Real world theory, complacency, and aspiration
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Real world theory, complacency, and aspiration Geoffrey Brennan1,2,3 • Geoffrey Sayre-McCord2
Accepted: 10 February 2020 Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Just how realistic about human nature and real possibilities must a theory of justice, or a moral theory, more generally, be? Lines have been drawn, with some (e.g. John Rawls) holding that idealizing away from reality is indispensable and others maintaining that utopian thinking is not just useless but irrelevant. In Utopophobia David Estlund defends the value of utopian theory. At his most modest, Estlund claims that it is a legitimate approach, not ruled out of court by anti-idealists on entirely inadequate grounds—merely ‘‘by assumption or definition’’ as he puts it (hence the ‘‘phobia’’ charge). Yet he also argues against what we call real world theory, which takes account of human imperfection and feasible options. It invites complacency and undermines aspiration, he argues, and he accepts Rawls’ claim that it will of necessity be unsystematic, thanks to its realism. We accept that the utopian approach is neither useless nor irrelevant. Yet we press hard against the charges against real world theory, maintaining that, properly understood, it invites neither complacency nor aspiration and can perfectly well offer a systematic and principled account of normative concepts, including justice specifically. Keywords Feasibility Complacency Concessiveness Limiting cases
& Geoffrey Brennan [email protected] 1
Present Address: Philosophy Department, ANU, Canberra, Australia
2
Philosophy Department, UNC-Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, USA
3
Political Science Department, Duke UNiveristy, Durham, USA
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G. Brennan, G. Sayre-McCord
1 Introduction In Utopophobia, Estlund describes his project as a methodological one. Its object, he tells us, is to put ‘‘idealism and realism in their proper places’’ in political philosophy (p4). His discussion focuses (as shall we) on justice—but the arguments are more general and the issues they raise reach across all of political philosophy and more broadly. They concern which lines of enquiry and what insights are relevant to a theory of the appropriate criteria for the evaluation of our political institutions and social interactions. The issue for Estlund is ‘‘whether theories of such things as justice are incorrect or are in some way a failure if there is no expectation of justice as understood by the theory being achieved.’’ (p4) He denies that theories that have this feature are incorrect or a failure—or more accurately, he denies that anyone has shown decisively that they are.1 Yet he worries that much theorising about justice effectively ‘‘forecloses … the possibility that human societies might be prone (perhaps indefinitely) to be significantly unjust’’; and moreover, forecloses this possibility merely ‘‘by assumption or definition’’ (p4). Against this, Estlund sets out to defend the idea that a theory of justice which ‘‘requires more than we can ever expect to achieve is not thereby in the least flawed
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