  A Rawlsian rejoinder to Cohen might point out that the principles of justice including the difference principle are principles for the regulation of the basic structure of society. Accepting the difference principle as a standard for institutional arrangements is not tantamount to accepting the difference principle as a guide to one's personal life. Cohen insists this position is unstable. Rawls holds that the basic structure of society is the primary subject of justice because its effects on people's fundamental life prospects are so deep and widespread. But voluntary choices of individuals within institutions such as the economy and the family also massively shape people's fundamental life prospects. According to Cohen, the rationale for taking the basic structure to be the primary subject of justice is also a rationale for taking people's choices within the basic structure to be incorporated in the primary subject of justice. Perhaps the principles of justice in their application to individuals take a somewhat different form than they do in their application to institutions. Recall here Cohen's acceptance of the idea that each individual has a Scheffler prerogative to pursue her own projects and aims, to some extent, and not always to be acting with a view to promoting justice. But Cohen's bottom line is that if justice requires the promotion of a moral goal, acceptance of that moral goal as a requirement of justice by the individual must commit her to acting in her own life with a view to promoting that goal.