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  1. Analyzing the Role of Values and Ideals in the Development of Energy Systems: How Values, Their Idealizations, and Technologies Shape Political Decision-Making.Joost Alleblas - 2024 - Science and Engineering Ethics 30 (2):1-21.
    This study examines an important aspect of energy history and policy: the intertwinement of energy technologies with ideals. Ideals play an important role in energy visions and innovation pathways. Aspirations to realize technical, social, and political ideals indicate a long-term commitment in the design of energy systems, distinguishable from commitment to other abstract goals, such as values. This study offers an analytical scheme that could help to conceptualize these differences and their impact on energy policy. In the proposed model, two (...)
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  • Mills, The racial contract and ideal theory.D. C. Matthew - 2024 - Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 27 (1):47-61.
    Among mainstream political philosophers, Charles Mills is probably best known, not as the author of The Racial Contract, but for his long-running critique of ideal theory and Rawls for his association with it. Yet the critique of ideal theory that followed the publication of The Racial Contract is prefigured in that very work, where we find in inchoate form what would be further developed later on. In the book, this early formulation of the critique occupies a small part of a (...)
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  • VIII—The Best City in Plato’s Republic: Is It possible?Jonathan Beere - 2023 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 123 (2):199-229.
    This paper argues that there are three distinct senses of possibility at play in the Republic’s discussion of whether the best city is possible: natural possibility, possibility for existing cities, and ideal possibility. It is argued that Socrates makes different claims about each of the three political proposals in Book v. (1) Women guardians are argued to be naturally possible. (2) Socrates considers it an open question whether the common family of guardians (the so-called ‘community of women and children’) is (...)
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  • Ideal Theory and Real Politics: The Politics in Political Liberalism.Darren Cheng - 2024 - Moral Philosophy and Politics 11 (2):253-274.
    Realist thinkers in political philosophy often criticize ideal theorists for neglecting or eliminating the fact of politics in their work. This is supposed to be problematic because we should never expect to overcome politics. Any theory that attempts to do so is said to be unrealistic, naïve, and impractical. Although much has been said in the dispute between realists and ideal theorists in recent years, this particular line of criticism, which should be distinguished from other criticisms of ideal theory, has (...)
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  • What is Distinctive of Political Normativity? From Domain View to Role View.Erman Eva - forthcoming - Philosophy and Social Criticism.
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  • Realism against Legitimacy.Samuel Bagg - 2022 - Social Theory and Practice 48 (1):29-60.
    This article challenges the association between realist methodology and ideals of legitimacy. Many who seek a more “realistic” or “political” approach to political theory replace the familiar orientation towards a state of justice with a structurally similar orientation towards a state of legitimacy. As a result, they fail to provide more reliable practical guidance, and wrongly displace radical demands. Rather than orienting action towards any state of affairs, I suggest that a more practically useful approach to political theory would directly (...)
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  • Markets Within the Limit of Feasibility.Kenneth Silver - 2023 - Journal of Business Ethics 182:1087-1101.
    The ‘limits of markets’ debate broadly concerns the question of when it is (im)permissible to have a market in some good. Markets can be of tremendous benefit to society, but many have felt that certain goods should not be for sale (e.g., sex, kidneys, bombs). Their sale is argued to be corrupting, exploitative, or to express a form of disrespect. InMarkets without Limits, Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski have recently argued to the contrary: For any good, as long as it (...)
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  • Ideální konsenzus, reálná diverzita a výzva veřejného ospravedlnění: k limitům idealizace v liberální politické teorii [Ideal Consensus, Real Diversity, and the Challenge of Public Justification: On the Limits of Idealisation in Liberal Political Theory].Matouš Mencl & Pavel Dufek - 2021 - Acta Politologica 2 (13):49–70.
    The paper deals with the methodological clash between idealism and anti-idealism in political philosophy, and highlights its importance for public reason (PR) and public justification (PJ) theorising. Upon reviewing the broader context which harks back to Rawls’s notion of a realistic utopia, we focus on two major recent contributions to the debate in the work of David Estlund (the prototypical utopian) and Gerald Gaus (the cautious anti-utopian). While Estlund presents a powerful case on behalf of ideal theorising, claiming that motivational (...)
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  • Beyond “ought Implies Feasible”.Jürgen Sirsch - 2021 - Metaphilosophy 52 (2):280-301.
    What kinds of feasibility restrictions should be taken into account in practically relevant political philosophy? David Estlund argues that “ought” does not imply “can will,” and, hence, that we should be very cautious regarding the inclusion of motivational restrictions in political philosophy. As Nicholas Southwood and David Wiens point out, however, Estlund’s position clashes with the requirement that “ought” implies “feasible.” The present article argues that even though we must accept that “ought” implies “feasible,” this does not settle the question (...)
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  • The Concept of Feasibility: A Multivocal Account.Daniel Guillery - 2021 - Res Publica 27 (3):491-507.
    A common objection to a proposal or theory in political philosophy is that it is not feasible to realise what it calls for. This is commonly taken to be sufficient to reject a proposal or theory: feasibility, on this common view, operates as a straightforward constraint on moral and political theory, whatever is not feasible is simply ruled out. This paper seeks to understand what we mean when we say that some proposal or outcome is or is not feasible. It (...)
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  • Infeasibility as a normative argument‐stopper: The case of open borders.Nicholas Southwood & Robert E. Goodin - 2021 - European Journal of Philosophy 29 (4):965-987.
    The open borders view is frequently dismissed for making infeasible demands. This is a potent strategy. Unlike normative arguments regarding open borders, which tend to be relatively intractable, the charge of infeasibility is supposed to operate as what we call a "normative argument-stopper." Nonetheless, we argue that the strategy fails. Bringing about open borders is perfectly feasible on the most plausible account of feasibility. We consider and reject what we take to be the only three credible ways to save the (...)
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  • Apocalypse Without God: Apocalyptic Thought, Ideal Politics, and the Limits of Utopian Hope.Ben Jones - 2021 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    Apocalypse, it seems, is everywhere. Preachers with vast followings proclaim the world's end and apocalyptic fears grip even the non-religious amid climate change, pandemics, and threats of nuclear war. But as these ideas pervade popular discourse, grasping their logic remains elusive. Ben Jones argues that we can gain insight into apocalyptic thought through secular thinkers. He starts with a puzzle: Why would secular thinkers draw on Christian apocalyptic beliefs--often dismissed as bizarre--to interpret politics? The apocalyptic tradition proves appealing in part (...)
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  • Bright Lines in Juvenile Justice.Amy Berg - 2021 - Journal of Political Philosophy 29 (3):330-352.
    Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.
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  • Being realistic and demanding the impossible.Enzo Rossi - 2019 - Constellations 26 (4):638-652.
    Political realism is characterised by fidelity to the facts of politics and a refusal to derive political judgments from pre- political moral commitments. Even when they are not taken to make normative theorising impossible or futile, those characteristics are often thought to engender a conservative slant, or at least a tendency to prefer incremental reformism to radicalism. I resist those claims by distinguishing between three variants of realism—ordorealism, contextual realism, and radical realism—and contrasting them with both non-ideal theory and utopianism. (...)
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  • Ideal Theory and "Ought Implies Can".Amy Berg - 2018 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 99 (4):869-890.
    When we can’t live up to the ultimate standards of morality, how can moral theory give us guidance? We can distinguish between ideal and non-ideal theory to see that there are different versions of the voluntarist constraint, ‘ought implies can.’ Ideal moral theory identifies the best standard, so its demands are constrained by one version. Non-ideal theory tells us what to do given our psychological and motivational shortcomings and so is constrained by others. Moral theory can now both provide an (...)
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  • Feasibility as a Constraint on ‘Ought All-Things-Considered’, But not on ‘Ought as a Matter of Justice’?Nicholas Southwood - 2019 - Philosophical Quarterly 69 (276):598-616.
    It is natural and relatively common to suppose that feasibility is a constraint on what we ought to do all-things-considered but not a constraint on what we ought to do as a matter of justice. I show that the combination of these claims entails an implausible picture of the relation between feasibility and desirability given an attractive understanding of the relation between what we ought to do as a matter of justice and what we ought to do all-things-considered.
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  • The General Theory of Second Best Is More General Than You Think.David Wiens - 2020 - Philosophers' Imprint 20 (5):1-26.
    Lipsey and Lancaster's "general theory of second best" is widely thought to have significant implications for applied theorizing about the institutions and policies that most effectively implement abstract normative principles. It is also widely thought to have little significance for theorizing about which abstract normative principles we ought to implement. Contrary to this conventional wisdom, I show how the second-best theorem can be extended to myriad domains beyond applied normative theorizing, and in particular to more abstract theorizing about the normative (...)
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  • Evolutionary models and the normative significance of stability.Arnon Levy - 2018 - Biology and Philosophy 33 (5-6):33.
    Many have expected that understanding the evolution of norms should, in some way, bear on our first-order normative outlook: How norms evolve should shape which norms we accept. But recent philosophy has not done much to shore up this expectation. Most existing discussions of evolution and norms either jump headlong into the is/ought gap or else target meta-ethical issues, such as the objectivity of norms. My aim in this paper is to sketch a different way in which evolutionary considerations can (...)
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  • Proxy Battles in Just War Theory: Jus in Bello, the Site of Justice, and Feasibility Constraints.Seth Lazar & Laura Valentini - 2017 - In David Sobel, Peter Vallentyne & Steven Wall (eds.), Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, Volume 3. Oxford University Press. pp. 166-193.
    Interest in just war theory has boomed in recent years, as a revisionist school of thought has challenged the orthodoxy of international law, most famously defended by Michael Walzer [1977]. These revisionist critics have targeted the two central principles governing the conduct of war (jus in bello): combatant equality and noncombatant immunity. The first states that combatants face the same permissions and constraints whether their cause is just or unjust. The second protects noncombatants from intentional attack. In response to these (...)
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  • Moral pickles, moral dilemmas, and the obligation preface paradox.Daniel Immerman - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (8):2087-2101.
    This paper introduces and defends a new position regarding the question of whether it is possible to have conflicting moral obligations. In doing so, it focuses on what I call a moral pickle. By “moral pickle” I mean a set of actions such that you ought to perform each and cannot perform all. Typically, when people discuss conflicting moral obligations, they focus on the notion of a moral dilemma, which is a type of moral pickle involving two conflicting actions. In (...)
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  • The feasibility issue.Nicholas Southwood - 2018 - Philosophy Compass 13 (8):e12509.
    It is commonly taken for granted that questions of feasibility are highly relevant to our normative thinking – and perhaps especially our normative thinking about politics. But what exactly does this preoccupation with feasibility amount to, and in what forms if any is it warranted? This article aims to provide a critical introduction to, and clearer characterization of, the feasibility issue. I begin by discussing the question of how feasibility is to be understood. I then turn to the question of (...)
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  • Feasibility four ways.Alan Hamlin - 2017 - Social Philosophy and Policy 34 (1):209-231.
    Abstract:Both the idea of feasibility and the role that it might play within political theory are controversial. Recent discussions have attempted to specify an appropriate overall conceptualization of feasibility. This essay offers a more nuanced account of a number of interrelated aspects of feasibility and argues for a more realistic view of feasibility. Four aspects of feasibility are identified and discussed: resource feasibility, value feasibility, human feasibility, and institutional feasibility.
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  • The challenges of ideal theory and appeal of secular apocalyptic thought.Ben Jones - 2020 - European Journal of Political Theory 19 (4):465-488.
    Why do thinkers hostile or agnostic toward Christianity find in its apocalyptic doctrines—often seen as bizarre—appealing tools for interpreting politics? This article tackles that puzzle. First, i...
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  • Justice within the limits of human nature alone.Neera K. Badhwar - 2016 - Social Philosophy and Policy 33 (1-2):193-213.
    Abstract: Contra John Rawls, G. A. Cohen argues that the fundamental principles of justice are not constrained by the limits of our nature or the nature of society, even at its historical best. Justice is what it is, even if it will never be realized, fully or at all. Likewise, David Estlund argues that since our innate motivations can be justice-tainting, they cannot be a constraint on the right conception of justice. Cohen and Estlund agree that if the attempt to (...)
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  • Ideal vs. Non-ideal Theory: A Conceptual Map.Laura Valentini - 2012 - Philosophy Compass 7 (9):654–664.
    This article provides a conceptual map of the debate on ideal and non‐ideal theory. It argues that this debate encompasses a number of different questions, which have not been kept sufficiently separate in the literature. In particular, the article distinguishes between the following three interpretations of the ‘ideal vs. non‐ideal theory’ contrast: (i) full compliance vs. partial compliance theory; (ii) utopian vs. realistic theory; (iii) end‐state vs. transitional theory. The article advances critical reflections on each of these sub‐debates, and highlights (...)
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  • Ability and Volitional Incapacity.Nicholas Southwood & Pablo Gilabert - 2016 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 10 (3):1-8.
    The conditional analysis of ability faces familiar counterexamples involving cases of volitional incapacity. An interesting response to the problem of volitional incapacity is to try to explain away the responses elicited by such counterexamples by distinguishing between what we are able to do and what we are able to bring ourselves to do. We argue that this error-theoretic response fails. Either it succeeds in solving the problem of volitional incapacity at the cost of making the conditional analysis vulnerable to obvious (...)
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  • Justice and the Meritocratic State.Thomas Mulligan - 2017 - New York: Routledge.
    Like American politics, the academic debate over justice is polarized, with almost all theories of justice falling within one of two traditions: egalitarianism and libertarianism. This book provides an alternative to the partisan standoff by focusing not on equality or liberty, but on the idea that we should give people the things that they deserve. Mulligan argues that a just society is a meritocracy, in which equal opportunity prevails and social goods are distributed strictly on the basis of merit. That (...)
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  • Normative behaviourism and global political principles.Jonathan Floyd - 2016 - Journal of International Political Theory 12 (2):152-168.
    This article takes a new idea, ‘normative behaviourism’, and applies it to global political theory, in order to address at least one of the problems we might have in mind when accusing that subject of being too ‘unrealistic’. The core of this idea is that political principles can be justified, not just by patterns in our thinking, and in particular our intuitions and considered judgements, but also by patterns in our behaviour, and in particular acts of insurrection and crime. The (...)
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  • Should global political theory get real? An introduction.Jonathan Floyd - 2016 - Journal of International Political Theory 12 (2):93-95.
    This special edition brings together (1) the recent methodological worries of the moralism/realism and ideal/non-ideal theory debates with (2) the soaring ambition of work in international or global political theory, as found in, say, theories of global justice. Contributors are as follows: Chris Bertram, Jonathan Floyd, Aaron James, Terry MacDonald, David Miller, Shmulik Nili, Mathias Risse and Matt Sleat.
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  • "Actual" does not imply "feasible".Nicholas Southwood & David Wiens - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (11):3037-3060.
    The familiar complaint that some ambitious proposal is infeasible naturally invites the following response: Once upon a time, the abolition of slavery and the enfranchisement of women seemed infeasible, yet these things were actually achieved. Presumably, then, many of those things that seem infeasible in our own time may well be achieved too and, thus, turn out to have been perfectly feasible after all. The Appeal to History, as we call it, is a bad argument. It is not true that (...)
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  • On Theorizing about Public Reason.Gerald Gaus - 2013 - European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 9 (1):64-85.
    This essay responds to the thoughtful essays on the Order of Public Reason (OPR) by Elvio Baccarini, Giulia Bistagnino and Nenad Miscevic. All three essays interrogate OPR’s understanding of moral theory - “meta” matters about the nature of morality, reasons and modeling within moral theories. I first turn to the general understanding of the moral enterprise underlying OPR, explaining why it takes a view at odds with the contemporary mainstream in moral philosophy. I then explain the idea of moral truth (...)
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  • Rejoinder to Estlund.David Wiens - manuscript
    Estlund has replied to my "Motivational Demands on the Limits of Justice". This short note is my rejoinder.
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  • Justice and Feasibility: A Dynamic Approach.Pablo Gilabert - 2017 - In Kevin Vallier & Michael Weber (eds.), Political Utopias: Contemporary Debates. New York, NY: Oup Usa. pp. 95-126.
    It is common in political theory and practice to challenge normatively ambitious proposals by saying that their fulfillment is not feasible. But there has been insufficient conceptual exploration of what feasibility is, and very little substantive inquiry into why and how it matters for thinking about social justice. This paper provides one of the first systematic treatments of these issues, and proposes a dynamic approach to the relation between justice and feasibility that illuminates the importance of political imagination and dynamic (...)
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  • On the Conceptual Status of Justice.Kyle Johannsen - 2015 - Dissertation, Queen's University
    In contemporary debates about justice, political philosophers take themselves to be engaged with a subject that’s narrower than the whole of morality. Many contemporary liberals, notably John Rawls, understand this narrowness in terms of context specificity. On their view, justice is the part of morality that applies to the context of a society’s institutions, but only has indirect application to the context of citizens’ personal lives. In contrast, many value pluralists, notably G.A. Cohen, understand justice’s narrowness in terms of singularity (...)
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  • Motivational Limitations on the Demands of Justice.David Wiens - 2016 - European Journal of Political Theory 15 (3):333-352.
    Do motivational limitations due to human nature constrain the demands of justice? Among those who say no, David Estlund offers perhaps the most compelling argument. Taking Estlund’s analysis of “ability” as a starting point, I show that motivational deficiencies can constrain the demands of justice under at least one common circumstance — that the motivationally-deficient agent makes a good faith effort to overcome her deficiency. In fact, my argument implies something stronger; namely, that the demands of justice are constrained by (...)
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  • Distributive Justice, Feasibility Gridlocks, and the Harmfulness of Economic Ideology.Lisa Herzog - 2015 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 18 (5):957-969.
    Many political theorists think about how to make societies more just. In recent years, with interests shifting from principles to their institutional realization, there has been much debate about feasibility and the role it should play in theorizing. What has been underexplored, however, is how feasibility depends on the attitudes and perceptions of individuals, not only with regard to their own behaviour, but also with regard to the behaviour of others. This can create coordination problems, which can be described as (...)
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  • Realism in Normative Political Theory.Enzo Rossi & Matt Sleat - 2014 - Philosophy Compass 9 (10):689-701.
    This paper provides a critical overview of the realist current in contemporary political philosophy. We define political realism on the basis of its attempt to give varying degrees of autonomy to politics as a sphere of human activity, in large part through its exploration of the sources of normativity appropriate for the political and so distinguish sharply between political realism and non-ideal theory. We then identify and discuss four key arguments advanced by political realists: from ideology, from the relationship of (...)
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  • 'Going Evaluative' to Save Justice From Feasibility -- A Pyrrhic Victory.David Wiens - 2014 - Philosophical Quarterly 64 (255):301-307.
    I discuss Gheaus's (2013) argument against the claim that the requirements of justice are not constrained by feasibility concerns. I show that the general strategy exemplified by this argument is not only dialectically puzzling, but also imposes a heavy cost on theories of justice -- puzzling because it simply sidesteps a presupposition of any plausible formulation of the so-called "feasibility requirement"; costly because it it deprives justice of its normative implications for action. I also show that Gheaus's attempt to recover (...)
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  • In Search of the Reason and the Right—Rousseau’s Social Contract as a Thought Experiment.Nenad Miscevic - 2013 - Acta Analytica 28 (4):509-526.
    For Rousseau, social contract is a hypothetical one; the paper claims that it is, in contemporary terms, a political thought-experiment (TE). The abductive way of thinking, looking for the best normative pattern in the data, finds its counterpart in the historical abduction in the Second Discourse; the analogy between the two secures the methodological unity of Rousseau’s political philosophy. The proposed reading of the work as a TE shows that it fulfills the necessary requirements put by (hopefully) intuitively acceptable definition (...)
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  • What Is the Point of Justice?Andrew Mason - 2012 - Utilitas 24 (4):525-547.
    Conflicting answers to the question of what principles of justice are for may generate very different ways of theorizing about justice. Indeed divergent answers to it are at the heart of G. A. Cohen's disagreement with John Rawls. Cohen thinks that the roots of this disagreement lie in the constructivist method that Rawls employs, which mistakenly treats the principles that emerge from a procedure that involves factual assumptions as ultimate principles of justice. But I argue that even if Rawls were (...)
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  • Political Ideals and the Feasibility Frontier.David Wiens - 2015 - Economics and Philosophy 31 (3):447-477.
    Recent methodological debates regarding the place of feasibility considerations in normative political theory are hindered for want of a rigorous model of the feasibility frontier. To address this shortfall, I present an analysis of feasibility that generalizes the economic concept of a production possibility frontier and then develop a rigorous model of the feasibility frontier using the familiar possible worlds technology. I then show that this model has significant methodological implications for political philosophy. On the Target View, a political ideal (...)
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  • Feasibility Constraints for Political Theories.Holly Lawford-Smith - 2010 - Dissertation, Australian National University
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  • Understanding Political Feasibility.Holly Lawford-Smith - 2012 - Journal of Political Philosophy 21 (3):243-259.
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  • Norms for political cynics. A metatheoretical exploration of the relation between power and normativity in politics.Tim Heysse - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    Supporters of political realism and republicanism as well as students of political feasibility and non-ideal theory progressively focus on the dimension of power in the political relation. Yet we lack the theoretical framework to represent these features of power. In this essay, I take a first step towards designing the necessary conceptual tools for such a framework by analyzing the relations between the concepts of power and normativity that define the political relation. Adopting a ‘methodological cynicism’, I analyse the reasons (...)
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  • Epistemic Limitations & the Social-Guiding Function of Justice.Matthew R. Adams - 2023 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 21 (3-4):270-297.
    The contemporary methodological debate about justice has centered around a dispute about the value of so-called ideal theory. I argue that justice performs a social-guiding function, which explains how people should respond to their limited and fallible abilities to realize justice institutionally. My argument helps to re-orientate the contemporary methodological debate. The obvious disagreement between many prominent supporters and skeptics of ideal theory obscures the fact that they are united by a false assumption: the practical value of justice exclusively consists (...)
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  • Which Limitations Block Requirements?Amy Berg - 2023 - Moral Philosophy and Politics 10 (2):229-248.
    One of David Estlund’s key claims in Utopophobia is that theories of justice should not bend to human motivational limitations. Yet he does not extend this view to our cognitive limitations. This creates a dilemma. Theories of justice may ignore cognitive as well as motivational limitations—but this makes them so unrealistic as to be unrecognizable as theories of justice. Theories may bend to both cognitive and motivational limitations—but Estlund wants to reject this view. The other alternative is to find some (...)
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  • Tra cielo e terra. Nota critica su 'Utopophobia' David Estlund e 'What is Political Philosophy?', di Charles Larmore.Francesco Testini - 2020 - Biblioteca Della Libertà 55 (229):153-168.
    L’anno appena trascorso è stato dimenticabile (per ovvie ragioni) e i filosofi politici hanno una ragione in più per dimenticarlo data la prematura scomparsa di Gerald Gaus. Tuttavia, essi potrebbero forse trovare una qualche consolazione nel fatto che il 2020 ha visto la pubblicazione di due notevoli opere dedicate alla loro disciplina: 'Utopohobia', di David Estlund e 'What is Political Philosophy?', di Charles Larmore. In questo saggio, dopo aver offerto una sintesi criminalmente breve del nucleo argomentativo dei due volumi, li (...)
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  • Ideal Theory for a Complex World.Jeffrey Carroll - 2022 - Res Publica 28 (3):531-550.
    The modern social world is unjust. It is also complex. What does this latter fact imply about the kind of approach that should be used in ameliorating the injustice expressed in the former fact? One answer, recently put forth by Jacob Barrett, is that _ideal theory_, which he understands as being fundamentally defined by the identification and subsequent pursuit of an aspirational macro-level institutional goal, lacks a place in social reform. The reason he thinks ideal theory lacks a place has (...)
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  • Stability, Autonomy, and the Foundations of Political Liberalism.Anthony Taylor - 2022 - Law and Philosophy (5):1-28.
    An attractive form of social stability is realized when the members of a well-ordered society give that society’s organizing principles their free and reflective endorsement. However, many political philosophers are skeptical that there is any requirement to show that their principles would engender this kind of stability. This skepticism is at the root of a number of objections to political liberalism, since arguments for political liberalism often appeal to its ability to be stable in this way. The aim of this (...)
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  • On the Messy “Utopophobia vs Factophobia” Controversy.Laura Valentini - 2017 - In Kevin Vallier & Michael Weber (eds.), Political Utopias: Contemporary Debates. New York, NY: Oup Usa. pp. 11-31.
    In recent years, political philosophers have been fiercely arguing over the virtues and vices of utopian vs realistic theorizing. Partly due to the lack of a common and consistently used vocabulary, these debates have become rather confusing. In this chapter, I attempt to bring some clarity to them and, in doing so, I offer a conciliatory perspective on the “utopian vs realistic theorizing” controversy. I argue that, once the notion of a normative or evaluative theory is clearly defined and distinguished (...)
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