Ideal Theory: True and False
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Ideal Theory: True and False Peter Stone 1 Accepted: 20 October 2020/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract
In The Tyranny of the Ideal (2016), Gerald Gaus offers a critique of ideal theory, as practiced by political philosophers from Plato to the present day. This critique rests upon a formal model Gaus develops of a theory of the ideal. This model supposedly captures the essential features of any theory that both identifies an ideal society and uses that society to orient political activity. A theory must do the former or fail to count as an ideal theory; a theory must do the latter or prove useless. Gaus then employs this model to argue against ideal theory, using it as the foundation for an alternative model for how political philosophers should think about justice. Unfortunately, Gaus’ model of a theory of the ideal is badly flawed. Gaus fails to demonstrate the desirability of an ideal theory functioning in the manner his model suggests. Moreover, his model bears no correspondence to any existing contemporary theory of justice. In the end, Gaus’ model fails to provide any reason to believe there is any tyranny of the ideal to be overthrown. Keywords Gerald Gaus . Ideal theory . Justice . Models . John Rawls . Amartya Sen Oh, I love to climb a mountain and to reach the highest peak … -Irving Berlin, “Cheek to Cheek” “From the beginning,” Gaus writes in The Tyranny of the Ideal: Justice in a Diverse Society, “political philosophy has sought to describe the ideal state, which, even if not fully achievable, gives us guidance in constructing a more just social world” (Gaus 2016, p. 3; all subsequent citations will be to this book unless otherwise indicated). He refers to
* Peter Stone [email protected]
1
Political Science Department, College Green, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland
P. Stone
this endeavor, borrowing a term from Rawls (1999), as ideal theory.1 This is one of several ways of understanding ideal theory, as Gaus acknowledges, but there is no way to avoid this given the diversity of ways in which the term has been employed since Rawls introduced it (p. 1). According to Gaus, ideal theorists “seek to identify the most just, or—more broadly—the best2 social world from the perspective of the political” (p. 39). Political philosophers, says Gaus, have held it necessary to identify this ideal because “Only after identifying the ideal can we take up the task of figuring out how to get there (or, if we cannot quite get to the ideal, to come as close to it as possible)” (p. 4). Gaus sets out in the Tyranny of the Ideal to critique ideal theory, especially as practiced in contemporary political philosophy. He begins in chapter I by trying to explain the appeal of ideal theory, and by laying out the criteria ideal theory should satisfy. He then proceeds to offer a series of formal models, which are meant to capture “how we might orient our understanding of justice by aiming at the ideal, how the ideal might orient our attempts to bring about a more just social world, and how we might understand the Ope
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