Ideal Non-Ideal Justice

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Juris Doctor, Undergraduate

Justice itself stands as a kind of ideal from which we often fall short. What then, does it mean to pursue an “ideal theory” of justice? What kinds of idealizations are involved, and why? Here there is a range of answers: some idealizations may be invoked for the purpose of simplicity and others for the sake of gaining a critical perspective on existing social arrangements. And why might one turn away from ideal theories of justice, to theorize about it in a “non-ideal” way? In doing so, one might be seeking, in a critical way, to expose the blind spots or obfuscations of ideal theory; alternatively, one might be attempting constructively to answer practical questions about what justice requires in certain unjust conditions.