Ideal and Nonideal Theory
One of the many distinctions introduced in John Rawls’s monumental work, A Theory of Justice, was that between (what he called) the ideal and the nonideal theories of justice. Like many of Rawls’s dichotomies, this one has come to frame much subsequent discussion in moral and political philosophy, and use of the Rawlsian terminology has become perfectly commonplace. Unlike many of Rawls’s other distinctions, however, relatively little serious critical attention has actually been focused on the distinction itself—and where the ideal-nonideal distinction has received such attention, I will argue, this attention has been largely either superficial or misguided. Within the world of “Rawls scholarship,” the distinction seems to be treated as straightforward and uncontroversial. Neither of the two largest recent books about Rawls (weighing in, respectively, at 585 and 550 pages),1 for instance, contains more than a passing reference to the ideal-nonideal distinction, nor do either of the two latest large-scale contributions to the vast literature on Rawls and his theories.2 Where the divide between ideal and nonideal theory is discussed at all in that world, Rawls’s distinction is usually characterized as “clear”3 or “unproblematic.”4 Indeed, even the two recent philosophical books with “nonideal theory” in their titles (whose authors clearly take themselves to be engaged in nonideal theorizing) contain no substantial discussion of the distinction.5