Advancing from the Citadel

This chapter argues that the well-ordered society is a dangerous illusion. The very aim that the ideal theorist cherished, to know justice and just social states as well as possible, requires an open, diverse society, in which innumerable perspectives simultaneously cooperate and compete, share and conflict. In this society there will be a crisscrossing network of communities exploring and refining moral ideals and gaining insights into their own ideals by their interactions with others. In order to be successful and robust, the Open Society 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.

The Nonideal

This chapter considers the question of whether there can be a moral, liberal framework for the Open Society, which itself abjures the pursuit of the ideal while providing a framework for diverse individual perspectives on justice. It argues that such a framework of liberal diversity seems most likely when our public social world is shaped by a set of characteristic features of the Open Society. We now have had sufficient experience of life in diverse societies that we can at least draw some tentative conclusions about the sorts of institutional structures and principles that are friendly to diversity per se. However, even these diversity-friendly arrangements cannot make room for all perspectives. The chapter attempts to identify the limits of liberal diversity, and why these limits make sense in the context of defending the Open Society.

The Elusive Ideal

This chapter discusses the concept of an evaluative perspective, which has been more thoroughly explored and formally modeled in the last decade. An evaluative perspective, Σ‎, includes three fundamental elements: (ES) a set of evaluative standards or criteria by which alternative social worlds in a domain {X} are to be evaluated; (WF) for all worlds i in the domain {X}, a specification of the world features of i that are relevant to evaluation according to ES, the evaluative standards; and (MP) a mapping function takes the evaluative standards (ES) and applies them to a social world, i, as specified by WF, yielding a so-called justice score for world i, the social world described by world features WFi. A theory meeting ES, WF, and MP evaluates a set (or domain) of social worlds {X} in terms of their realization of justice.

The Fractured Ideal

The previous chapter explored the deep dilemma at the heart of the “normalized” approach to ideal justice: the very normalization that defines the “correct” perspective in political philosophy leads to the conclusion that this correct perspective on justice cannot effectively identify its own ideal. This chapter analyzes ways to ease this tension—abandoning a fully normalized perspective in favor of various partial normalizations. It shows that when a partial normalization generated enough diversity to drive effective searching it ultimately engendered disagreement on the ideal itself. It would seem—at least on first inspection—that we must choose between full normalization, which yields a definite theory of justice but makes it most unlikely that we can find the ideal, and relaxing normalization, which improves the chances that many will find better alternatives, but which yields disagreement about what ideal justice is.

The Allure of the Ideal

This chapter identifies several different enduring models of utopian-ideal thought, arguing that one stands out as meriting closer investigation. It argues that this is an attractive understanding of utopian-ideal theory, that it makes sense of the theory's appeal, and why those such as Oscar Wilde thought ideals are a necessary part of any “map” of political reform. This understanding is broad enough to include a wide range of traditional utopian theory, as well as many current ideal theories. It also makes sense of many of the current facets of the ideal theory debate among contemporary philosophers, such as that between Amartya Sen and Rawls on the importance of ideals in pursuing justice.