Pragmatism’s Contribution to Nonideal Theorizing

This chapter frames Nancy Fraser’s important shift from normal to abnormal justice as a move to the nonideal that brings historical oppression and asymmetrical relations between human beings into the theory and practice of justice. Using the unlikely pairing of Jane Addams and Richard Rorty, it then argues that a pragmatic turn advances the nonideal project of justice in two important ways: first, by conceiving the normative theorizing of justice as a transformative or melioristic project rather than a purely conceptual, representationalist one; and second, by socializing justice, in Addams’s distinct sense, so that enlarging the sphere of justice becomes an ethical and sociopolitical, not merely epistemic, effort that demands active cultivation of sympathetic knowledge and affective ties with others. The concern is to affirm the nonideal over the ideal, not to encourage a move beyond both ideal and nonideal theorizing alike to a pragmatist “working program” of ameliorating injustice.