Abstract
This chapter is predicated on the idea that a realist defense of natural rights might very well look like a form of what is now known as “ideal theory.” The chapter then examines some of the attacks on ideal theory such as presented by David Schmidtz and Jacob Levy and finds that if understood in light of a doctrine of metaphysical realism, ideal theory can be a defensible form of theorizing and escape the dichotomy of having to choose either ideal theory or empirical theory.
It is our task to start with what is more knowable to oneself and make what is knowable by nature knowable to oneself.
Aristotle
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Douglas J. Den Uyl and Douglas B. Rasmussen, The Perfectionist Turn: From Metanorms to Metaethics (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016) [hereinafter TPT].
- 2.
Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl, Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005) [hereinafter NOL].
- 3.
Will Wilkinson, “Public Policy after Utopia,” Niskanen Center, October 24, 2017, https://www.niskanencenter.org/public-policy-utopia/.
- 4.
Ibid.
- 5.
Ibid.
- 6.
For a discussion of the difficulties in recommending common courses of conduct that are involved in determining what concrete political/legal order is the best expression of justice, or in identifying what one personally needs to do to act justly, when all these orders, including the one in which one lives, violates individual rights, see Douglas J. Den Uyl, “Justice, Morality, and the Welfare State,” in Douglas B. Rasmussen, Aeon J. Skoble, and Douglas J. Den Uyl, eds., Reality, Reason, and Rights: Essays in Honor of Tibor R. Machan (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011), pp. 27–47.
- 7.
Wilkinson, “Public Policy after Utopia.”
- 8.
Will Wilkinson, “How Political Idealism Leads Us Astray,” Vox, August 4, 2016, https://www.vox.com/2016/8/4/12376522/political-idealism-enemy.
- 9.
Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). See also our critique, “Why Justice? Which Justice? Impartiality or Objectivity?” The Independent Review 17, no. 3 (Winter 2013): 441–60.
- 10.
The Idea of Justice, pp. 101–02.
- 11.
See Douglas J. Den Uyl’s discussion of “ontic” and “conatic” excellence in The Virtue of Prudence (New York: Peter Lang, 1991), pp. 213–23.
- 12.
To repeat what we noted earlier, this is also not to say that in seeking to achieve an ideal one can assume that an abstract understanding is sufficient.
- 13.
David Schmidtz, “Nonideal Theory: What It Is and What It Needs to Be: Review Essay,” Ethics 121, no. 4 (July 2011): 776 (emphasis added). See also David Schmidtz, “Realistic Idealism,” Methods in Analytical Political Theory, Adrian Blau, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 131–152.
- 14.
Ibid.
- 15.
Schmidtz, “Nonideal Theory,” p. 779.
- 16.
Ibid., p. 777 (emphasis added).
- 17.
- 18.
“For a discussion of the value of creating a culture that understands the meaning and importance of liberty, see ‘The Challenge of Communitarianism,’ Chap. 10 [of NOL], pp. 440–43. Yet, we do think our approach to politics has the virtue of steering a middle course between the two extremes of political virtue idealism on the one hand and political cynicism on the other. It is not necessary for the state or political/legal order to attempt to create moral excellence or engage in soulcraft in some form or other in order to get people to respect the basic negative right to liberty. The most that is required of individuals is orderly conduct (see our discussion of the distinction between ‘moral excellence’ and ‘orderly conduct’ in Chap. 4 [of NOL]) in accord with appropriate legal principles. All that may be necessary is that people conduct themselves according to what the legal system requires, with little or no appeal to moral principles and only with regard to what they understand as their perceived advantage. See also our discussion of this issue in Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl, Liberty and Nature: An Aristotelian Defense of Liberal Order (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1991), pp. 193–98 and pp. 224–25.” NOL, pp. 282–83 n16 (slightly edited).
- 19.
Wilkinson , “Public Policy after Utopia.” Wilkinson also lists Gerald Gaus as a source for his claims, but we will not consider Gaus’s views here. As noted above, we have addressed some of the basic features of his constructivist approach to morality (see his The Order of Public Reason: A Theory of Freedom and Morality in a Diverse and Bounded World [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011]) in TPT, pp. 137–58. We argue there, among other things, that Gaus does not succeed in avoiding idealization in his attempt to construct a non-ideal theory.
- 20.
Jacob Levy, “There’s No Such Thing as Ideal Theory,” Social Philosophy and Policy 33, nos. 1–2: (October 2016), p. 313.
- 21.
Ibid., p. 318.
- 22.
Ibid., p. 324. There’s a certain arrogance in this claim (though Levy is quoting David Schmidtz here favorably). We suspect that Plato’s Republic will retain respectability long after the works of those concerned with compliance are forgotten.
- 23.
That is to say, there is a difference between abstracting without precision and abstracting with precision. We expand on the importance of this point below.
- 24.
Gerald Gaus notes a distinction between abstraction and idealization that seems similar in some respects to the distinction being made here. (See Tyranny of the Ideal: Justice in a Diverse Society [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016], pp. 36–38.) But he says that this distinction is too difficult to grasp when modeling. Yet, this raises the issue of whether (a) we explain abstraction in terms of models, or instead (b) models are to be understood in terms of the types of abstraction that can be employed. This issue is a huge one, easily the subject for another book; and so, it is beyond what we can discuss here. However, we can say that not only do we adopt alternative (b), but we would insist, as we have been arguing throughout this book, that this issue fundamentally depends on whether models are first derived from the world and then applied to it, or instead they are first applied to the world and what it is not considered in the model is regarded as irrelevant. Are abstractions, models, and theories ultimately the expression of the very intelligibility of the world, or are they imposed on the world to make it intelligible?
- 25.
Levy, p. 333.
- 26.
Ibid., p. 327.
- 27.
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 1976) [hereinafter TMS], III 2.2–7, pp. 97–102.
- 28.
The Smith closest to our own understanding of how moral knowledge works is probably something like TMS, VI.iii.25, pp. 247–48 where the ideal does play a strong role.
- 29.
See Douglas B. Rasmussen, “Grounding Necessary Truth in the Nature of Things: A Redux,” Shifting the Paradigm: Alternative Perspectives on Induction, eds. Paolo C. Biondi and Louis F. Groarke (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2014), pp. 343–80. See also Francis Parker and Henry B. Veatch, Logic as a Human Instrument (New York and Evanston, IL: Harper & Row, 1959), pp. 266–79; and H. W. B. Joseph, An Introduction to Logic, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1916), pp. 407–08.
- 30.
Considering how much natural law and natural rights influenced New England thinkers, such as Thoreau, we find it most ironic that the subtitle of Dan Moller’s Governing Least (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), which attempts to dispense with talk of natural rights, is “New England Libertarianism.” See Richard Drinnon, “Thoreau’s Politics of the Upright Man,” in Owen Thomas, ed., Walden and Civil Disobedience: Authoritative Texts, Background, Reviews and Essays in Criticism (New York, W. W. Norton & Co., 1966), pp. 411–12, for an account of the importance of natural law and natural rights for Thoreau and other New England thinkers.
- 31.
E. Jonathan Lowe, “Essentialism, Metaphysical Realism, and the Errors of Conceptualism,” Philosophia Scientiae 12, no. 1 (2008 (Anti-)Realisms: The Metaphysical Issue): 9–10. It should be noted that the notion of moderate essentialism that we developed in Chap. 7 is thoroughly compatible with the sense of robust essentialism espoused in Lowe’s statement, because it does not require natures that exist ante rem as universal suprasensible realities or in rebus as universal parts of a being’s nature.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Rasmussen, D.B., Den Uyl, D.J. (2020). The Importance of the Realist Turn. In: The Realist Turn. Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48435-4_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48435-4_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-48434-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-48435-4
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)