ABSTRACT

Humanity faces an unprecedented political challenge: the task of steering itself towards a sustainable future amidst global systemic uncertainty. A crucial part of this challenge involves developing a vision of change, of an achievable good society: a vision of the harbour we are aiming for as we sail through these troubled waters. Political philosophers of old are often thought to have generated such visions. Yet, the works of more recent political philosophers seem to have lost this visionary character. The standard explanation for this change holds that this is because, over the last four decades, many political philosophers—most obviously, in the English-speaking world—have become less willing to articulate visions that clearly relate to political practice, preferring instead to focus on what John Rawls calls ‘ideal theory’. As a result, their work has become predominantly interested with the clarification of moral intuitions applied to the political structure of society. However, more recently still, several political philosophers have come to express profound dissatisfaction with the Rawlsian notion of ideal theory. This has generated a methodological debate opposing ‘ideal’ theorists to ‘realist’ political philosophers. This book emerges from within this debate.