Part III - Implications for Ideal Theory

6 Ideal Theory as Faith

Chapter 2 suggested that we can understand apocalyptic thought as a form of ideal theory, since it identifies an ideal and theorizes a path to it. Apocalyptic thought and ideal theory, it turns out, share more in common than is often assumed. This chapter builds on that idea. In doing so, it doesn’t cast aside earlier methodological recommendations and suggest, without explicit evidence, that apocalyptic thought exercises insidious influence over ideal theory today. But the chapter does explore parallels between ideal theory and apocalyptic thought, with a focus on what grounds people have for believing them.

The most influential understanding of ideal theory comes from John Rawls, who explains it as offering principles of justice that members of a liberal democratic society have reason to accept. Ideal theory, according to this view, has navigational value: it outlines a shared goal – what Rawls calls a “realistic utopia”¹ – for those in society to strive toward. Apocalyptic and other religious beliefs, on the other hand, are not based on reasons all can be expected to accept. Individuals can hold such beliefs on faith, but unlike ideal theory, it would be unreasonable to demand the rest of society to adopt and pursue their goals. For Rawls, then, there is a neat distinction between ideal theory and religious belief: the former is based on plausible reasons that others should accept, whereas the latter is unsuitable to guide society as a whole.²

This distinction proves too neat. The grounds for ideal theory turn out to be shakier than ideal theorists tend to admit. Indeed, in recent years, there have been growing concerns over ideal theory. What has resulted is intense debate over the topic in political philosophy, which at times has grown insular and arcane, as understandings of ideal theory have multiplied.³ This chapter suggests that a less insular approach, in dialogue with social science and other research, stands the best chance of advancing the current debate over ideal theory and its limitations.⁴

Specifically, my argument builds off criticisms of ideal theory by Gerald Gaus,⁵ and draws on social science research to put them on firmer ground. To plausibly defend an ideal theory, it is necessary to show that its principles would have normative force in the future society it envisions. But research on human prediction undermines the claim that we can plausibly know societal conditions in the distant future and what principles of justice would look like under those conditions. The immense complexity of social phenomena and the occurrence of Black Swans – rare, difficult-to-predict events with transformative effects⁶ – severely constrain human predictive capacities. Evidence for this point comes from forecasting studies, which suggest no reason for confidence in predictions about society for the distant future.⁷ Since defenses of ideal theory depend on such predictions, they necessarily fail. Similar to religious and apocalyptic belief, ideal theory lacks plausible grounds and ultimately rests on faith. So contrary to Rawls’s view, people do not have compelling reason to accept any proposed account of ideal theory.

Though Rawls’s approach runs into insurmountable problems, it is important to appreciate its normative appeal. Too often, critics fail to grasp the moral instincts that motivate ideal theory. When ideal theory aims to identify the most just society possible, it seeks information relevant for guiding action in a complex world where the path to greater justice is far from straightforward. Knowing the ideal helps avoid paths that, though appealing in isolation, lead away from the ideal. Without a plausible ideal to guide action, political philosophy is left with deep uncertainty over how best to advance justice long term. One never knows if certain actions move society closer to or further from its most just form possible. Even efforts that advance justice now risk taking society down paths that close off greater justice later.

Regrettably, ideal theory finds itself unable to escape this dilemma. There is perhaps, though, still a role for it in advancing justice. One function of ideal theory is to offer hope in the possibility of a just society.⁸ Both ideal theory and apocalyptic thought offer utopian hope, which gives meaning to imperfect, partial efforts to advance justice by understanding them as steps toward the ideal within the long arc of history. Utopian hope goes beyond desiring and believing in the possibility of justice in the short term, which even if realized can often be fleeting in the face of new political developments that threaten to overturn progress. Utopian hope sets its sights on a far loftier goal: a future that ultimately proves hospitable to justice and the ideal society. Ideal theory offers such hope to sustain people when the immediate prospects of justice seem bleak.

Utopian hope offers psychological benefits and, understandably, some embrace it. For those who do so by turning to either religion or ideal theory, it is important to be honest that such beliefs rely on faith. The chapter closes with a look at Rawls’s writings to show that, though its role is often downplayed, faith has been an inextricable part of contemporary ideal theory from the start. Once we recognize that point, it becomes clear that political philosophy must rethink ideal theory’s role in advancing justice.

Ideal Theory’s Normative Appeal

Before getting into ideal theory’s limitations, let’s first look at what draws people to it. Ideal theory takes different meanings, and here the focus is on what I call navigational ideal theory.⁹ This conception of ideal theory seeks to outline the best and most just society with the potential of being realized at some future point.¹⁰ I focus on this conception because, among competing understandings of ideal theory, it is the best candidate to serve as a normative guide to action.

To explain navigational ideal theory’s normative appeal, it helps to contrast it with a conception less suited to serve as a moral guide. Sometimes ideal theory refers to idealization, meaning that it assumes ideal conditions that are rare or impossible in order to isolate and explain a concept. This manner of theorizing is common in science. Isaac Newton explains gravity by introducing an ideal pendulum, which experiences no friction or air resistance. This pendulum does not represent the perfect pendulum engineers should aim to build. Rather, the term ideal conveys that the pendulum functions under simplified conditions, which put the focus on gravitational force.¹¹ A similar rationale motivates thought experiments in philosophy that assume ideal conditions to better understand our intuitions about a normative concept. For instance, though others do not always contribute their fair share, imagining that they do illuminates basic intuitions about what fairness demands.

Ideal theorists sometimes construct idealizations with bolder normative ambitions: to present an end goal, ideal justice, to strive for. This approach specifies a goal under conditions that rarely if ever hold in reality. Constraints in the real world, but absent from an idealization, can make the ideal impossible. Ideal theory thus can send people chasing after utopia in one sense of the word – “nowhere,” an ideal that doesn’t exist now and is impossible to ever realize. Ideal theory that sets forth an impossible ideal raises concerns because it risks having perverse normative effects when the ideal looks much different from the best possible option.

To illustrate, imagine a perfect society. Many envision a place free from injustice where everyone always acts justly. But suppose weakness of will and other shortcomings prevent this ideal from ever being realized regardless of what society does – there always will be some who act unjustly. The perfect society imagined is what some call a “hopeless” ideal, meaning that the ideal requires action that each individual has the ability to do, yet collectively there is virtually no chance that everyone will do their part to realize the ideal.¹² If a society characterized by perfect compliance is indeed a hopeless ideal, it likely would be unwise to pursue it. Though some measures to increase compliance advance justice, beyond a certain point they backfire – like draconian surveillance to combat noncompliance. Indeed, such surveillance often backfires and leads to racially disparate outcomes.¹³ We thus should be cautious of pursuing hopeless and unattainable ideals since they can lead away from the best possible option.¹⁴

There are legitimate concerns, then, regarding ideal theory’s normative value. Yet this common criticism – ideal theory fails as a normative guide because it embraces unattainable ideals – is not a flaw inherent to it. Navigational ideal theory avoids this pitfall by focusing on what is collectively feasible and identifying the most just society possible. In this way, it steers clear of unattainable ideals that would undermine its normative value.

But this approach still has its critics.¹⁵ It is helpful to differentiate common objections against navigational ideal theory so as to be clear why it might fail as a normative guide:

1. (a) There is no such thing as the most just society possible.¹⁶

2. (b) Ideal theory seeks information – what is the most just society possible – irrelevant to advancing justice.¹⁷

3. (c) Ideal theory cannot identify the most just society possible.¹⁸

According to (a) and (b), ideal theorists ask the wrong question – what is the most just society possible? – when formulating a theory of justice. That question is the wrong place to start because there is no such thing as the ideal society and, even if there were, knowledge of it would prove useless for advancing justice. In contrast, (c) avoids the strong claim that ideal theory is fundamentally misguided, and instead argues that ideal theory cannot answer the question it poses, no matter how valuable the answer would be. We’ll examine (c) later in the chapter, but the remainder of this section focuses on the more fundamental critiques of ideal theory, (a) and (b).

Some find (a) compelling, uneasy with the idea that justice takes one perfect, platonic form. These critics believe the focus should be on eliminating injustice rather than climbing toward some illusory peak form of justice. As Amartya Sen puts it, we care about preventing famine, less so about whether a 45 or 46 percent tax rate for top earners best represents justice.¹⁹

Without question, ending grave injustice deserves priority. But that view is compatible with ideal theory. Ending the world’s many injustices is no small feat, and constitutes its own lofty ideal that can serve as an end goal in efforts to advance justice. The interconnected nature of society demands that we look for an optimal approach, since ending one injustice can exacerbate others. As an example, consider Abraham Lincoln who secretly promised government jobs and other perks to Democrats to ensure passage of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery.²⁰ The injustice of slavery likely justified such bribery, but most would be uncomfortable with its continuing indefinitely. Ideal theory keeps in view the many aspects of justice worth striving for. Rather than necessarily condemning all compromises, it reminds us to consider how compromises impact efforts to advance toward an ideal goal.

So ideal theory emphasizes that advancing justice demands more than tackling one injustice at a time: it requires a holistic view focused on what social arrangements best eliminate various injustices. For the pursuit of that goal, there is reason to hang on to the climbing metaphor common to ideal theory. Societies are not simply just or unjust, but exhibit degrees of injustice. Efforts against injustice often are intergenerational and build off past successes with an ideal in mind, which is why the metaphor of climbing toward a peak is apt.

Sen is perhaps right that fine distinctions about perfect justice are not critical. Society could take various forms, whose comparative levels of justice vary slightly, but which all eliminate significant injustices. We want to reach one of those ideals and care less about reaching the absolute best one. That point implies revising, not abandoning, ideal theory. In efforts to advance justice, what is important is not necessarily ending up atop Everest, so to speak, but aiming for an eight-thousander – one of those rare peaks over 8,000 meters – free from the injustices of lesser peaks and valleys. This view opens the door to a pluralist approach to ideal theory, where there is a set of most just options and any one is worth striving for. That revision still leaves the core normative function of ideal theory in place: offering a lofty goal to guide action, while recognizing that many injustices must be overcome on the way to it.

Instead of denying existence of the ideal, (b) doubts that knowing it helps advance justice. Sen takes this view: “[T]he existence of an identifiably inviolate, or best, alternative does not indicate that it is necessary (or indeed useful) to refer to it in judging the relative merits of two other alternatives.”²¹ Here he overstates his case by suggesting that ideal theory would be irrelevant to guiding action even if it gained the information it seeks. Imagine that ideal theorists succeeded in compiling a volume that accurately details the most just society (or societies) possible. Contrary to Sen, there is reason to believe that such a work would offer insights into how best to advance justice.

The uneven and path-dependent nature of social change helps explain why. If the path to advancing justice were always smooth and gradually ascending – like a hike up Mount Fuji, as Gaus puts it²² – knowing the ideal would be unnecessary. The option that leads to greater justice also would lead toward the most just possibility. But the path to advancing justice sometimes is more rugged with peaks and valleys: the option promising greater justice now leads to a local peak but away from the most just possibility. Knowledge of the ideal helps identify and avoid paths that, though appealing in isolation, lead away from and can preclude the ultimate goal.²³

This strategy of bypassing opportunities to advance justice in the short term to do so in the long term does not mean that ideal theory always permits an action as long as it takes society closer to the ideal. Some ideal theories categorically prohibit certain actions – say restrictions of basic liberties – even if they represent the only path to an ideal. In this case, the ideal is morally infeasible. We could achieve it, but not through morally permissible actions. This complication does not undermine the normative value of an ideal goal. It rather adds another layer of feasibility to consider – moral feasibility – when determining the most just society to strive for.

In many contexts, we readily recognize the value of a long-term goal like ideal theory provides. A medical student who wants to serve the poor as a doctor forgoes volunteering full-time at a homeless shelter, even though doing so would lead to greater justice now. Full-time volunteer work would force the student to abandon their studies and goal of advancing justice as a doctor. Leaders of social movements often make similar judgments. Rather than pursue every opportunity to advance justice, they strategically dedicate energy and resources to court cases, legislative campaigns, and protests best suited to advance their long-term goal.²⁴ Likewise, ideal theory offers an objective to orient action away from paths that diverge from our ultimate goal.

Despite these points in ideal theory’s favor, perhaps the ideal is too far off to offer meaningful guidance. Admittedly, ideal theory cannot provide complete guidance on how to act by specifying an ideal – knowing a goal is distinct from knowing how to achieve it. Nevertheless, knowledge of a goal is often informative in evaluating paths to it. If a core principle of the ideal society were a ban on nuclear technology, that would tell us that the goal of banning nuclear weapons and power is not a fool’s errand but worth pursuing. Though ideal theory cannot provide complete guidance, it offers information that merits consideration and has potential value in advancing justice.

In sum, valid moral instincts lie behind wanting to identify the most just society possible. Navigational ideal theory seeks information relevant to guiding action in a complex world where the path to greater justice is far from clear. The critical question, which we consider next, is whether ideal theory can attain this information.

What a Plausible Defense of Ideal Theory Requires

This section identifies a necessary condition for a plausible defense of navigational ideal theory as part of an argument for why, unfortunately, such a defense fails. The argument builds on criticisms of ideal theory by Gaus in his book Tyranny of the Ideal. There he raises doubts that we have the information necessary to determine the most just society possible. Since the ideal likely lies far in the future, describing it requires predictions about far-off worlds. Gaus assumes we are less accurate in judgments about justice for the distant future than the present.²⁵ Though a reasonable claim, not all political philosophers share it.²⁶ Some have more confidence in their predictions and descriptions of distant ideal worlds, which Gaus dismisses as “sheer delusion.”²⁷

The disagreement between Gaus and ideal theorists reflects a long-standing split among political philosophers: some are deeply suspicious of ideal and utopian theorizing, while others embrace it. Social science research on prediction can help overcome this impasse by shedding light on the uncertainty inherent in ideal theorizing. Given the sharp divide over ideal theory, there is value in detailing this evidence.

Let’s start with premise (1) of my argument drawing on this evidence:

1. (1) Defenses of navigational ideal theory are plausible only if they show that the theory’s principles would have normative force in the society it envisions.

This premise identifies a necessary condition to plausibly defend navigational ideal theory. It is modest in that it does not require a defense to show that an ideal theory’s principles would have more normative appeal than all other proposals, leaving open the possibility discussed earlier that the ideal society could take various forms. The basic intuition of premise (1) is that, since ideal theory outlines principles for a future society, these principles cannot just have normative force now. They must have normative force in the ideal society. We do not want to embrace an ideal theory, pursue its ideal, arrive at it, and then discover its principles of justice are ill-suited for the society we find ourselves in.

Another way of expressing this point is that ideal theory must consider the social realizations of its principles. Ideal theory involves not just theorizing about principles of justice, but also thinking through what those principles would look like in society when implemented.²⁸ Many ideal theorists are sensitive to this point, even if they do not explicitly say so. Ideal theories usually include background social conditions – that is, they specify the context in which ideal principles of justice would be implemented. Knowing that context helps in imagining what an ideal theory’s principles would look like when realized and whether they would have normative appeal in that form.

Rawls’s theory of justice, for example, includes background social conditions. Its principles are adopted under “favorable circumstances,”²⁹ where there is moderate scarcity but conditions are not so harsh as to preclude cooperation or democratic institutions.³⁰ Rawls also takes pluralism as a given in the ideal society, assuming that individuals hold different religious and philosophical views.³¹

Such background conditions play a key role in Rawls’s method of defending ideal theory. In his view, simply reflecting on a theory’s principles in the abstract is insufficient for evaluating them. He instead recommends evaluating ideal principles against our judgments at all levels of generality – from abstract conceptions of justice to its demands in concrete situations – in search of a reflective equilibrium, where the principles and all our judgments align. This method does not privilege judgments at one level of generality over others.³² It thus ensures a place for normative judgments on how an ideal theory’s principles would fare in potential circumstances where they would be realized. By adopting this method for evaluating ideal theory, Rawls shows an appreciation for the concerns of premise (1).³³

Other approaches are less congenial to premise (1). G. A. Cohen, for instance, criticizes Rawls for outlining a theory too closely tied to particular social conditions and recommends instead identifying more general principles of justice.³⁴ According to this view, a theory of justice need not provide background social conditions. But even for that approach, background social conditions remain relevant. Evaluating principles of justice in isolation, detached from their application in social settings, severely limits our ability to form and be confident in our normative judgments. We develop and refine such judgments by considering the application of principles in concrete contexts – a point Cohen himself recognizes.³⁵ If ideal theory fails to give background social conditions, evaluating it still involves bringing to mind likely conditions in the ideal society so as to determine what the theory’s principles would look like in practice.

A more direct challenge to premise (1) comes from the idea that some principles of justice are so self-evident that no social realization of them – no matter how disastrous – could give us reason to rethink them. Like Sen and Gaus, I find this claim implausible.³⁶ To deny that any social realization could challenge an ideal theory before even considering it betrays a lack of epistemic humility. It is impossible to know the full implications of principles we propose, so it is important to remain open to encountering considerations that could prompt us to revise them.³⁷ When moral reasoning closes that possibility and holds on to principles despite their troubling and absurd implications, it becomes rigid dogmatism – like Immanuel Kant’s doubling down on the claim that it’s wrong to lie to a murderer at the door looking for a friend.³⁸ Ideal theorists can claim that their principles of justice are true even if they cause the world to perish.³⁹ But they will encounter stiff resistance – and for good reason.

Prediction and Ideal Theory

So considering the social realizations of an ideal theory’s principles is key to evaluating and defending them. Now to the next step of the argument:

1. (2) Showing that navigational ideal theory’s principles would have normative force in the society it envisions requires reliably accurate predictions about science, technology, economics, and politics for the distant future.

Given today’s pervasive and entrenched injustices, few expect the ideal society to appear any time soon. Ending society’s most significant injustices requires collective efforts that span generations. Since advancing justice is a long-term project, the potential arrival of the ideal society lies in the distant future. The ideal theorist interested in defending their theory must make predictions about society far into the future to show what their theory’s principles would look like and that they would have normative force under those conditions.

Premise (2) perhaps seems misguided since ideal theory’s purpose is to prescribe a goal, not predict whether it will be reached. That is right, but prescribing a feasible goal – navigational ideal theory’s focus – requires prediction. Specifically, the ideal theorist must predict what is possible in the future, and from that feasible set identify the most just option.⁴⁰

It is not enough, then, for the ideal theorist to predict what their proposed principles of justice would look like if implemented now. Before the ideal has any hope of arriving, much in society could change that would provide legitimate grounds for reconsidering our principles of justice.⁴¹ Most obviously, society could cease to reflect background economic and political conditions assumed by ideal theory and render the theory’s principles obsolete. If Rawls’s assumption of moderate scarcity no longer held and new technology brought an overabundance of widely distributed resources, previous debates over distributive justice could look quaint, while other issues moved to the fore. Accurate predictions about future economic and political conditions are necessary to avoid a theory that becomes dated and vulnerable to challenges.

Defending ideal theory also calls for accurate predictions about science and technology. Though we use existing normative principles to evaluate innovations, the interaction between the two proves more complex. Technological and scientific discoveries can raise valid reasons to rethink moral judgments.⁴² If the ideal theorist fails to account for that, they risk specifying principles that appear just today but would be incomplete and mistaken in the ideal society.

Past innovations illustrate this point by expanding the realm of what’s possible and giving rise to new rights and liberties. Consider developments in medicine. Previously, society had few options for healing the sick and injured, and thus a right to healthcare made little sense. Now in a world with effective methods for treating many injuries and diseases, access to such care has come to be seen as a right. People disagree on how extensive this right is, but most accept that wealthy societies have some obligation to treat the critically injured, regardless of whether they can pay for care. Likewise, the invention of the printing press contributed to the emergence of a freedom now widely recognized – freedom of the press. Today the Internet is having transformative effects, as it becomes more essential for communication, learning, and political engagement. Some believe access to it should be a basic right.⁴³ Future innovations will further shape conceptions of justice. The ideal theorist who enumerates basic rights and liberties for the ideal society without considering future innovations risks giving an incomplete list that neglects concerns at the center of tomorrow’s debates about justice.

Beyond expanding conceptions of justice, scientific and technological discoveries sometimes unsettle them. Consider advances in our understanding of nonhuman animals. Research has overturned the view, most famously defended by René Descartes, that animals are machines lacking a variety of capacities believed to be distinct to humans.⁴⁴ Studies show animals to be creatures far more complex than previously believed, which experience pain and emotion, use language and tools, engage in problem solving, cooperate, and aid others. Such discoveries prompt us to rethink animals’ place in the moral universe and suggest that they deserve stronger consideration in theories of justice than they traditionally receive.⁴⁵

In response to these examples, some may still resist premise (2). Rather than show the need for long-term prediction in ideal theory, perhaps these examples show the importance of specifying principles of justice that remain valid across contexts. For instance, instead of making a sharp distinction between humans and animals, a normative theory is better off identifying capacities that merit moral consideration, without predicting in advance what life forms possess them. Ideal theorists, in other words, need more theory.

In a sense that is right. Innovations and discoveries highlight blind spots in normative theories, and it would be best to formulate them free from errors to begin with. The problem, though, is that we often recognize errors in our theories only after confronting concrete counterexamples. Beforehand, it is difficult to know the specific refinements and qualifications that principles of justice require. For that reason, the ideal theorist cannot afford to neglect major technological and scientific advancements in a future hospitable to the ideal society, which may be radically different from our own. Given how often new discoveries influence conceptions of justice, we have little reason to assume that proposed principles of ideal justice that look appealing today are suited for future worlds. We also need an accurate account of what those worlds could look like.

Why Defenses of Ideal Theory (Regrettably) Fail

To review, the ideal theorist wanting to plausibly defend their theory must explain what their proposed principles of justice would look like when implemented in the ideal society, which is unlikely to arrive soon. That forces the ideal theorist to make predictions for the distant future about science, technology, economics, and politics, since these factors impact what form ideal principles would take when realized. Unfortunately for the ideal theorist, they cannot accurately make these predictions with any consistency, which is my next claim:

1. (3) We cannot make reliably accurate predictions about science, technology, economics, and politics for the distant future.⁴⁶

Those who study prediction overwhelmingly agree on this point. Social science research offers nothing to suggest that we come close to having the predictive capacities necessary to formulate a defensible account of navigational ideal theory.

Philip Tetlock, a leading researcher on prediction, conducts forecasting tournaments to measure how well individuals – including professors, journalists, and intelligence analysts⁴⁷ – predict future societal events (e.g., who will win an election or whether two countries will go to war). These studies find that some individuals are better forecasters than others and that certain interventions and ways of thinking improve forecasting.⁴⁸ But they also find severe limitations on human predictive capacities. When making predictions five years out, forecasters’ accuracy declines and approaches random chance – or, as Tetlock puts it, a dart-throwing chimp.⁴⁹ Tetlock and others conclude that even the best forecasters cannot make accurate predictions about society a decade from now, besides the occasional lucky guess and generalities (e.g., there will be interstate conflicts).⁵⁰ So if someone makes detailed claims about what society will look like in fifty years, we have little reason to take their arguments seriously.

These limitations reflect how difficult it is to predict outcomes of complex systems involving many variables in nonlinear relationships, as is the case with society. Weather forecasting offers a helpful analogy. Weather patterns are extremely complex. Small variations in initial conditions – beyond what we can accurately measure – lead to vastly different outcomes as time elapses.⁵¹ So though meteorologists generally can predict the weather for the next few days, their longer-term forecasts are far less accurate. The complexity of the social world creates similar challenges. Skilled forecasters predict events in the short term with some accuracy, but their predictive powers fail them when trying to foretell events further out.

Some may accept these limits on human prediction while denying that they pose problems for ideal theory. After all, ideal theory only makes general predictions about the distant future (e.g., there will be moderate scarcity and pluralism), not the detailed predictions studied by Tetlock (e.g., the euro will hit this value by this date).

This defense fails to save ideal theory, however. Our inability to predict many small events can add up and lead to dramatic, unforeseen changes in society that are relevant to ideal theory. Relatedly, failures in forecasting sometimes result from the intervention of rare, difficult-to-predict, transformative events in society – what Nassim Taleb calls Black Swans.⁵² These events, like the invention of the printing press, reshape society and alter its course in ways hard to foresee. Black Swans are especially relevant to ideal theory because their transformative effects can unsettle our considered views, causing us to rethink conceptions of justice. In other words, these societal developments are exactly the ones ideal theorists must predict to show that their principles of justice would have normative force in a future radically different from today. Yet the same feature that makes Black Swans transformative – radically departing from the status quo – also makes them difficult to predict. Predictions often extrapolate from the past, but that method fails to predict outliers like Black Swans. Such events pose a thorny dilemma for ideal theory: events with great impact on the world, which we desperately would like to predict, often are ones we are least likely to. Black Swans throw a wrench into predictive models, and give us little reason to believe that we can make reliably accurate predictions about society for the distant future.

Occasional predictions of Black Swans fail to provide much hope to ideal theorists. Pundits, academics, and others make many claims about the future – inevitably, some seemingly improbable predictions end up being right by chance. But that doesn’t mean their predictions are reliably accurate. Forecasting studies put successful predictions, which grab our attention, into context by also tracking failed ones. And as research shows, people are poor predictors of future societal developments beyond the short term.

Such limitations severely hinder ideal theorizing. Since we cannot predict future possibilities for society, we don’t know what an ideal theory’s principles would look like when implemented, which prevents us from plausibly defending them. Here is a review of the argument so far and the conclusion that follows:

1. (1) Defenses of navigational ideal theory are plausible only if they show that the theory’s principles would have normative force in the society it envisions.

2. (2) Showing that navigational ideal theory’s principles would have normative force in the society it envisions requires reliably accurate predictions about science, technology, economics, and politics for the distant future.

3. (3) We cannot make reliably accurate predictions about science, technology, economics, and politics for the distant future.

4. (4) So, by (2) and (3), we cannot show that navigational ideal theory’s principles would have normative force in the society it envisions.

5. (5) So, by (1) and (4), no defense of navigational ideal theory is plausible.⁵³

There are two points worth noting. First, this argument is not based on radical skepticism about moral truth. I assume we can identify clear examples of unjust societies and make plausible claims about what the ideal society is not – for instance, one with the horrors of slavery like the antebellum South. But such claims alone cannot get us to a determinate answer about what the ideal society specifically is, especially given the vast array of future possibilities, some of which we would have difficulty even imagining today.

Second, the argument never rejects out of hand the concept of the ideal society. It grants to ideal theorists the possibility of an ideal that represents the most just society with the potential to be realized. The problem, though, is that we lack the predictive capacities to plausibly identify and defend this ideal. That is what makes ideal theorists’ plight so frustrating. They believe in the possibility of the ideal, perhaps rightly so, but prove unable to identify it with any certainty.

Implications for Political Philosophy

One of the most famous critiques of religious belief comes from Bertrand Russell. He compares such belief to claiming that a tiny teapot, imperceptible by telescope, orbits the sun. Though no one can disprove this claim, it would be nonsense to accuse those who doubt it of being unreasonable. The onus is on those making the claim about the teapot to show its plausibility. If they fail to, we dismiss their claim as absurd. For Russell, religious belief has a similar status: it lacks plausible grounds, even if it cannot be falsified. His analogy emphasizes that those making religious claims cannot expect others to believe simply because it is impossible to disprove their claims.⁵⁴

Russell’s analogy is relevant because it equally applies to navigational ideal theory. Though ideal theorists like Rawls distinguish ideal theory from religious belief, the former is no more immune from Russell’s critique than the latter. The ideal theorist claims to give plausible grounds that a particular ideal should serve as a collective guide. Skeptics may run into difficulties disproving that claim, given deep uncertainty over the distant future. Yet for that same reason, the ideal theorist cannot make a compelling case for their ideal – they cannot show that it would have normative force in far-off contexts where it could be realized. Rawls’s method aspires to offer an ideal that others in society have reason to accept, but ultimately fails to do so. That raises the question: Where does political philosophy go next?

Some suggest that political philosophy should abandon its focus on ideal theory. Charles Mills argues that, by placing its attention on far-off ideals, ideal theory distracts from today’s most pressing injustices and has perverse effects on political philosophy’s priorities.⁵⁵ Burke Hendrix raises the additional worry that ideal theory risks doing more harm than good by championing ideals whose full consequences cannot be known. Ideal theory often has unintended effects and can exacerbate the very injustices it seeks to remedy.⁵⁶ Such criticisms of ideal theory reflect underlying discontent with the dominant approach to justice in political philosophy.

Skeptics of ideal theory offer alternatives, which share the feature of rejecting a single ideal to guide efforts toward greater justice. Sen argues that we can advance justice without a perfect ideal by instead identifying the most pressing injustices and using a comparative approach to evaluate options for addressing them.⁵⁷ David Wiens also prefers to focus on specific injustices. He suggests institutional failure analysis, which identifies societal failures resulting in injustice and then formulates feasible measures to avoid them.⁵⁸ This interest in addressing injustice rather than striving after an ideal is nothing new and resembles sentiments common after the Second World War, whose horrors dashed utopian hopes.⁵⁹ Karl Popper reflects this mindset in a 1947 lecture on the ills of utopian projects, which recommends advancing justice through “the elimination of concrete evils rather than … the realization of abstract goods.”⁶⁰ Popper’s influence today is most evident in Gaus’s work to develop an alternative to ideal theory. Drawing on Popper’s idea of the Open Society,⁶¹ as well as John Stuart Mill’s idea of experiments in living,⁶² Gaus argues that society should encourage its members to pursue different ideals and that such experimentation gives insight into what social arrangements best promote justice.⁶³

These proposals deserve consideration as potential paths forward in theorizing about justice without navigational ideal theory. It is important, though, to recognize the aspirations that these alternatives leave behind. Without an ideal to guide action, efforts to advance justice face deep uncertainty. Even when we advance justice, there always is the worry that our efforts lead away from greater justice later. Navigational ideal theory looks to be an antidote to such uncertainty by assuring us that we’re on the right path when reforms move society closer to the ideal. Recent proposals by Sen, Wiens, and Gaus offer no such assurance. They leave open the very danger that ideal theory seeks to avoid: ending up on lesser peaks of justice because there is no end goal pointing to the highest peak. They fail to solve the problem at the heart of ideal theory – what ultimate aim should we strive for? In fact, they give up trying to solve it.⁶⁴

I note this limitation not to recommend that political philosophy stubbornly defend the claims of navigational ideal theory. As we have seen, it is in no position to offer a plausible goal to guide action given future uncertainty. But recognizing this limitation helps avoid unrealistic hopes for alternatives to ideal theory. In particular, it is a mistake to claim there are reasonable grounds for believing that these alternatives lead to a society that is in any sense ideal. Despite his criticisms of ideal theory, Gaus makes this mistake when discussing his hopes for an open and diverse society. He writes: “[W]e cannot know what such an ideal [society] would be – unless we disagree about it. Only those in a morally heterogeneous society have a reasonable hope of actually understanding what an ideal society would be like, but in such a society we will never be collectively devoted to any single ideal.”⁶⁵ Gaus suggests that understanding the ideal comes through an indirect process where different individuals and groups seek their own ideal and learn from social experimentation.

Gaus’s optimism is understandable. Experimentation has been the engine behind remarkable advances, transforming fields like medicine, which cures a host of ailments it was impotent against not long ago.⁶⁶ Perhaps Gaus is right, and applying this approach to justice will unleash similar advances. But even if he is right, suggesting that this approach leads to the ideal overlooks the often haphazard and imperfect nature of experimentation. Chance and timing impact how knowledge from experimentation grows. Successful experiments spark interest in a hypothesis, the study of which then enjoys disproportionate attention and resources. Yet after many years, we sometimes discover that the hypothesis was wrong. Knowledge eventually grows, but along the way some experimental results direct our attention away from more promising ideas that go neglected. Far from always triumphant, the experimental approach also leads society down paths that are less than ideal.

So abandoning the aspirations of navigational ideal theory comes with real losses. Political philosophy finds itself in a tough spot without any clear ideal to light the way regarding which path best advances justice long term. We are left stumbling about in the dark, with political philosophy unable to allay doubts that actions taken to advance justice may in fact lead away from the most just possibility.

That uncertainty can create motivational hurdles to engaging in the difficult work of advancing justice. For many, a critical component of such work is hope – that the future is not condemned to the same injustices plaguing the present. Alternatives to ideal theory can foster hope in short-term progress by identifying clear injustices, outlining ways to address them, and encouraging people to take action that will bring about marginal advances in justice. But it is unclear that such hope is always enough. Steps to advance justice today can be overturned tomorrow as administrations, lawmakers, and judges change. That reality renders hope in short-term progress fragile and fleeting. Even when marginal advances endure, we cannot know if they represent steps toward the most just society. Together, these factors undermine short-term hope’s potency as a source of motivation. If short-term hope is all we have, the arduous task of advancing justice risks resembling a random walk rather than a journey up a majestic peak.

That image of a random walk is far less inspiring and, for some, deeply unsettling. The difficult work of advancing justice entails sacrifices, setbacks, and frustration. Understandably, many look for reassurance that these struggles are worth it – that they lead to a goal worth striving for. Ideal theory offers that by infusing current hardships with moral significance and linking them to a far more hopeful future. So there are real worries that the loss of ideal theory leads to despair and, as a result, some resist simply leaving it behind. Whether ideal theory still has a role to play, despite its limitations, is what we explore next.

Preserving Utopian Hope

Defenses of navigational ideal theory fall short. But does that failure of ideal theory force us to abandon utopian hope? Even if there are not plausible grounds to accept a proposed ideal, one could accept it on faith. That point suggests a path forward for ideal theory, albeit with tempered ambitions: concede our inability to identify the most just society possible with any confidence, yet embrace hope for an ideal on faith. In the absence of strong evidence for an ideal, faith sustains hope in it. Faith has a close relation to hope, a point that the Christian tradition has long recognized: “[F]aith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).⁶⁷ Guided by that principle, one strategy for preserving ideal theory and utopian hope is to recognize their reliance on faith.

This approach makes explicit ideal theory’s parallels with religious belief. The apocalyptic tradition, in particular, envisions a future ideal society and fosters hope that it will be realized. In a pluralistic society, it would be unreasonable to expect everyone to accept these religious beliefs based on faith. Still, for those who have such faith, it is a source of meaning and instills hope for greater justice in a world marred by injustice. Ideal theory has the potential to play a similar role. Just as individuals in pluralistic societies practice different religions, they also can embrace different ideal theories (or none at all). According to this view, no ideal serves as a collective goal for society to pursue. Rather, individuals embrace different ideals, which help assure them that their efforts to advance justice are meaningful steps toward a more perfect world.

Some will see little point in hanging on to ideal theory and reach a conclusion similar to Russell’s regarding religious belief. Beyond just claiming that arguments for religious belief lack plausible grounds, Russell treats such beliefs as nonsense – like believing a tiny teapot is orbiting the sun. Admitting religious belief’s reliance on faith doesn’t change that fact. Belief in ideal theory is vulnerable to the same criticism. From the critic’s perspective, we should treat any account of ideal theory as absurd, since so much about the future is unknown and the forms society could take are virtually endless. We have no idea what a proposed ideal would look like in practice and whether it would have normative appeal under conditions that could be radically different from today’s world. Even if we avoid defending ideal theory, belief in it is nonsense.

One can arrive at this conclusion while still caring about justice. For some, progress against concrete injustices and suffering provides sufficient assurance that their efforts are worth it. To continue in this work, they do not need the further assurance that their efforts move society toward the most just possibility.

Others, though, yearn for this more robust hope. That is evident from its persistent expressions in religion, philosophy, literature, and popular culture. Utopian hope expresses the desire to realize an ideally just society and belief in its possibility. Such hope often looks beyond the immediate future for inspiration, an idea evident in Martin Luther King Jr.’s maxim that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”⁶⁸ Even if the present is not hospitable to justice, the long arc of history is. Utopian hope instills partial, imperfect steps toward justice with meaning by situating them within a longer development toward the ideal. According to this view, human efforts over time move society closer to the ideal, which once achieved will be stable and lasting – otherwise it wouldn’t be a true utopia. After all, a society that quickly falls into decline after achieving its goal fails to count as utopia. Because it is meant to endure, utopia represents an end goal. For this reason, utopian hope has close links to teleological views of history, which understand history as having a purpose and moving toward a particular end. Even if there are at times setbacks, the overall course of history is moving toward utopia – or at least that is the hope – and this future ideal informs the significance of all that comes before it.

The goal here is not to argue that morality or reason demands utopian hope. In a world long filled with injustice, where horrific suffering seems to fall at random on the undeserving, it is both understandable and defensible to reject utopian hope. There is plenty of room in political philosophy and social movements for those who work against injustice without hoping for utopia. My modest goal is to carve out space for utopian hope and explain how someone can embrace it without falling into error.

It turns out that the same factor that undermines defenses of ideal theory – future uncertainty – ensures a place for utopian hope. The nature of hope helps explain why. Though conceptions of hope vary, most understand it as involving, at the very least, the desire for an outcome believed to be neither guaranteed nor impossible.⁶⁹ The desired outcome need not be likely. After all, people often hope for very unlikely things, like an experimental drug that will cure their cancer. The desired outcome just has to be possible. As Adrienne Martin explains in her study How We Hope, the mere possibility of an outcome, no matter how unlikely, provides permission to hope and act on that hope. So hope does not require inflating the odds of an outcome, and there is nothing inherently irrational about “hoping against hope” – that is, hoping for an outcome with extremely long odds. Such hope emphasizes an outcome’s possibility, which can have practical value by sustaining individuals as they pursue goals under incredibly trying circumstances, like a terminal illness.⁷⁰

We can apply these insights to utopian hope. The deep uncertainty surrounding the future opens the door for such hope. Future uncertainty makes it impossible to establish what the utopian society would look like and whether it will be realized, so utopian hope must rely on faith. Yet this same uncertainty functions as a bulwark to protect faith in utopian hope. Because so much about the future is uncertain, we cannot entirely preclude the possibility of achieving the ideal society at some point. Though realizing the ideal is difficult to imagine, it still is possible, which frees people to embrace utopian hope without committing any obvious error. This hope offers needed assurance, at least for some, that the arduous work to make the world more just leads to more than just fleeting progress. From the perspective of utopian hope, such work – so often incomplete and imperfect – contributes to an ideal truly worth striving for.

Here some might object that the analogy between ideal theory and religious faith breaks down. This description of utopian hope, aware of its own uncertainty, seems to stand in contrast to more dogmatic forms of hope often found in religious faith. Indeed, it is common for religious believers to describe their faith as providing hope for an ideal future that is certain.⁷¹

But that view is not universal. In today’s secular age, as Charles Taylor points out, religious beliefs and hopes no longer seem as self-evident as they once did. Religious belief in many contemporary societies does not enjoy the status of assumed truth, nor does the divine pervade shared perceptions of the world and the forces within it. For those who choose to embrace religious faith in this context, their faith often coexists with uncertainty and doubt.⁷²

This variety of religious faith described by Taylor, which offers uncertain hope, serves as an apt analogy for ideal theory aware of its epistemic limitations. In both cases, beliefs grounded in faith rather than plausible evidence serve as a source of utopian hope. Ideal theory and utopian hope cannot escape this shortcoming, but can persist in spite of it. If we are to hang on to ideal theory and utopian hope with intellectual honesty, we must abandon the ambition of offering plausible grounds for others to accept our ideal and hope for it.

Rawls’s Faith

The idea that ideal theory relies on faith can be jarring, since it is not usually described in this way. Ideal theory often aims to provide a common goal to strive for in a pluralistic society where religious faith fails to fulfill that role. Political philosophy thus tends to treat ideal theory as resting on more solid ground than religious faith. That perspective has its roots in Rawls, whose thought inspired much of contemporary ideal theory. A close look at Rawls’s writings serves as a reminder, however, that reliance on faith is at the heart of ideal theory.

In his account of ideal theory, Rawls assigns a central role for utopian hope. No historical figure impacted his thinking on this issue more than Kant. Citing Kant, Rawls stresses the need to hold on to hope for a just society if life in this world is to be worth living.⁷³ This hope strikes him as necessary, especially when individuals take on the difficult task of working to advance justice. Rawls believes ideal theory can “banish the dangers of resignation and cynicism” and meet the challenge of preserving utopian hope. “By showing how the social world may realize the features of a realistic utopia,” he writes, “political philosophy provides a long-term goal of political endeavor, and in working toward it gives meaning to what we can do today.”⁷⁴

Rawls’s Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy illustrate in greater detail his interest in the utopian element in Kant’s philosophy, as well as his debt to it.⁷⁵ His final lecture on Kant focuses on the relation among faith, reason, and hope in Kant’s thought.⁷⁶ As Rawls explains, Kant treats utopian hope as a necessary component of morality. Specifically, the moral law takes as its object the highest good, which for Kant is a world where happiness is proportional to and in harmony with virtue. And since the moral law only seeks ends that are possible, one of its presuppositions is that the highest good must be possible.⁷⁷ Without that presupposition, the moral law cannot get off the ground. “If … the highest good is impossible,” writes Kant, “then the moral law, which commands us to promote it, must be fantastic and directed to empty imaginary ends and must therefore in itself be false.”⁷⁸

Kant goes on to argue that further presuppositions are necessary for the highest good to be possible. It is here that he introduces tenets of religious faith – immortality of the soul and the existence of an omnipotent and benevolent God – along with freedom of will as necessary presuppositions of morality.⁷⁹ Without these presuppositions, the highest good as Kant sees it would be impossible. Only a good and all-powerful God ensures that virtue and happiness ultimately will correspond. Only immortality ensures that individuals can make continual progress in conforming their will to the moral law. And only freedom of will ensures the possibility of moral action to begin with. Together, the presuppositions of morality answer a question Kant poses to himself: “What may I hope for?”⁸⁰ They fill in the content of what he considers reasonable faith.⁸¹ Kant avoids claiming that we can prove God’s existence or immortality. But there is also no way to disprove these religious beliefs, so reason permits them. Moreover, since these beliefs are necessary presuppositions of the moral law, morality requires them.⁸² As Kant puts it, “Morality … inevitably leads to religion.”⁸³

Rawls’s conception of utopian hope never looks as robust as Kant’s, since it lacks hope for God and immortality. But despite these departures, Rawls treats Kant’s account of utopian hope and reasonable faith with great sympathy. To distinguish between which elements are worth preserving and which to discard, Rawls uses the German term “Vernunftglaube” for some of Kant’s beliefs and the English term “reasonable faith” for others. Vernunftglaube just means reasonable faith, but Rawls specifically uses it to refer to Kant’s hope for achieving the highest good and the related presuppositions of God and immortality. Rawls then uses the term reasonable faith to refer to Kant’s hope for a “realm of ends,” a society where individuals live under conditions of justice.⁸⁴ This realm of ends closely resembles the realistic utopia that Rawls outlines in his ideal theory and defends as a goal to strive for. Notably, he calls the “realm of ends … a secular ideal.”⁸⁵

Not surprisingly, Rawls sees the reasonable faith required for this ideal as more essential than Kant’s Vernunftglaube. He asks: “[W]hat is the content of practical faith once we take a realm of ends as the object of the moral law?” Here Rawls essentially describes the move that he makes in his political philosophy, so his response to the question proves illuminating for understanding faith’s role in his ideal theory. He writes:

I suggest that while [taking a realm of ends as the object of the moral law] does not require the postulates of God and immortality, it does require certain beliefs about our nature and the social world … . For we can believe that a realm of ends is possible in the world only if the order of nature and social necessities are not unfriendly to that ideal. For this to be so, it must contain forces and tendencies that in the longer run tend to bring out, or at least support, such a realm and to educate mankind so as to further this end.⁸⁶

For Rawls, Kant’s religious beliefs are unnecessary as presuppositions for working toward an ideal society, but other presuppositions are necessary. Namely, we must hold on to the hope that such an ideal is possible and, relatedly, that the future is hospitable to its realization.

This hope for the future reflects aspects of a teleological view of history. Kant stresses our practical need to “hope for better times” and see history as progressing toward greater perfection.⁸⁷ Rawls’s remarks on Kant’s view suggest an affinity for it: “We must believe … that the course of human history is progressively improving, and not becoming worse, or that it does not fluctuate in perpetuity from bad to good and from good to bad. For in this case we will view the spectacle of human history as a farce that arouses loathing of our species.”⁸⁸ Even as he leaves behind Kant’s religious beliefs, Rawls expresses greater openness to other leaps of faith seen as necessary presuppositions of working toward the ideal society.⁸⁹

The essay “On My Religion,” written by Rawls near the end of his life, provides insight into why he cannot hang on to the religious elements in Kant’s concept of reasonable faith, which he otherwise finds appealing. Rawls points to three events during his service in the Second World War that led him to abandon his Christian faith: (1) a sermon to him and other U.S. troops claiming that God would aid them in killing the Japanese; (2) the death of his friend Deacon on an expedition that Rawls almost went on instead; and (3) learning about the horrors of the Holocaust.⁹⁰ It became impossible to maintain his faith, as Rawls explains:

These incidents, and especially the third [the Holocaust] …, affected me in the same way. This took the form of questioning whether prayer was possible. How could I pray and ask God to help me, or my family, or my country, or any other cherished thing I cared about, when God would not save millions of Jews from Hitler? When Lincoln interprets the Civil War as God’s punishment for the sin of slavery, deserved equally by North and South, God is seen as acting justly. But the Holocaust can’t be interpreted in that way, and all attempts to do so that I have read of are hideous and evil. To interpret history as expressing God’s will, God’s will must accord with the most basic ideas of justice as we know them. For what else can the most basic justice be? Thus, I soon came to reject the idea of the supremacy of the divine will as also hideous and evil.⁹¹

Though deeply religious before the war – Rawls at one point considered seminary⁹² – the Holocaust and his experiences in combat dashed his faith that God ensures justice now or ever. In fact, for Rawls, to imagine an omnipotent God in a world marred by such evil only crushes hope in a just future, for it suggests that the ruler of the universe is a monster.

The horrors of the Second World War pushed Rawls to give up his religious faith, yet he held on to utopian hope and the conviction that the future is hospitable to justice. Not everyone held on to such hope in the wake of these horrors. Rawls, though, adamantly rejects political despair as an option. Even after the “the manic evil of the Holocaust,” he stresses that we must start from the assumption that a realistic utopia is possible.⁹³ The thought of abandoning hope in that ideal strikes Rawls as intolerable. So a secular understanding of ideal theory steps in to be the source of utopian hope that religious faith can no longer provide.

The basis for this move lies in his distinction between forms of reasonable faith. In his lecture on Kant, Rawls makes a point to differentiate reasonable faith in an ideal society from reasonable faith (or Vernunftglaube) in religious beliefs like immortality and the existence of God. Rawls admits that Kant himself never makes this distinction,⁹⁴ but feels compelled to make it because “the plausibility of Kant’s view in these two cases are quite different.”⁹⁵ For Rawls, reasonable faith in a just and ideal society has greater plausibility since the object of such faith could be realized within the confines of the natural world, without any necessary reference to the supernatural.⁹⁶ So though hope for a future ideal society and hope in the divine both rest on faith, Rawls sees the former as the more reasonable of the two faiths.

This desire to distinguish the faith required for ideal theory as more reasonable and plausible than the faith required for religious belief is where Rawls runs into trouble. To preserve his utopian hope, Rawls must make leaps of faith no less considerable than those he eschews. His ideal theory rests on the convictions that we can identify the ideal and that the future is such that it fosters progress toward it. We already have seen earlier in this chapter that there are not plausible grounds to support the first claim. And the teleological view of history implicit in the second claim long has been criticized as wishful thinking rather than grounded in actual evidence. That seems even truer today as the world grapples with the legacies of slavery and colonialism, as well as the devastating consequences of human-induced climate change. Confronted with such overwhelming injustice from the present and recent past, some have no patience for “fairy tales that imply some irrepressible justice.”⁹⁷ According to that view, only a tendentious and selective reading of history suggests that it continually progresses toward greater justice.

Now it would be too strong to say that Rawls errs in hoping for utopia and a future conducive to its realization. The future could radically depart from the present and bring about the ideal. That possibility, regardless of its likelihood, allows one to embrace ideal theory and utopian hope without violating basic principles of rationality. But it is a mistake to think that ideal theory rests on faith so qualitatively different than religious faith that it succeeds in providing plausible grounds to accept and pursue a shared ideal. By making distinctions between ideal theory and religious faith that fail to hold up under scrutiny, Rawls set contemporary ideal theory on the wrong track from the start.

Political philosophy long has taken seriously the notion that ideal theory can identify the most just society possible, give plausible arguments for this claim, and offer an end goal to guide collective action. Such ambitions far outstrip human capacities and fail to appreciate the deep uncertainty in the world along with its full implications. We cannot predict future developments and innovations that will shape society, and thus cannot show what proposed principles of justice would look like in far-off worlds, let alone that they would constitute the most just society. Political philosophers would be wise to admit these limitations and stop expecting the impossible from ideal theory. If theorizing about the most just society possible persists, it is important to recognize it for what it is: hope for an ideal grounded in faith.

7 Limiting the Dangers of Utopian Hope

As Chapter 6 explored, it is highly doubtful that ideal theory can identify the ideal society with confidence and serve as a reliable guide to social action. Because of future uncertainty, ideal theory ultimately rests on faith, not plausible arguments for the ideal it proposes. So ideal theory ends up in a role similar to that of apocalyptic thought – a source of utopian hope for those who accept it on faith. Such hope can have benefits. It instills efforts to advance justice with meaning by interpreting them as steps toward an ideal that is both possible and worth striving for. But not all aspects of utopian hope prove beneficial. As the history of apocalyptic thought makes clear, such hope also comes with real dangers – in particular violence.

This chapter examines the dangers of utopian hope and ways to limit them. It builds on the idea, emphasized throughout this study, that ideal theory shares overlooked features with apocalyptic thought. One long-standing worry with apocalyptic thought is that it promotes violence.¹ That fear has lurked in the background in the previous case studies of Thomas Müntzer and the Fifth Monarchy Men, whose apocalyptic visions helped inspire violent rebellion. Today apocalyptic thought continues to be a motivating force for a range of violent groups, from Christian White nationalists to Muslim extremists.² Their shocking brutality makes it tempting to conclude that apocalyptic thought – and perhaps religion generally – is inherently violent. A closer look at apocalyptic thought, however, reveals that its greatest pitfall is one that also threatens ideal theory. Both apocalyptic thought and ideal theory can fall victim to false confidence regarding their ability to identify and achieve utopia. Purported knowledge of the path to utopia has justified all kinds of bloodshed and cruelty throughout history, yet the ideal never comes. When utopian hope turns into hubris, it can lead to disaster.

The apocalyptic tradition is incredibly diverse and, though strands of it encourage violence, others suggest strategies for minimizing that risk. In this way, the apocalyptic tradition offers unexpected insights to ideal theory on how to understand utopian hope. Partly in response to the explosive potential of apocalyptic belief, Jewish and Christian thought developed interpretations of such belief aimed at neutralizing its dangers. These religious traditions often stress the radical nature of human ignorance as it pertains to what exactly the ideal society looks like, how to bring it about, and when it might come. Such knowledge lies with God alone. Given the limits of human knowledge, it would be foolish and dangerous to try to force utopia into existence through our own efforts. That conclusion is in part discouraging, for it pushes utopia beyond our grasp. But there is also wisdom in it, for it captures the epistemic limitations that face utopian theorizing and the dangers of ignoring them.

Now in recommending epistemic humility, Jewish and Christian thought still hold on to utopian hope. This hope is grounded in faith and gives meaning to the difficult work of advancing justice under conditions far removed from utopia. By closely linking utopian hope with epistemic humility, the apocalyptic tradition – or at least certain strands of it – suggests an approach that ideal theory would be wise to imitate.

Fear of Apocalyptic Violence

According to Bernard McGinn, a leading scholar of religious thought in the Middle Ages, the “apocalyptic worldview is inherently violent.”³ He qualifies this claim by noting that apocalyptic belief does not always lead to violence.⁴ But he does emphasize the salient role of violence in ancient apocalyptic texts. On this particular point, there is truth to his claim. Readers of apocalyptic literature do not have to search long to find violent imagery. Revelation 9:15, for instance, speaks of four angels of death set loose “to kill a third of humankind” (see Figure 7.1).⁵ Another passage describes in gruesome detail the fate of the wicked and idolatrous: “Those who worship the beast … will also drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured unmixed into the cup of his anger, and they will be tormented with fire and sulfur … . And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever” (Revelation 14:9–11). Such vivid accounts of violence appear frequently in Jewish and Christian apocalyptic texts.

Figure 7.1 Angels of death from Revelation 9

Engraving from sixteenth century by Jean Duvet⁹

Interestingly, these texts rarely call on believers to engage in violence. That responsibility almost always lies with God, who enacts vengeance on the enemies of the righteous. At the same time that apocalyptic thought calls on believers to refrain from violence and accept martyrdom in the face of persecution (e.g., Revelation 2:10, 20:4), it celebrates God’s use of violence against the wicked. So in Jewish and Christian apocalyptic thought, violence occupies an ambiguous role not free from danger.⁶ Even if an apocalyptic text explicitly cautions against engaging in violence, its celebrations of divine wrath can motivate some to see themselves as agents chosen to inflict punishment on the wicked – especially when God tarries.

Beyond its violent imagery, apocalyptic texts portray a world divided between good and evil. Eternal peace and salvation await the righteous, while suffering and punishment await the wicked. Such a mindset can encourage the demonization of outsiders and weaken prohibitions on violence against them. Indeed, many who carry out genocide and religious violence see their victims as irredeemably evil and less than human.⁷ Apocalyptic thought, with its dichotomous view of the world, seems to promote a mindset prone to violence.⁸

Because of their celebrations of violence, apocalyptic texts can appear out of place in religious traditions that elsewhere emphasize peace. The book of Revelation almost didn’t make it into the Christian canon – many early lists of the canon left it off¹⁰ – and some believe Christianity would have been better off without it. John Dominic Crossan takes that view due to worries over Revelation’s incompatibility with the gospel message of peace, nonviolence, and forgiveness. The book’s “pornography of violence” and portrayal of Christ unleashing vengeance on his enemies horrifies Crossan. “To turn Jesus into a divine warrior,” he writes, “allows once again – but now terminally in the last book of the Bible – the normalcy of human civilization’s violent injustice to subsume the radicality of God’s nonviolent justice.”¹¹ According to this view, the apocalyptic text of Revelation subverts Christianity’s core message.¹²

These risks, of course, extend beyond just the religious traditions that gave birth to apocalyptic thought. Nonbelievers also draw on apocalyptic ideas and use them to advance political ends. This development is especially worrying for critics of apocalyptic thought. Arthur Mendel notes that, though “the world could afford the fantasy of Apocalypse” in the past, it no longer is tolerable in a nuclear age where its influence could have cataclysmic results.¹³ In his view, apocalyptic thought anticipates total destruction and risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Similarly, John Hall calls the migration of apocalyptic ideas from the religious to the secular realm an “ominous development.”¹⁴ Apocalyptic thought, he argues, makes violence sacred. As a result, “the sacred violence of the warring apocalypse became grafted onto secular politics and social movements.”¹⁵ So according to some, apocalyptic thought’s continued influence in politics today poses grave risks – perhaps even an existential threat.

Apocalyptic thought has no shortage of critics and it is easy to see why. Its visions of utopia appear side by side with gruesome images of violence and scenes of mass destruction. These features suggest to many that apocalyptic thought is inherently violent and should have no place in religion or politics.

Coexisting with Apocalyptic Belief

Religiously motivated violence grabs people’s attention. Sometimes the means employed – crashing planes into building or beheading victims – are spectacular. Yet even if the means are more mundane, there still is something shocking about religious beliefs that push people to violence. It is easier to understand violence prompted by greed, lust, or revenge. These are emotions we all experience to some degree and can identify with. But killing someone over a 2,000-year-old apocalyptic prophecy? That is harder to understand – and thus an object of curiosity. When religious and apocalyptic beliefs motivate violence, it’s difficult to look away. Because such violence receives outsized attention, it can seem more pervasive than it is.

In the vast majority of cases, of course, apocalyptic belief never turns violent. The widespread nature of such belief reminds us of that point. Polling finds that over a third of Americans believe Christ’s Second Coming will occur before 2050.¹⁶ So in the United States alone, tens of millions of people hold apocalyptic beliefs, and there are even more worldwide. Almost all of them coexist peacefully with their neighbors. Only in an incredibly small number of cases does apocalyptic belief spark violence. For this reason, many scholars of apocalyptic thought reject the view that it is inherently violent.¹⁷

That conclusion stands in tension with views common to political theory. Many modern thinkers have a strong suspicion of religious belief that divides the world between good and evil – which apocalyptic thought often does – due to worries that it breeds discord and violence. As Jean-Jacques Rousseau writes, “It is impossible to live in peace with people one believes are damned.”¹⁸ Recent work on the history of toleration, however, gives us reason to question this assumption.

In her study Mere Civility, Teresa Bejan examines the thought of Roger Williams, who in founding Rhode Island embarked on one of the most radical experiments in religious toleration the world had seen. His support of religious freedom for even the most despised sects at the time did not derive, as one might assume, from a respect for all faiths. As Bejan stresses, Williams held fervent religious and apocalyptic beliefs that led him to see most of his neighbors as damned – and he wasn’t afraid to tell them so. It was because of, not in spite of, these convictions that he embraced a conception of religious liberty far more expansive than his contemporaries did.¹⁹

For Williams, religious freedom was key for ensuring that individuals were at liberty to evangelize their faith. As he was keen to point out, those who are religious opponents today could become members of the body of Christ tomorrow.²⁰ The neighbor who appears damned is not necessarily irredeemable. The way to bring them into the church is to evangelize to them rather than employ the state to persecute them – a step that inevitably would corrupt the church in Williams’s mind. The Rhode Island experiment and its continuation in the United States today remind us that strongly held religious beliefs, including apocalyptic ones, do not guarantee violence. Those anxiously awaiting the end may see the world as sharply divided between the righteous and the damned, and even find the latter deeply disagreeable, while still coexisting with them in conditions free from violence.²¹

In sum, apocalyptic belief, like religious belief generally, proves too diverse to broadly characterize as violent.²² That characterization lacks nuance and fails to account for the simple fact that many hold apocalyptic beliefs without ever engaging in violence. To understand apocalyptic thought’s relation to violence, it is necessary to identify more precisely what forms of it are linked to violence. We turn to that question next.

What Makes Utopian Hope Dangerous

Though there is often unease with apocalyptic belief’s dichotomous view of the world, this feature alone is insufficient to spark violence. After all, people can see the world as divided between good and evil, while at the same time placing all responsibility on God to bring about the utopia promised. According to this view, one patiently waits for God to act. To inspire violence, apocalyptic thought needs something more – belief that the elect have an active role to play in realizing God’s kingdom and should do so by any means necessary, including force.

Frances Flannery emphasizes this point in her study of apocalyptic groups that engage in terrorism. She makes a distinction between what she calls “passive” and “active eschatology,” and describes the latter as “one of the clearest indicators that a group will be violent.”²³ Passive eschatology counsels patience while waiting for divine intervention to bring about the ideal society, whereas active eschatology calls on believers to eliminate evil and realize the ideal society through their own efforts.²⁴ The latter mindset justifies action normally prohibited – like violence against others – since it serves the critical role of realizing the ideal.

This link between active eschatology and terrorism identified by Flannery highlights a key point: the same aspect of apocalyptic thought that makes it appealing for politics also makes it dangerous. Chapter 2 noted that apocalyptic thought’s political appeal partly lies in offering an apparent solution to a challenge that plagues ideal theory. In response to the worry that a truly ideal society seems beyond reach, cataclysmic apocalyptic thought points to an imminent crisis as the vehicle to finally realize the ideal. This mindset has advantages for politics because of the urgency it creates – now is the time for bold action to take advantage of the unique opportunity at hand. If that idea gains hold, it can become a powerful motivating force in politics. But this strategy comes with shortcomings. Due to future uncertainty, those predicting utopia and calling for violence to realize it cannot give plausible grounds to back up their claims.

That limitation is good reason to be wary of justifications for violence that appeal to apocalyptic thought. Such appeals call for certain bloodshed in the hope of attaining a highly uncertain utopia. If there were compelling evidence that violent action would bring about utopia, then one could make a strong case for violence. But in reality, there never is plausible evidence that violence will lead to utopia. The history of political violence motivated by apocalyptic belief suggests far less hopeful outcomes. At its worst, apocalyptic violence results in senseless bloodshed, like when thousands of peasants died heeding Müntzer’s call to realize God’s kingdom through revolutionary action.²⁵ At its best, it helps improve society while leaving it deeply flawed, like when apocalyptic belief motivated Union soldiers during the American Civil War as they marched through the South and liberated slaves.²⁶

Even in these best-case scenarios, utopian hope by itself appears insufficient to justify violence. Calls for violence in pursuit of utopia are always dubious, considering that no action has yet to succeed in bringing about the ideal. Given the horrors of violence, it is wise to demand that justifications for it, at the very least, appeal to more certain and attainable ends than utopia (e.g., ending a concrete injustice like slavery). We can formulate this principle as follows:

Principle against utopian violence: Given deep uncertainty over the future, which makes it impossible to identify the ideal society with confidence, calls to engage in violence cannot be justified on the grounds that it will help realize utopia. Such an uncertain good cannot justify the evils of violence.

This principle does not demand pacifism. It leaves open the possibility that violence can be justified when there are plausible grounds to believe that it will achieve worthy ends (e.g., stopping an unjust aggressor from inflicting civilian casualties).²⁷ The principle does, however, treat all appeals to utopian goals as insufficient to justify violence.

So far we have focused on utopian hope’s violent potential in the context of apocalyptic thought, but the principle against utopian violence highlights that this risk applies to ideal theory generally. What makes apocalyptic thought dangerous – a commitment to bringing about the ideal society through whatever means necessary – also can render other forms of ideal theory dangerous. Indeed, the danger of mixing utopian aspirations with politics is a recurring concern in political thought, expressed by various thinkers who embrace the principle against utopian violence or something close to it.

Atrocities during the twentieth century in particular prompted critiques of utopian political projects. Referencing the dangers embodied by the politics of Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, and Pol Pot, Isaiah Berlin writes: “[I]f one really believes that [a final] solution is possible, then surely no cost would be too high to obtain it: to make mankind just and happy and creative and harmonious for ever – what could be too high a price for that?”²⁸ Though he understands the rationale behind this approach, the “search for perfection” ultimately strikes Berlin as “a recipe for bloodshed.”²⁹

Karl Popper expresses similar concerns. In his view, utopian projects inevitably come with epistemic uncertainty over how to achieve them, which makes violence appealing as a tool to overcome uncertainty and ensure agreement on a common political goal. He writes:

[T]he Utopian method, which chooses an ideal state of society as the aim which all our political actions should serve, is likely to produce violence … . [D]ifferences of opinion concerning what the ideal state should be like cannot always be smoothed out by the method of argument. They will at least partly have the character of religious differences. And there can hardly be tolerance between these different Utopian religions. Utopian aims are designed to serve as a basis for rational political action and discussion, and such action appears to be possible only if the aim is definitely decided upon. Thus the Utopianist must win over, or else crush, his Utopianist competitors who do not share his own Utopian aims and who do not profess his own Utopianist religion.³⁰

This remark comes well before the flurry of interest in ideal theory sparked by John Rawls’s Theory of Justice. Popper makes a point often absent from current debates, which this study has explored: utopian or ideal theorizing resembles religious belief in its inability to provide plausible grounds for the ideal it champions. He worries that, faced with this dilemma, utopian theory may turn to violence to mobilize the collective action needed to realize its ambitions.

Some may object to these worries and argue that future uncertainty justifies violence in pursuit of utopia. Since we cannot be sure what the future holds, who can say that a particular utopian project will fail? And given that uncertainty, who has the right to stand in the way of sincere attempts to not just theorize about utopia but also realize it? The problem, though, is that realizing a particular ideal on a societal scale usually requires much of society to strive for it – including those with dramatically different utopian hopes (or none at all). Given future uncertainty, people lack compelling reason to believe that any proposed ideal accurately captures utopia. Even if no one can show that a proposed ideal is mistaken, that is different from offering plausible grounds to believe in it. As a result, deep divisions over the ideal are likely. Perhaps violence could overcome some divisions by compelling individuals to pursue the same ideal, but that course of action has obvious downsides. It violates the principle against utopian violence and inflicts immense costs on society for a highly uncertain goal.

As critics of apocalyptic thought and ideal theory point out, utopian hope comes with real dangers. If hope in utopia pushes us to realize it at all costs, it poses severe harms without the assurance that the ideal will ever come. That raises the question: Can we preserve utopian hope and its benefits while avoiding its more destructive elements? The following section looks at how religious traditions grappling with apocalyptic thought’s explosive nature have tried to answer that question.

A Remedy from within the Apocalyptic Tradition

In light of the concerns raised earlier, the apocalyptic tradition seems limited in what it can offer ideal theory. By pointing to crisis as the way to utopia, apocalyptic thought proves appealing to ideal theorists looking to explain how an ideal can be both utopian and feasible. This appeal, though, turns out to be illusory. Apocalyptic thought tries to justify dramatic political action, even violence, as necessary to realize utopia, but ultimately cannot provide compelling reasons for that claim. Given that defect, it may seem that ideal theorists would be better off ignoring apocalyptic thought altogether.

It’s true that apocalyptic thought fails to provide an understanding of the ideal suited to guide collective action for a society. No form of ideal theory succeeds in that regard. The apocalyptic tradition suffers from a limitation common to all forms of ideal theory. That limitation should come as no surprise and doesn’t preclude the apocalyptic tradition as a potential source of wisdom. In fact, dangers within this tradition have spurred reflection on how to contain them, resulting in strategies that offer insights on how to preserve utopian hope while avoiding its pitfalls.

Notably, one finds in Jewish and Christian thought strands of eschatology that take a humble approach to utopian hope, which proves particularly suited to guard against the dangers of apocalyptic thought. Three core principles define this approach:

1. (1) embrace utopian hope;

2. (2) accept that humans are largely ignorant of the ideal and how to bring it about; and

3. (3) recognize the dangers of trying to force the ideal into existence.

With these principles, Jewish and Christian thought put forward a strategy that gives space for utopian hope but remains alert to its hazards. This strategy avoids having to abandon utopian hope because it approaches such hope with an attitude of epistemic humility.

Let’s look first at the Jewish tradition, for which apocalyptic belief and utopian hope are central. Maimonides’s Thirteen Principles, a popular summation of the Jewish faith, highlight this point. His final two principles state:

1. (12) I believe with full faith in the coming of the Messiah, and, though he tarry, I anticipate him, nonetheless, on every day, when he may come.

2. (13) I believe with full faith that there will be a resurrection of the dead at the time that the Creator, may His name be blessed, wills it.³¹

The Jewish tradition has long wrestled with how to understand these apocalyptic expectations. In particular, outbursts of messianic enthusiasm throughout Jewish history have made this task all the more urgent.

Two of the most famous examples are the revolt against Rome led by Simon bar Kokhba and the movement inspired by Sabbatai Zevi. In both cases, apocalyptic hopes ended in utter disaster. Heralded as the messiah, Bar Kokhba initially succeeded in achieving a short period of Jewish self-rule beginning in 132 C.E. Rome, however, struck back and within a few years destroyed Jerusalem, killed thousands of its inhabitants – including Bar Kokhba – and sent those Jews who survived into exile.³² The movement led by Sabbatai also met a sad end. This self-proclaimed messiah attracted followers across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East as apocalyptic expectations reached a fever pitch in the year 1666. But rather than restore Israel as predicted, Sabbatai eventually would deny his faith and convert to Islam.³³

Such disappointments have left a deep impact on Jewish eschatology.³⁴ Drawing on teachings from the Talmud and Midrash, some rabbis argue that there is a divine injunction against trying to force the end.³⁵ This warning captures the wariness in Jewish thought toward any human projects that aspire to realize apocalyptic hopes.

Isaac Bashevis Singer sums up this attitude at the end of Satan in Goray, his fictional account of Sabbatai Zevi. After detailing the many hopes that Sabbatai dashed, Singer closes with the moral of the story: “Let none attempt to force the Lord: To end our pain within the world: The Messiah will come in God’s own time: And free men of Despair and crime: Then death will put away his sword: And Satan die abjured, abhorred.”³⁶ So the lesson of Sabbatai’s failure is not that we should abandon utopian hope. Instead, it teaches the importance of learning how to maintain such hope while also recognizing that its aims lie beyond our power.

An even more radical approach within Jewish thought for avoiding the danger of forcing the end is found in the idea of the eternal delay of the Messiah’s return. According to this view, the Messiah is always coming and believers should continually anticipate his arrival, but his return remains forever located in future time. Because the arrival of God’s kingdom exists perpetually in the future, there is no reason to believe that one can force its manifestation in the present. This feature of God’s kingdom means that one should continually strive for it, free from the hubris that one can ever attain it. Theologian Steven Schwarzschild defends this understanding of Jewish eschatology and explains its ethical implications: “[S]ince humanity is to strive to imitate God … and since they are to undertake these efforts in this world, the ultimate goal of ethics is to establish what is then called ‘the (Messianic) kingdom of God’ on earth. This is, of course, an infinite goal, infinitely … to be approached.”³⁷ Utopian hope – even when its aim is eternally delayed – gives meaning to partial steps toward the ideal, while cautioning against the presumption that we can fully achieve it.

Similar strategies appear in Christianity, which like Judaism has a long history of contending with apocalyptic hopes coming to naught.³⁸ Various passages from scripture lend support to a humble approach to utopian hope, such as the reminder that only God knows when he will bring about his kingdom. In the so-called Little Apocalypse from the Gospels, Jesus warns his disciples of wars, political upheaval, and persecution that will precede the coming of the Messiah. As to when this hope will be fulfilled, he cannot say: “But about the day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Mark 13:32). The only guidance he can give is “keep awake – for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn” (Mark 13:35). By denying that anyone but God knows when his kingdom will arrive, these verses undermine all human claims about being on the verge of realizing utopia.

Augustine is the most influential Christian theologian in developing this line of thought. He stresses a sharp break between the earthly and heavenly kingdoms, and cautions against trying to calculate when God’s ideal kingdom will come or looking for signs of it in the world.³⁹ One of his foremost interpreters, R. A. Markus, explains how this understanding of eschatology shapes views on hope and progress: “Christian hope deflates all ideologies and utopias: in their place it sets provisional goals, to be realised piecemeal, and to be kept flexible and perpetually subject to revision and renewal.”⁴⁰ Augustine’s interpretation of eschatology does not jettison hope for an ideal future, but rather counsels skepticism toward anyone who purports to have a plan for achieving it.

As these examples from Judaism and Christianity illustrate, some of the strongest critics of apocalyptic thought’s violent manifestations come from voices that still identify with and operate within this tradition of thought. Because of this connection, they have a deep familiarity with the tradition and intimate understanding of its weaknesses. Some traditions may be so flawed that they are not worth preserving, but that is not the conclusion of theologians like Augustine and Schwarzschild. For they also see certain strengths in the apocalyptic tradition. Rather than scrap it, they focus on crafting the most compelling interpretation of apocalyptic thought – one that overcomes its most problematic features.⁴¹

On this goal, they have had some success. Both Jewish and Christian thought developed understandings of eschatology that encourage epistemic humility and warn against the hubris of believing that human agency can force the arrival of utopia. Obviously, that humble approach has not always prevailed – there is no shortage of apocalyptic sects that have pursued utopia, sometimes through violence. Importantly, though, that upheaval gave way to strategies for containing it. These strategies involve, at their core, recognizing the deep uncertainty that plagues any human effort to identify the ideal and bring it about. Given that uncertainty, they take a wary view toward justifications for violence that appeal to utopian goals. By pairing utopian hope with epistemic humility, the apocalyptic tradition offers an approach to ideal theory that tempers its ambitions and keeps its most dangerous aspects in check.

Utopian Hope with Epistemic Humility

If not approached with epistemic humility, utopian hope can have violent and destructive consequences. Both the Jewish and Christian traditions understand this point given their histories, and in response have developed accounts of utopian hope to guard against its dangers. That is a laudable achievement, but some may ask what utopian hope looks like in practice when we abandon claims to knowledge regarding the object of such hope. If we concede that we cannot identify the ideal with any confidence, what if anything is left of utopian hope?

The humble approach defended here does not render utopian hope a wholly empty concept. Though a complete picture of the ideal is beyond human knowledge, our ability to identify with greater confidence certain practices that are clearly unjust provides a sense of what the ideal is not. One finds traces of this intuition in apocalyptic literature, which frequently condemns present injustices and emphasizes that they have no place in the ideal to come. For instance, the book of Revelation rails against the cruelty, greed, and human bondage of the Roman Empire (Revelation 18). A negative understanding of the ideal, which excludes certain injustices from it, provides a basis for critiquing the present and cultivating an attitude never content with its imperfections. Despite its vagueness and incompleteness, this vision still represents a radical departure from the entrenched injustice of the present – and, as such, a source of hope for those who choose to embrace it.

Inevitably, embracing utopian hope will prompt some to use their imagination to further fill in their vision of the ideal. There is nothing necessarily wrong with such flights of the imagination. They have the potential to inspire new ideas and experiments within society that prove beneficial. But it is important to always remember the tentative nature of these visions, given the epistemic limitations inherent to ideal theorizing. Appreciating that fact should keep us humble. Humility teaches us to coexist with other conceptions of utopian hope that we may not fully understand and to remain open to learning from them. That openness to revision, and refusal to accept any particular vision of utopia as the final word, is what a world of deep uncertainty ultimately demands of ideal theory and utopian hope.

Conclusion

Encounters with apocalyptic thought often obscure the richness of this tradition. Many have a difficult time getting past the strange and bizarre impression that apocalyptic belief leaves them with. It is as if beliefs in the rapture, Armageddon, the Last Judgment, and the like spring from an alien mindset that outsiders cannot access. At the same time, the apocalypse has become mundane. Portrayals of global catastrophe – whether through nuclear war, climate change, asteroid impact, or deadly pandemic – have proliferated in popular culture. Apocalypse is understood simply as catastrophe, and this flattened conception now shows up everywhere.

These encounters leave us with an incomplete picture of apocalyptic thought, one that makes it difficult to grasp its nuances and persistent role in political life. To overcome that barrier, this study looks at apocalyptic thought from a different perspective – the perspective of thinkers with secular conceptions of politics. Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Engels all reject apocalyptic hopes that God will soon intervene to perfect society, so one might expect these theorists to dismiss apocalyptic thought. Yet they opt for a different approach. Recognizing the power of apocalyptic thought, they engage with it in their political writings.

By examining what draws these thinkers to apocalyptic thought, we gain insight into its enduring appeal and impact on political philosophy. Though apocalyptic thought’s catastrophic imagery gets all the attention, its emphasis on utopian hope is just as central to it – if not more so. Because of its strategies for cultivating and preserving utopian hope, the apocalyptic tradition remains a resource for those interested in fostering such hope today.

Three Takeaways

By taking a closer look at secular apocalyptic thought, this book arrives at three main conclusions. They concern how to study apocalyptic thought, the source of its political appeal, and its lessons for political philosophy today. Let’s briefly review each of these conclusions.

(1) The study of secular apocalyptic thought would place itself on firmer ground by focusing on cases where secular thinkers explicitly reference religious apocalyptic texts, figures, or concepts. This methodological recommendation comes in response to how loosely the term apocalypse is used, not just in popular culture, but also in academic research. Originally in the Jewish and Christian traditions, apocalypse referred to a divine revelation. So in the Bible, apocalyptic literature recounts a revelation, which in many cases explores the relation between crisis and utopia in God’s plan for the end of time. Today apocalypse has taken the expansive meaning of referring to any catastrophe. Influenced by this trend, researchers often conclude that any discussion of catastrophe counts as evidence that it was influenced by religious apocalyptic thought. As a result, they see religious influences where the evidence for them is questionable, since catastrophic imagery and language also can come from nonreligious sources (e.g., accounts of war). An additional factor exacerbates this methodological problem: some use the label apocalyptic as a rhetorical weapon against ideologies and beliefs they find irrational and bizarre. To guard against drawing illusory connections in the history of ideas, I suggest more rigorous standards for identifying secular apocalyptic thought. Specifically, there should be evidence of secular thinkers explicitly referencing and drawing on religious apocalyptic thought.

(2) Apocalyptic thought’s political appeal partly lies in offering resources to navigate persistent challenges in ideal theory. Ideal theory tackles the task of identifying the most just society, often with the aim of providing a goal to guide collective action. This aspiration to be a normative guide leaves ideal theory with a challenge: outlining a goal that is utopian and feasible. Its vision of the ideal society needs to be feasible, for it makes little sense to dedicate valuable resources to striving after a goal that isn’t even attainable. Its goal also needs to be utopian so that it possesses sufficient moral appeal to justify the sacrifices needed to attain it. Unfortunately, a more utopian ideal tends to be less feasible, and vice versa. What I call cataclysmic apocalyptic thought provides an apparent solution to this catch-22: it embraces a thoroughly utopian ideal, seemingly out of reach, and declares it feasible by pointing to a coming crisis as the path to attain it. According to this view, crisis promises to open up possibilities previously closed off and offers a rare opportunity to make the ideal a reality. Apocalyptic thought thus proves appealing for those who want to realize the ideal and not merely theorize about it.

(3) Ideal theory and apocalyptic thought both rest on faith and are best suited to be sources of utopian hope, not guides for collective action by a society. Apocalyptic thought sets forth an ideal and theorizes a path to it. Such thought thus has similarities to ideal theory that political philosophy often overlooks. Most notably, John Rawls sees the two as fundamentally distinct. In his view, ideal theory presents an ideal that individuals in a pluralistic society have reason to accept and collectively strive for, which religious belief cannot offer. That view runs into problems, though, because it fails to account for how future uncertainty undermines ideal theory’s claims. Even if its proposed ideal seems morally appealing, there is no reason to be confident that it will retain its appeal under radically different future conditions that we cannot predict. Unable to provide plausible grounds for the ideal it proposes, ideal theory ultimately rests on faith. Despite this limitation, ideal theory can persist as a source of utopian hope, which gives meaning to imperfect efforts to advance justice by portraying them as steps toward the ideal. Such hope comes with risks, since it can motivate efforts to bring about utopia by any means possible – including violence. One strategy to reduce this risk, found in Jewish and Christian thought, embraces utopian hope while stressing human ignorance of the ideal and how to achieve it. Sensitive to our epistemic limitations, this strategy warns against believing that we can identify the ideal and a path to it. By pairing utopian hope with epistemic humility, religious traditions offer potential wisdom for ideal theory.

Revisiting the Parable of Hillside

The parable of Hillside at the start of this study highlights how Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Engels respond to apocalyptic thought and its appeal, while also hinting at potential drawbacks in each of their approaches. Though Machiavelli recognizes the power of apocalyptic hope in politics, he resists the temptation to embrace it. An obstacle stands in his way of taking that leap: he simply cannot fathom a lasting utopia ever emerging due to the constant flux and inevitable decay that characterize politics. Hobbes opts for a different strategy, which focuses on tempering apocalyptic ideals. He makes the case that the Christian understanding of utopia – the kingdom of God – manifests itself on earth as the Leviathan state, despite its many imperfections in that form. Engels is the most unapologetic in his embrace of apocalyptic thought and utopian hope. He praises Thomas Müntzer’s apocalyptic vision for politics while transforming his ideal of the kingdom of God into a secular goal to strive for.

None of these approaches prove well suited to sustain utopian hope. That is most obvious in the case of Machiavelli, who rejects such hope to begin with. Hobbes does hang on to a form of utopian hope, but one so anemic that it is hard to imagine its having much appeal for those yearning for utopia. He co-opts the apocalyptic ideal of the kingdom of God and equates it with the deeply imperfect state outlined in Leviathan, all in an effort to warn against political projects that strive for perfection and cause continual upheaval. Instead of embracing the most ambitious forms of utopian hope, Hobbes wants his readers to set their sights lower. On its face, Engels’s approach seems most conducive for preserving utopian hope. What attracts him to apocalyptic thought – its idea that crisis opens the way to utopia – proves appealing as a potential solution to challenges inherent in ideal theory. That solution, though, turns out to be illusory. Utopian hope that looks to realize its aims through crisis sets itself up for disappointment. No one can give plausible grounds that a particular crisis will actually deliver utopia. So though Engels embraces utopian hope, his understanding of it proves difficult to sustain in a world filled with uncertainty.

Each thinker’s engagement with the apocalyptic tradition has its shortcomings, yet other approaches prove more promising for sustaining utopian hope. In particular, Jewish and Christian theologians struggling with the explosive potential of apocalyptic thought came to develop strategies that both limit its dangers and preserve utopian hope. The relevance of these strategies to current debates over ideal theory reminds us not to dismiss or ignore the apocalyptic tradition, despite its odd and bizarre features. Prominent figures throughout the history of political thought have taken a keen interest in the apocalyptic tradition. As is hopefully now clear, close study of this tradition, in all its richness, still has the potential today to offer novel perspectives and insights into challenges common to political life.

A Closing Parable

Just as it began, this study ends with a parable. It comes from the Christian apocalyptic tradition, specifically Matthew 25:31–46. In the passage, Jesus explains the fate of the sheep (righteous) and the goats (unrighteous) at the end of time. The Son of Man returns, takes his place on the throne, and welcomes the sheep into his kingdom (see Figure C.1). He proceeds to explain why they have been blessed and chosen to enter his kingdom: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me” (Matthew 25:35–36). His explanation confuses the sheep. They cannot remember ever serving the king in these ways. With a simple response, the king dispels their confusion: “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40).² Perhaps no other verse better sums up the gospel message.

Figure C.1 Separation of the sheep and the goats

Byzantine mosaic from the early sixth century¹

The parable of the sheep and the goats has generated a wide range of interpretations. Here I’d like to offer an interpretation not with the goal of supplanting others, but to highlight the parable’s potential wisdom for ideal theory – specifically, its subtle reminder of the virtue found in epistemic humility. Consider the ignorance of the sheep. When the king thanks them, they are at a loss to explain how they served him. They have a woefully incomplete understanding of how their actions fit into the broader project of advancing God’s kingdom. Moreover, the actions for which they are praised highlight their limitations. They feed the hungry, which suggests that hunger is still a problem. They take in the stranger, which suggests that lack of shelter is still a problem. And they visit the prisoner, which suggests that crime and the need for prisons are still problems. In short, the sheep fail to fully solve many of the social ills they encounter. Unable to realize utopia through their own efforts, they work for partial steps to alleviate suffering and remedy injustice. Despite the imperfect nature of their efforts, the parable makes clear that they still have reason to hold on to utopian hope.

For some ideal theorists, the sheep may seem like odd – even perverse – role models. Shouldn’t we aim higher? Beyond just alleviating suffering, we must address the systemic injustices that cause it. That point is absolutely correct. But ideal theory often goes beyond identifying systemic injustices and proposing measures to fight them. It purports to outline a harmonious vision that eliminates injustice, and argues that this proposal should guide society. In reality, though, ideal theorists have no special knowledge of what the ideal society would look like. Too much about the future is unknown to make claims about utopia with confidence – or at least justified confidence. Realizing that fact is disappointing, to be sure. But it is far worse to presume that we have knowledge of the ideal and then attempt to bring it about by any means necessary. In a complex world, such hubris usually has unintended and regrettable consequences.

Given that danger, the sheep in their humility serve as an instructive model. With their questions to the king, they admit their epistemic limitations. As they stumble around in an uncertain world to advance justice, they cannot offer a detailed path to utopia and do not feign such knowledge. They are not, of course, completely ignorant of what actions are likely to be effective in advancing justice, at least in the short term. After all, they do have some success in feeding the hungry, providing shelter to the stranger, and comforting the imprisoned. So the lesson of the parable is not that good intentions are all that matter and questions of effectiveness are irrelevant. Research, experimentation, and planning all have an important role to play in helping ensure that good intentions are paired with – to the best of our knowledge – effective practices.

We can grant this point while still rejecting the loftier ambitions of ideal theory. For there is a fundamental difference between, on the one hand, weaving together a unified theory that aspires to wholly eliminate injustice and, on the other, more piecemeal efforts to improve institutions and practices as we gain a deeper understanding of injustices and their causes. The latter approach holds greater promise in an uncertain world that frustrates the long-term predictions of ideal theory. Recognition of our epistemic limitations ultimately recommends a humble approach to advancing justice – one that involves trial and error, small experiments that can be expanded if they are fortunate enough to succeed.

Though that approach departs from many prominent understandings of ideal theory, it leaves one aspect of it in place: utopian hope. At the same time that future uncertainty undermines the idea that we can identify utopia, it carves out space to believe in its possibility should we choose. Since so much about the future is uncertain, we are free to hope that it will be far better, no longer marred by the injustices of the present. Such hope, in short, can be as ambitious as our imagination allows.