Political Utopias: Contemporary Debates

I’m delighted to have received my contributor’s copy of Political Utopias: Contemporary Debates, edited by Michael Weber and Kevin Vallier. The other contributors are: David Estlund, Gerald Gaus, Pablo Gilabert, Alexander Guerrero, Keith Hankins, Robert B. Talisse, Rosa Terlazzo, Laura Valentini, Danielle Wenner, and David Wiens.



Here is the description from the Oxford University Press website:

Political theory, from antiquity to the present, has been divided over the relationship between the requirements of justice and the limitations of persons and institutions to meet those requirements. Some theorists hold that a theory of justice should be utopian or idealistic--that the derivation of the correct principles of justice should not take into account human and institutional limitations. Others insist on a realist or non-utopian view, according to which feasibility--facts about what is possible given human and institutional limitations--is a constraint on principles of justice. In recent years, the relationship between the ideal and the real has become the subject of renewed scholarly interest. This anthology aims to represent the contemporary state of this classic debate. By and large, contributors to the volume deny that the choice between realism and idealism is binary. Rather, there is a continuum between realism and idealism that locates these extremes of each view at opposite poles. The contributors, therefore, tend to occupy middle positions, only leaning in the ideal or non-ideal direction. Together, their contributions not only represent a wide array of attractive positions in the new literature on the topic, but also collectively advance how we understand the difference between idealism and realism itself.

I’m pretty happy with the final version of my contribution (“Why Public Reasoning Involves Ideal Theorizing”). But the first draft of the paper, which I presented at the conference on Political Utopias at BGSU three years ago, was (to put it mildly) very rough. In fact, I thought that the presentation was a disaster, and contemplated (at least for a few hours) leaving academia forever. Thanks to helpful and friendly feedback at the conference, though, as well as at a subsequent presentation (at the APT), and from friends and colleagues kind enough to comment on later drafts (as well as anonymous referees for OUP), I feel pretty ‘okay’ with the published version of the essay. The whole experience was a helpful reminder of how vital exposing one’s ideas to others for critical feedback is for improving one’s philosophical work.

Here is the abstract for my paper:

Why Public Reasoning Involves Ideal Theorizing 

Some theorists—including Elizabeth Anderson, Gerald Gaus, and Amartya Sen—endorse versions of “public reason” as the appropriate way to justify political decisions while rejecting “ideal theory.” The chapter proposes that these ideas are not easily separated. The idea of public reason expresses a form of mutual “civic” respect for citizens. Public reason justifications for political proposals are addressed to citizens who would find acceptable those justifications, and consequently would comply freely with those proposals should they become law. Hence public reasoning involves “local ideal theorizing”: the justification of political proposals includes their consideration and evaluation under conditions of compliance with them by the citizens to whom those justifications are addressed. Local ideal theorizing, moreover, can lead to “full ideal theorizing,” wherein citizens outline and evaluate an amended version of their society’s “basic structure.” This argument is illustrated by some recent empirical work on inequality within the United States.

Finally, the book’s cover is quite beautiful (the image is from Thomas More’s original Utopia).

Kudos to Kevin and Michael on putting together such an excellent volume!