The Tyranny of the Ideal

Justice in a Diverse Society

Gerald Gaus

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780691183428, 9780691158808
• eBook ISBN: 9781400881048
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

In his provocative new book, The Tyranny of the Ideal, Gerald Gaus lays out a vision for how we should theorize about justice in a diverse society. Gaus shows how free and equal people, faced with intractable struggles and irreconcilable conflicts, might share a common moral life shaped by a just framework. He argues that if we are to take diversity seriously and if moral inquiry is sincere about shaping the world, then the pursuit of idealized and perfect theories of justice—essentially, the entire production of theories of justice that has dominated political philosophy for the past forty years—needs to change.

Drawing on recent work in social science and philosophy, Gaus points to an important paradox: only those in a heterogeneous society—with its various religious, moral, and political perspectives—have a reasonable hope of understanding what an ideally just society would be like. However, due to its very nature, this world could never be collectively devoted to any single ideal. Gaus defends the moral constitution of this pluralistic, open society, where the very clash and disagreement of ideals spurs all to better understand what their personal ideals of justice happen to be.

Presenting an original framework for how we should think about morality, The Tyranny of the Ideal rigorously analyzes a theory of ideal justice more suitable for contemporary times.

CHAPTER I

The Allure of the Ideal

Orienting the Quest for Justice

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at.

—OSCAR WILDE

1 ORIENTING TO UTOPIA

1.1 Beyond the Contemporary Debate and Its Categories

THERE ARE NUMEROUS UNDERSTANDINGS OF SO-CALLED IDEAL POLITIcal theory—so many that the literature has now reached the stage in which taxonomies of the ideal/nonideal distinction are being presented. Laura Valentini identifies three different ways in which the contrast is employed—“(i) full compliance vs. partial compliance theory; (ii) utopian vs. realistic theory; (iii) end-state vs. transitional theory”¹—while Alan Hamlin and Zofia Stemplowska identify other “dimensions”: (i) full v. partial compliance; (ii) idealization v. abstraction; (iii) fact sensitivity v. insensitivity; and (iv), perfect justice v. local improvements.² Although such “conceptual cartography”³ is helpful in organizing the now-large literature, it has important limitations. If we become too focused on classifications and distinctions, we are apt to miss how these different dimensions can be integrated (in various ways) into an overall, coherent, and compelling articulation of an ideal political philosophy. To be sure, when an idea is “messy”⁴ because of its many dimensions the resulting debate may be confused; philosophers are apt to talk past each other. Here drawing sharp distinctions between different questions will be valuable. However, often philosophy is messy because the elements of the mess are intertwined in complex ways in a coherent view of the problem. We will see that almost all these different dimensions will come up in this book, as I explore a compelling, but somewhat complex, view of what a theory of an ideal may be, and when and why it is attractive.

Moreover, if we focus too much on the current debate, its categories and concerns, we are apt to fall into the all-too-common error of supposing that somehow these issues “have all originated in response to the methodological paradigm set by John Rawls.”⁵ No doubt the current round of literature has been spurred by themes in Rawls’s work, but many of these issues have arisen, and been investigated, throughout the history of political thought, both recent and distant. In 1982 Barbara Goodwin and Keith Taylor presented a sophisticated answer to whether “utopian” thought must be realistic,⁶ employing possible world analysis, inquiring whether an ideal world must be realistically achievable in one move, or could be reached in several moves as one navigates through intermediate possible worlds (an idea that I shall develop in detail in chapter II).⁷ And other scholars have shown that the two millennia of utopian thought was often concerned with articulating ideals that provided the goals of progressive thought and practice.⁸ Indeed, Karl Kautsky famously praised More’s Utopia as articulating a socialist ideal, which satisfied important “realization” constraints. “More conceived of the realization of his ideals: he was the father of Utopian Socialism, which was rightly named after his Utopia. The latter is Utopian less on account of the inadequacy of its aims than on account of the inadequacy of the means at its disposal for their achievement.”⁹ I certainly do not wish to deny that the recent debate has stressed some new and important issues and has achieved new insights, but contemporary philosophers too often see their concerns as new and unique when, in fact, they are echoes, as well as developments, of a long line of political thinking.

We thus need to be cognizant of the current debates, while stepping back and keeping in mind that we are exploring a larger and more enduring theme in political thinking. My aim in this chapter, then, is not to analyze or enter into the current debate, though I too shall engage in a bit of classification and line drawing (I am, after all, a philosopher). I shall identify several different enduring models of utopian-ideal thought, arguing that one stands out as meriting closer investigation. I argue that this is an attractive understanding of utopian-ideal theory, that it makes sense of the theory’s appeal, and why those such as Oscar Wilde (in our epigraph) thought ideals are a necessary part of any “map” of political reform. I believe this understanding is broad enough to include a wide range of traditional utopian theory, as well as many current ideal theories. It also makes sense—if I may say so, much better sense—of many of the current facets of the ideal theory debate among contemporary philosophers, such as that between Amartya Sen and Rawls on the importance of ideals in pursuing justice. After I articulate this theory and its appeal in this chapter, the next two chapters analyze it in considerable depth. I certainly do not claim that all who would deem themselves “ideal theorists” or “utopians” are involved in this long-standing project, though I do think many more are committed to it than they realize. And it is a project that demands the attention of those of us who are skeptical that our diverse societies should be arranged around any conception of utopia.

1.2 Of Paradise

Right from the beginning political philosophy has sought to describe the ideal state, which, even if not fully achievable, gives us guidance in constructing a more just social world. As Plato, the first of the ideal theorists, acknowledged, it is in “the nature of things that action should come less close to truth than thought,” and so our ideal constructions will not be “reproduced in fact down to the least detail.”¹⁰ On this view, as Ingrid Robeyns has put it, the ideal functions as “a mythical Paradise Island” that tells us where “the endpoint of our journey lies.” Although the ideal does not “necessarily tell us anything about the route to take to Paradise Island,” it orients our journey.¹¹ Only after identifying the ideal can we take up the task of figuring out how to get there (or, if we cannot quite get to the ideal, to come as close to it as possible). As Rawls says, “By showing how the social world may realize the features of a realistic Utopia, political philosophy provides a long-term goal of political endeavor, and in working toward it gives meaning to what we can do today.”¹² To this he adds, “[the] idea of realistic Utopia is importantly institutional.”¹³ We wish to identify the institutional structures and patterns of interaction of an achievable ideally just social world, for it is this that ultimately provides the guidance we need to reform our own social world’s institutions. Of course, we may never arrive at the ideal social world, but with an ideal guiding us the hope is that we can rest assured that our efforts to secure justice have at least moved us in the right direction.

If the goal of the ideal is to orient our navigation through less-than-ideal social worlds, we need to understand where we are now in relation to it. The ideal can orient us only if we have some idea of where it is, and where we presently are. Consequently, this orienting function of ideal political philosophy seeks not only to inform us about the long-term goal of creating a perfectly just society, but also to ground at least some significant class of judgments as to whether a move from, say, our present social world to a near social state moves us closer to, or further from, the ideal.¹⁴ Rawls believed that ideal justice provided guidance for thinking about justice in our nonideal societies, assisting to “clarify difficult cases of how to deal with existing injustices” and to orient the “goal of reform,” helping us to see “which wrongs are more grievous and hence more urgent to correct.”¹⁵ Existing institutions are thus to be judged in light of ideal justice, and ideal theory thus provides a goal for societies that pursue justice.¹⁶ Famously, the back cover of Justice as Fairness (2001) informs us that “Rawls is well aware that since the publication of A Theory of Justice in 1971 American society has moved further away from the idea of justice as fairness.”¹⁷ Rawlsians thus not only seek to depict a perfectly just society but can employ this knowledge to orient their comparative judgments about, say, the justice of American society in 1971 and 2001.

1.3 Climbing

We shall discover in chapter II that this orienting function of the ideal turns out to be surprisingly complicated. It seeks to combine two tasks—(i) identification of the ideally, optimally, or perfectly just society, and (ii) comparative justice judgments of less-than-ideal societies. Our all-things-considered judgments about what changes are recommended by justice (§I.1.5) critically depend on judgments about where the ideal is, and how far from it (in a sense that needs to be explained) we are. As Amartya Sen observes, this implies that to make an all-things-considered judgment as to whether justice recommends a move from our current world to nonideal world a, or nonideal world b, we must know which is closer to the ideal, utopian point u.¹⁸ We may have firm grounds for concluding that a is more just than b, but unless we also know where a and b are in relation to u, we do not know whether moving to a or b would be recommended by justice. Given these complexities, Sen argues that we should simply focus on what we are really concerned about, the relative justice of a and b, and forget about comparing them to u, which is not only difficult but, happily, unnecessary. He writes:

The possibility of having an identifiably perfect alternative does not indicate that it is necessary, or indeed useful, to refer to it in judging the relative merits of two alternatives; for example, we may be willing to accept, with great certainty, that Mount Everest is the tallest mountain in the world, completely unbeatable in terms of stature by any other peak, but that understanding is neither needed, nor particularly helpful, in comparing the peak heights of, say, Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount McKinley. There would be something off in the general belief that a comparison of any two alternatives cannot be sensibly made without a prior identification of a supreme alternative.¹⁹

This passage is crucial for understanding the contrast between ideal theories and Sen’s comparative approach. An ideal theory begins with identifying an ideal within a set of possible worlds—or, using a somewhat more formal language, a “global optimum” in the domain {X}—and evaluates all options in relation to it, whereas Sen’s analysis does not concern itself with an ideal but only “whether a particular social change would enhance justice.”²⁰ The l...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Summary of Contents
• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter I: The Allure of the Ideal: Orienting the Quest for Justice
• Chapter II: The Elusive Ideal: Searching under a Single Perspective
• Chapter III: The Fractured Ideal: Searching with Diverse Perspectives
• Chapter IV: The Nonideal: The Open Society
• Chapter V: Advancing from the Citadel
• Appendix A. On Measuring Similarity
• Appendix B. On Predictive Diversity
• Works Cited
• Index