ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the implications connected to political philosophy's dismissal of philosophical and theoretical concerns and it proposes a revised model for realistic utopianism. The revised version of realistic utopianism presents adheres to the commitments of Rawls's project and it is in fact intended to further clarify them. It aims at developing a methodological strategy suitable to fulfill the aspirations of a realistically utopian political philosophy and apt to avoid the shortfalls detected in Rawls's approach. The revised model of realistic utopianism rejects Rawls's philosophical abstention and it vindicates its normative claims on theoretical grounds. Political philosophy conceives the relationship between theoretical adequacy and practical relevance in different ways, depending on whether they are conceived as dependent or independent, on the one hand, and as commensurable or incommensurable, on the other. The chapter presents enlightens a broader framework of analysis to better explain how the models examines conceive political philosophy's twofold commitment to philosophical and political requirements.
