures from equality provided that such socio-economic inequalities are to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged and attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of oppor- tunity (see Rawls, 1971 and 1996). Such inequalities can benefit the least advantaged if they motivate the talented to be more productive than they would be if such in- centives did not exist. G.A. Cohen’s critique of the Rawlsian defence of inequality- generating incentives 2 has sparked much debate among defenders and critics of Rawls’s theory of justice as fairness (see Cohen, 1992, 1995 and 1997; Bertram, 1993; Estlund, 1998; Williams, 1998). Cohen argues that ‘the principles of distributive justice, principles, that is, about the just distribution of benefits and burdens in society, apply, whatever else they do, to people’s legally unconstrained choices’ (Cohen, 1997, p. 3). In particular, Cohen claims that the demands of social justice apply to the legally unconstrained choices of self-seeking high-fliers. Such an ethos is undermined, claims Cohen, by Rawls’s claim that the two principles of justice only apply to the basic structure of society – that is, to society’s main political, social and economic institutions. In this paper I shall explore a possible Rawlsian response to Cohen’s critique that much of the recent literature has ignored. By focusing on the principles that apply to social systems and institutions, Cohen and other commentators have neglected Rawls’s discussion of the principles that apply to individuals (see Rawls, 1971, pp. 108–117 and ch. VI). The principles of natural duty and obligation, claims Rawls, ‘are an essential part of a conception of right: they define our institutional ties and how we become bound to one another. The con- ception of justice as fairness is incomplete until these principles have been accounted for’ (1971, p. 333). Once we consider what Rawls has to say about the principles that apply to individuals we see that these Incentives and the Natural Duties of Justice Colin Farrelly 1 Colin Farrelly, University of Aberdeen