Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T05:05:45.108Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Idealizing Morality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Lisa Tessman
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Implicit in feminist and other critiques of ideal theorizing is a particular view of what normative theory should be like. Although I agree with the rejection of ideal theorizing that oppression theorists (and other theorists of justice) have advocated, the proposed alternative of nonideal theorizing is also problematic. Nonideal theorizing permits one to address oppression by first describing (nonideal) oppressive conditions, and then prescribing the best action that is possible or feasible given the conditions. Borrowing an insight from the “moral dilemmas debate”—namely that moral wrongdoing or failure can be unavoidable—I suggest that offering (only) action-guidance under nonideal conditions obscures the presence and significance of unavoidable moral failure. An adequate normative theory should be able to issue a further, non-action-guiding evaluative claim, namely that the best that is possible under oppressive conditions is not good enough, and may constitute a moral failure. I find exclusively action-guiding nonideal theory to be both insufficiently nonidealizing (because it idealizes the moral agent by falsely characterizing the agent as always able to avoid moral wrongdoing) and meanwhile too strongly adapted to the nonideal (because normative expectations are lowered and detrimentally adapted to options that, while the best possible, are still unacceptable).

Type
Contributed Papers
Information
Hypatia , Volume 25 , Issue 4: Special Issue: Feminist Legacies/Feminist Futures: The 25th Anniversary Issue , Summer 2010 , pp. 797 - 824
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, Elizabeth. 1993. Value in ethics and economics. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bar On, Bat‐Ami. 2002. Teaching (about) genocide. In Twenty‐first century feminist classrooms: Pedagogies of identity and difference, ed. Macdonald, Amie and Casal, Susan Sanchez. New York: Simon and Schuster, pp. 233–49.Google Scholar
Card, Claudia. 1996. The unnatural lottery: Character and moral luck. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Elster, Jon. 1983. Sour grapes: Studies in the subversion of rationality. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139171694CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Estlund, David. 2008. Democratic authority: A philosophical framework. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Farrelly, Colin. 2007a. Justice in ideal theory: A refutation. Political Studies 55:844–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farrelly, Colin. 2007b. Justice, democracy and reasonable agreement. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frye, Marilyn. 1983. Oppression. In The politics of reality. Trumansburg, N.Y.: The Crossing Press, pp. 1–16.Google Scholar
Goodin, Robert. 1995. Political ideals and political practice. British Journal of Political Science 25 (1): 37–56.10.1017/S0007123400007055CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gowans, Christopher, ed. 1987. Moral dilemmas. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gowans, Christopher. 1994. Innocence lost: An examination of inescapable moral wrongdoing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hansson, Sven Ove. 2006. Ideal worlds—wishful thinking in deontic logic. Studia Logica 82:329–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hare, R.M. 1981. Moral thinking. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holbo, John. 2002. Moral dilemmas and the logic of obligation. American Philosophical Quarterly 39 (3): 259–74.Google Scholar
Holmes, Stephen, and Sunstein, Cass. 1999. The cost of rights. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Jaggar, Alison. 2000. Ethics naturalized: Feminism's contribution to moral epistemology. Metaphilosophy 31 (5): 452–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jaggar, Alison. 2009. L'imagination au pouvoir: Comparing John Rawls's method of ideal theory with Iris Marion Young's method of critical theory. In Feminist ethics and social and political philosophy: Theorizing the non‐ideal, ed. Tessman, Lisa. New York: Springer, pp. 59–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kittay, Eva Feder. 1999. Love's labor. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kittay, Eva Feder. 2009. The ethics of philosophizing: Ideal theory and the exclusion of people with severe cognitive disabilities. In Feminist ethics and social and political philosophy: Theorizing the non‐ideal, ed. Tessman, Lisa. New York: Springer, pp. 121–46.Google Scholar
Langer, Lawrence. 1991. Holocaust testimonies: The ruins of memory. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Langer, Lawrence. 1998. Preempting the holocaust. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Lipsey, R. G., and Lancaster, Kelvin. 1956. The general theory of second best. Review of Economic Studies 24 (1): 11–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mason, Andrew. 2004. Just constraints. Political Studies 34:251–68.Google Scholar
Mason, H.E., ed. 1996. Moral dilemmas and moral theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
McConnell, Terrance. 1978. Moral dilemmas and consistency in ethics. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 8:269–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyers, Diana Tietjens. 2004. Being yourself: Essays on identity, action, and social life. Md.: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Mills, Charles. 1998. Blackness visible: Essays on philosophy and race. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Mills, Charles. 2004. “Ideal theory” as ideology. In Moral psychology, ed. DesAutels, Peggy and Walker, Margaret Urban. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 163–81.Google Scholar
Mills, Charles. 2009. Schwartzman vs. Okin: Some comments on Challenging Liberalism. Hypatia 24 (4): 164–77.10.1111/j.1527-2001.2009.01064.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nagel, Thomas. 1979. The fragmentation of value. In Mortal questions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 128–41.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha. 1986. The fragility of goodness. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha. 2000a. Women and human development: The capabilities approach. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha. 2000b. The costs of tragedy: Some moral limits of cost‐benefit analysis. Journal of Legal Studies 29 (2): 1005–36.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha. 2003. Tragedy and justice: Bernard Williams remembered. Boston Review, October/November.http://www.bostonreview.net/BR28.5/nussbaum.html(accessed April 20, 2010).Google Scholar
O'Neill, Onora. 1987. Abstraction, idealization and ideology in ethics. In Moral philosophy and contemporary problems, ed. Evans, J.D.G.Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 55–69.Google Scholar
O'Neill, Onora. 1993. Justice, gender, and international boundaries. In The quality of life, ed. Nussbaum, Martha and Sen, Amartya. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 303–35.Google Scholar
O'Neill, Onora. 1996. Towards justice and virtue: A constructive account of practical reasoning. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pateman, Carole, and Mills, Charles. 2007. Contract and domination. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 1971. A theory of justice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 19931996. Political liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 1999. The law of peoples. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 2001. Justice as fairness: A restatement, ed. Kelly, Erin. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Robeyns, Ingrid. 2008. Ideal theory in theory and practice. Social Theory and Practice 34 (3): 341–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ross, W.D. 1930. The right and the good. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sartre, Jean‐Paul. 1949 [French, 1948]. Dirty hands. In No exit and three other plays, Trans. L. Abel. New York: Alfred Knopf, pp. 129–248.Google Scholar
Schwartzman, Lisa. 2006. Challenging liberalism: Feminism as political critique. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
Schwartzman, Lisa. 2009. Non‐ideal theorizing, social groups, and knowledge of oppression: A response. Hypatia 24 (4): 177–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 2006. What do we want from a theory of justice? Journal of Philosophy 103 (5): 215–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 2009. The idea of justice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sinnott‐Armstrong, Walter. 1988. Moral dilemmas. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Spelman, Elizabeth V. 2002. Repair: The impulse to restore in a fragile world. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Stemplowska, Zofia. 2008. What's ideal about ideal theory? Social Theory and Practice 34 (3): 319–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stocker, Michael. 1990. Plural and conflicting values. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Swift, Adam. 2008. The value of philosophy in nonideal circumstances. Social Theory and Practice 34 (3): 363–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tessman, Lisa, ed. 2009. Feminist ethics and social and political philosophy: Theorizing the non‐ideal. New York: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tessman, Lisa. 2010. Against the whiteness of ethics: Dilemmatizing as a critical approach. In The center must not hold: White women philosophers on the whiteness of philosophy, ed. Yancy, George. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, pp. 193–209.Google Scholar
Valentini, Laura. 2009. On the apparent paradox of ideal theory. Journal of Political Philosophy 17 (3): 332–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, Margaret Urban. 1998. Moral understandings: A feminist study in ethics. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Walker, Margaret Urban. 2003. Moral contexts. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Walker, Margaret Urban. 2006. Moral repair: Reconstructing moral relations after wrongdoing. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Bernard. 1973. Ethical consistency. In Problems of the self. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar