Making Sense of the Ideal/Non-Ideal Theory Debate

In this paper I take up the ideal/non-ideal theory debate—one which has generated a great deal of literature that reflects upon the real-world impact of Anglo-American contemporary political philosophy. Unlike many discussions, however, this article does not focus on the defence of either ideal theory or non-ideal theory, nor does it concentrate on a plausible account of the complementary relationship between those two types of normative political theorizing. Rather, it deals with the question of how to make sense of the debate, and, more importantly, the question of how to characterize the arguments within the discussions. In doing so, I hope to show that the existing understandings of the debate do not capture the common central feature of the arguments—which, I will argue, is the paradigm shift thesis—and, in addition, I wish to outline and defend an alternative approach to making sense of the arguments. These discussions seem to me urgently needed to bring clarity to the ‘messy’ terrain of the ideal/non-ideal theory debate. Indeed, political philosophers appear to be less interested in studying the debate from a retrospective perspective and hence the current literature falls short of offering participants of the debate a conceptual map that can guide critical reflections on the discussions. In order to fill up this gap in the literature, I undertake a critical analysis of the ideal/non-ideal theory debate, which is divided into three stages. At first, I outline and examine two influential approaches to making sense of criticisms of ideal theory. The first approach centers on the various definitions of ideal theory; the second approach focuses on the multiplicity of the functions of political theory. Both of them, I will argue, fall short of highlighting the paradigm shift thesis, which characterizes existing criticisms of ideal theory. In next stage, I outline a new approach which is derived from the centrality of the paradigm shift thesis in the debate. This approach, centered on the validity of the paradigm shift thesis, suggests that the critiques of ideal theory can be characterized as various attempts to justify the thesis. In the final stage, I use the realist critique of liberalism as an example to illustrate the strength of the new approach.