A Defense of Nonideal Theories of Justice

AutorDaniela Goya-Tocchetto
CargoProfessor in the Departments of Philosophy and Economics at College of Charleston (SC, United States)
Páginas64-90
A Defense of Nonideal Theories of Justice
Uma Defesa de Teorias de Justiça Não Ideais
Daniela Goya-Tocchetto*
College of Charleston, Charleston – South-Carolina, United States
(…) we should always carefully separate the empirical from
the rational part, and pref‌ix to Physics proper (or empirical
physics) a metaphysic of nature, and to practical anthropology
a metaphysic of morals, which must be carefully cleared of
everything empirical, so that we may know how much can be
accomplished by pure reason in both cases.
(Kant, Groundwork)
1. Introduction
The above quote by Immanuel Kant vividly instantiates a methodologi-
cal position that has been prevalent in contemporary1 political philosophy
at least since the publication of John Rawls’ groundbreaking A Theory of
Justice, in 1971 – namely, the adherence to ideal theories and rationalism
as the proper way to arrive at principles of justice. This methodological
stance has been conducive to the present state of affairs in political philos-
ophy, characterized by an ongoing rationalist debate easily recognized in
the endless contemporary publications in the major journals of the f‌ield.
* Professor in the Departments of Philosophy and Economics at College of Charleston (SC, United States).
E-mail: danielagt@gmail.com.
1 “(…) what is connoted by our focus on contemporary political philosophy? Within the analytical tradition
of thought, as that affects both philosophy and other disciplines, political philosophy has become an
active and central area of research in the past three or four decades; it had enjoyed a similar status in the
nineteenth century but had slipped to the margins for much of the twentieth. In directing the Companion
to contemporary political philosophy, we mean to focus on this recent work” (Companion, 2012, p. xvii).
Direito, Estado e Sociedade n. 47 p. 64 a 90 jul/dez 2015
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Direito, Estado e Sociedade n. 47 jul/dez 2015
A Defense of Nonideal Theories of Justice
As a consequence of this idealist and rationalist attitude, contemporary
political philosophers have been making very little use of surmounting
evidence about human morality gathered by primatologists, evolutionary
biologists, psychologists, experimental economists, and neuroscientists.
There are certainly remarkable exceptions. Even neo-Kantian political
philosophers such as Rawls himself have been sensitive to empirical f‌ind-
ings from a subset of f‌ields, like economics and other social sciences.2 In
Rawls’s case, the degree to which he demonstrated being sensitive to the
workings of the empirical world is especially noteworthy. Most political
philosophers address empirical data about human behavior solely after the
principles of justice are in place, so as to check the feasibility and the sta-
bility of their proposed set of justice principles. Rawls does in part f‌it with
this general way of proceeding shared by the majority of his fellow political
philosophers. Nonetheless, he goes beyond this standard modus operandi.
In the second part of his second principle of justice, he makes a conces-
sion to unequal distributions of income insofar as this inequality is capable
of improving the lives of those least advantaged in society–the so-called
difference principle. This concession is the result of incorporating the teach-
ings of economics, more specif‌ically, the idea that incentives are necessary
in order for people to perform their best. In this manner, Rawls fully ac-
knowledges and addresses the empirically demonstrated tradeoff between
eff‌iciency and equality, shaping the form of his second principle of justice
so as to properly incorporate this economic fact.
Hence, my claim in the present paper does not amount to stating that
contemporary political philosophers have been completely oblivious to the
results of the empirical sciences. My argument rests on the identif‌ication
of three problems with the manner in which political philosophers have
assimilated the relevance of empirical evidence. Firstly, political philoso-
phers have not yet embraced all sorts of empirical evidence – this is espe-
cially true in relation to the f‌indings from the natural sciences. Secondly,
the degree to which philosophers have taken account of the results from
empirical sciences is still rather incipient. In this sense, it seems necessary
to give all the relevant empirical evidence, from the social and the natu-
ral sciences, due consideration. Thirdly, most political philosophers have
2 It is important to stress at this point that political philosophers have more easily incorporated empirical
f‌indings from the social sciences than from the natural sciences.
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