The possibility of wildly unrealistic justice and the principle/proposal distinction

Abstract

Are institutional principles of justice subject to a minimal realism constraint to the effect that, to be valid, they must not make demands that are wildly unrealistic in the sense that there is no chance (or a vanishingly small chance) that they will ever be met because we are robustly disposed to fail to set out to do some of the things that meeting the demands would require? Many of us say ‘‘yes.’’ David Estlund says ‘‘no.’’ However, while Estlund holds that 1) institutional principles of justice are not subject to a minimal realism constraint, he accepts that 2) institutional principles of justice are subject to an attainability constraint to the effect that, to be valid, they must not make demands we are unable to meet; and 3) what he calls ‘‘institutional proposals’’ are subject to a minimal realism constraint. I argue that these three theses do not represent a plausible combination given Estlund’s account of the principle/proposal distinction. Given this account, Estlund is either wrong to reject a minimal realism constraint on institutional principles of justice, or wrong to accept an attainability constraint on institutional principles of justice and/or a minimal realism constraint on institutional proposals. Show more