Feminist philosophy—such as in the work of Onora O’Neill—has played a crucial role in the critique of “ideal theory,” Rawlsian and otherwise. This chapter seeks to build on O’Neill’s insights by making a case that ideal theory is in part ideological, serving the group interests of the socially privileged. It begins by differentiating the diverse senses of “ideal” and then laying out the main features of ideal theory in the sense under examination. It then argues that ideal theory has no adequate rationale and that its hegemony in mainstream ethico-political theory must therefore be sought elsewhere. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the virtues of non-ideal theory—for example, its superior capacity to generate descriptive and normative mapping concepts appropriate to the existing non-ideal world, and its greater realism about the obstacles to the realization of a more just society.
Keywords
ideal theory, Rawlsianism, feminism, non-ideal theory, racism and justice
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.