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Ideal Theory and Real Politics: The Politics in Political Liberalism

  • Darren Cheng ORCID logo EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: October 13, 2023

Abstract

Realist thinkers in political philosophy often criticize ideal theorists for neglecting or eliminating the fact of politics in their work. This is supposed to be problematic because we should never expect to overcome politics. Any theory that attempts to do so is said to be unrealistic, naïve, and impractical. Although much has been said in the dispute between realists and ideal theorists in recent years, this particular line of criticism, which should be distinguished from other criticisms of ideal theory, has not been clearly or explicitly addressed by ideal theorists in the literature. I deal with this issue by examining the ideal theory of John Rawls, which has been a prominent target of realist criticisms. My aim is to see where politics exists, or might exist, in Rawls’s theory, and whether this politics satisfactorily answers to the various aspects of the realist’s critique. My analysis suggests that there may be no inherent or necessary conflict between ideal theory and real politics, after all.


Corresponding author: Darren Cheng, Department of Philosophy, Toronto Metropolitan University, 350 Victoria Street, Toronto, ON M5B 2K3, Canada, E-mail:

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Robert Murray, Alex Wellington, and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions on previous versions of this article. I also want to thank Hasko von Kriegstein for advice during the publication process.

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Received: 2022-10-09
Accepted: 2023-09-11
Published Online: 2023-10-13
Published in Print: 2024-10-28

© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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