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WHAT “REALISTIC UTOPIAS” ARE — AND AREN’T

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2016

William A. Galston
William A. Galston*
Affiliation:
Governance Studies, Brookings Institution
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Abstract:

Political theory is not a purely theoretical enterprise; it is intended to be practical and action-guiding. To perform this role, the requirements of political theory must be possible, and the standard of possibility it employs must be appropriate to the political domain. Because human beings vary in their capacity for morality and justice, a reasonably just society, as Rawls understands it, must not be expected. Despite his concerns to the contrary, the possibility of a just polity is not needed to ward off resignation and cynicism. There is a principled path between a politics of complacency that thwarts feasible progress and a politics of utopian aspiration that ends by inflicting harm in the name of doing good.

Keywords

political feasibilityideal theorynonideal theoryutopianismmoral capacity
Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 33 , Issue 1-2 , Fall 2016 , pp. 235 - 251
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 2016 

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References

1 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 3.Google Scholar

2 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, II. i. 7.

3 Alan Hamlin and Zofia Stemplowska, “Theory, Ideal Theory, and the Theory of Ideals,” Political Studies Review 10 (2012): 53.

4 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, I. vi. 1–16. Nor am I persuaded by G. A. Cohen’s quasi-Platonic thesis that the most basic normative principles (including principles of justice) must be principles that don’t reflect facts. For the reasons why not, see William A. Galston, “Realism in Political Theory,” European Journal of Political Theory 9, no. 4 (2010): 405–6.

5 Sen, Amartya, “The Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal,” Journal of Political Economy 78, no. 1 (1970): 152–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 For a wonderful example, see Jennifer Gordetsky et al., “The ‘Infertility’ of Catherine de Medici and its Influence on 16th Century France,” Canadian Journal of Urology 16, no. 2 (2009): 4584–88.

7 “On the Common Saying, ‘This may be true in theory, but it does not apply in practice,” in Hans Reiss, ed., Kant’s Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 89.

8 Raikka, Juha, “The Feasibility Condition in Political Theory,” The Journal of Political Philosophy 6, no. 1 (1998): 32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 David Estlund, Democratic Authority: A Philosophical Framework (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 265.

10 Reza Abbaschian and Robert Reed-Hill, Physical Metallurgy Principles: SI Version (Boston: PWS-Kent, 1992), 200.

11 Estlund, Democratic Authority, 259.

12 Ibid., 262.

13 Abraham Lincoln, Speech on the Dred Scott decision, Springfield, Illinois, June 26, 1857; repeated during the final Lincoln-Douglas debate, Alton, Illinois, October 15, 1858.

14 Aristotle, Politics, II. 3.

15 Estlund, Democratic Authority, 268.

16 Onora O’Neill, Towards Justice and Virtue: A Constructive Account of Practical Reasoning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 40–41.

17 Andrew Mason, “Rawlsian Theory and the Circumstances of Politics,” Political Theory 38, no. 5 (2010): 663.

18 Stemplowska, Zofia, “What’s Ideal About Ideal Theory,” Social Theory and Practice 34, no. 3 (2008): 327–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Estlund, Democratic Authority, 264.

20 I am grateful to my anonymous referee for pointing out the Estlund could take onboard my thesis about moral inequality and construct a version of hopeless realism that takes these differences into account — for example, by depicting a society in which all citizens are as publicly and privately virtuous as they are capable of being. This raises some interesting questions about the limits of civic education and the extent to which weakness of will can be remedied, among others. But these are matters for another essay.

21 Far less politically dangerous is the assumption that we are all irremediably flawed and that our task as individuals and citizens is to do the best we can within those constraints. If we are all sinners, as Niebuhr insisted, we should be humble about our own accomplishments, tolerant of the shortcomings of others — and measured in our expectations of social progress. This said, Niebuhr was anything but complacent about the ills of American society, and neither were the many liberals of his generation whom he inspired.

22 As the reviewer points out, how we can put these thoughts together remains somewhat puzzling. This puzzle raises questions I cannot adequately pursue here. I’m inclined to believe that familiar phrases such as “everyone to count for one, no one to count for more than one” capture an intuition that is not refuted by the inequality of moral capacities. If so, equal moral weight might be closer to the mark than equal moral worth.

23 Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince, chapter XV.

24 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 127.Google Scholar

25 John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 7.

26 John Rawls, Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 215.

27 Rawls, Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy, 198–99.

28 Rawls, Law of Peoples, 34–35.

29 Celine Spector, “John Rawls’s Rousseau: From Realism to Utopia” (paper on file with the author).

30 Quoted in Rawls, Law of Peoples, p. 7, n. 10.

31 Rawls, Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy, 200.

32 Babylonian Talmud, Mishna Avot 3:2.

33 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Spiritual Laws,” in Essays, First Series [1841].

34 Rawls, Law of Peoples, 128.

35 Ibid.

36 Estlund, Democratic Authority, 269.

37 Zofia Stemplowska, “What’s Ideal About Ideal Theory?” 32.