UC San Diego

The distinction between ideal and non-ideal theory is a tool that can help us understand how to make moral and political progress. Ideal theory provides a goal for us to reach, and non-ideal theory tells us what to do in our current, non-ideal state. Throughout my dissertation, I argue that we need both of these kinds of theory in order to make progress. I also argue that we need to apply these tools to particular problems in order to get a better understanding of the theoretical questions at stake. To that end, I investigate three particular problems. Chapter One is devoted to showing that we need ideal theory to make sustained societal progress over time. But because we are unable to agree on a complete ideal, we should work together to create incomplete ideal theory, which can then guide our progress. Chapter Two shows how we can use the ideal/non-ideal distinction to resolve two longstanding tensions in moral and political philosophy. We disagree about how much our moral theories should yield to our flaws, and we also disagree about how to interpret the voluntarist constraint: what it means for “ought” to imply “can.” I show that we need ideal theory of morality, which uses a thinner version of the voluntarist constraint and does not yield to our flaws, to provide an ultimate standard. But we also need non-ideal theory, which uses a thicker version, to guide our actions. Chapter Three tackles beneficence. Does our duty to the very poor increase when others inevitably fail to comply with that duty? It may be that we only have to do our fair share—that even in the non-ideal world, we only have to do what we would have had to do in the ideal. I show that this view is plagued by counterexamples. Many consequentialists hold the alternative view, that we must pick up others’ slack, but their interpretation of this view is extremely demanding. I argue that we should look to an alternative moral theory. Two versions of deontology, intuitionism and Kantianism, require us to do more when others are doing less without also making extreme demands.