Virtuous Imbalance. Political Philosophy between Desirability and Feasibility

The book investigates and assesses different methodological strategies political philosophy can endorse in order to jointly meet its theoretical and practical commitments. More precisely, the book addressed three paradigmatic ways of conceiving political philosophy and its tasks, namely Rawls’s realistic utopianism, Machiavelli’s realism and Plato’s utopianism. The three models are explored with reference to a pattern of analysis based on the categories of desirability and feasibility. Desirability and feasibility are methodological criteria operating within political theories and orienting them in developing or justifying their normative claims, the former concerning the adequacy of principles and models, the latter regarding the practical possibility of enacting them. By comparatively evaluating the three selected models, the book enlightens their relative merits and limits, thus setting the ground for defining an appropriate methodological profile for political philosophy. To this end, the book distinguishes between political philosophy’s prescriptive and evaluative purposes, which imply different notions of normativity – a comparative notion the former, a transcendent one the latter – and diverse roles for feasibility constraints. Examining the requirements of practical relevance connected to prescriptive principles and to evaluative standards, the book suggests that prescription is better served by realism, while evaluation better fits utopianism. Moreover, the book proposes a revised model of realistic utopianism, which avoids the shortfalls detected in Rawls’s original formulation and which can enable political philosophy to play a proper public role, without dismissing its theoretical commitments. The book indeed contends that political philosophy can perform a properly normative function only if it preserves its philosophical character and if it does not abandon its theoretical ambitions.