Socialists don’t need to appeal to morality and justice. Unlike liberals and conservatives, they can point out how the world works, and how our political imagination is constrained as a result.| Damage
Steve Fuller’s most recent book is entitled To Judge and to Justify, with the subtitle Profiles of the Academic Vocation, but this hardly offers the best key to its contents. The book might rather be…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Holly Lawford-Smith’s brief article, “Ideal Theory—A Reply to Valentini”, is exactly what it sounds like: a concise reply to Laura Valentini’s “On The Apparent Paradox of Ideal Theory”. Valentini, as I summarize elsewhere, outlines a paradox consisting of three premises: Any sound theory of justice must be (1) action-guiding and (2) ideal, but (3) any … Continue reading Holly Lawford-Smith, “Ideal Theory—A Reply to Valentini”→| Political Not Metaphysical
Many critics of ideal theory contend that there is a gap between ideal theories and our non-ideal circumstances—a gap which renders ideal theories ill-suited to guide action in the real world. Valentini calls this the guidance critique. But yet, ideal theory seems inescapable. This, Valentini generates a paradox, which can be stated as follows: Any … Continue reading Laura Valentini, “On the Apparent Paradox of Ideal Theory”→| Political Not Metaphysical
In recent years, political philosophers have started to pay more attention to methodology, largely to due pressure from the charge that political philosophy is too detached to really guide political action Many of theses methodological debates have clustered together under the heading ideal/non-ideal theory. In this article, Laura Valentini argues—I think rightly—that the debate about … Continue reading Laura Valentini, Ideal vs. Non-Ideal Theory: A Conceptual Map→| Political Not Metaphysical
Anthony Appiah’s recently published book As If: Idealization and Ideals is an insightful and original treatment of the role of idealization in philosophical thought. This has been a hot topic in recent political philosophy. But, part of what makes Appiah’s discussion more interesting than most is that he places his discussion of ‘ideal theory’ within a … Continue reading Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Political Ideals: Lessons from John Rawls” in As If: Idealization and Ideals.→| Political Not Metaphysical
In “Ideal and NonIdeal Theory”, A. John Simmons takes up the familiar distinction Rawlsian distinction, a distinction Simmons thinks has not received enough “sustained attention”. His aim is to “rationally reconstruct” Rawls’s position on the distinction, defend Rawls’s approach against alternatives, and reply to some criticisms of Rawls’s approach. Rawls’s Ideal Theory Rawls divides any … Continue reading A. John Simmons, Ideal and Nonideal Theory→| Political Not Metaphysical