Throughout the history of political philosophy and politics, there has been continual debate about the roles of idealism versus realism. For contemporary political philosophy, this debate manifests in notions of ideal theory versus nonideal theory. Nonideal thinkers shift their focus from theorizing about full social justice, asking instead which feasible institutional and political changes would make a society more just. Ideal thinkers, on the other hand, question whether full justice is a standard that any society is likely ever to satisfy. And, if social justice is unrealistic, are attempts to understand it without value or importance, and merely utopian? This book argues against thinking that justice must be realistic, or that understanding justice is only valuable if it can be realized. The book does not offer a particular theory of justice, nor does it assert that justice is indeed unrealizable—only that it could be, and this possibility upsets common ways of proceeding in political thought. The book's author engages critically with important strands in traditional and contemporary political philosophy that assume a sound theory of justice has the overriding, defining task of contributing practical guidance toward greater social justice. Along the way, it counters several tempting perspectives, including the view that inquiry in political philosophy could have significant value only as a guide to practical political action, and that understanding true justice would necessarily have practical value, at least as an ideal arrangement to be approximated. Demonstrating that unrealistic standards of justice can be both sound and valuable to understand, the book stands as a trenchant defense of ideal theory in political philosophy.
Author(s): David Estlund
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: xvii, 377 pages ;
City: Princeton
Copyright
Contents
Preface And Acknowledgments
Part I Looking Up to Justice
1 An Unrealistic Introduction
1. Being Realistic, and the Alternatives
2. Human Nature
3. Justice and Basic Social Structure
4. Charles Mills on Ideal Theory
5. Justice as Ingredient or Recipe
6. Compared to Cohen
7. Enoch on Multiple Agents
2 Overview
1. Introduction
2. Couldn’t Justice Be Unlikely?
3. Prime Justice
4. Plural Requirement
5. Against Practicalism
6. Conclusion
3 Anti-Anti Moralism
1. Introduction
2. What Is the Moral?
3. The Irrelevance of Platonism (and Its Denial)
4. Against the Primacy of Disagreement
5. Varieties of Anti-Moralism
a.
b.-d.
e.-f.
g.
h.
i.
6. Conclusion
4 Circumstances and Justice
Introduction
2. Uncoupling Justice from the Need for Social Rules
3. Multiple Realizability and Specification
4. Who Needs Justice?
5. Does Justice Apply Only in Nonideal Conditions?
6. Is Moral Deficiency a Circumstance of Justice?
7. Conclusion
Part II Unbending Justice
5 Utopophobia
Introduction to Part II
part a
1. Principles and Probability
2. The Ability/Probability Distinction
3. The Limited Relevance of Human Nature
4. Can’t Bring Oneself
part b
6. The Success Conditional
7. Can’t Try?
8. Clinical Motives
6 Mitigating Motives
part a
1. Selfishness Is Not Requirement- Blocking, and Typicality Adds Nothing
2. Mitigation as Justification or Excuse
3. Weighty Motives
4. Severe and Merely Insistent Motives
part b
5. Examples from Theories of Justice
6. Human Nature versus a Socialist Theory of Justice
7. Hopeless Theory (Defended)
8. Ideal Theory
9. Would Perfect People Need Politics?
7 Justice Unbent
part a
1. Introduction
2. Ability and Excuse in Individuals and Collectives
3. Incentive-Induced Abilities
4. Profound and Less Profound Partiality
5. Are Prerogatives a Concession to Human Nature?
part b
6. Excused Injustice, a Safe Harbor?
7. Rawlsian Realism Resisted
Part III Beyond Concessive Justice
8 Concessive Requirement
1. Introduction
2. The Procrastination Puzzle
3. Beyond Actualism vs. Possibilism
4. Lesser Needs (A)
Lesser Need 1
Lesser Need 2
5. A Technical Debate
6. Nested Concessive Requirements
Appendix: Oughts Going Forward
9 Bad Facts
1. Introduction
Cohen vs. Facts
2. Bad Facts
3. Constructivism and Compliance
4. More Bad Facts
5. The Circularity Objection
10 Prime Justice
1. Introduction
part a
2. The Conditional/Concessive Dilemma
3. Is Global Prime Justice Hopeless?
part b
4. Getting Specific
5. Realism Is Not the Point
6. Global or Specific Prime Justice?
7. What Can We Know of Prime Justice?
8. The Question of Reconciliation
Part IV The Culprit Problem
11 The Puzzle of Plural Obligation
1. Introduction
Moral Collective Action Problems
2. Whiff and Poof Plus
3. Qualifications about What the Agent Knows
4. The One-Person Case
5. Group Agents?
6. Unilateral Compliance
7. Prospective Agency?
8. Nonmoral Disvalue
9. Subtle Wrongs?
10. Bad People
11. Moral Luck?
12 Plural Requirement
1. Introduction
Non-Deontic Moral Requirement
2. Are Plural Requirements “Practical”?
3. The Case of Good Motives
4. Feasibility as Plural Ability
5. Prime Justice and Plural Requirement
6. Conclusion
Part V The Practical and the Idealistic
13 Progress, Perfection, and Practice
1. Introduction
2. Dangers of Idealistic (and of Realistic) Thought
3. Critique of Pure Comparativism
4. Conclusion
14 The Fallacy of Approximation
1. Introduction
a. Beyond Ideal or Best
b. Beyond Second or Next Best
c. Beyond Infeasibility
d. Beyond Causal Interactions
2. Positive and Negative Implication
3. Moral/Political Examples
Appendix: Organic Unity and the Fallacy of Approximation
15 Countervailing Deviation
1. Introduction
2. Is the Ideal Really Being Consulted?
3. Institutional Countervailing
16 Beyond Practicalism
1. Introduction
2. What Good Is Nonpractical Intellectual Work?
17 Informed Concern
1. Introduction
a.
b.-d.
e.-f.
g.-h.
i.-j.
k.-m.
n.-o.
p.
2. Conclusion
Epilogue
Notes
Preface and Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Epilogue
Index
Index Of Examples And Propositions
General Index
