| The Tyranny of the Ideal In his provocative new book, The Tyranny of the Ideal , Gerald Gaus lays out a vision for how we should theorize about justice in a diverse society. Gaus shows how free and equal people, faced with intractable struggles and irreconcilable conflicts, might share a common moral life shaped by a just framework. He argues that if we are to take diversity seriously and if moral inquiry is sincere about shaping the world, then the pursuit of idealized and perfect theories of justice--essentially, the entire production of theories of justice that has dominated political philosophy for the past forty years--needs to change. Gerald Gaus is the James E. Rogers Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona. His books include The Order of Public Reason and Justificatory Liberalism . |