First steps toward a nonideal theory of justice

Abstract

Theorists have long debated whether John Rawls’ conception of justice as fairness can be extended to nonideal (i.e. unjust) social and political conditions, and if so, what the proper way of extending it is. This paper argues that in order to properly extend justice as fairness to nonideal conditions, Rawls’ most famous innovation—the original position—must be reconceived in the form of a ‘nonideal original position’. I begin by providing a new analysis of the ideal/nonideal theory distinction within Rawls’ theoretical framework. I then systematically construct a nonideal original position, showing that although its parties must have Rawls’ principles of ideal justice and priority relations as background aims, the parties should be entirely free to weigh those aims against whatever burdens and benefits they might face under nonideal conditions. Next, I show that the parties ought to aim to secure for themselves a special class of nonideal primary goods: all-purpose goods similar to Rawls’ original primary goods, but which in this case are all-purpose goods individuals might use to (a) promote Rawlsian ideals under nonideal conditions, (b) weigh Rawls’ principles of ideal justice and priority relations against whatever burdens and benefits they might face under nonideal conditions, and (c) effectively pursue their most favored weighting thereof. Finally, I defend a provisional list of nonideal primary goods, and briefly speculate on how the parties to the nonideal original position might deliberate to principles of nonideal justice for distributing them.

• justice
• fairness
• Rawls
• ideal
• nonideal
• political
• morality

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This article is a distant descendant of the first two chapters of my 2008 PhD dissertation, ‘A Nonideal Theory of Justice’. I am deeply indebted to my dissertation committee members—Thomas Christiano, Gerald Gaus, and Michael Gill—for years of help, support, and feedback. I am also indebted to Kit Wellman, Steven Geisz, and Andrew Altman for extensive guidance and feedback, as well as Robert Kane, Kristina Meshelski, Sylvia Berryman, Matt Bedke, Robert Jubb, Richard North, Anthony Reeves, and Amy Berg. I also thank audiences at the 2007 Eastern APA, MANCEPT Political Theory Workshop, University of British Columbia, and University of Arizona, as well as Eva Erman, the editorial board, and three anonymous reviewers at Ethics and Global Politics for their time, feedback, and encouragement. Finally, I must thank my colleague Maryana Arvan for her tireless help and support in shaping and editing numerous iterations of this paper, including the final manuscript.

Notes

1. See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice. Rev ed. (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999a); and John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).

2. See A. John Simmons, ‘Ideal and Nonideal Theory’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 38, no. 1 (2010): 5–36, for an influential overview and account of the distinction(s). Also see Marcus Arvan, ‘A Non-Ideal Theory of Justice’ (PhD diss., University of Arizona, 2008), chapter 1; Katherine Eddy, ‘Against Ideal Rights’, Social Theory and Practice 34, no. 3 (2008): 463–81; Eva Erman and Niklas Möller, ‘Three Failed Charges Against Ideal Theory’, Social Theory and Practice 39, no. 1 (2013): 19–44; Colin Farrelly, ‘Justice in Ideal Theory: A Refutation’, Political Studies 55, no. 4 (2007): 844–64; Anne Phillips, ‘Egalitarians and the Market: Dangerous Ideals’, Social Theory and Practice 34, no. 3 (2008): 439–62; Michael Phillips, ‘Reflections on the Transition from Ideal to Non-Ideal Theory’, Nous 19, no. 4 (1985): 551–70; Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009); Zofia Stemplowska, ‘What's Ideal About Ideal Theory?’, Social Theory and Practice 34, no. 3 (2008): 319–40; and Robert S. Taylor, ‘Rawlsian Affirmative Action’, Ethics 119 (2009): 476–506, esp. 485–492.

3. See Amartya Sen, ‘What Do we Want from a Theory of Justice?’ The Journal of Philosophy 103, no. 5 (2006): 215–38; and David Wiens, ‘Prescribing Institutions without Ideal Theory’, Journal of Political Philosophy 20, no. 1 (2012): 45–70.

4. See Farrelly, ‘Justice in Ideal Theory’. Cf. Burke A. Hendrix, ‘Where should we expect social change in non-ideal theory?’, Political Theory 41, no. 1 (2013): 116–43.

5. Again, see Eddy, ‘Against Ideal Rights’; Farrelly, ‘Justice in Ideal Theory’; and Sen, ‘What Do we Want from a Theory of Justice?’.

6. See e.g. Laura Valentini, ‘Ideal vs. Nonideal Theory: A Conceptual Map’, Philosophy Compass 7, no. 9 (2012): 554–64; Robert Jubb, ‘Tragedies of Non-ideal Theory’, European Journal of Political Theory 11, no. 3 (2012): 229–46; and Stemplowska, ‘What's Ideal About Ideal Theory?’

7. Also see John Rawls, The Law of Peoples, with “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited” (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999b), 4–5.

8. See e.g. Charles Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979, 1999); Simon Caney, Justice Beyond Borders: A Global Political Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Andrew Kuper, Democracy Beyond Borders: Justice and Representation in Global Institutions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Darrel Moellendorf, Cosmopolitan Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); and Thomas Pogge, ‘An Egalitarian Law of Peoples’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 23 (1994): 195–224.

9. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 8.

10. See Simmons, ‘Ideal and Nonideal Theory’, 8–9.

11. See Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 216; and Rawls, The Law of Peoples, 5.

12. See Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 216–17; and Rawls, The Law of Peoples, Part III.

13. Simmons, ‘Ideal and Nonideal Theory’, 17.

14. See Simmons (2010); Farrelly (2007); Stemplowska (2008); Phillips (1995); and Taylor (2009).

15. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 109.

16. Ibid., 110.

17. Tim Mulgan, Ethics for a Broken World: Imagining Philosophy after Catastrophe (Durham: Acumen Publishing, 2011).

18. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 110.

19. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 297.

20. I thank an anonymous reviewer for encouraging me to clarify this.

21. I first defended this idea in Arvan, ‘A Non-Ideal Theory of Justice’, chapter 1. David Estlund makes a similar point – that we should not simply seek to mirror ideal principles in nonideal conditions – in Chapter 10 of David Estlund, Democratic Authority: A Philosophical Framework (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).

22. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, §51.

23. Ibid., 53, 266.

24. Ibid., 12.

25. Ibid., §51.

26. See Fatemeh Nejati (2006), ‘A Big Lesson’, www.we-change.org/spip.php?article326 (accessed February 14, 2014).

27. See Farrelly, ‘Justice in Ideal Theory’; Arvan, ‘A Non-Ideal Theory of Justice’, ch. 1; and Eddy, ‘Against Ideal Rights’; Cf. Erman and Möller, ‘Three Failed Charges Against Ideal Theory’, §IV.

28. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 215–16; emphasis added.

29. I thank an anonymous reviewer for raising this concern.

30. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 217–18.

31. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 74–5, 106.

32. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 79–80, 123.

33. Such a group need not actually know Rawls’ theory of justice, or have all of Rawls’ principles of ideal justice, as their aim. Rather, what is relevant is that they are guided by some Rawlsian ideal (e.g. equal basic liberties), in a way that is consistent with the lexical priority of Rawls’ principles (viz. a group would not qualify as a Rawlsian group if they put economic justice in front of equal basic liberties, since that would violate the priority of Rawls’ ideal principles).

34. Pablo Gilabert and Holly Lawford-Smith, ‘Political Feasibility: A Conceptual Exploration’, Political Studies 60 (2012): 809–25; and Holly Lawford-Smith, ‘Non-ideal Accessibility’, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 16 (2013): 653–69.

35. See Norman Daniels, ‘Reflective Equilibrium’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Spring 2011 Edition), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2011/entries/reflective-equilibrium/: §4 (accessed May 3, 2014).

36. I thank an anonymous reviewer for encouraging me to address this.