Justice, for our children: using non-ideal theory to talk to children about injustice

The greatest artist does not have any concept Which a single piece of marble does not itself contain Within its excess, though only A hand that obeys the intellect can discover it. Michelangelo Buonarroti Fidelity to the facts in political theory is often associated with a conservative slant, or at least a tendency to prefer incremental reformism to radicalism. Political realism—both in its classical manifestations and its contemporary revival1—is frequently linked to that tendency. For instance, in recent works we read that realism can lead to a “collapsing of the space for serious challenges to major social and political institutions (Markell, 2010, p. 176), that “the closer political theorists are to politics the more their own judgment and frailties will be tested” (Philp, 2012, p. 646), and that “realism will inevitably tend to nudge us towards a greater acceptance of the status quo, towards more modesty in the change that we are prepared to propose or demand” (Finlayson, 2017, p. 271). In this article I resist those claims, and contribute to the project of reclaiming the radical potential of political realism (Brinn, 2019; Cross, 2019; Honig & Stears, 2011; McKean, 2016; McQueen, 2016; Prinz, 2016; Raekstad, 2016; Prinz & Rossi, 2017). I develop a form of realism as genealogy–both debunking and vindicatory–and show how it can be more radical than both ideal and nonideal approaches to normative political theory. I arrive at this conclusion by addressing two related, partly methodological and partly substantive challenges facing realism. The first challenge concerns the very possibility of a realist normative political theory: if characterizing realism by contrasting it with moralism means that political judgment is not to be derived from pre-political moral commitments, what other sources of political normativity are available? The second challenge is status quo bias: does realism's fidelity to the facts condemn it to some form of conservative complacency? I argue that there is an important sense in which realists can support radical and even unachievable political change—one can be realistic and demand the impossible, as the soixante-huitard slogan goes. To see how that may be the case one needs to characterize realism by contrasting it with both nonideal theory and utopianism (in a pejorative sense of the term, as I shall clarify). In a nutshell, realism differs from nonideal theory because it need not be concerned with feasibility constraints, and it differs from utopianism because it eschews plans of the perfect polity or for the correct course of political action. Utopianism, realism and nonideal theory are all technical terms, so my definitions will by necessity be stipulative, though, it is to be hoped, not overly controversial. With those distinctions in place it will become clear that moralism is at greater risk of status quo bias than realism because of its relative blindness to ideological bias. Whereas realism, I argue, is an approach grounded in our best social-scientific accounts of politics, but not in such a way as to jeopardize the transformative potential of our political imagination. The upshot is that, if we set aside the quasi-technocratic aspirations of a political theory geared to generate immediate policy guidance, realism (rather than nonideal theory) emerges as the best bet for those sympathetic to many of the concerns about fidelity to the facts of real politics raised in current methodological debates (e.g., Estlund, 2014, 2017; Freeden, 2012; Hamlin & Stemplowska, 2012; Horton, 2017; Miller, 2016; Mills, 2005; Rossi, 2016; Valentini, 2012; Wiens, 2012). That, however, this not true of all forms of realism. In fact, after briefly characterizing realism in the next section, I move on to distinguishing between ordorealism, contextual realism, and radical realism. I then show how each approach draws on different sources of normativity and, relatedly, exhibits fidelity to a different set of facts about politics. I associate ordorealism with the prioritization of peace and stability, contextual realism with practice-dependent norms, and radical realism with a form of ideology critique. I then contrast realism with nonideal theory and discuss utopianism and the prospects for a radical realism. I characterize a version of radical realism with a distinctive epistemic normativity, which has radical potential that surpasses what is found in moralist political theory and also opens a new option in the debate on the status of normativity in Marxism. That is because, while radical realism avoids potentially ideological moralizing, it can inform open-ended social critique as well as lend support to concrete forms of prefigurative politics. To be sure, that is not sufficient to establish the superiority of realism to moralism, and not even to identify the all-things-considered best form of realism. My aim here is more modest: I want to show that, pace some critics (Erman & Möller, 2015a; Estlund, 2017; Leader-Maynard & Worsnip, 2018; Scheuerman, 2013), contemporary realism is a distinctive and consistent position in normative political theory, and that at least one of its variants does not suffer from a status quo bias—rather, it is as radical as it gets. Moral philosophy sets the background for, and the boundaries of, political philosophy. What persons may and may not do to one another limits what they may do through the apparatus of a state, or do to establish such an apparatus. (Nozick, 1974, p. 6) While that approach remains prevalent in contemporary Anglo-American political philosophy, realists claim that no overarching principles that span personal morality and politics are plausible. That may appear to fly in the face of simple consistency requirements: if there are true overarching moral principles (“bring about the greatest good for the greatest number,” or “never lie,” say),—where “overarching” means that they apply to any agent regardless of whether the context of action is politics or not—then shouldn't we just apply them to our political predicament, in a categorical or even just pro tanto way? The realist contention is that moralists beg the question of whether there are any such principles spanning the personal and the political—a fraught distinction we will discuss in the next subsection—or at least whether they are good guides to political action or judgment. That is not to say that non-overarching principles are just role ethics principles for political office-holders (Estlund, 2017, p. 366), for non-overarching principles are not just a context-specific application of overarching principles. More precisely, non-overarching, properly political principles don't draw on the same sources of normativity as moral principles. That is why realists believe that there are no overarching principles. If such overarching moral principles existed, then at least a significant portion of normative political theory would be a branch of applied ethics. If realists can show that they can make normative political judgments that don't draw on overarching principles and so don't share the sources of normativity of moral principles, then they will have made room for their view. One may reply that the lack of overarching moral principles doesn't preclude the notion that politics should be governed by moral principles, albeit moral principles that apply only to the political domain (Estlund, 2017, p. 367). That is a point realists who are not overly concerned with semantics are ready to concede (Williams, 2005, p. 5). What matters is that realist normative standards—however one may wish to call them—are not inferred from overarching, pre-political values or principles.2 The main arguments in favor of the rejection of overarching moral principles, i.e., the realist thesis about the normative autonomy of the political, could be crudely summarized by this slogan: if morality could solve political problems, we wouldn't have politics. I want to distinguish between three argumentative strategies in support of this claim, each of which leads to a different strand of realism: ordorealism, contextual realism, and radical realism. Three caveats about that taxonomy are in order. First, my task here isn't to show how these arguments defeat moralism, but simply to articulate the positions realists may take. Second, those are Weberian ideal types; most worked out positions incorporate elements from more than one of the three approaches. Third, I make no consequential hermeneutical claims about any of the canonical figures I mention to fix ideas, nor about their reception. Ordorealism has a familiar Hobbesian starting point, which Bernard Williams calls ‘the first political question’: “the securing of order, protection, safety, trust, and the conditions of cooperation” (Williams, 2005, p. 3). The basic thought is that, left to their own devices, including their own ethical judgments, people conflict, with highly undesirable results—so much so that ethical judgment itself may be reduced to a dead letter. Morality or justice are not in themselves a way out of this problem but, as Hobbes saw, they may be instruments through which political power enables us to solve that problem. So we need a freestanding sphere of political normativity if there is to be scope for personal morality, let alone most other trappings of human sociality. Note how leaving (or not falling into) the state of nature is considered desirable not out of some moral commitment to the desirability of political association,3 but simply because it is a precondition for the enjoyment of most of what we happen to take to be valuable, morally or otherwise (Williams, 2005, p. 3). This is a modest point about the instrumental value of political association. As such it is an empirical claim, and one that probably wouldn't hold true in the few remaining small-scale stateless societies (Widerquist & McCall, 2015). But a certain contingency even of its basic claims is characteristic of the empiricist roots of this strand of realism. The contextual strategy's starting point can also be understood as beginning empirically, through an observation of the phenomenological difference between the political and the personal. One doesn't need to invoke Carl Schmitt to note that something is amiss in the thought that lying to my friends is bad for the same reasons that lying in a political campaign is bad, if indeed it is. This approach may remind us of Machiavelli's claims about the tensions between personal and political values and so of the unlikeliness of a unified source for both. Yet realists need not endorse the more radical and old-fashioned readings of Machiavelli, according to which there is no salient difference between legitimate authority and effective power. Indeed some realists elevate such a distinction to a foundational principle (Sagar, 2018). The important point is just that the normative standards that apply to the exercise of political power are different from those that apply to personal relationships. Here, however, one may worry that contextual realists have failed to learn the feminist lesson encapsulated in the slogan, “the personal is political.” To assuage that worry, one may distinguish the personal/political boundary from the public/private one. Many liberal theorists consider them to be equivalent, or in any case focus solely on the latter, as their main concern is to identify the appropriate sphere of legitimate state intervention. So they tend to accommodate feminist concerns by acknowledging that, while the public/private line may have been drawn in the wrong place, the distinction remains viable and important (Gavison, 1992). Liberal realists, qua liberals, will be unable to accommodate the radical position of feminists who reject the public/private distinction altogether (MacKinnon, 1989). But realists need not be liberals, and if they aren't they can focus on the personal/political line instead, which in turn may allow for kinship with quite radical feminist positions (Frazer, 2015). That is because the personal/political distinction is not about a narrow liberal concern with the limits of state action. When the slogan was coined in the 1960s, feminists wanted to point out that, even in movements uninterested in the state or antagonistic towards it, the sphere of appropriately political action was conceived too narrowly, often in ways that marginalized issues of concern to women (Finlayson, 2016, pp. 125–128). That is not to say that the line cannot be drawn. Rather, the slogan reminds us to look with suspicion at any established, ossified way of drawing the line between the personal and the political. The point about questioning the received wisdom about issues like the political/personal divide—critiquing them as ideology, if you will—leads to the third and final strategy at the realist's disposal, the radical one whose guiding thought is that “ethics is usually dead politics; the hand of a victor in a past conflict reaching out to extend its grip to the present and the future,” as Raymond Geuss puts it (2010, p. 42). Insofar as morality is influenced by political power, moral advocacy for political actions and institutions should be the object of critical suspicion—more so than most mainstream, ethics-first political theory allows. That point highlights a connection between the radical and ordorealist approaches. For ordorealists morality and justice are instrumenta regni. The radical approach shares that insight. However, on the ordorealist view the priority remains to establish order by whatever means necessary and so the insight is not problematized. The radical approach tries to establish criteria for making qualitative distinctions between the moral (and other) beliefs that support political authority. Different strands of realism assign different relative weights to stability and ideology, and resolve the trade-off accordingly. As I will show in a moment, the insistence on meeting the basic legitimation demand is ordorealist, the references to a form of legitimation specifically suited for modernity are contextual, and the litmus test for the admissibility of beliefs in legitimacy is radical. The basic legitimation demand exemplifies the ordorealist approach insofar as it requires the provision of order and stability, so relative success in meeting the demand becomes the basis of normative judgments. Importantly, though, the coercive provision of order is conceptually distinguishable from raw domination, which is suspended warfare rather than a political relationship (Hall, 2015)—all politics is coercive, but not all coercion is political. While it is possible to say of any regime whether it meets the basic legitimation demand, the notions of order and stability here can be filled in in context-dependent ways: what might have been acceptable politics in feudal Europe would not pass muster now. Politics versus raw domination is a conceptual distinction, but ordorealists can accommodate conceptual change. Yet a prudent attitude towards change prevails among realists who emphasize those concerns. So, simplifying somewhat, in the work of Matt Sleat (2013a) and Andrew Sabl (2011, 2017) we find defenses of relatively conservative versions of liberalism, with an emphasis on providing a stable outlet for the management of diversity social conflict while renouncing the neo-Kantian project of neutral arbitration. Contextual realism can be associated with a practice-dependent approach to the sources of normativity (Sangiovanni, 2008; Rossi, 2012). The rough idea is that normative political principles are grounded in an interpretation of the point and purpose of particular political practices. The contextual realist, then, constructs her normative standards by asking whether the point and purpose of a particular set of institutions is genuinely political (i.e., whether it addresses the right questions about the provision of order, etc.), and whether those institutions are suited to their purpose. In Williams's theory this is exemplified by the connection between modernity and liberalism: an analysis of the historical context yields an account of the most suitable regime. This is a different level of evaluation from that which a pure ordorealist approach would warrant. For it allows us to rank alternative legitimate regimes on the basis of their fitness for purpose. Robert Jubb's recent defense of non-intrinsic egalitarianism exemplifies this approach (Jubb, 2015). Crudely, on Jubb's view an egalitarian standard turns out to be required for legitimacy on the basis of a reading of what may be expected of political institutions under contemporary conditions. New realist work on the legitimacy and justice of the EU similarly draws on Williams-inspired practice dependence (Beetz, 2017). The radical approach, on the other hand, acquires its normativity by contesting what one may call legitimation stories. Williams's critical theory principle provides a good illustration. The distinction between necessary political coercion and raw domination partly depends on whether the exercise of political power makes sense to those over whom it is exercised (Williams, 2005, pp. 4–6), but this perception can be manipulated by ideology. For Williams this happens when a belief in the legitimacy of a coercive order is caused by the very power it supports and is in the interest of that power (Williams, 2002, pp. 230–234; 2005, p. 6; Sagar, 2018). One may not find that account of ideological distortion persuasive, but radical-minded realists must have one in order to make good the idea that there is more to legitimacy than a belief in it. And, importantly, the distinction between acceptable and unacceptable legitimation stories is not moral but epistemic: ideological legitimation stories just aren't what they purport to be, so epistemic caution requires us to disregard them, as we will see in 3.2 below (Prinz & Rossi, 2017).4 Recent realist work in this vein includes critiques of the ideology of Rawlsian political liberalism (Finlayson, 2015; as well as critiques of policy or normative (Prinz & Rossi, Rossi, 2017; & 2017; & Prinz, critique of the ideological nature of political may also be read in this That of realism should some way towards why realism is from nonideal theory, even though it is frequently with it by the many theorists who it to an approach on “the concrete among made by with (Markell, 2010, p. or on the that politics is by 2017, p. realism and nonideal theory are about “the more than most contemporary political theory but here I will show that, at least for some variants of realism, we are about different of that has for the level of to each Crudely, nonideal theory is a set of for how best to our normative political in the This can be to point to a of between ideal and nonideal theory, much as or to a need to with political as to the ideal polity Wiens, out of about the or because one the ideal as an ideological from concrete for social change us these I just want to show that there is a consequential distinction between nonideal theory and realism. our account of nonideal theory, a of facts is to a role in facts about feasibility the of an ideal theory a desirable and the or unachievable political state of nonideal theory will us what is the best way to the what is If we reject the of and that normative should rank political one another as to some ideal then nonideal theory will of a between the values in alternative way nonideal theory is a or a set of criteria for the of of the three realist strategies for political will a role in each but they don't have to be facts about feasibility for all of realism. the in to be the a of that point The third the difference between and nonideal theory. we may say that the to the status quo become as we through the the right is to contain facts about ordorealists will have to identify political that can order in the This of realism is indeed most often associated with the conservative or figures in the also an important role in versions of contemporary liberal realism 2017; 2012; that are on or about social change than liberal theory. in that vein is to from the status As we have that realism and nonideal theory one we may say that, insofar as they have to take feasibility ordorealists are nonideal theorists of realism. The contextual realist will have scope for radical social through a of the and institutions at hand A practice-dependent approach is by to but the to which that a status quo bias on the of the is in a addressing this (Erman & Möller, so I cannot do justice to its it to say that, even if critics on the left are correct that the most radical are out to practice-dependent there are of transformative by that Many are not realist, but some realist methodological (e.g., 2017; & 2019; 2015). the radical realist will be to the from to transformative This work will be by an of how power beliefs in and so it will draw on the best social-scientific accounts of those but that no limits on our to critique and our to those beliefs any and for our the radical realist has no need for feasibility That is not to say that all status quo bias from feasibility constraints, but all status quo bias to fidelity to the facts So realists can demand the is in but not by status quo bias. that that radical realists can that is with no to and us that it is and even to do so 2008; Estlund, would be an if radical realism found itself with positions one may call (or in My view is that realists can make that do not take feasibility but other to the of political two forms of which we may call and ideological cannot that in the any state of of which the has no For the of a even in its there a of of of with which no principles will radical realism is and so while it can let the political of feasibility constraints, it is of it the of that an of The realist can be and but must be modest to those to there are of politics not to The of ideological moralism is the way of the on their status quo bias is to from its on like and, to a that the best for thought from facts from the of our normative the we on the more we on moral judgments alone But do these the that To see a potential for bias there one doesn't have to with on the of are not to often ideology with an of the true of our conceptual and our 2012, p. it to that, as many and our moral and moral must in some way to our present if only because, whatever it may be, morality is one of the we are in & In which case there is at least a debate to be as to the relative of as to status quo bias. The two forms of are radical realism must But they are what room is left for radical normative The I wish to here its from an in the which may be to or The of the moralist and the to moral of the ideological moralist are realism is in the sense that its normativity is it just us that, its the we should to for the a with the that we shall even if there are no on what basis can we make those normative drawing on pre-political moral our of the sources of normativity for the radical approach to realism: normative judgments from a critical of legitimation and the is on epistemic rather than moral If a legitimation isn't what it to be, it becomes and so should be and the it supports should be a critical of other legitimation stories may the they would rather to notions of autonomy to those and even Williams to “the most basic sense of which us that we should to the power of to critical theory but it is important for a realist to resist the call of even such pre-political moral (Williams, 2002, p. such in normative political theory does so at the risk of them at a we should not pre-political moral whose turns out to be with the very political or institutions they are to The rough idea that move can be the of it would be to an as a for her own if it turns out that a role in our current notion of then it is to the notion of to the legitimacy of another to of this of realist in are and often for that This should but it does not the of whether the arguments can be (Estlund, 2017, p. to the the point here is not one about the of but about whether some arguments are even may be that some may be but it cannot be made to in favor of a for the case of for instance, that a radical realist wanted to the legitimation status of coercive, forms of political of

Nonideal theory and critical theory are two approaches to social critique. Nonideal theory has become increasingly popular in post-Rawlsian political philosophy over the last 15 years (for an overview, see Valentini 2012). It is a broad church, but is often thought to be motivated by a dissatisfaction with ideal theory's lack of practical relevance (Swift 2008, 368). Issues that have preoccupied proponents of nonideal theory are partial compliance (see Rawls 1971, 8–9; Cullity 2004; Chahboun 2015), or the question of how to translate principles of justice into concrete policy recommendations (see, among others, Phillips 1985; Robeyns 2008). Critical theory, on the other hand, is often associated with the Frankfurt School (see Held 1980; Gordon, Hammer, and Honneth 2019), but also refers, more broadly, to work done by critical race theorists and feminist scholars (Mills 1997; Haslanger 2021). It shares with nonideal theory an orientation to real-world circumstances and a commitment to being relevant to action in the face of those circumstances. In the light of this, it is surprising that the relationship between nonideal theory and critical theory has not received more attention in the literature, for instance in the way that the relation between realism and nonideal theory has (for discussions of the latter see Cozzaglio and Favara 2022; Favara 2022; Sleat 2016; Rossi and Sleat 2014). This special issue seeks to fill this gap. The four contributions, while each developing a distinct understanding of this relationship, all agree that critical theory offers important insights which could strengthen the real-world relevance of the nonideal theory enterprise. The first contribution “Should nonideal theory rely on ideal theory? Lessons from the Frankfurt School,” by Kristina Lepold, addresses the question posed in the title that has been the subject of some debate among nonideal theorists. Drawing inspiration from the Frankfurt School, Lepold argues that if nonideal theory relies on ideal theory to identify injustices, it is a matter of chance whether nonideal theory can help members of the social world to understand the injustices they face. This, however, should give nonideal theorists pause for thought, for the ability of nonideal theory to successfully guide collective action to overcome injustice depends on its ability to contribute to such self-reflection. Lepold concludes by suggesting that nonideal theory should not rely on ideal theory, if it does not want to risk having no practical relevance. In the second contribution, “Non-ideal theory and critical theory and their relationship to standpoint theory,” Hilkje Hänel demonstrates that there is a methodological overlap between critical theory and some variants of nonideal theory when it comes to analyzing social reality. Both share a commitment to standpoint theory, that is, the assumption that one's social position is relevant to knowledge acquisition. This methodological commonality means that nonideal theory and critical theory face a similar challenge: the critical standpoint is always only a potential and never a given, which Hänel calls the “problem of ideology.” This problem can be addressed by drawing on a theoretical resource that is central to critical theory, namely ideology critique. In his contribution, “Critical Theory, Ideal Theory, and Conceptual Engineering,” Andrea Sangiovanni picks up on a similar thread. He argues that all social and political philosophy should become critical theory in the sense that it starts theorizing from the current social practices we find ourselves in. This is because disputes about normative concepts, like freedom or justice, can only be resolved by understanding the practical context in which they are meant to do their work. Rather than proceeding a priori, we need to ask which concept is most useful or appropriate in a given context, or which concept best captures the essential features of a set of social practices. In the final contribution, “Beyond the nonideal: Why critical theory needs a utopian dimension,” Titus Stahl examines central arguments by Marx, Adorno, and others against ideal or utopian theorizing. The essence of these arguments is that political theorists are incapable of envisioning ideal states of affairs under nonideal conditions because the latter severely limit their epistemic, imaginative and conceptual capacities. But Stahl argues that most of these arguments are unconvincing and shows how critical theory can be immanent, starting from within current society and its contradictions, and at the same time construct provisional ideal states of affairs that can orient collective action. Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

The distinction between ideal and nonideal theory is an important methodological concern in contemporary political theory. At issue is the extent to which political theorizing is a practical endeavor and, consequently, the extent to which real-world facts should either be factored into political theorizing or else be assumed away. The distinction between ideal theory and nonideal theory was first introduced by John Rawls in his classic A Theory of Justice. Rawls’s ideal theory is an account of the society we should aim for, given certain facts about human nature and possible social institutions, and involves two central assumptions. First, it assumes full compliance of relevant agents with the demands of justice. Second, it assumes that historical and natural conditions of society are reasonably favorable. These two assumptions are individually necessary and jointly sufficient for his ideal theory. For Rawls, nonideal theory primarily addresses the question of how the ideal might be achieved in practical, permissible steps, from the actual, partially just society we occupy. The account of ideal and nonideal theory advanced by Rawls has been subject to criticism from different directions. Amartya Sen accepts Rawls’s distinction between ideal and nonideal theory but argues that Rawlsian-style nonideal theory is too ideal. Given the many and severe injustices we face we do not need to know what ideal (or “transcendental”) justice looks like; our focus should not be on how to transition toward this ideal. Instead, the advancement of justice requires a comparative judgment which ranks possible policies in terms of being more or less just than the status quo. G. A. Cohen, by contrast, argues that Rawlsian-style ideal theory is not really ideal theory as such, but instead principles for regulating society. Our beliefs about normative principles should, ultimately, be insensitive to matters of empirical fact; genuine ideal theory is a form of moral epistemology (an exercise of identifying normative truths).

In the wake of the nonideal theory turn in political philosophy, few have paused to ask: Is nonideal theory a form of ideology? And perhaps even fewer have paused to ask: Is the debate between ideal/nonideal theorists itself a form of ideology? To the first question, I argue that nonideal theory is ideological in virtue of the fact that it rules out more utopian ways of theorizing by methodological fiat, and in so doing, risks entrenching an unjust status quo. To the second question, I argue that the debate between ideal/nonideal theorists is itself a form of ideology, one which serves to reinforce the status quo by convincing political philosophers/theorists that the most pressing problems are problems about what we should think about what we are doing. But this is false. An upshot of my argument is that we ought to abandon the ideal/nonideal theory debate and address the pressing problems of political philosophy head-on in pluralist fashion, oscillating back and forth between these two modes of theorizing without a decision procedure to tell us when we should take up one perspective or the other.

Reviewed by: Kant's Nonideal Theory of Politics by Dilek Huseyinzadegan Omar Dahbour Dilek Huseyinzadegan. Kant's Nonideal Theory of Politics. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2019. Pp. xii + 204. Paperback, $34.95. In this work the author attempts two, rather different, tasks in rethinking the nature of Kant's contributions to political philosophy. First, she argues that Kant's political writings depart methodologically from his critical writings on epistemology and morality. This is the significance of her use of the term 'nonideal theory' to designate the distinctive methodology that is supposedly operative in later Kantian texts such as part 1 of the Metaphysics of Morals, and especially the essays on enlightenment, world history, and war and peace. Second, she maintains that Kant's distinctive contributions to political philosophy derive not from entailments of his moral philosophy, but from specific theses he advocates concerning the nature of legitimate government, historical progress, and international relations. The author's primary claim concerning Kant's method for thinking about political life is that it is distinct from the ideal theory used in his three critiques on epistemology, morality, and aesthetics. While the Metaphysics of Morals contains an "ideal" conception of peace (7), the nonideal theory contained in the other essays provides a guide to the "pursuit of peace" (11). On her view, Kant derives his ideal theory from "formal" notions of personhood and rights (7). But Kant was interested in more than simply working out the conceptual implications of his basic notion of moral rightness. While the central concept of Kant's moral theory is right (Recht), the corresponding concept in his political theory is "purposiveness" (Zweckmässigkeit). The latter is taken to be a "regulative principle of teleology" that justifies the existence of certain values (e.g. "perpetual peace") and institutions (e.g. a federation of states) based on the purposiveness of (human) nature leading toward these ends (10). Kant regarded political norms to be goals that are realizable through a historical process. As the author writes, this is not provable as such, but is a "useful assumption" (31). Clearly, Kant's philosophy of history plays a central role here. It is, as the author admits, a hypothetical reconstruction of world history—even, as she provocatively refers to it, a "historical novel" (27, 51)! Yet, on her account, it shows the importance of narrative in justifying, for instance, the cosmopolitan ideas that Kant espoused (42, 50). At this point, some concerns about this approach emerge. First, Kant's contribution to the philosophy of history is not, despite the author's claims, unprecedented. What is interesting in Kant's case is the particular story he told; but then the importance of Kant's input is not methodological (i.e. with respect to methodology in the philosophy of history, to which Kant contributes nothing unique), but substantive. Second, does Kant's approach truly address what the author refers to as the "feasibility concern" regarding his substantive political proposals (115)? If Kant's teleological reconstruction of human history were based on a thick, empirical account (as, for instance, Hegel's was), maybe so. But Kant's "hypothetical" history is nothing of the sort. The answers here lie not in the methodological originality of Kant's approach, but in the substantive value of the particular norms and institutions that he advocated. Above all, the idea of a cosmopolitan world order has been extremely influential. This order is, on the author's account, a possible, pragmatic result of various historical tendencies—including Kant's notion of "unsocial sociability"—rather than a simple product of postulated moral ideals. Peace, in other words, is a political goal, rather than a moral goal, and is to be achieved not on the basis (only) of moral incentives, but also of the practical incentive of peoples' need for accommodation with one another (102–3). This practical incentive gives rise to the three political proposals that Kant advocates: republican government, a federation of states, and a right of hospitality (117). The combined effect of the enactment of these proposals was to be the condition of "perpetual peace" that Kant envisaged as the necessary end of world history (13). There are, however, some reasons...

Dark Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform

In the ideal vs. non-ideal theory debate contemporary political philosophers discuss the method of theorizing social justice. Some argue that theories of social justice should be ideal and justify exclusively in ideal theory a just society as goal for social reform. Others hold that theories of social justice should be nonideal and justify exclusively in non-ideal theory how to address social injustices in the status quo. This article shares the view of those who, like John Rawls, maintain that theories of justice must consist of an ideal and a non-ideal theory part. Yet it criticizes Rawls for prioritizing ideal over non-ideal theory and defends the mutual dependence or co-originality of ideal and non-theory. For not only does non-ideal theorizing depend on a goal of social reform justified in ideal theory. Ideal theorizing also depends on a non-ideal theory to determine whether and how the goal for social reform is feasible.

The main goal of the thesis is to provide a framework for the pursuit of normative inquiries in the field of political philosophy, which bridges ideal and non-ideal theory by accommodating both types of approaches and by providing a blueprint for the transition between ideal and non-ideal theory. This blueprint is subsequently used to examine the various ways in which principles of distributive justice are dependent upon certain idealised assumptions and the ways in which such principles would be affected by the transition from ideal to non-ideal theory. A secondary goal of the thesis is to explore to what extent we can draw on various developments from social sciences (and particularly for this thesis, from neoclassical and behavioural economics) to engage in meaningful analyses of theories belonging to the field of political philosophy (and particularly for this thesis, theories of distributive justice). Aside from the provision of a theoretical background concerning the topic of distributive justice (chapter 2), the thesis consists of two main parts.In the first part (chapter 3), I propose and defend a novel methodological approach for pursuing normative inquiries, which aims to bridge ideal and non-ideal theory and provide a framework for the systematization of knowledge in political philosophy. The core ideas of the approach are that: (1) political philosophy should be concerned with both short term goals, such as addressing severe injustices in the present world and long term goals, such as moving towards gradually more just states of the world in the long-run and (2) an appropriate way to satisfy these aims in a systematic manner is to build a landscape of normative models through incremental derivation (i.e., making the assumptions of a model more or less fact-sensitive one at a time) and selecting to pursue the best path that we might take from mitigating problems of severe injustice in the current state of the world to the achievement of perfect justice. The subsequent chapters, which together compose the second part of the thesis, are then designed to expose various ways in which normative principles are dependent on certain assumptions, thereby illustrating the problems which may arise in the transition from ideal to non-ideal theory. All cases studied refer to the connection between principles of distributive justice and assumptions concerning rationality.In chapter 4 I challenge the Rawlsian assertion that each party will have a first-ranked preference for an identical set of principles of justice behind the veil of ignorance, claiming that the original position allows parties to choose on the basis of a plurality of conceptions of rationality and allows choices based on the assignment of different weights to social positions, which in turn may lead to a reasonable disagreement concerning the conception of justice selected. I then argue that this reasonable disagreement does not entail an abandonment of the contractualist project, but its reconstruction in the form of a two-stage process, where parties first construct an individual preference hierarchy for alternative conceptions of justice and then work towards the reconciliation of the divergent conceptions that are chosen in the first stage. Finally, I claim that the threshold prioritarian view is the most plausible candidate for selection in this reconciliatory stage, since it manages to address both the legitimate complaints of parties that would prefer a conception of justice focused on the most disadvantaged positions in society as well as the legitimate complaints of parties that would prefer a conception of justice in which less or no special weight is assigned to the worst-off positions. This result illustrates the more general claim that, in some cases, incrementally modifying the inputs of a normative model may lead to a change in the principles generated by that model.In chapter 5 I seek to assess the responses provided by several theories of sufficientarian justice in cases where heterogeneous assumptions concerning individual rationality are introduced. …

When interest in political realism started to resurge a few years ago, it was not uncommon to interpret realist political theory as a form of non-ideal theorising. This reading has been subjected to extensive criticism. First, realists have argued that political realism cannot be interpreted as merely a form of applied political theory. Second, realists have explained that political realism can defend a role for unfeasible normative prescriptions in political theory. I explain that these developments, besides allowing us to reject interpretations of political realism as a form of non-ideal theory, have given us reason to think of political realism as a form of ideal theory. Yet, when ideal theory enters the picture, a series of methodological questions arise regarding the proper use of ideals. In this paper, I clarify how the relationship between ideal and non-ideal theory ought to be conceptualised in realist political theory. I examine the two major interpretations of the role of ideals that have been provided so far – the target and benchmark interpretations – and I show that neither is compatible with some of the fundamental theoretical commitments of realist political theory. This both allows me to point out the requirements that an interpretation of the relationship between ideal and non-ideal theory must meet to be defined as properly realist and allows me to emphasise the strengths of the realist approach. Accordingly, I propose a new interpretation of the role of ideals, one consistent with realist theoretical commitments: I suggest that realist political ideals ought to be interpreted as models.

Should global political theory “get real,” focusing on real-world moral failures? I argue that, insofar as we think it important to reflect on global morality in a world of separate states, the answer is yes. In the article’s first stage, I set up the argument by suggesting that our only convincing reasons to reject the idea of a world state are non-ideal—these reasons concern failures to comply with moral duties, rather than ideal visions of a perfectly just world of full compliance. Therefore, any theory assuming a world of separate states must itself be a non-ideal theory focusing on compliance failures. In the article’s second stage, I contend that this necessary focus should lead global political theorists to make more use of social-scientific knowledge than they typically do, while recognizing the structural obstacles confronting global social science. In the article’s third stage, I indicate some under-studied normative implications of these obstacles, tying the debate on ideal and non-ideal global theory to other methodological questions in global political philosophy.

In recent work in political philosophy there has been much discussion of two approaches to theorizing about justice that have come to be called ‘ideal theory’ and ‘non-ideal theory’. The distinction was originally articulated by Rawls, who defended his focus on ideal theory in terms of a supposed ‘priority’ of the latter over non-ideal theory. Many critics have rejected this claim of priority and in general have questioned the usefulness of ideal theory. In diagnosing the problem with ideal theory, they have frequently fingered for blame the idealization it involves. In this paper I focus on one particular, much-discussed idealization—full compliance—in order to defend it. Focusing on the assumption, I argue that Rawls’s work is not ideal in the way that it is usually thought to be, is less ideal than is widely recognized, and became less ideal over time. I also argue that critics who in effect claim that it is not realistic enough simply fail to understand Rawls’s central motivation. Finally, I defend the assumption by arguing that there is an important sense in which all theories of justice must assume full compliance. Such an assumption, I argue, is needed if we are to have a plausible basis on which to judge the normative attractiveness of a theory.

Reviewed by: Kant’s Nonideal Theory of Politics by Dilek Huseyinzadegan Elaine P. Miller (bio) Dilek Huseyinzadegan, Kant’s Nonideal Theory of Politics Northwestern University Press, 2019, 204 pp. ISBN 978-0-8101-3987-9 The opening pages of Kant’s Nonideal Theory of Politics present the controversial central claim of the book head on: Kant’s teleological arguments in political philosophy, which have a contentious reputation in Kant circles, not only should not be omitted from scholarly inquiry but form an essential part of what Dilek Huseyinzadegan calls “Kant’s nonideal theory,” or the second prong of his dual-focused political philosophy. Nonideal theory, a term Huseyinzadegan borrows from Charles Mills, is anchored, on her argument, in the regulative principle of Zweckmässigkeit, or purposiveness, and has as its purview the contingent variables of politics such as history, culture, and geography. Accordingly, she names “nonideal” the part of his political philosophy that takes up not a priori ideals and political goals but the messiness of actual, empirical history. In The Racial Contract, Mills describes the aim of examining a nonideal contract, such as Rousseau’s in “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality,” in order to “explain and expose the inequities of the actual nonideal polity” (Mills 1997, 9). The racial contract, in relation to social contract theory, starts with “uncomfortable reality” in order not to have to continually “retreat into illusory idealizing abstraction,” and so that it can readily shift between the hypothetical and the actual (Mills 1997, 130). Part of the historical support for Mills’s argument that the racial contract constructs not only racial exploitation but also race [End Page 238] itself can be directly traced to Kant. Huseyinzadegan’s work is not an apologia for Kant, but a demonstration of the ways in which Kant countenanced the nonideal features of his own description of geography and peoples as a part of political philosophy that concerned itself with empirical, historical reality alongside the principles of political right. Huseyinzadegan locates Kant’s political philosophy not only in the obvious “political writings” but in a range of critical and noncritical texts, focusing notably on the Critique of Judgment, a work that some may feel has nothing to do with politics. Of course, Hannah Arendt’s Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy argued convincingly for the relevance of the “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment” to a Kantian political philosophy, and spurred a whole line of interpretations in this vein, but this is not Huseyinzadegan’s focus. She draws attention rather to the relatively neglected “Critique of Teleological Judgment,” fully aware of the controversy to which this focus might give rise. In emphasizing purposiveness as a regulative principle that informs Kant’s political philosophy, she argues that Kant’s use of teleology does not render up an unsavory narrative of world history moving inexorably toward a European end, but rather foregrounds the gap between the ideals put forward by his theory of Recht and the realities of current culture that fail to live up to them. It is in her identification of Zweckmässigkeit, which operates as a link, in the manner of reflective judgment, between the ideals of Recht and the nonideality of actual history, that Huseyinzadegan makes a decisive contribution to the interpretation of Kantian political philosophy. Chapters 1–3 of Kant’s Nonideal Theory of Politics cover Kant’s essay “What is Orientation in Thinking?”; “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim”; “What is Enlightenment?”; and the Doctrine of Right. Huseyinzadegan starts by identifying in the Critique of Pure Reason a precursor to the concept of reflective judgment. Here Kant talks about ideas of reason as providing an “imaginary focus” that allows for a greater unity and extension between the concepts of the understanding and the sensible experience they constitute. This hypothetical unity gives rise to a hope that, despite all the diversity and seeming infinitude of empirical experiences, it still might be possible for us to draw them all together as if they belonged to this imaginary focal point. The regulative use of this imaginary point serves to orient us in an otherwise bewildering or overwhelming amount of sensible experience. We cannot dogmatically assert the...

This article begins by setting out Rawls's conception and defense of ideal theory as a necessary precursor to the kind of nonideal theory that can guide action in the real world. It then evaluates the critique of those, such as Amartya Sen, who insist that knowing what an ideally just society would look like is simply not helpful for that purpose. Having also addressed the complaint that the Rawlsian approach is ideological, and hence worse than useless, the discussion broadens out to compass the more wide-ranging critique of mainstream contemporary political philosophy leveled by so-called political realists. It then turns to Cohen's very different objection—that Rawls's ideal theory of justice is too tailored to empirical circumstance. It concludes with an attempt to identify the variety of different things that might be conceived as nonideal theory. Ideal theory may be understood in many different ways, but nonideal theory fares little better.

Reviewed by: Kant's Nonideal Theory of Politics by Dilek Huseyinzadegan Paul T. Wilford HUSEYINZADEGAN, Dilek. Kant's Nonideal Theory of Politics. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2019. xii + 204 pp. Cloth, $99.95; paper, $34.95 Kant is often depicted as the preeminent idealist, the foremost representative of an a priori and abstract mode of reasoning—the exemplary instance of what is often called "ethics-first political theory." In this guise, Kant provides a convenient foil for the realist tradition of International Relations and for empiricist and historical thinkers concerned with defending national traditions and local identities (see, for example, Yoram Hazony's The Virtue of Nationalism). According to Dilek Huseyinzadegan, however, this standard view presents a parody of Kant's thought by emphasizing "the principle of Recht as a discourse on rights and institutions" while neglecting Kant's sustained attention to the empirical realities and "contingent variables of politics." Huseyinzadegan's careful, scholarly, and detailed study corrects this distorted caricature of Kant's political philosophy. Huseyinzadegan's book is not only an apologia for Kant, however, but also a work of political theory in its own right—a contribution to the development of "an ideal theory of cosmopolitanism, which attempts to incorporate an actual diversity of historical, cultural and geographic perspectives." Huseyinzadegan espies in Kant the conceptual resources for keeping ideal theory tethered to the real world through "a robust nonideal theory" that provides "a nondogmatic account of our current circumstances." The key to Kant's nonideal theory, however, is the often overlooked systematic "role of teleology in Kant's political philosophy." Hence, Huseyinzadegan defends the twofold thesis that "the regulative principle of purposiveness is the underlying principle of a nonideal theory of politics" and that for Kant "purposiveness as a regulative principle guides our inquiries into diverse and contingent particulars by means of a hypothetically lawful universal and unifying concept." For Huseyinzadegan, teleology serves the heuristic purpose of negotiating "the gap between a lawfulness that we must presuppose in all theoretical inquiry and a contingency that our intellect cannot render fully meaningful." Thus, teleology proves essential for understanding the complexity, subtlety, and even the realism of Kant's political philosophy. Teleology is the conceptual bridge between the ideal and the real, between [End Page 612] the moral imperative to reform our world and the often recalcitrant and even intractable realities of the concrete empirical world. Huseyinzadegan's book is divided into three parts, each of which explores a domain of inquiry where regulative teleology is decisive. Part I, History and Politics: Political History and Cosmopolitanism, explores the conceptual framework for Kant's philosophy of history. Chapter 1, "A Matter of Orientation," illuminates the epistemic reasons for why "a systematic investigation of diverse particulars in the world requires that we use our reason hypothetically" by employing "the subjective principle of purposiveness." While the "epistemic-metaphysical status of regulative principles is weak and fallible," we cannot do without them if our inquiry into a set of particulars, "for which no universal concept is readily given," is to be directed "toward unity and systematicity." Chapter 2, "Historical Patterns, Political Aims," explores the postulation of the cosmopolitan intent of history as "a teleological way of orienting oneself in thinking about world history." By identifying "the direction or aim (Absicht) of history" we can chart a middle course "between the extremes of nihilism and unwarranted optimism" as we take our bearings from "a universal concept that both adequately describes particular historical events as part of a whole and provides a rule for judging them." While critical of Kant's eurocentrism, Huseyinzadegan affirms his "methodological or meta-theoretical point, that a particular view of history is crucial for developing a political agenda"; "a rational guiding thread (Leitfaden)" for interpreting history and orienting ourselves practically remains indispensable. Part II, Nature, Culture, and Politics: Political Anthropology and Cosmopolitanism, focuses on Kant's use of organic metaphors to describe sociopolitical progress. Chapter 3, "Organisms, Bodies Politic, and Progress" begins by adumbrating Kant's account of reflective teleological judgment in the Critique of Judgment, showing how the distinct logical structure of biological entities, especially the relation of parts to wholes, provides normative criteria for evaluating the body...

Legal Transitions without Legitimate Expectations*