Rawls and Non-ideal Theory

Abstract Famously, John Rawls’s theory of justice is an ideal theory of justice, or a theory of the principles that would govern a perfectly just social structure under favorable conditions and when everyone is generally motivated to act rightly. Non-ideal theory, in contrast, would issue guidance for dealing with injustice. For Rawls, non-ideal theorizing relies on having an ideal theory of justice on hand. Though Rawls’s own work focuses mostly on ideal theory, then, that focus is motivated by Rawls’s conviction that ideal theory is a needed first step toward non-ideal theory: that ideal theory offers a systematic vision of justice by reference to which we can order our thinking about where our actual society falls short and what should be done about it. Yet it remains unclear and hotly debated whether ideal theory really is needed, and whether Rawls’s theory is even helpful, for non-ideal theorizing. This chapter reviews significant contributions to this literature and argues that ideal theory is most helpful when it focuses on the ideals themselves rather than on the normative principles that aim to realize those ideals.