ABSTRACT
Political philosophy stands in between theory and practice, it stands in between philosophy and politics. Political philosophy focuses on how politics is and it aims at offering a philosophical understanding of the political dimension. Realism and utopianism describes two different orientations normative political philosophy may endorse. The term utopianism is likely to lead to misunderstandings, since, for instance, utopianism may be associated with traditional utopian theories. Utopian political philosophy develops principles and models without being concerned with their feasibility. Desirability and feasibility are methodological criteria operating within political theories. In elaborating its principles and models or in justifying them, political philosophy may start from one of the two, it may assign priority to one or the other, and it may combine them in different ways. Desirability is a normative criterion and it represents one of the dimensions along which political philosophy may argue in favour of its theses and may justify its normative claims.
