3. Avoiding the Political Realist-Idealist Dichotomy

CHAPTER 3

Avoiding the Political Realist-Idealist Dichotomy

Douglas J. Den Uyl and Douglas B. Rasmussen

The members of a human group are not parts of a single organism, like the hands or feet of an animal, who have no will of their own, nor are we like bees, ants, or even herd animals whose strong natural instincts can be counted on, at least in some areas, to be powerful enough to assure more or less harmonious coordination. Rather, humans, even in the most repressive societies we know, grow up to be individuated creatures who are separate centres for the formation, evaluation, and revision of beliefs, attitudes, values, and desires, and for the initiation of action that puts these beliefs and desires into effect. So coordination of action in our societies, either of a negative kind (that I don’t act so as to thwart your plans) or of a positive kind (that I act so as to maximize the attainment of some goal that can be reached only by joint effort) is always a social achievement, and it is something attained and preserved, and generally achieved only at a certain price.

—Raymond Geuss, Philosophy and Real Politics

The sole use of statistics in political economy is to supply examples and illustrations of general principles. They can never be the basis of principles, which are grounded upon the nature of things; whereas statistics, in the most improved state, are only an index of their quantity.

—J. B. Say, A Treatise on Political Economy

The debate between advocates of political realism and political idealism is a messy one, because the crucial concepts are not clear. Indeed, William A. Galson in his most helpful essay, “Realism in political theory,”1 which is an attempt to identify the main areas of disagreement between the political idealist and political realist, describes his text as having an “an air of bricolage.”2 Nonetheless, it seems that we can say that the central figures3 around which this debate revolves, or at least those whose views initially precipitated this dispute, are John Rawls4 and Bernard Williams.5 Rawls’s approach to political philosophy is seen as an example of political idealism,6 while Williams’s is seen as political realism, and the fundamental issue dividing them is whether one begins by ethical theorizing and then applies its conclusions to the political order or whether one begins with an existing state of political activity (usually in conflict) and draws conclusions from there—conclusions that must be of value to actual political actors.7 The divide results because it is assumed that one option rules out the other. We think, however, that both can coexist—and in many cases do coexist despite claims to the contrary—and thus we do not embrace the dichotomy. Each can have entirely different functions, and indeed both may be necessary.

Possibly a more vivid way of stating the problem is: Does political realism allow one to do political theory who is not a social scientist and who does not begin political theorizing with social science? Is the whole tradition of political philosophy (e.g., the Republic, Leviathan, Origins of Inequality, etc.) ruled out? Would it be beyond the pale, for example, if someone in the middle ages theorized something like the US Constitution and the reasons for it, because during that epoch it had no chance of implementation? We think not.

Our view of this issue will be to argue that there is a sense in which both political realism and political idealism are compatible. We will in Part I of this essay reprise the basic themes of our approach to political philosophy and ethics8 in order to show how that approach constitutes a middle ground between political realism and political idealism.9 How this is so will become clear as we explain the sense in which our approach is realistic and the sense in which it is idealistic. This will also involve us arguing against the claim that what is essential about politics is conflict and in favor of the claim that what is essential in politics is reconciliation. In Part II, we will consider aspects of Gerald Gaus’s thoughtful and important argument against political idealism. We will argue that ethical ideals cannot be avoided by the political philosopher and in fact Gaus, like others, seems to tacitly adopt a version of what in this debate is called “moralism.” Next, we will briefly examine Robert Jubb’s account of political realism and its guidelines for political philosophers regarding the ideals, for example egalitarianism, they seek to implement. We will note that this advice is well and good, but it is not anything that should require the rejection of ethical ideals in political philosophy, especially when the political ideal is considered not in terms of making society good, but in terms of differentiating and legitimating the positive law of a society from merely the use or threat of physical force. Finally, we note that the metaphysical realist10 approach we adopt provides the context for a rejection of the political realist-idealist dichotomy.

I
WHY WE ARE POLITICAL REALISTS

Despite his Marxian sympathies, we think that Geuss’s statement expressed in one of our epigraphs is on to something, because it comes remarkably close to accurately depicting a central and basic issue of political philosophy that is immediately recognized, though not always fully grasped, by a political liberal—particularly a classical liberal or a libertarian. This issue is the problem of integrated political diversity. This problem can be illustrated by the following set of questions:

How … is the appropriate political/legal order—the order that provides the overall structure to the social/political context—to be determined? What is its ethical basis? Since the structure provided by the political/legal order will rule over all equally, how can the universalism of political/legal structural principles square with the pluralism and self-direction required by human flourishing? Hence, how is it possible to have an ethical basis for an overall or general social/political context—a context that is open-ended or cosmopolitan—that will not require, as a matter of principle, that one form of human flourishing be preferred to another? How, in other words, can the possibility that various forms of human flourishing will not be in structural conflict be achieved?11

These questions constitute a problem whose solution involves features of both political idealism and political realism.

We have also called the issue these questions raise “liberalism’s problem,”12 and we have endeavored to show that solving this problem involves recognizing that it is not an ethical problem in the usual sense.13 The solution to this problem is not concerned to direct human conduct—that it is to say, it is not concerned to provide guidance in how to pursue goodness, virtue, justice, or generally engage in right conduct or even in how to avoid evil, vice, injustice, or generally evade wrong conduct. Rather, it is concerned to regulate conduct in a certain way. In this respect, then, our concern is similar to Williams’ in holding that the paramount problem for political philosophy is “securing of order, protection, safety, trust, and the conditions of cooperation,”14 and that answering the question of what it is that differentiates a solution to this problem from that of simply domination is nothing less than an answer to the question of what it is that legitimates a political/legal order.15 We hold, however, that though this is a problem that is uniquely political, this does not mean that there is not an ethical basis for solving it distinct from the practice of politics itself. Indeed, the meaning of such terms as “order,” “safety,” “trust,” “conditions of cooperation,” and “domination” require an ethical grounding if they are to be of any use in solving this problem. We argue that the type of regulation of human conduct that is required will have the aim of securing a condition that will protect the possibility that people might themselves pursue moral conduct when among others and thus provide the precondition for these terms having any ethical meaning. The focus of such regulation of human conduct is to protect the possibility of self-direction by establishing a political/legal order that protects an individual’s basic, negative natural rights to life, liberty, and property.16 This approach to solving liberalism’s problem requires, then, not only rejecting that political philosophy is simply the institutionalization of ethics—that is, ethics writ large—but also recognizing that liberalism’s problem is fundamentally political in character.

Aristotle notes that human beings are by nature political animals, and by this he primarily means that their human flourishing cannot be achieved outside of the “polis.”17 His use of the term polis has two senses: one refers to social or community life and the second refers to the political/legal order, which we usually call the “state.” Aristotle conflates these two senses,18 and this conflation remains a part of political philosophy to this very day and requires of political theorists and philosophers that they always make clear exactly to what sense they refer when speaking of the “political.” Thus, we have argued that it is true that being social in some fashion or manner is required for human flourishing, but it is something quite different and more nuanced when it comes to explaining the importance of belonging to a given political/legal order.

Nonetheless, we have been able to accept both senses of the term political when we say that liberalism’s problem is fundamentally a political problem, because this problem results in part from the social character of human flourishing and its solution requires a political/legal order of a certain makeup. In other words, liberalism’s problem results from a consideration of how the overall structure of the social order handles the pluralistic and individualized, and sometimes conflicting, character of human flourishing of each and every human being.19 And since it is the political/legal order that eventually determines the overall structure of the social order, which involves primarily and ultimately the use of physical force in regulating human conduct,20 the solution to liberalism’s problem must not prejudice the structure of that order more toward some forms of human flourishing than others. It must instead find a solution that is based on an equally applicable and common critical element that is necessary to each individualized form flourishing.21

We have argued that the common critical element that is necessary to each and every individualized form of human flourishing is self-direction, and by self-direction we mean only “the act of using one’s reason and judgment upon the world in an effort to understand one’s surroundings, to make plans to act, and to act within or upon those surroundings.”22 The reason self-direction is key is because it must be present for moral responsibility (and thus human flourishing) to occur; and yet, it does not in itself require any particular form of human flourishing. Protecting the possibility of self-direction does not seek to determine the object of self-direction but only its exercise, and thus its protection is compatible with the plurality of forms of human flourishing.

As should be clear, there is nothing about being self-directed that guarantees that one is flourishing or self-perfecting; so, there is nothing about the protection of the possibility of self-direction among others, which a political/legal order based on an individual’s basic, negative, natural rights to life, liberty, and property23 affords, that guarantees, or even makes probable, that people will engage in flourishing or self-perfecting activities. The concern of such a political/legal order is not with how acts will turn out, but rather with setting the appropriate context for the possibility of self-directed action in the first place. However, since the single most basic and threatening encroachment on self-direction, and thus the possibility of moral action,24 is the use of physical force, a political/legal order that protects these rights by prohibiting initiatory use or threat of physical force in any or all of its various forms25 is the solution to liberalism’s problem.

There is, then, a sense in which the approach to political philosophy and defense of individual rights that we have championed is not primarily a matter of individual or social ethics, but is basically and irreducibly political. We think that this sense is captured, surprisingly enough, by Ayn Rand when she made the following statement about the common good of the political community.

It is only with abstract principles that a social system may properly be concerned. A social system cannot force a particular good on a man nor can it force him to seek the good: it can only maintain conditions of existence which leave him free to seek it. A government cannot live a man’s life, it can only protect his freedom. It cannot prescribe concretes, it cannot tell a man how to work, what to produce, what to buy, what to say, what to write, what values to seek, what form of happiness to pursue—it can only uphold the principle of his right to make such choices …. It is in this sense that “the common good” … lies not in what men do when they are free, but in the fact that they are free.26

In this case, statecraft is not soulcraft. Rather, statecraft is securing liberty for human beings so that they might fashion for themselves their own souls, be that good or bad, and this is the function or aim of a political/order based on individual rights. Individual rights provide a structure that constitutes the common good of the political community, for they provide the ethical basis for a solution to liberalism’s problem. Individual rights are “the link between the moral code of a man and the legal code of a society.”27

So, as strange as it may seem, the approach towards political philosophy that we advocate can be seen as a form of political realism, because this approach does not try to reduce political philosophy, particularly finding a solution to liberalism’s problem, to a matter of employing normative ethics. Nor does this approach argue that individual rights are a necessary component in the actions needed to achieve human flourishing or even that these rights are fundamental moral principles that somehow trump all others in guiding human conduct.28 As already noted, individual rights do not guide human conduct but only regulate it, and then only in regard to providing a solution of liberalism’s problem. This approach seeks merely to have people follow laws that protect individual rights. It does not even try to develop the moral dispositions of persons to respect individual rights.29 Its aim is to have people follow the laws that protect such rights, not engage in the employments of practical wisdom in the attainment of virtue. Hence, the aim of our approach is extremely limited and non-utopian.

WHY WE ARE POLITICAL IDEALISTS

Since at least Plato, there has been the classic question of whether there is a basis for distinguishing between the legitimate use of political/legal power and its de facto use. This question has also been asked in other ways: Is there in principle a way to distinguish right from might? Is positive law more than merely orders backed by threats? What is the nature of the connection between the ethical order and the political/legal order? What is the standard for political legitimacy? We too have asked this classic question when we addressed liberalism’s problem.

As we have argued elsewhere,30 human flourishing or self-perfection is an agent-relative, individualized, inclusive, and self-directed activity. It is not a one-size-fits-all reality, and when it is coupled with the open-ended, natural sociality of human beings together with the basic nature of political/legal action, liberalism’s problem arises. So, it is the character of human good—understood in terms of human flourishing or self-perfection (and as explained in our account of individualistic perfectionism)31 that gives rise to liberalism’s problem, and it is also to the basic character of human flourishing or self-perfection to which we have appealed in finding the basis for a solution to that problem. Thus, our approach to political philosophy is certainly not free from ethical considerations.

Moreover, our view of liberty is an ethical notion in that we reject that liberty can be merely doing whatever one wants free of external impediments with no regulation on what one may do. Rather, we have aligned ourselves with Locke’s claim that “no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions …. And that all men may be restrained from invading others’ rights, and doing hurt to one another ….”32 For us, liberty is not opposed to there being an ethical regulation on what people may do to one another, and this is what legitimates the political/legal order and makes positive law ultimately more than orders backed by threats. Indeed, liberty only exists within the context of such regulation by a political/legal order. As we have noted, the regulations that define liberty can be expressed in the language of individual rights. So again, our approach is certainly not free of involvement with ethical considerations.

However, the crucial difference between our approach and that of many idealist approaches to political philosophy is that we have clearly rejected what we have termed “equinormativity”—that is, the idea that ethical norms are all of one type or have the same function.33 Rather, we have argued that the function of an ethical norm can vary with the problem that is being faced. Ethical norms are a response to issues and problems that reality presents to human beings. The type of ethical norm that is appropriate to the problem of attaining a worthwhile life—that is, the quest for human flourishing or self-perfection—is quite different from the type of ethical norm appropriate to legitimating the political/legal order and finding a solution to liberalism’s problem. As we observed in TPT:

The paradox is that the more increasingly acute one becomes at ethical reasoning and conduct, the less is transferable from oneself to others—that is, the less universal the principle upon which one may be acting becomes. By contrast, we would argue, the better one gets at political reasoning, the more universal the principles must be.34

Therefore, the sense in which our approach to political philosophy can be classified as idealistic depends on understanding the basis for this paradox.

In order to understand better this paradox, we need to examine briefly the vital differences between (1) the basis for the type of norm needed for attaining a flourishing or self-perfecting life and (2) the basis for the type of norm needed for legitimating the political/legal order and finding a solution to liberalism’s problem.

(1) We have argued that human flourishing or self-perfection can be defined as the exercise of one’s own practical wisdom.35 This definition of human flourishing means that ethical norms are tools employed by moral agents not first and foremost for regulating human conduct but instead for attaining human good in circumstances that are particular and contingent. The determination of what ought to be done36 is not achieved by merely following moral norms but requires insight by the agent that is often informed by exemplars of human conduct and common experience. Accordingly, ethical norms that are involved in the pursuit of human flourishing or self-perfection do not primarily consist in a litany of prescriptions or proscriptions but, rather, are open-ended principles coupled with dispositional goals that are designed to facilitate action in a variety of unknown circumstances as coordinated by an individual exercising her own practical wisdom. The fundamental idea behind this account of human flourishing or self-perfection is that individual human good is always and necessarily a unique type of reality, not some abstraction or universal or impersonal form. This is a view that more accurately respects objectivity regarding the nature of the human good because it does not substitute an abstraction about the good for that good itself.

Since human flourishing is not some abstract, universal, or impersonal form, it is not concretely the same and thus equally applicable across flesh-and-blood persons. Nor is the ability to universalize “‘person1 ought to pursue her good’ to ‘Any and every person ought to pursue her own good’ sufficient either to establish that person1’s and personx’s goods are the same or to give a reason for either person1 or personx to sacrifice her pursuit of her good for the other’s good.”37 Indeed, there can be morally legitimate differences among human beings. In other words, even if all human beings acted in a totally morally righteous manner, there could be ethically legitimate differences—sometimes conflicting—among them. Human flourishing is not a common good and cannot be achieved in a universal manner.38 Therefore, the very character of human flourishing precludes it from being the proper aim of a political/legal order that seeks to have laws that are equally applicable to all, not structurally biased in favor of one form of human flourishing (or constituent activity) over another, and protective of the possibility of each person’s self-directed pursuit of human flourishing.39

It should be emphasized that we differ from many contemporary liberal theorists, because we hold that liberalism’s problem is not merely the result of people having different perspectives (sometimes conflicting ones) of human flourishing, but rather that human flourishing is as a concrete reality different for each person, and indeed can in certain cases be conflicting.40 Hence, when it comes to solving liberalism’s problem, appealing to norms for human flourishing is a nonstarter, because its norms are neither universal nor impersonal.

(2) We have already noted that it is the open-ended, natural sociality of human beings, combined with the agent-relative, individualized, and self-directed character of human flourishing or self-perfection coupled to the nature of political action that gives rise to liberalism’s problem. Further, we have already noted that it is the self-directed character of human flourishing that provides the key to solving liberalism’s problem and that this requires a political/legal order based on individual rights. However, individual rights are a different type of ethical norm from the type found in the quest for human flourishing, and this point can be more readily grasped by explicitly considering the basic criteria that determine the type of ethical norm needed to solve liberalism’s problem. These are as follows:

It must not structurally prejudice the overall social context in favor of some forms of human flourishing over others;
It must be universal or equally applicable to all forms of human flourishing—that is, it must be social in the open-ended or cosmopolitan sense;
It must be concretely present in any and every form of human flourishing—that is, it must be grounded in some common critical element that runs through any and all forms of human flourishing (or its pursuit); and
It must appeal to some aspect of human flourishing in which every person has a necessary stake.41

These criteria do not constitute the basis for an ethical norm that guides persons in seeking human flourishing, for there is no consideration of the particular situation, culture, or nexus42 of persons. Rather, the concern is with the overall structure of the social context for the individualistic, self-directed pursuit of human flourishing when among others. Thus, the type of norm that is needed will be one that regulates conduct so as to establish conditions that secure and maintain the possibility that people might for themselves pursue their own form of human flourishing when among others. Individual rights protect this possibility. As we have noted:

Individual rights are concerned with providing the ethical basis (or rationale) for the framework (or backdrop) necessary for the possibility of social life in which any and every person might be self-directed and thus might pursue a self-perfecting life. Individual rights are concerned with justifying and determining the context necessary for the possibility of social life in which persons and groups can conduct themselves according to normative principles.43

They are the ethical norm for the structural framework (or backdrop) that secures the general social context for the pursuit of one’s human flourishing. They are a condition-setting, as opposed to a condition-seeking, norm. As such, their concern is transcultural, transpersonal, universal, and hence impersonal.44 We call such an ethical norm a “metanorm,” and its difference from other ethical norms can be illustrated by noting that it is concerned with establishing the rules for playing the moral game among others as opposed to establishing the rules that provide guidance for playing that moral game well.45 As such, a metanorm pertains to a different ethical order than the type of norm that pertains to various practices of human flourishing or self-perfection.

It is here, however, that we need to make clear how our approach to solving liberalism’s problem is different from how it might appear to someone who looks at this problem from a Rawlsian perspective—the main perspective these days regarded to be the quintessential form of ideal theory. First, Rawls’s view of justice-as-fairness might seem to be a metanorm because the description of the hypothetical situation from which rational contractors are asked to choose principles of justice—namely, the “original position” with its veil of ignorance—is most certainly impersonal. The veil of ignorance precludes particular knowledge of one’s social reality, natural assets, abilities, strengths, psychology, life-plan, and conception of the good. Indeed, Rawls notes that ‘‘we think of the original position as the point of view from which noumenal selves see the world.”46 The reason for this approach seems to be the assumption that in order to find universal principles of interpersonal justice, then one must proceed from an impersonal account of not only human beings but also human flourishing.47 Our approach is, however, embedded in a metaphysical realist approach in which both human nature and human flourishing are individualized realities that are also profoundly social in nature. Neither of these features can be ignored when attempting to solve liberalism’s problem,48 and it is by finding the necessary feature of human flourishing that meets the basic criteria for solving liberalism’s problem that we are able to find an impersonal norm that is not incompatible with either the individualized or social character of human nature and human flourishing.49 As we have stated more than once, this feature is the self-directed character of speculative and practical reason, and it is this feature, which is fundamentally necessary to human beings being the kinds of beings they are, that enables us to find an impersonal ethical principle—an ethical metanorm—and avoid the need for adopting an impersonalist ethical foundation. In other words, we can find a solution to liberalism’s problem without needing to adopt equinormativity.50

Second, Rawls states, “[A] moral conception may condemn the world and human nature as too corrupt to be moved by its precepts and ideals.”51 For Rawls, if one is to ethically evaluate the world and human beings, the basis for a moral conception’s precepts and ideals cannot be found in the natural order, particularly human nature, and instead a constructivist approach to ethical knowledge is to be adopted. We, however, reject this assumption and suggested approach to ethical knowledge. It is not necessary for us to give up political idealism, because we are making the norm we use to solve liberalism’s problem subservient to needs of flesh-and-blood persons and are in no sense requiring persons to improve themselves. It is perfectly possible to have an ethical principle that will deal with liberalism’s problem and indeed the basic question of legitimating the political/legal order without taking on the task of attempting to provide guidance for the moral improvement of people’s lives or in general trying to make the world better. Further, it is not necessary to assume that ethical norms are constructed and are in no way based on the nature of human beings. Our approach is to argue that ethical norms are indeed so grounded, but that does not mean that they cannot provide a basis for either the guidance or regulation of human conduct. Human nature can determine what is ethically needed and at the same time set limits on what is ethically possible, and this means that one can have a basis for a realistic idealism when it comes to the respective domains of normative ethics and political philosophy. It is not necessary to accept equinormativity in order to apply ethical norms.

It is clear from what we have said above that in a certain sort of way we are guilty of “moralism.” It is still from an ethical context that the metanorms gain their legitimacy even if they do not function to direct us towards flourishing directly. We saw, for example, that liberty itself is a moralized notion. The central truth of idealism is precisely its insistence that legitimacy is grounded in some way in an ethical context. That we allow for different types of ethical norms does not change the fact our individualist eudaimonistic ethics is providing the broad framework for reflection on these matters. The centrality of moving within an ethical context when thinking about political matters is why we remain defenders of traditional political philosophy.

Before closing out this section, we might take a moment to note another implication of our approach which differs from the typical realist and allows us some sympathy for the idealist. We can perhaps see this best by looking at Edward Hall’s discussion of Stuart Hampshire’s views on compromise.52 Hall suggests that realists, following Hampshire, would endorse compromise because they regard the essence of political life to be conflict. What follows from this is that conflict should not be regarded as a “defect or a malfunctioning” but as normal. So, our task becomes one of managing conflict over competing goods, to the end that conflict does not result in violence. Secondly, we need to purge ourselves of the idea that compromises on matters of principle are to be scorned and avoided. Once we purge ourselves of that attitude, we will be able to effectively manage conflict. Thirdly, once we realize that conflict is perpetual and ever present as part of the nature of politics, we will realize that the job of political theory is to theorize about how to manage it—and not to theorize about how to remove it. That realization, namely that conflict is the essence of politics, is the sine qua non of political realism. Finally, the task in the end then becomes one of finding those institutions “that the member of a polity can come to affirm and acquiesce to.”

Some clarifications are in order. First, a diversity of values is not necessarily a conflict of values. Markets are a good indication that not only is cooperation possible in social life, but it is arguably society’s essential telos. Indeed, diversity and cooperation are natural bedfellows in that both wealth and alternatives diminish conflict. Of course, the response to this claim would be that our subject is politics and not commercial life, so we have not shown that conflict is not the essence of politics even if it is not the essence of other aspects of social life. We will be back to that issue momentarily. Secondly, there is a possible confusion here between ideals and principles. We discuss this distinction fully elsewhere,53 but the main point now is that principles can be weighted whereas ideals are not. One principle outweighing another is ipso facto not a compromise, but a likely expression of an endeavor in practical wisdom. If so, compromising principles would be to abandon them because they would no longer be action guiding. Ideals can be “compromised” in the sense of being altered. But if this alteration is devoid of principle, one has pragmatism because nothing is left to constrain any further alterations. It is conceivable then that principles and ideals, though different, can and should go together.

Next, we should note that the Carl Schmittean view that seems to be accepted by most realists—namely that politics is essentially characterized by conflict between enemies—is a picture of a political order in decline or chaos and not a representative statement about the essence of political order. What is essential about politics is reconciliation, not conflict.54 And in this regard, it is especially important to realize that reconciliation does not imply conflict. People who are not necessarily in conflict can be reconciled. That is precisely what the solution to “liberalism’s problem” does. It is premised on recognition of diversity but does not require that diversity to be conflictual. Rather, all that is required is that the diversity in some way constitute a unity: e pluribus unum. Indeed, the solution to liberalism’s problem calls for the “affirmation and acquiescence” to its institutional expression—namely the affirmation of, and acquiescence to, a respect for individual rights. Such a political order is one grounded in a principle, namely the principle of respecting and enforcing individual rights. Taking that principle away, or compromising it, may leave one with an ideal of individual rights, but it would at the same time open the door to violent conflict; for as we have just suggested, the assertion of ideals devoid of any instantiation as principles, or instantiation according to principles, becomes a kind of dogmatism that may actually encourage social conflict and violence when confronted by other ideals.

However, principles disconnected to ideals offer us no basis upon which to weigh them. They come out as either deontic rules or get abandoned. Ideals are the basis for organizing and weighing principles. A healthy political order is thus defined necessarily by both. Hence, we should reject both the idea that politics is primarily and by nature about friends and enemies as well as the notion that principles should be compromised. Politics is about a unity in a context of diversity according to some guiding principle of social interaction. In our case individual rights is the primary political principle.55 We are not suggesting in saying this that accommodations (“compromises”) cannot be made or that choices in weighing principles will be easy. One need only recall the choice the American Founding Fathers made between union on the one hand and the continuation of slavery on the other during the development of the US Constitution. While hindsight may make it easy to conclude that some of the choices made then were the wrong ones, the chance to institutionalize, to some extent at least, the principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence may have seemed then the paramount principle. In any case, our point is that in politics ideals and principles are meant to work together if we want both acquiescence and affirmation. Absent principles and left only with ideals, we would lose acquiescence in favor of conflict. Absent ideals, we would lose affirmation in favor of pragmatism.

II
WHY WE ARE NEITHER REALISTS NOR IDEALISTS

One of the most sophisticated and sustained attacks on ideal theory is to be found in Gerald Gaus’s Tyranny of the Ideal.56 Like many other attacks, Rawls figures most prominently as an object of Gaus’ concern. As we have noted already, however, our focus here is not particularly with Rawls or fads in contemporary political theory. The attack on ideal theory seems to us to be at least partially an attack upon traditional political philosophy generally, and as just mentioned we seek to defend that tradition. We say “partially” because much of traditional political philosophy does at least some of what modern day “realists” want to do in place of ideal theory. However defective such reflections may appear to modern day social science analysts, those thinkers did not simply wish a normative structure upon the world, but looked into the nature of social action in reflecting upon their more normative conclusions. Our position here, as elsewhere, is that there is room for both “realism” and “idealism,” and that something like ideal theory is of value to, and necessary for, political philosophy. Part of our claim about its necessity is that despite efforts to purge political philosophy of ideal theorizing, it never leaves: it is either presumed or smuggled in. We are not claiming that ideal theory, or realist theory, cannot be done without focus upon the other. Our claim is rather that both can and do contribute to political philosophy and that therefore ruling out specialization is not one of our points here. Rather our purpose here is to defend ideal theory as having necessary value in political philosophy.

Gaus ironically does seem to give ideal theory a role to play at first, but he notes that the endeavor to put it into practice relegates that ideal to virtual incoherence. As he puts it in a way that also states the essence of his project:

In order to be successful and robust, the Open Society, I have tried to show, must be based on a moral constitution that provides the basis of a practice of responsibility and accountability among a maximally wide array of perspectives, allowing us to reap the fruits of the cooperation and competition that diversity allows. This is the truth retained from the idea of a well-ordered society: we must indeed have a common public moral framework by which to resolve our disputes and hold each other accountable. But this is a working convergence on a common framework from multiple, deeply different perspectives, which are based on very different ideals of justice, not a normalized perspective on justice (246).

Just prior to these remarks, Gaus notes:

I have tried to show that such an ideal is ultimately a mirage, yet one that tyrannizes over our thinking and encourages us to turn our backs on pressing problems of justice in our own neighborhood. It is a mirage because even if we actually had full confidence and complete agreement about the principles of justice, we would disagree about what social states best satisfied them (246).

At first glance, on the basis of the first passage cited, it looks as though Gaus is simply smuggling in his ideal, namely the “Open Society.” After all, we need a “common moral framework” to resolve disputes and to hold people accountable. Isn’t that just another ideal, albeit one that may differ in some ways from Rawls or other traditional ideals? And even if that ideal is “mirage,” does that make it any less of an ideal that by his own admission is necessary? Before answering “yes,” it is important to understand why Gaus would answer “no.” The main reason is that the moral structure is endogenous to social activity and not an exogenous product calling upon society to conform to its norms.

Thus, although having an “Open Society” sounds like an ideal, it is really more a process than an ideal. Yet even though any result of the process may evaporate eventually, can we not say that when that result is extant it still functions like an ideal? Gaus gives us some reason in the passages above to think the result does function like an ideal in the sense that it regulates. However, such regulatory norms do not function like other ideals because they are emergent and not imposed. They are, in a sense, already regulating as they emerge. It is important to note again here that for us as neo-Aristotelians and metaphysical realists, moral norms are also embedded in practices, and that includes justice, perhaps often in just the way Gaus imagines justice ought to function. We are not, for example, predisposed against the process of common law. Nevertheless, even in an evolutionary process we would argue that there is an ineluctable remainder of “moralism.”

One initial way in which the ideal of justice must come into the picture is through the individual. Gaus notes that in his favored “Open Society” each individual “is free to pursue his or her own inquiry into justice, exploring the terrain of justice as he or she sees it,…” (149) The reason this is not an instance of ideal theory is that the ideals are only held by individuals. There is no overall ideal functioning for society as a whole—there is simply the interplay of the various ideals held by individuals. Yet it is worth noting that the ideals held by the individuals are themselves most often ideals for the whole society—something Gaus accepts (177). Take that away from them and one is left simply with competing interests. Consequently, ideal theory is what separates what is theoretical from what reduces simply to interest, whatever the level of consideration in which it is being posited. Hence, in this regard, the difference between John Rawls on the one hand and any ordinary person on the other is simply that Rawls is better at developing his ideal than the ordinary person would be. Otherwise, they both equally have ideas of the good society that generalize across society and separate themselves from a picture simply of competing interests. Ideals are thus necessary at the micro level, but always concern the macro.

Of course, one is tempted to ask why the “Open Society” and the defense of it is not just another form of ideal theorizing. It is admitted that we need a moral framework, so the question falls on whether there really is a significant difference in the nature of being an ideal between a “‘comprehensive perspective’ and the ‘public social world’ of rules and institutions that is collectively created by members of a society” (177). The difference as just noted supposedly rests on the difference between an evolving body of norms versus an imposed one. But the preference of one of these over the other is itself an ideal, or is at least populated with ideal values. The fact that one favors process over a “comprehensive perspective” does not lessen the fact that both present an ideal picture of a social order and have characteristics that are measured in terms of a set of prior values which idealize a certain pattern or patterns of action by providing a standard for their evaluation. In other words, those practices have to conform to a set of norms brought to the measurement of actions in an Open Society every bit as much as any other type of ideal. The difference is the way they are instituted, not necessarily the way they are conceptualized as normative standards.

Gaus makes a lot of how the ideals of traditional political philosophy are not, and cannot be, fully realized because the attempt to impose them never results in actual circumstances that match the ideal. But if history is any indication, the Open Society will fare little better on this score. Our concern is not to object to Gaus’s vision of an open society, but rather to point to the inescapability of “moralism” it imposes upon us as well. In the Aristotelian tradition we adopt, there is no expectation that practice will be a simple mirroring of some ideal without further consideration of circumstances, histories, and capacities. Aristotelians draw their norms from experience. We are fans of the open society also, and for many of the reasons Gaus cites; but for us there is always an “ideal” framework regulating at least the boundaries of acceptable practice. That regulatory function is a practical one. Furthermore, a regulatory ideal covers its practical domain without supposing it can define every aspect of it. That is the nature of an Aristotelian realist form of abstraction. It is not so much, then, whether practice looks like the ideal but how they interface with each other keeping in mind that both are necessary.

Gaus notes that “the Open Society invites all to share their ideals and show other perspectives how our common life can be made more just” (218). Much like an open market creates a better quality and variety of products, so a market in ideals of justice will do the same. Yet this analogy simply points to the same issue we have been raising. A free market in shoes certainly creates better shoes and more diverse types of shoes. A Soviet style uniformity of imposed production procedures is definitely not going to do so. Yet even in the highly pluralistic market of shoes, we still know we’re talking about shoes. They have a nature and function that regulates what will qualify as an example of a shoe and no doubt as an example of a good shoe. The same holds for justice. First, we cannot assume that all social interactions are about justice any more than we can assume all productions are about making shoes. We have to sort justice claims from other sorts of claims. Gaus, like so many others as we have noted elsewhere,57 is very reluctant to define the nature of justice because that would press against the emergent nature of justice he wishes to defend. The danger there is, then, that justice becomes merely what we say it is as the social process evolves the concept. Even that, however, supposes we have some idea of what we’re talking about, that we can separate conclusions of justice from other sorts of conclusions. And to say that justice is the set of norms that govern us politically through a process of sifting divergent and competing claims about it is simply to beg the question.58 Why are those sets of conclusions to be categorized as conclusions about justice and why should we accept them as decisive? We cannot leave it with whatever view or views come to be commonly referred to as justice are thereby justice. That would be to confuse identifying an outcome with establishing a principle.59 However open or complicated a process may be—and Gaus has standards for what must take place for outcomes to lead to acceptable conclusions about justice60—we either smuggle in an ideal about the quality of the end product or we smuggle in a pattern of ideals about a process that will justify accepting an emergent result. But in the latter case we would still need some sense of an ideal of justice to even define the universe of what qualifies as just acts or policies as well as whether the values posited to lead us to justice are suitable to the task.61 The values Gaus prefers, such as pluralism, diversity, and inclusiveness are not self-justifying. Whatever the flaws of traditional political theory may be, those theorists were at least in part attempting to paint establish standards that should be used to identify and justify claims about justice—not just impose their favored order on the rest of us.

As noted, Gaus is especially keen to point out that ideals are never realized in practice in the way they are pictured when considering the ideal alone. In this regard he claims that the pursuit of ideals forces us into “The Choice” where we “must choose between relatively certain (and perhaps large) local improvements in justice and pursuit of a considerably less certain ideal, which would yield optimal justice” (82). In some cases, the more we strive for the optimal the farther away we become from actually being able to change things locally for the better. And likewise, the more we concentrate on what we can accomplish locally, the less reliance we place on the ideal to the point where the original ideal becomes incoherent in the light of current circumstances, or useless as a guide to change. Assuming we can tell what qualifies as an advance in justice locally, Gaus would also want to note that we cannot respond by saying that we must know and utilize the ideal (the “optimal”) in order to decide what are acceptable trade-offs between pursuit of the ideal and achieving local advancements. Gaus would likely deny we actually have that choice. Instead, focusing on the pursuit of the ideal only serves to evaporate the ideal, because the ideal alters as it fails to live up to itself in practice. The ideal is either not recognizable as an ideal for the circumstances at all, or it splinters so badly there is nothing clearly left to trade off against. There is then, nothing to trade off. Consequently, because of this distraction towards the ideal, we would be left with less than could have been achieved locally. Better to just abandon the ideal from the beginning.

The problem here has again something to do with the nature of abstraction. A principle like justice, if it has any grounding in reality, functions neither as a blueprint nor as something against which trade-offs are made. A principle of justice, like other moral principles, serves to illuminate appropriate courses of action according to the circumstances in which they are to be undertaken. Their value and necessity in this regard are not diminished one iota because practical experience varies and is more or less susceptible to change. In some ways Gaus is a victim of what comes of accepting modern moral paradigms—that norms of justice are deontic-like rules meant to dictate precise conformity of action irrespective of practical concerns. This need not be how moral principles are to be understood. And while it is true that the strictly political context may need rules like this, that is to be understood in light of the nature of the situation (what we call “liberalism’s problem”), and not because this is the nature of moral principles. In addition, moving to the other side and ignoring principles in favor of consequences alone butts up against what we have been discussing above, namely defending the standards for measuring consequential success. It is no wonder that morality seems to take us nowhere with these two paradigms of deontology and consequentialism as our choices. It is no wonder that Gaus looks outside of traditional normative applications in political theory for answers. What is missing from what we would regard as virtual caricatures of morality is judgment—a central feature of a classical ethics. So “the choice” is not a binary one between local success and an optimal ideal. It is instead the interplay of both of these mediated by judgment. The interplay Gaus speaks of between the various perspectives on justice is in consort with the interplay between principle and practice, and for similar reasons—both must issue in judgment, and judgment is inherently normative. The role of judgment is exactly what is missing from both the deontological and consequentialist understandings of morality.

Part of the desire to move away from “moralism” is the belief that we learn more about practice through social science modeling than through typical ethical reflection. The former looks to real time events while the latter conducts armchair ruminations. No doubt there is truth and value to social science modeling. But models are themselves like ideals, that is, subject to interpretation, disconfirming evidence, competing conceptions, and practical unreality. In a sensible world (and we are by no means suggesting that Gaus is not part of such a world) the applicability and limitations of models would itself be subject to judgment. As Aristotle noted long ago, practical wisdom is at the center of all this. We suggest that the endeavor to remove it in favor of rules, prescriptions, commands, algorithms for measuring consequences, cause and effect, and like measures that are devoid of judgment is what cuts off ideals from practical reality. The normative cannot be mindless.

WHY WE ARE NEITHER IDEALISTS NOR REALISTS

In a particularly useful article by Robert Jubb, entitled “Realism,”62 which surveys the realist positions, we are given various reasons to accept realism and reject “moralism.” According to Jubb, political realism recognizes that political philosophy is more than just the application of principles of normative ethics to politics. This is so because political philosophy faces the problem of dealing with conflicting views of the ethical life and indeed conflicting visions of human good, or what we have called “human flourishing.” As noted above, however, we hold that this problem, which we identify as the problem of integrated political diversity, is not merely a matter of reconciling competing perspectives or visions but is grounded in the very character of human flourishing—indeed one that is grounded in an account of human nature. That political philosophy is more than simply ethics writ large, then, is ultimately a matter of human nature, not the so-called liberal conception of the person. This is a problem that applies across cultures and times.63 So, we regard the irreducibility of political philosophy to normative ethics as fundamental and not just the result of Modernity.64 In this sense, we think political realism is spot on.

Jubb offers six guidelines, which he thinks helps to define political realism and thus contrasts it to what has been called “moralism.” These are:

A realist account of a political value must be based on an interpretation of the political situation in which the value is to be realized.
That interpretation of the situation must be plausible, not least in avoiding both relentless despair and utopian hope.
The value being theorized must be one that agents can be expected to respect as the theory requires without becoming moral saints.
Actual agents should also be able to see something of their expectations or aspirations in the theory that is being offered for their political situation, even if they may have more expansive hopes than it makes room for.
That theory should not rely on controversial interpretations or rankings of values, but try to make use of the evaluative and normative material the situation presents.
When connections are drawn between different normative or evaluative claims, as they will have to be, these connections must be based on plausible theories of and claims about how human life actually operates.65

Frankly, we see nothing in these guidelines, at least abstractly considered, that precludes the type of political idealism or moralism that is part of our approach to political philosophy. To what these guidelines amount depends in large part on what one is trying to achieve by politics, and this is a matter of what standard for political legitimacy one defends. Moreover, these guidelines seem more directed to the processes of implementing a legitimate political/legal order than the task of determining what legitimates, if anything, such an order. One needs to know what determines which interpretation is being used, what is plausible, what is being asked of agents, and what is controversial—to mention just of few of the crucial concepts noted in these guidelines—and this requires a theory of political legitimacy. Finally, when Jubb illustrates how these guidelines might be applied when implementing egalitarianism, it is clear that no argument for this ideal has been provided or even an account of that in terms of which equality is to be measured.66 To the extent political realism requires an account of what it is that legitimates a political/legal order, then something more than these guidelines is required, which at times Jubb seems to admit.67

The impetus behind political realism’s rejection of “moralism” appears to involve ignoring two differences. The first is the difference between political philosophy and applied normative ethics. The second is the difference between determining what it is that legitimates a political/legal order and determining how to implement or maintain a legitimate political/legal order. There appear no good reasons to deny these differences, and further, it does not follow from political philosophy being more than the application of normative ethical principles that there is no ethical solution to the problem of integrated political diversity—more particularly, that there cannot be a kind of ethical norms and set of principles that address this problem, as we have argued in various works. Even more, it does not follow that determining what legitimates a political/legal order cannot be differentiated from how one implements such an order. Or, as we have put it, it can be argued that equinormativity is false and the type of ethical norm needed to solve the foundational problem of political philosophy is different from what is required for the ethical life, and this is the entry point for understanding and justifying the notion of basic negative rights we spoke of earlier.

CONCLUSION

We might note that good political philosophy is not just about justice as seems to be the current supposition among many political theorists. Justice may be the central political concern, but political philosophy is by no means limited to it. As a recent book notes, there can be things like “virtue politics” which concerns more than the virtue of justice alone.68 Historically it would be odd to think of justice apart from its relationship to other virtues. Indeed, it would be odd to think of “ideal” political systems as simply ideals of justice. Ironically, to say that political philosophy is about justice and virtually nothing else is to already give political philosophy a liberal bias. Liberalism may wish to claim that the political order should limit itself to justice alone, but “soul crafting” has long been a part of political philosophizing, and soul crafting has its eye on other virtues. Certainly, one can make a case against a soul crafting political order (as we do), but that is different than starting off with the liberal bias of justice being the only concern of political philosophy. In general, political philosophy is about the good society, and “good” can certainly encompass more than simply a focus upon justice. Even in liberal orders, other concerns, such as benevolence, have a place in formulating any political ideals or determining legitimate processes. There is, obviously, nothing wrong with limiting one’s attention to justice alone, but it is likely that the ideals of justice were never meant to stand on their own in isolation from other related ideals.

In addition, ideals of justice, or otherwise, are not just institutionally aspirational in the sense of aspiring to be put into practice. Ideals are motivationally aspirational as well. There seems to be among many critics of ideal theory the supposition that ideals are only concerned with putting themselves into practice in the sense of structuring the world according to the characteristics of the ideal. Yet the motivational, indeed teleological, nature of an ideal as an end serves practice too as we have tried to suggest above. The debate here may be a version of the old one of whether we can successfully envision a world without final causes, which brings us to the importance of metaphysical realism, and our claim, which we have defended in other places,69 that political philosophy is radically deficient, like so many other areas of contemporary thinking, when the wider need for such a metaphysical context is not acknowledged.70 We have suggested that those various final causes creep in to virtually any theoretical account and serve a purpose; but should they be purged entirely we may be left with the Parmenidean conclusion that all we can say is “what is, is.”

1William A. Galston, “Realism in political theory,” European Journal of Political Theory 9.4 385–411. DOI: 10.1177/1474885110374001

2Ibid., p. 386.

3See Robert Jubb, “Realism,” in Adrian Blau, Methods in Analytical Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 112–30; Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009), which is principally a critique and revision of John Rawls’s claim that we need an ideal of justice, and Edward Hall, Value, Conflict, and Order: Berlin Hampshire, Williams and the Realist Revival in Political Theory (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2020). Hall argues that the ethical pluralism advanced by Isaiah Berlin, John Gray, Stuart Hampshire, and Bernard Williams can be used to make a case for what might be called “weak political realism,” The idea here is not to disavow the possibility of any connection between ethics and political philosophy or theory—that is, at least in regard to providing a source for political normativity, for “no realist worth taking seriously seeks ‘a political theory cleansed of all moral content’” (p. 13).

4See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971) and idem, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).

5Bernard Williams, “Realism and Moralism in Political Theory,” [hereinafter RMPT] in Geoffrey Hawthorn, ed., In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005), pp. 1–17.

6However, Justin Tosi has suggested to us that there might be reasons for not considering Rawls as primarily a political idealist, but instead as a “realistic utopian.” See John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, ed., Erin Kelly (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 37–38 where Rawls notes the importance of issues regarding the implementation of a conception of justice. Be this how it may, the issue of whether ethical ideals and principles can have a role for political philosophy and theory remains, and this issue is a major concern of this essay.

7See Robert Jubb, “Realism,” pp. 112–30.

8See Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl, Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005) [hereinafter NOL]; Douglas J. Den Uyl and Douglas B. Rasmussen, The Perfectionist Turn: From Metanorms to Metaethics (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016) [hereinafter TPT]; and Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl, The Realist Turn: Repositioning Liberalism (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) [hereinafter TRT]. Some material used in this essay is adapted from these works.

9The beginnings of our approach to the political realist-idealist controversy can be found in Chapter 8, “The Importance of Metaphysical Realism,” TRT, pp. 239–57.

10Metaphysical realism holds that there are beings that exist and are what they are apart from our cognition and that we can know both the existence and nature of these beings.

11TRT, p. 27.

12We have called this set of questions “liberalism’s problem,” because since at least Locke, liberalism has been, by and large, the only political tradition to appreciate fully its fundamentality and importance.

13We hold that is a problem that requires an ethical metanorm. We explain this below.

14RMPT, p. 3

15Ibid., p. 5

16NOL, Chapter 4 and 11; and TRT, Chapter 2.

17NOL, pp. 141–42.

18“The end of the polis qua society is the virtuous and happy life, but it does not follow that the function of the polis qua state is to use coercive force against its citizens so as to make them virtuous and happy.” Fred D. Miller, Jr. Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle’s “Politics” (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 358.

19This is especially important when one realizes that human sociality itself comes in various forms—from small communities, often each with their own unique ends, to larger ones, and to ultimately cosmopolitan societies that do not have a determinate end. See our discussion of Oakeshott’s distinction between enterprise and civil associations in Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl “Norms of Liberty: Challenges and Prospects,” in Aeon J. Skoble, ed. Reading Rasmussen and Den Uyl: Critical Essays on Norms of Liberty (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008), pp. 177–244; and Douglas J. Den Uyl and Douglas B. Rasmussen, “The Myth of Atomism,” The Review of Metaphysics 59 (June 2006): pp. 843–70. Finally see, Michael Oakeshott, On Human Conduct (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), chapter II, “On the Civil Condition,” pp. 108–84.

20Though it is certainly true the markets can coordinate human conduct without the need for a central plan, it is nonetheless the case that markets require the existence of private property and contracts, and this requires the existence of a political/legal order.

21In doing so, no doubt forms of non-flourishing will occur as well. The structural form of the social political order concerns itself with a necessary feature of flourishing but not flourishing itself as we note below.

22NOL, p. 89. Self-direction should not be confused with autonomy in either the Kantian or Millean sense, and it is certainly not human flourishing or self-perfection. In other words, it is the exercise of both speculative and practical reason, but it is not necessarily the exercise of speculative or practical wisdom.

23Hereafter, we will refer to these types of rights as simply “individual rights.”

24See our discussion of the case of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn in the Gulag, NOL, pp. 94–95.

25All forms of encroachment on self-direction by others have their basis in physical compulsion. For a detailed account of this point and discussion of related matters, see NOL, pp. 89–90 n15, p. 90 n16, pp. 279–80, and pp. 303–11

26Ayn Rand, “From My ‘Future File’,” The Ayn Rand Letter 3, no. 26 (September 23, 1974): 4–5 (first emphasis added).

27Ayn Rand, “Value and Rights,” in John Hospers, ed., Readings in Introductory Philosophical Analysis (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968), p. 381.

28NOL. pp. 265–68; TRT, pp. 46–57,

29The task of creating a culture that respects individual rights is vital. However, it does not follow from this truth that this is a task for the political/legal order. See our reply to communitarianism, NOL, pp. 242–44.

30NOL, Chapter 6; TPT, Chapter 1.

31Ibid.

32John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), Book II, chapter 2, Paragraph 6, p. 271.

33NOL, pp. 38–39; TPT, pp. 92–94; and TRT, pp. 30–33, 44–57.

34TPT, p. 70. See also David Gordon, “Rothbard and the Problem of Rules,” Mises Wire November 13, 2020), https://mises.org/wire/rothbard-and-problem-rules.

35Ibid., Chapter 1.

36Even the determination of what ought not to be done requires the employment of practical wisdom.

37TRT, p. 41, slightly reworded. Also, it should be noted, that there is a vital difference between something being universalizable and something being universal. See TPT, pp. 75–85.

38This is not to say that we cannot abstractly talk about what all people need to do, but the whole point of emphasizing such a neo-Aristotelian approach to normative ethics is to make clear the vital importance not to conflate abstractions with realities.

39See NOL, chapter 11, for a full account and defense of this claim.

40It should be noted, however, that this sort of value pluralism, as Isaiah Berlin insists, is not equivalent to ethical relativism. Moreover, though there are many objective ends that constitute human good, that does not mean that one cannot speak of their “generic character,” as Berlin also insists (see NOL, pp. 170–71). Whether the plurality of ends must lead to incompatibility cannot be determined by simply an appeal to some abstract account of human good or morality, but rather is a matter for practical wisdom. So, we too reject an ethical rationalism that does not recognize the crucial importance of an individual’s nexus and the particular and contingent circumstances in determining what ought to be done. Nevertheless, unlike Berlin, Gray and others, value pluralism is not its own starting point or defining context, must be understood through a framework of human nature, as we point out throughout our works. As we have sought to make clear, we think these considerations make an important difference to not only how we consider the ethical enterprise but the political one as well. Finally, it should be noted that largely in light of our commitment to human nature as setting the context for these concerns, we consider and critique John Gray’s dismissal of any form of perfectionism and his claim that liberalism as a political philosophy can no longer be sustained (see NOL, pp. 173–83 and pp. 244–50).

41NOL, p. 272.

42That is to say, the circumstances, talents, endowments, interests, beliefs, and histories that descriptively characterize the individual.

43NOL. p. 285.

44“To our way of thinking, the sort of respect owed to persons in a rights context is different from that in the normal moral case. In the former, one gets a kind of respect for the kind of being they are—in the latter, for what they do with themselves. In a way, as Kant again saw (though for perhaps different reasons), rights do not even require the presence of another person—only the potential presence. What one is actually respecting is not persons, but the generic property of personhood, as just noted. It is not that this sort of respect is unimportant…. [It] is not that there is no respect here, but rather that there is a respect for persons…. Persons are more than their generic properties, and significant portions of the moral enterprise—indeed, the most significant—are those non-generic characteristics. To say that respecting rights is respecting a person is about like telling a friend that your relationship with her is completely captured by your generic need for friendship. TPT, pp. 329–330.

45See TRT, pp. 30–32.

46Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 255.

47Rawls seems to be mistaken in thinking that philosophical abstraction can by itself offer a solution to liberalism’s problem. This error applies not only to the use of such abstraction in the original position in A Theory of Justice but also to his appeals to the ideal of free and equal citizenship in Political Liberalism. Both attempt to ignore the character of human flourishing and thus the limits it places on what might be attained by the political/legal order.

48See NOL, pp. 299–301.

49We have made this point slightly differently: “Rule impersonalism does not imply ethical impersonalism, though ethical impersonalism is likely to imply rule impersonalism all the way down. Another way to put it is that agent relativity in value does not preclude rule impersonalism or transpersonalism. But agent neutrality seems unable to allow for personalism at all—only circumstantial pluralism.” Douglas J. Den Uyl and Douglas B. Rasmussen, “Two Dogmas of Egalitarianism,” Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines (August 28, 2020): 23 n36, https://doi.org/10.1515/jeeh-2020-0010.

50“It takes a return to a neo-Aristotelian ethics such as individualistic perfectionism to show that the political/legal order can be ethically legitimated without requiring that ethics itself become juridical or legislative in character. This is so because the structure of typical ethical arguments today (as found in both Kantian and utilitarian ethical theory) is integrally like the structure of most normative political arguments in that it is assumed that universality and agent-neutrality of obligations are the sine qua non of normative ethics or any fundamental ethical ideal. In effect, it is generally assumed that all ethical norms must be of the same type—that equinormativity is true.” TRT, p. 44.

51John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, p. 184 (emphasis added). This statement by Rawls is noted by Galston, “Realism in political theory,” p. 409 n9.

52Hall, Value, Conflict, and Order, pp. 111–14. Hall himself, faced with these defenses of compromise, actually ends up much like ourselves as described here and in the next section.

53TRT, pp. 83–89.

54See NOL, pp. 333–38.

55There can, of course be others. Candidates historically have been some standard of merit, democracy, family lineage, and the like.

56Gerald Gaus, The Tyranny of the Ideal, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016). References in the following pages to this work will be placed in the text.

57TRT, Chapter 8, pp. 239–57.

58Gaus likes the Sen mountain peak analogy which we have discussed elsewhere. Ibid. pp. 243–45.

59Indeed, it might even be considered as an example of the genetic fallacy.

60We discuss some of this process in TPT, pp. 137–58.

61It might be claimed that identifying the nature of X (e.g., justice) is different from having an ideal of justice. However, justice is an inherently normative term, so to identify it is to in some fashion idealize it.

62See Robert Jubb, “Realism,” in Adrian Blau, Methods in Analytical Political Theory.

63To think of a problem and its solution without thinking of where and when it exists does not mean that they can exist apart from such considerations. Abstract considerations need not ignore such specifications. In fact, they require them and are a part of their extension. See TRT, Chapter 7.

64However, to recall what we said earlier, we call this problem “liberalism’s problem” because this tradition in political philosophy recognizes its importance and attempts to deal with it directly.

65Jubb, “Realism,” p. 125.

66See Douglas J. Den Uyl and Douglas B. Rasmussen, “Two Dogmas of Egalitarianism,” Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines.

67Jubb, “Realism,” p. 112.

68James Hankins, Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019).

69We argue for the importance of metaphysical realism for ethics and political philosophy in TPT and TRT.

70This essay has benefited from feedback on an earlier version from a workshop for the Free Market Institute at Texas Tech University on October 30, 2020.

Defending Liberty: Essays in Honor of David Gordon