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.
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Notes
Gaus also speaks of “utopian-ideal thought” (p. 3), and generally uses the terms “ideal” and “utopia” interchangeably. He is not alone in doing so (e.g., Weber and Vallier, eds. 2017).
Gaus, unlike both Rawls and many of his sharpest critics (e.g., Cohen 2008), regards the distinction between justice and goodness as unimportant (p. 39, n. 118). For the sake of consistency, I shall speak simply of justice in this paper.
But not sufficient. An evaluative perspective could possess all five components without even specifying an ideal social world, much less incorporating distance from this ideal into its overall evaluation.
While Gaus acknowledges that “Sen is deeply skeptical that knowledge of the ideal is really of much use at all,” he at one point adds that “Sen need not be absolutely committed to ignoring all ‘distance’ or ‘directional’ information” (p. 9). Gaus provides no reason for attributing this equivocation to Sen.
Valentini’s paper offers a comprehensive critique of Sen’s treatment of Rawls and ideal theory. My hope is that this essay will do for Gaus some of what Valentini did (quite effectively) for Sen.
One could argue that Gaus’ model captures the work of libertarian theorists of justice, such as Robert Nozick. Such theorists, after all, attach great importance to their ideal (minimal, sometimes less-than-minimal) state. But the conceptions of justice offered by such theorists do not seem two-dimensional in the manner Gaus describes. Rather, they seem one-dimensional in a way opposed to other theories; in evaluating social worlds, they consider only the distance between these social worlds and the ideal, not any distinct metric of justice.
Neufeld and Watson (2018, p. 55) notes the association of ideal theory with communism in The Tyranny of the Ideal, but without comment or criticism. I am afraid I cannot be so forbearing.
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Stone, P. Ideal Theory: True and False. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 24, 375–380 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-020-10134-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-020-10134-8