The moving global Everest: A new challenge to global ideal theory as a necessary compass
| Author | Shmuel Nili |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885116677480 |
| Date | 01 January 2018 |
| Published date | 01 January 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
European Journal of Political Theory
2018, Vol. 17(1) 87–108
!The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885116677480
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EJPT
Article
The moving global Everest:
A new challenge to global
ideal theory as a necessary
compass
Shmuel Nili
Yale University, USA; Australian National University, Australia
Abstract
I present a new challenge to the Rawlsian insistence on ideal theory as a compass
orienting concrete policy choices. My challenge, focusing on global politics, consists
of three claims. First, I contend that our global ideal can become more ambitious
over time. Second, I argue that Rawlsian ideal theory’s level of ambition might change
because of concrete policy choices, responding to moral failures which can be identified
and resolved without ideal theory. Third, I argue that we currently face such potentially
transformative choices. I conclude that these choices are analytically prior to, rather
than derivative from, global ideal theory.
Keywords
Method of political philosophy, non-ideal theory, global justice, natural resource trade,
global reform
Over the last decade, political philosophers have been spending considerable energy
debating what political philosophy should be doing. Much of this debate has
centred on John Rawls’s claim that political philosophy should focus on construct-
ing ‘ideal theories’ – theories which present a complete vision of perfect justice for
the domain they seek to regulate, and which assume that all agents comply or can
be brought to comply with the demands of justice.
1
Rawls himself was early to
recognise the point that his critics (such as Amartya Sen) would later stress:
that problems of injustice ‘are ...the things that we are faced with in everyday
life ...the pressing and urgent matters’ (1999a: 8). However, Rawls insisted that
‘ideal theory...provides ...the only basis for the systematic grasp of these more
pressing problems’ (1999a: 8).
Corresponding author:
Shmuel Nili, Yale University, 115 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06511, USA.
Email: shmuel.nili@anu.edu.au; shmulik.nili@gmail.com
One way to understand this Rawlsian claim is as follows. We might be able to
recognise manifest injustices as injustices, even without an ideal theory offering a
complete vision of perfect justice. Indeed, our condemnation of some specific
injustices (slavery, for instance) comes before an ideal theory: this condemnation
is not a result of ideal theory, but is a fixed judgment against which we evaluate any
ideal theory. However, we cannot have a systematic response to injustice without an
ideal theory. This is because the systematic response to specific injustice is the one
that best leads us towards a vision of perfect justice, and only an ideal theory can
provide such a vision. Call this Rawlsian position the ideal compass view.
Defending Rawls against Sen, AJ Simmons (2010: 35) captures the ideal compass
view as follows:
We don’t need to know all that ideal justice requires in order to compare ...our policy
options here and now, any more than we need to know that Everest is the tallest
mountain in the world before we can compare the heights of lesser peaks ...[But]
which of two smaller ‘peaks’ of justice is the higher ...matters conclusively only if
they are both on equally feasible paths to the highest peak of perfect justice. And in
order to endorse a route to that highest peak, we certainly do need to know which one
that highest peak is.
My aim here is to present a new challenge to this Rawlsian insistence on ideal
theory as a necessary compass by building on Rawls’s own meta-theoretical frame-
work.
2
My challenge consists of the following three claims. First, I will contend
that, at least in the context of global politics, the Rawlsian ‘Everest’of ideal theory
can move, and that our global ideal can become more ambitious over time. Second,
I will argue that ‘Everest’might move because of choices we make below it: that
Rawlsian ideal theory’s level of ambition might change because of our concrete
policy choices, responding to specific moral failures, which can be recognised as
failures without recourse to any ideal theory. Third, I will try to show that we
currently face such potentially transformative choices below Everest, and that these
choices do not hinge on where Everest currently is. Concrete moral choices we face
might (re)shape the ambitions of global ideal theory, but they are also independent
of any ideal theory.
These claims have significant methodological implications, because they turn the
ideal compass view on its head: they show that some concrete public policy choices
we are currently facing are analytically prior to, rather than derivative from, global
ideal theory, and that as long as these choices are not made, circumstances are not
ripe for focusing on global ideal theory. In turn, this point should push us to re-
evaluate many aspects of global political philosophy: if it is indeed the case, that as
long as some concrete choices are not made, philosophers discussing global politics
ought not focus on constructing an ideal theory of global justice, much of what
global political philosophy has been doing for the last two decades is misguided.
In order to establish these claims, and show that concrete public policy choices
can have such a dramatic effect on global ideal theory, I need to be specific from the
outset about which particular choices I have in mind. I will highlight a set of
88 European Journal of Political Theory 17(1)
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