ABSTRACT
The threat posed by climate change demands that we rethink our collective goals, laws, and incentive structures that bind and guide human behaviour. Ultimately, this is the task of facing up to limitation. Effectively facing limitation requires that we adapt our methods of inquiry such as to reflect the necessity of acknowledging and confronting limitation when seeking to resolve human problems. This chapter challenges contemporary political philosophy to reckon with this challenge by confronting the limitations of Rawlsian ‘ideal theory’. These involve prioritising the pre-democratic conclusions of philosophers over the political autonomy of democratic citizenries; failing to start from real political problems as experienced by actual citizens; relying on idealisation (that is, making false assumptions, such as full compliance or taking a cost-blind approach to rights); lacking a theory of transition (that is, a theory of how we might go about seeking to implement the recommendations set out in the theory); failing to seriously consider a diversity of moral considerations in political deliberations; ignoring the fact that trade-offs loom large in political deliberations; and ignoring the role played by power in political action.
