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The distinction between ideal and non-ideal theory is a tool that can help us understand how to make moral and political progress. Ideal theory provides a goal for us to reach, and non-ideal theory tells us what to do in our current, non-ideal state. Throughout my dissertation, I argue that we need both of these kinds of theory in order to make progress. I also argue that we need to apply these tools to particular problems in order to get a better understanding of the theoretical questions at stake. To that end, I investigate three particular problems. Chapter One is devoted to showing that we need ideal theory to make sustained societal progress over time. But because we are unable to agree on a complete ideal, we should work together to create incomplete ideal theory, which can then guide our progress. Chapter Two shows how we can use the ideal/non-ideal distinction to resolve two longstanding tensions in moral and political philosophy. We disagree about how much our moral theories should yield to our flaws, and we also disagree about how to interpret the voluntarist constraint: what it means for "ought" to imply "can." I show that we need ideal theory of morality, which uses a thinner version of the voluntarist constraint and does not yield to our flaws, to provide an ultimate standard. But we also need non-ideal theory, which uses a thicker version, to guide our actions. Chapter Three tackles beneficence. Does our duty to the very poor increase when others inevitably fail to comply with that duty? It may be that we only have to do our fair share—that even in the non-ideal world, we only have to do what we would have had to do in the ideal. I show that this view is plagued by counterexamples. Many consequentialists hold the alternative view, that we must pick up others' slack, but their interpretation of this view is extremely demanding. I argue that we should look to an alternative moral theory. Two versions of deontology, intuitionism and Kantianism, require us to do more when others are doing less without also making extreme demands.

Some realists in political theory deny that the notion of feasibility has any place in realist theory, while others claim that feasibility constraints are essential elements of realist normative theorising. But none have so far clarified what exactly they are referring to when thinking of feasibility and political realism together. In this article, we develop a conception of the realist feasibility frontier based on an appraisal of how political realism should be distinguished from non-ideal theories. In this realist framework, political standards are feasible if they meet three requirements: they are (i) politically intelligible, (ii) contextually recognisable as authoritative, and (iii) contestable. We conclude by suggesting that our conception of realist feasibility might be compatible with utopian demands, thereby possibly finding favour with realists who otherwise refuse to resort to the notion of feasibility.

The following article responds to a realist critique of ideal theory in the "official" liberal democratic account of civil disobedience classically offered by John Rawls. The shortcomings the critical theorist, Robin Celikates (2014:236), identifies in Rawls's account follow, "at least, in part, from treating ideal theory as an independent starting point and working towards a definition of this decidedly nonideal political practice from there". The research aims, firstly, to identify and to explain a significant weakness in "new realist" political theory, and, secondly, to offer direction from our recent historical past to contemporary struggles for social justice in South Africa today, which suffer from such weakness in practice. The Freedom Charter is identified as the embodiment of a set of ethical ideals which exceeds but which may complement Tully's approach. . Mainstream historical sources are used, firstly, to identify a serious shortcoming with a dominant approach in political theory, and, secondly, to identify a significant factor that frustrates the effectiveness of "service delivery" protests today.

This article advances the case for 'normative behaviourism' – a new way of doing political philosophy that tries to turn facts about observable patterns of behaviour, as produced by different political systems, into grounds for specific political principles. This approach is applied to four distinct problems at the heart of the ideal/non-ideal theory and moralism/realism debates: (1) How to distinguish good from bad idealisations; (2) how to rank options of variable feasibility, cost, and danger; (3) how to distinguish legitimate acceptance of a given political system from acceptance based on coercion or false consciousness; and (4) how to translate abstract principles into concrete institutions. Objections against the general viability of normative behaviourism, and against the types of behaviour it tracks, are also considered.

At the heart of Kant's legal-political philosophy lies a liberal, republican ideal of justice understood in terms of private independence (non-domination) and subjection to public laws securing freedom for all citizens as equals. Given this basic commitment of Kant's, it is puzzling to many that he does not consider democracy a minimal condition on a legitimate state. In addition, many find Kant ideas of reform or improvement of the historical states we have inherited vague and confusing. The aim of this paper is to untangle both puzzles by exploring Kant's idea of self-governance. I argue that Kant's idea of self-governance gives us a very good starting point for thinking about how to leave room for a variety of political systems—different ideals—that have grown out of and responding to different contingent historical and cultural circumstances. It also helps us id entify those areas where we want to take extra care to build in safeguards to secure stability and to take sufficiently seriously humankind's truly nasty sides. Autogovernança e Reforma no Republicanismo Liberal de Kant - Teoria Ideal e Não-Ideal na Doutrina do Direito em Kant No centro da filosofia jurídico-política de Kant está um ideal liberal, republicano de justiça compreendido em termos de independência privada (não-dominação) e sujeição às leis públicas que garantem a liberdade para todos os cidadãos como iguais. Dado este compromisso básico de Kant, é intrigante para muitos que ele não considere a democracia uma condição mínima para um Estado legítimo. Além disso, muitos consideram as idéias de Kant quanto à reforma ou melhoria dos estados históricos que herdamos, vagas e confusas. O objetivo deste artigo é desembaraçar os dois quebra-cabeças explorando a ideia de auto-governança de Kant. Eu argumento que a ideia de auto-governança de Kant nos dá um bom ponto de partida para pensar em como deixar espaço para uma variedade de sistemas políticos — diferentes ideais — que cresceram e responderam a diferentes contingências históricas e circunstâncias culturais. Também nos ajuda a identificar as áreas em que queremos ter um cuidado extra para construir salvaguardas para garantir a estabilidade segura e para levar suficientemente a sério os lados verdadeiramente desagradáveis da humanidade.

This paper focuses on the arguments in favor of extending distributive justice beyond national borders. Within the contemporary literature of normative political philosophy, we find arguments for either a global or European extension of distributive justice. Philosophers in favor of the European extension are also often supportive of extending to yet other places, but then the following philosophical question arises: Would the establishment of social justice at the level of the EU encourage or discourage the achievement of global justice? Such a question comes from a 'non-ideal theorizing' approach to evaluating whether or not the organization of distributive justice at the EU level would constitute an approximation to global justice and, thus, be considered as transitionally just. It proposes two positions, namely continuity and discontinuity approaches; the former claims that the extension to the European level encourages global justice while the latter claims it is discouraging. In considering the EU as having a privileged international bargaining power to contribute efficiently to global justice, the paper sides with the continuity approach while proposing an adjustment. The main argument, which is called a compatibility proviso, requires taming the potential harmful effects of the European level, in order to achieve the ideal of global justice in a 'pareto optimal' manner. The proviso strengthens the continuity approach by removing two risks: (1) the extension may stop once the distributive justice is organized at the EU level; but also that (2) such a deepening of the EU integration might be in itself harmful to global justice.

I present a new challenge to the Rawlsian insistence on ideal theory as a compass orienting concrete policy choices. My challenge, focusing on global politics, consists of three claims. First, I contend that our global ideal can become more ambitious over time. Second, I argue that Rawlsian ideal theory's level of ambition might change because of concrete policy choices, responding to moral failures which can be identified and resolved without ideal theory. Third, I argue that we currently face such potentially transformative choices. I conclude that these choices are analytically prior to, rather than derivative from, global ideal theory.

In the past decade, the value of so-called ideal theory has become a major point of dispute among political theorists. While critics of ideal theory accuse this approach of "idle utopianism", its advocates fault the critics for conceding to "cynical realism". This dissertation examines two charges against ideal theory. The demandingness charge states that ideal theory fails to acknowledge the constraints on justice set by the empirical conditions that prevail in our world, and that it therefore produces invalid principles. The uselessness charge states that ideal theory, even if it tells us what justice would require under exceptionally favorable circumstances, offers no information valuable for guiding action in the nonideal circumstances characteristic of today's societies. The two charges target the idealized assumptions made in ideal theory, in particular the assumption of full compliance. By assuming full compliance, the critics argue, ideal theory ignores the way real-world agents' motivational limitations render the pursuit of its proposed principles infeasible or undesirable. In four free-standing articles, I examine when and why noncompliance due to motivational limitations puts constraints on justice, and how this affects the status and usefulness of ideal theory. I argue that motivational limitations constrain justice in ideal theory if we hold that justice is action-guiding in the sense that it confers actual duties on individual agents, and that the distribution of collective duties to individuals requires reasonable expectations of others' compliance. In nonideal theory, adopting an actualist standpoint will lead us to conclude that not only the noncompliance of others, but also our own foreseeable noncompliance constrains what justice can demand. I further argue that how this affects the usefulness of ideal theory depends, on the one hand, on how we interpret crucial concepts such as "action-guidance", and, on the other, on which task we expect political theory to perform. My findings shed new light over the complex conflict lines that underlie the current dispute, and urge debaters to render explicit and argue for the assumptions upon which they rest their judgments about ideal theory.

Based on three recently published books on climate justice, this article reviews the field of climate ethics in light of developments of international climate politics. The central problem addressed is how idealised normative theories can be relevant to the political process of negotiating a just distribution of the costs and benefits of mitigating climate change. I distinguish three possible responses, that is, three kinds of non-ideal theories of climate justice: focused on (1) the injustice of some agents not doing their part; (2) the policy process and aiming to be realistic; and (3) grievances related to the transition to a clean-energy economy. The methodological discussion underpinning each response is innovative and should be of interest more generally, even though it is still underdeveloped. The practical upshot, however, is unclear: even non-ideal climate justice may be too disconnected from the fast-moving and messy climate circus.

This work addresses the applicability of Rawls's theory of justice in non-ideal circumstances. The goal, more particularly, is to assess the urgency role that Rawls and some of his interpreters confer to justice of fairness under non-ideal circumstances. In Rawls's case, the urgency role means, in sum, that infringements to the first principle of justice (the basic liberties principle) must be treated as more serious and urging than infringements to the second principle. The paper's main conclusion is that a "strong" understanding of this role has unbearable consequences, worse still than those entailed by the same relation of lexical priority between the two principles under the (ideal) condition of strict compliance. The problem is that, in circumstances of no strict compliance, scarcity of political means needed to make institutional improvements may impose total neglect of second principle issues until the first principle is wholly satisfied.

This article discusses the normative perspectives that guide debates on freedom of communication and media, from the perspective of the distinction between ideal and non-ideal theories. In political theory, ideal theories are often criticized as being detached from actual, existing social conditions and real-world problems. Similarly, it can be argued that abstract and idealized models of freedom of communication and media do not provide the most useful theoretical resources for analyzing the factors that enable or constrain free expression in contemporary societies. The article discusses the implications of three different non-ideal approaches to freedom: Axel Honneth's normative reconstruction, the capabilities approach developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, and the notion of agonistic freedom associated with radical democratic theory. ; Peer reviewed

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy on 20 September 2016, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13698230.2016.1231678. ; David Miller's Strangers in Our Midst is an important contribution to the debate among political philosophers about how liberal democratic states should deal with the issue of migration. But it is also a thoughtful statement concerning how best to do political philosophy and, as such, contributes also to the growing debate within Anglo-American political theory about the relative merits of 'ideal' versus 'non-ideal' normative theorising. Miller's argument in the book builds on his earlier published work in suggesting that political philosophy should be 'for Earthlings': it should not be understood as a process of ideal theorising which ignores political reality. He argues that normative theorists should seek to resolve complex political problems by taking seriously the political context that makes these problems complex, rather than putting aside that context in the interests of deriving first principles. This is a controversial approach, which requires political philosophers to take more seriously than they often do the expressed concerns of citizens living in democratic states and the practical problems associated with applying normative principles in ways which actually help address the issue at hand. This piece discusses some of these themes, and the issue of migration more generally, in order to help frame the debate which follows.

The article gives conceptual clarification on a distinction between ideal and nonideal theory by analyzing John Rawls´ theory as presented in his books "A Theory of Justice" and "The Law of Peoples." The article tries to show the importance of ideal theory, while at the same time pointing out that the distinction, ideal and nonideal, needs further qualification. Further, the article also introduces the distinction of normative and descriptive into ideal and consequently nonideal theory. Through this four-fold distinction it is easier to establish the function of each theory and the separation of work-fields between philosophers, politicians and lawyers.

This paper discusses the role of metaphysics in Rawlsian political theory. Specifically, it examines Jean Hampton's argument that metaphysics should, contra Rawls, be included in political theorizing since public metaphysical debate lowers the chance of expediency arguments that may marginalize members of society. This paper then considers potential Rawlsian objections to Hampton's argument that appeal to the veil of ignorance and original position. However, this paper defends Hampton's argument against the potential Rawlsian objections by referring to Charles Mills' work on ideal theory.

This thesis concerns the nature of the concept of feasibility and its role in constraining moral and political philosophy: to what extent and in what way facts about feasibility ought to constrain what moral and political theory say. I begin in my first chapter by giving an account of feasibility, that is, by attempting to understand what we mean when we say that some outcome is or isn't feasible. I argue against the various attempts that have been made in the literature to give a binary definition (e.g. Gilabert and Lawford-Smith, Räikkä). There is a multiplicity of different possible sharpenings of the term 'feasible', no single one of which is obviously privileged. Different sharpenings hold fixed different ranges of facts, making different sets of proposals feasible. In the remainder of the thesis, I go on to relate this account of feasibility to moral and political theory. I argue that it is not clear which sharpenings of 'feasibility' constrain which sorts of moral theory. I engage with the literature on 'ideal theory', arguing that theory constrained only by expansive (permissive) sharpenings of 'feasibility' (which is one thing that could be meant by 'ideal theory') is useful and important for the purpose of practical action guidance. I thus draw two important conclusions. The first is the thesis of the first chapter about the concept of feasibility. I then build on this to get to a more substantive methodological conclusion, that theory constrained only by permissive (unrealistic) feasibility constraints is useful.