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. (shrink)

Estlund has replied to my "Motivational Demands on the Limits of Justice". This short note is my rejoinder.

People tend to be biased and irrational about politics. Should this constrain what our normative theories of democracy can require? David Estlund argues that the answer is ‘no’. He contends that even if such facts show that the requirements of a normative theory are very unlikely to be met, this need not imply that the theory is unduly unrealistic. I argue that the application of Estlund’s argument to political irrationality depends on a false presupposition: mainly, that being rational about politics (...) is something people could easily do if they tried. Since the empirical evidence shows that being rational about politics is actually quite difficult, Estlund’s argument comes up short. Moreover, I argue that the argument cannot plausibly be extended to insulate normative theories of democracy from facts about political irrationality because of the need for constraints of realism to explain the crucial role that appeals to (reasonable) disagreement play within such theories. (shrink)

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 (...) non-ad hoc way to distinguish cognitive from motivational limitations. I argue that this strategy will not work. Just as a person’s cognitive limitations may block her motives no matter how much she perseveres, so too motivational limitations may be genuine inabilities. Even ideal theories of justice must bend to even ordinary motivational limitations when they truly cause us to be unable to comply with requirements. (shrink)

Although the discussion about feasibility in political theory is still in its infancy, some important progress has been made in the last years to advance our understanding. In this paper, we intend to make a contribution to this growing literature by investigating the proper place of feasibility considerations in political theory. A motivating force behind this study is a suspicion that many presumptions made about feasibility in several current debates—such as that between practice-independence and practice-dependence, ideal and non-ideal theory, and (...) political moralism and political realism—are too rigid and underestimate the numerous different ways in which feasibility concerns may enter into our theorizing. To chisel out this feasibility space, our aim is to suggest two metatheoretical constraints on normative political principles as intuitively plausible, the so-called ‘fitness constraint’ and the ‘functional constraint’, through which we elucidate five central aspects for determining proper feasibility constraints of an account in political theory. (shrink)

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.

The feasibility constraint on the concept of justice roughly states that a necessary condition for something to qualify as a conception of justice is that it is possible to achieve and maintain given the conditions of the human world. In this paper, I propose three alternative interpretations of this constraint that could be derived from different understandings of the Kantian formula ‘ought implies can’: the ability constraint, the motivational constraint and the institutional constraint. I argue that the three constraints constitute (...) a sequence in the sense that accepting the motivational constraint presupposes that we accept the ability constraint, and to accept the institutional constraint presupposes that we accept both previous constraints. Adding the possibility of rejecting all three constraints, we get four distinct metatheoretical positions that theorists could take vis-à-vis the feasibility constraint on justice. (shrink)