Precis of Utopophobia: on the limits (if any) of political philosophy
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Precis of Utopophobia: on the limits (if any) of political philosophy David Estlund1
Accepted: 10 July 2020 Springer Nature B.V. 2020
In Utopophobia, I defend the following simple claim which is at the core of the book’s concerns: Against Utopophobia: It is no defect in a theory or conception of social justice if it sets such a high standard that there is little or no chance of its being met, by any society, ever. Such a theory could nevertheless be true. This is not a defense of practical proposals (proffered in light of what we know about human tendencies), but of certain kinds of principles (or standards, or requirements—as you prefer) of justice. If something can’t be done, then, I will grant, it’s not required. This is a widely accepted principle in moral and political philosophy: ‘‘Ought implies can’’ It is one way in which moral requirements must be realistic. Applied to our topic, I will grant for the sake of argument that a theory of justice for a society can be refuted if its alleged requirements can be shown to be more than the society is able to do. The ‘‘ought’’ of social justice implies ‘‘can,’’ or so I will allow for the sake of argument. But that principle seems often to be misused in political theory. Here is a little piece of reasoning that purports to make use of that principle, more explicitly than usual but I hope familiar: ‘‘I’ve just studied a certain theory of justice, but its requirements are very idealistic. Knowing what we do about people and history, there is little or no & David Estlund [email protected] 1
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chance of a society ever meeting those principles. But since ought implies can, those are false requirements of justice.’’ This makes a clear mistake in assuming, without any argument, that if society will not meet some standard then it is not able to. But that a society will not meet a standard says nothing at all about whether it is able to meet it. To see this, think about a simple example outside of the context of morality or politics: Chicken dance: I am not going to dance like a chicken during a lecture. I also want you to understand that dancing like a chicken is, for most people (and certainly for me) easy. I could easily do it. So from the fact that I will not do it, you cannot infer that I can’t do it. In the same way, think about the society that will not meet a certain standard of social justice. This standard is not thereby refuted. There may seem to be a more formidable version of the likelihood objection, one that my arguments so far do not touch. You might be attracted to the following: The Human Nature Constraint A normative political theory is defective and so false if it imposes standards or requirements that ignore human nature—that is, requirements that will not, owing to human nature and the motivational incapacities it entails, ever be satisfied. I deny this. First, consider whether requirements are blocked when the agent ‘‘can’t bring herself’’ to do it (I will use ‘‘can’t will’’ for brevity). Messy Bill: Suppose Bi
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