I think I understand your thought regarding Socrates a bit better. But, before we get to that, a quick note of clarification: I don’t think many people would say that the text you quote is using the term “ideal” in its normal sense because I do not suggest there are any constraints on “way[s] of specifying what the first best scenario looks like.” That’s why I said a theory can be ideal in my sense even if e.g. it suggests we do something really terribly unjust.

But, on your more important point: Is your thought that utopian theories are sometimes satirical and, so, hard to categorize on my account? Voltaire’s Candide might provide a nice example here. Its clear that his theory is not intended to provide an ideal theory though it is not explicitly relativised to any other theory. So I’d probably have to say more to rule out characterizing satirical theories as ideal on my suggested account. Thanks!

Also, I’d love to see the text your are thinking about if Aristotle suggests something like the distinction I’ve drawn.

All my best, -N

“To put the proposed ideal/non-ideal distinction a different way, non-ideal theories are theories of the second best relative to some way of specifying what the first best scenario looks like. A non-ideal theory must just be closer to reality in some sense than an ideal theory.”

^^ Is this not exactly how the word is used in everyday context?

This is precisely the distinction Aristotle makes between himself and Plato. Aristotle sees himself correcting Plato’s ideal theory by bringing it closer to reality. Aristotle points to the ground, Plato points to the sky.

The real question you raise seems to be about “action guiding” theory, and whether this is properly the domain of ideal or non ideal theory, and whether a sliding scale approach is appropriate. If Socrates is ironic, then the Republic is at once “ideal” and “non-ideal”. If we can read utopian schemes as ironic, then what we are really doing is engaging in contemplation, and not “action guiding” theory at all. In a sense I am saying that the history of political philosophy, properly understood, is exactly as you might say not necessarily action guiding whatsoever.

I really don’t know the ancients well enough to comment on your first few questions (you’d probably have to say which of their theories you are thinking about). I am also afraid I do not understand what you mean by “ironic” or “holistic” in this context.

One thing I can say that might help is this: The term “ideal” in this context is a technical term - the meaning here is not just what is meant when we say something is “ideal” in ordinary conversation. Nor do I think that people in this debate have argued that the ideal/non-ideal theory distinction has anything to do with how Aristotle used the term “ideal.”

All my best, -Nicole

There can be no impetus for ‘non ideal’ theorizing that does not contain within itself completion of an end in a holistic manner. Anything done in a holistic manner seems to imply the ideal, which as Aristotle would say, is the “end” of a given thing.

First, as to Kristina’s question: “why do we want to get an account of the ideal/non-ideal theory distinction that can account for all the uses of the terms currently in the literature?” In other words, why do we want a “neutral” account of the distinction?

I guess I think it is fine to use the terms however one would like as long as one is clear about how one is using them. There are also good reasons to think we should do certain kinds of “ideal” theory - that some kinds are useful or important. Perhaps there are even reasons to think we should not do certain kinds of “ideal” theories. I doubt, though, that one can win a debate about what kinds of theories we should create by suggesting that something is or is not an ideal theory. It seems to me that, if one is interested just in what an ideal/non-ideal theory is, a good characterization should capture at least the canonical examples of such theories. Do you think the account I’ve suggested can do that?

Robert, I think you’re close to what I have in mind when you say: A non-ideal theory would be specified in terms of its distance from the conditions under which an ideal could be realized. Less close when you say: A theory would be non-ideal when it modeled what we should do under conditions which are both non-optimal for the realization of some ideal and more like the conditions we face than those which are optimal for the realization of that ideal are.

I might say that a theory is less ideal to the extent that it is further from some ideal. The only thing I balk at in the first characterization you suggest is that a theory’s being less ideal necessarily tells us anything about how easy it is to get from the less ideal to the more ideal. (I’m working on a paper on why neither good ideal nor non-ideal theories have to be particularly action guiding).

Finally, the distinction, if it works, is only “neutral” in the sense that it can capture many of the ideal/non-ideal theories in the literature, not that it can capture many of the attempted characterizations of this distinction (even by authors of the relevant theories).

All my best! -Nicole

Thanks for your comments! I have just a few thoughts.

First, I should clarify: The idea is not “the more like the world we face the world a theory uses to generate prescriptions is, the more non-ideal it is.” Nor is the idea “that the more truths (or less falsehoods) a theory has the more non-ideal that theory is.” The suggestion is much more radical than that. The idea is that a theory is only non-ideal if constrained *relative* to an ideal (where a constraint does imply that the non-ideal is closer to the real world than the ideal). But I say it is radical because Robert was right about some of its “perverse” implications: it entails that “what is ideal theory one day may be non-ideal theory the next.” What is ideal might also be non-ideal on the same day (relative to another theory). It is also possible that “theories which model the world as much more awful than it is as ideal theories” on the account. I’m not sure that this is unintuitive, however. For “ideal” doesn’t mean “better” or “more like something we’d like to achieve” on this account. I hope the clarification helps explain why I don’t think this is much like what others have suggested.

Second, strange implications aside, I think it is fine to use the terms “ideal theory” or “non-ideal theory” in any way one might like. There are certainly advantages to being clear about intending to use it as Rawls does, for instance (though that’s not just the im/perfect compliance distinction). The advantage of doing it this way would only be that it could capture the full range of ways that people are using the terms (when clearly some do not use the terms the way Rawls did). Perhaps, though, Robert’s suggestion could also do that. I just wonder how we know a theory has perfected justice (do we judge it by that own theory’s lights? Is there only one ideal theory on this account? Why would perfect justice entail perfect compliance? etc.).

Third, Kristina is probably right that it can’t just be the number of assumptions that makes a theory more or less ideal (how would we delineate them?). Perhaps quality has to be brought into a metric of closeness to the actual world. (Though, again, the idea isn’t that how ideal a theory is should be reflected in the measure of closeness but that a theory is non-ideal *relative* to another theory if it is closer to the actual world than that theory.) I do think Rawls’ assumption of a self-contained nation is false and so getting rid of that assumption would bring us closer to the real world. Hence, if one was doing Rawlsian theory without that assumption one would (other things equal) be doing a sort of non-ideal theory on this account. Also to reiterate “ideal” here does not mean “good” or even “adequate.” I want to leave aside the quality of a theory in assessing its type on this account.

Finally, I’m not sure I understand Kristina’s “larger question [:..] why we would want to fit all theories together in this way[?]” Perhaps again the answer is just that this account might be general enough so that all of the ideal/non-ideal theories in the literature can be categorized appropriately using it. But, now I wonder if that’s very important. What’s important in understanding Rawls’ theory, for instance, is understanding why he uses the terms the way he does. Perhaps there is no reason to aim for a general account of the ideal/non-ideal distinction? But, if that’s not what you were after, can you explain the question?

Thanks again for the great thoughts/discussion! -Nicole

Maybe what I am calling Rawls’ assumption, you would call a falsehood, so that this assumption of a self-contained nation is one thing that makes Rawls’ theory ideal. But I’m worried that the number of assumptions has nothing to do with what I’m calling the adequacy of theories. In fact, the number of assumptions seems to me to be irrelevant in most respects. Perhaps it is the the quality and not the quantity of assumptions? This metric would of course make it less likely that we could get all theories to fit together on a spectrum. But I suppose the larger question is why we would want to fit all theories together in this way - I don’t know.