Metaphilosophy - 2016 - Garc A Gibson - Utopias and Comparative Assessments of Justice

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METAPHILOSOPHY
Vol. 47, No. 1, January 2016
0026-1068
UTOPIAS AND COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENTS OF JUSTICE
FRANCISCO GARCIA GIBSON
Abstract: When we make public policy choices, is it helpful to know how utopia
(that is, the perfectly just institutional design) would look? Amartya Sen argues
that it is neither necessary, nor sufficient, nor even contributory. He claims that
before making a policy choice one should compare several feasible institutional
designs to see which promotes justice most (a “comparative assessment” of
justice), and that it is misleading to use the perfect design as a standard in those
comparisons. Principles of justice are the proper standard. The present article
contends that the perfect design has nevertheless an important role to play in the
prior task of identifying and refining our principles of justice. It also shows that
the perfect design—in at least one sense of this term—may be a legitimate long-
term goal for present policy choices.
Keywords: Amartya Sen, comparative assessments, justice, utopia.
1. Introduction
Let us assume that before we make policy choices it is crucial to com-
pare alternative feasible institutional designs, in order to tell which
design would improve justice, or reduce injustice, most. This task may
be called, following Amartya Sen, a “comparative assessment” of jus-
tice (Sen 2009, 17). Identifying the perfectly just institutional design is
regarded by him as neither necessary nor sufficient, nor of any particu-
lar help, for that comparative task (Sen 2009, 15–16). In this article I
contend that having a picture of the perfect design plays an important
role in comparative assessments of justice.
The article is structured as follows. In section 2, I introduce a set of
preliminary definitions and considerations. In section 3, I assess the
claim that the perfect design is helpful for real-world policy choices,
since it serves as a comparison standard between imperfect designs. I
show that although using the perfect design itself as a comparison
standard may result in wrong policy choices, this design nevertheless
has an important role to play in the prior task of identifying the proper
comparison standard. In section 4, I show that the perfect design has
yet another role to play in comparative assessments as a legitimate

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UTOPIAS AND COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENTS OF JUSTICE 93
long-term goal for present policy choices. This is shown after distin-
guishing several senses of the idea of a perfect design.
2. Principles, Institutional Designs, and Comparative Assessments

of Justice
In this section I introduce a set of distinctions and definitions that will
be used in subsequent sections. We may start by distinguishing between
principles of justice and their (institutional) implementation (Boot
2012; Gilabert 2012; Hamlin and Stemplowska 2012). A principle of
(social) justice is a criterion for normatively assessing states of affairs
regarding the distribution of social benefits and burdens. This means
that principles of justice single out certain distributive states of affairs
as normatively required. A common example of a principle of justice is
the following sufficientarian principle (SP): everyone should have secure
access to basic nourishment, basic health care, and housing. This is a
principle of justice because it singles out a certain state of affairs—the
state of affairs in which everyone has secure access to certain social
benefits—as normatively required. Rawlss two principles of justice and
the utilitarian principle are also familiar examples of principles of
justice.
We say that a principle is implemented (or instantiated, or realized)
when the normatively desirable state of affairs obtains, to a given
degree. For example, if everyone had secure access to basic nourish-
ment, and so forth, we would say that SP is implemented to the highest
degree. Now, principles are usually implemented by a number of causes.
In the present article I focus on a specific type of cause: institutional
designs. An institutional design (or scheme, or arrangement) is a set of
social rules. By “social rule” I mean a generally accepted rule that gov-
erns behavior in a society, and this includes both formal and informal
rules.1 Social rules are an important cause of principle implementation
because their existence has substantial consequences on the distribution
of social benefits and burdens. Different institutional designs have dif-
ferent distributive consequences. Therefore, different institutional
designs instantiate principles of justice to different degrees.
Another notion that is important to introduce is that of justice per-
formance, defined as the degree to which an institutional design instan-
tiates principles of justice. If an institutional design instantiates (or
would instantiate) principles of justice to a higher degree than another
design, then the former design has a higher justice performance than
1
The term “institutional design” should not be taken to suggest that all social rules
are under some agents control. Nevertheless, in this article I do assume that legislative
agents usually have at least some control over (formal and informal) social rules through
legislation.

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94 FRANCISCO GARCIA GIBSON
the latter.2 We may then roughly define the idea of a perfectly just insti-
tutional design (or perfect design) as the institutional design that fully
instantiates all principles of justice (that is, the institutional design that
has the highest justice performance).
A comparative assessment of justice is a comparison between different
feasible institutional designs in order to choose one, according to several
comparative dimensions. The most important, or focal, comparative dimen-
sion is justice performance (but there are other dimensions, which will be
explained later). Although it is obviously possible to comparatively assess
infeasible institutional designs in terms of justice (for example, we may com-
pare different utopias to assess which of them implements principles to a
higher degree), in the present article the idea of comparative assessments of
justice will refer exclusively to assessments of currently feasible designs, since
these are the main subject of actual policy choices. (For the idea of feasibil-
ity, see section 4.1.)
Let us illustrate all previous definitions by the following example. For the
sake of simplicity, suppose that the only principle of justice is SP. Imagine
that our current institutional design has trouble securing everyones access
to basic goods (nourishment, health care, and housing), and 50 percent of
the population lacks access to at least one of them. Imagine that there is an
alternative institutional design that would secure access to 80 percent of the
population. If we made a comparative assessment between both designs, we
would conclude that the alternative design is better than the current one in
terms of justice performance. If there were a third alternative design that
would secure access to everyone, that third design would then be the perfect
design, since it would perform highest in terms of justice.
In this article I avoid the common terminology of “ideal theory”
and “non-ideal theory,” since it may lead to confusion due to the many
diverse senses in which the terms “ideal” and “theory” may be under-
stood (Stemplowska and Swift 2012, 373–74). For similar reasons, I
also avoid the term “perfect justice” (used, for example, by Sen 2009),
since it is ambiguous; it could refer to the perfectly just institutional
design or to the set of principles that are fully implemented by it.
3. Comparison Standards
Consider the following simple argument, which aims to show that
knowing the perfect design is relevant for policy choices. Suppose we
2
It should be noted that certain social rules may be regarded as desirable states of affairs
themselves, and not as desirable due to the distributive consequences caused by their existence
(that is, “instrumentally” desirable). Procedimentalist conceptions of democracy, for instance,
do not claim that democracy is (only) valuable as a set of social rules capable of implementing
certain principles of justice (such as equality and liberty). These conceptions claim instead that
democracy is a normatively required state of affairs in itself.

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had to choose between establishing one imperfect set of social rules or

another. It may seem natural to choose the imperfect set that most
resembles the perfect set of social rules.3 Now, it would be impossible
to tell which imperfect set most resembles the perfect design without
knowing what the perfect design looks like, that is, without knowing
our comparison standard. This means that having a picture of the per-
fect design is necessary for comparative assessments of justice. More-
over, it seems that the perfect design is sufficient for these assessments,
since once we know what the perfect design consists in, and which of
the alternative imperfect designs resembles it most, this is all we need
to know in order to make the right choice.
Against this argument, Sen contends that the perfectly just institu-
tional design is not a proper standard for comparative assessments of
justice (Sen 2009, 16). Now, no contemporary theorist actually claims
that it is. In particular, John Rawls, who is one of Sens main targets,
does not. Certainly, some expressions by Rawls may suggest otherwise.4
But it is for the most part clear that for him the proper comparison
standards are principles of justice, not the perfect design.5 Nevertheless,
it is useful to go through the reasons for rejecting the perfect design as
a proper standard, since this will allow us to better understand how
identifying the perfect design may still play a different, but important,
role in comparative assessments of justice.
3.1. The Perfect Design as a Comparison Standard

As Sen explains, grounding policy choices in the degree to which each
option resembles the perfect design may result in wrong choices (Sen
2009, 16). The reason is that using resemblance as the sole comparison
standard may lead us to neglect our main concern: justice performance.
To see this, let us expand the SP example mentioned above in the fol-
lowing way (for simplicitys sake, assume that SP is the only principle
3
A set of rules “resembles” another set when both sets require and allow the same
actions. This sense should be distinguished from a second sense, according to which two
sets of rules resemble each other if they have the same distributive consequences. Two sets
that resemble each other in the first sense may not resemble each other in the second
sense if, for example, they apply to different territories with differing circumstances. The
first sense is not (directly) relevant for comparative assessments of justice, but the second
sense is crucial.
4
Consider, for instance, the following claim by Rawls: “We are in the way of describ-
ing an ideal arrangement, comparison with which defines a standard for judging actual
institutions, and indicates what must be maintained to justify departures from it” (1971,
227).
5
Consider, for example, the following claim by Rawls: “The two principles of justice
provide an Archimedean point for appraising existing institutions as well as the desires
and aspirations which they generate. These criteria provide an independent standard for
guiding the course of social change” (1971, 520).

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of justice). Suppose we had to make a comparative assessment of jus-

tice between the following three alternative institutional designs:
Design A. This design would fully implement SP. Among other insti-
tutions, this design includes a system of public health care and edu-
cation. Design A is infeasible (assume this for the sake of the
argument).
Design B. This design is similar in most (but not all) aspects to design A.
It includes a system of public health care and education. Design B par-
tially implements SP (say, by 25 percent). Design B is feasible.
Design C. This design is different from design A in most aspects. It
includes a system of private health care and education, among other
differences. Design C partially implements SP (say, by 50 percent).
Design C is feasible.
Design A is the perfectly just institutional design. Since A is not fea-

sible, however, the actual policy choice is between B and C, which are
feasible. So let us now compare B and C exclusively in terms of their
resemblance to A. The result of this comparative assessment is that B
should be preferred over C, since B (which has a public health care sys-
tem and education, among other similar aspects) resembles A to a
higher degree than C (which lacks a public health care and education
system, among other differences). But should we really prefer B, if
what we are trying to choose is the option that best promotes justice?
Choosing B over C would be a serious mistake, since B implements SP
to a lower degree than C. Therefore, using resemblance to the perfect
design as a comparison standard neglects the crucial comparative
dimension of justice performance, and it may therefore lead to errone-
ous comparative assessments of justice. This is due to the fact that rule
resemblance does not necessarily track justice performance.
Another way to understand this point is by noticing that it is per-
fectly possible for two different institutional designs to perform equally
in terms of justice, even if one of them resembles perfect institutions
more closely than the other. For example, imagine that two different
public health systems, D and E, perform equally well in terms of pro-
viding basic health care, because they both secure care for 50 percent
of the population. However, D resembles the perfect design more than
E does. If resemblance to the perfect design—that is, with its defining
social rules—were the proper comparison standard, we should prefer D
to E. But that would be a mistake, since if both imperfect designs
would perform equally, there is no reason (all other things being equal)
to prefer D over E.
It may be countered that the previous argument is based on unreal-
istic examples. It could never be the case that institutional design B

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performed worse than C, if B resembles the perfect design A to a

greater extent than C. And it could never be the case that D and E per-
formed equally if D resembled A to a greater extent than E. Institu-
tional design is, however, a very complex and frail matter. Even
seemingly minor changes in terms of institutional design might produce
enormous changes in terms of justice performance. For example, even
if we kept all other rules equal, minor changes in public transport fees,
minor changes in taxes on crucial goods such as cereals, or a slight
increase in informally institutionalized corruption might have substan-
tial consequences in terms of wealth distribution. This implies that a
design that resembled the perfect design almost completely, except for
some seemingly minor changes in its rules, could actually differ sub-
stantially in terms of justice performance. And, by contrast, a design
that is very different from the perfect design in every aspect except for
some important rules, could perform quite well in terms of justice. For
example, an institutional design that resembled the perfect design in
every aspect except for a tax on cereals might perform worse than
another design that resembled the perfect design to a lesser extent but
lacked a tax on cereals, or compensated for that tax via exemptions on
taxes that affect other crucial commodities. Moreover, a same level of
justice performance may be achieved by different combinations of rules,
even by strongly different combinations. For example, as Rawls (2001)
explains, a “property-owning democracy” and a “liberal democratic
socialism” may both perform equally well in terms of justice, even if
their rules substantially differ. Again, resemblance in terms of defining
social rules and resemblance in terms of justice performance are inde-
pendent variables.
If rule resemblance is a misleading comparison standard because it
does not reliably track justice performance, we may wonder whether
there is an alternative standard that does the job properly. Principles of
justice are that standard (Boot 2012; Gilabert 2012). This may be appa-
rent from the fact that justice performance is defined precisely as the
degree to which an institutional design instantiates principles of justice.
When comparing alternative institutional designs, we should choose—all
other things being equal—the design that implements principles of justice
to a higher degree. This may be illustrated using the same example as above.
When comparing designs B and C, the adequate comparison standard is SP.
We should choose—all other things being equal—the design that imple-
ments SP to a higher degree (that is, design B).
3.2. Perfect Designs and Reflective Equilibrium

Not only does Sen claim that the perfect design is an inadequate com-
parison standard, he also claims that the perfect design is not “of any

V
particular help” for comparative assessments of justice (Sen 2009, 16).

Against the latter claim, I here explain a sense in which picturing the
perfect design may be very helpful, if not necessary, for those
assessments.
Picturing the perfect design may be an important step in the process
of justifying principles. A central part of many theories of justice is
devoted to arguing in favor of one or more principles of justice over
other candidate principles. This justificatory task is usually very com-
plex, and many methodological paths have been proposed to address it.
A widely accepted method of justification is reflective equilibrium. As
explained by Norman Daniels, this method “consists in working back
and forth among our considered judgments (some say our ‘intuitions’)
about particular instances or cases, the principles or rules that we
believe govern them, and the theoretical considerations that we believe
bear on accepting these considered judgments, principles, or rules, revi-
sing any of these elements wherever necessary in order to achieve an
acceptable coherence among them” (Daniels 2011).
Perfect designs and reflective equilibrium are connected in the fol-
lowing way. Once a theory of justice provides us with putative princi-
ples of justice, the method of reflective equilibrium requires us to check
whether these principles cohere with our considered judgments about
which institutions are just. In order to do this, we need first to picture
a set of institutions that would realize those principles. We may then
check whether this set of institutions differs in important ways from
the institutions that are just according to our considered judgments. If
there is a clash between the allegedly perfect design and our considered
judgments, the method of reflective equilibrium requires that we revise
either the putative principles or our considered judgments, in order to
reach coherence between them.6
This point may be illustrated by the following example. Imagine that
there is a set of putative principles of justice such that the institutional
scheme that would fully implement them would not include a progres-
sive tax regime. Imagine that according to your considered judgments
justice requires such a regime. The method of reflective equilibrium
would then require that you revise the putative principles (or, alterna-
tively, that you revise your considered judgments). In this way, pictur-
ing perfect justice plays an important role in identifying the right
principles of justice and in refining them.7
6
This connection between perfect designs and reflective equilibrium is explained by
Rawls in the context of his discussion of different institutional regimes that could realize
his principles of justice (2001, 136).
7
If we find out that an allegedly perfect design clashes with our intuitions and needs
to be revised, we should say that it was not actually a perfect design or utopia but a dys-
topia. I thank an anonymous referee for pointing this out.

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But do we need a detailed, complete description of the perfect design in

order to select or refine our principles of justice? Take again the example of
the considered judgments about the tax regime. Would it not be enough just
to check whether the institutional implementation of the principles being
tested includes a progressive tax regime, instead of having to devise the
whole system up to its last detail?8 The answer is yes, but we still need to
check our principles against our considered judgments regarding other
(important) aspects of the social system, such as public funding of elections
and political campaigns, the system of property, and so on. As the set of rel-
evant considered judgments becomes wider, utopias description needs to
become more specific as well.
There are other reasons why a complete description of the perfect
design is needed. Coherentist justification of the type required by
reflective equilibrium gets stronger when more elements are included in
the coherent system (Bonjour 1985, 95–98). Therefore, if our descrip-
tion of utopia gets more precise, and we are able to check our princi-
ples against more considered judgments, we achieve a stronger
justification for them.
Another reason is that a more complete description of utopia can
help us to check whether our principles have the right priority relations
among them. For instance, suppose that a theory of justice includes the
Rawlsian principle of fair equality of opportunity and the difference
principle but claims that the latter has priority over the former. This
may not in itself contradict any of our considered judgments. But if we
picture the institutional design that would fully implement those princi-
ples (with their priority relation), we may find out that, for example,
the design does not include minority quotas for certain power posi-
tions, for the reason that establishing quotas in those positions could
diminish economic gains that could be used (through taxes or other
means) to improve the situation of the worse off. If according to our
considered judgments those quotas should exist even at the cost of
worsening the situation of the worse off, then reflective equilibrium
could require that we revise the priority between principles. Now, one
could only arrive at this conclusion after elaborating a fairly detailed
picture of how the set of principles (with their priority relation) would
be institutionally implemented.9
8
I thank an anonymous referee for urging me to address these issues.
9
There may be cases in which a proposed set of principles of justice could be fully
implemented by more than one institutional design. And in some of those cases it may
happen that our considered judgments conflict with one of these designs but not with the
other(s). Should we then revise our principles, our judgments, or both? The answer (which
I cannot develop here) is that in each particular conflict we should choose the revision
that brings more overall coherence between theory and considered judgments. I thank
Ruth Zimmerling for helping me notice this problem.

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4. The Argument from Path Dependence

Another argument to show that utopias are helpful for comparative
assessments of justice is the “argument from path dependence” (I take
the name from Hamlin and Stemplowska 2012, 59). When we make
policy choices it is often the case that some institutional designs that
would greatly improve justice are not directly or immediately feasible.
Instead, they are indirectly feasible, via a sequence, or path, of institu-
tional reforms. We say that there is path dependence when some indi-
rectly feasible reforms may only be implemented if we follow certain
reform paths but not others. Path dependence refers to the fact that
certain present choices may block the path to other future choices.
Path-dependence considerations may therefore compel us sometimes to
relinquish short-term minor increases in justice for the sake of long-
term higher increases (Gilabert 2012; Simmons 2010).
Consider the following schematic situation of path dependence.
Imagine that from the status quo (F) there are two directly feasible
designs, G and H, that would increase justice when compared to F.
However, one of them (G) would perform worse than the other (H) in
terms of justice. There is also a third design (I), which would perform
better than both G and H. Design I is not directly accessible from F,
but it can be accessed if we first implement G. Now, if we implemented
H instead of G, we would block the path to I. In this type of scenario,
we should (at least in some cases) prefer G to H, because although in
the short term H would realize justice to a higher degree than G, if we
choose H we would block the path to I, which is even better than H.
Let us now illustrate this scheme by the following example.
Suppose that a city that suffers a housing deficit is deciding whether
to allow the destruction of some decaying historic buildings in order to
build new apartment buildings that could house many more people.
These new buildings could not be built, for instance, in the suburbs,
because the city lacks the economic means to build roads and public
transport to connect the city and the suburbs. Allowing the destruction
of the historic buildings in order to give way to the new buildings
would increase justice, because it would reduce the unequal distribution
of housing (assuming that justice requires an equal distribution of
housing). But suppose that prohibiting the destruction of historic
buildings would mean that in the future, when the city budget increases
(and suppose that it is expected to increase), those historic buildings
could be repaired and turned into a tourist attraction that would fur-
ther add to the citys revenues. This enlarged budget would in turn
make it possible to construct the apartment buildings in the suburbs,
because it would be large enough to build new roads and public trans-
port to connect the city and the suburbs. And suppose that thanks to
the newly expanded budget the city would also be able to increase

V
justice in several other ways. This example shows that in some cases
choosing short-term justice-enhancing reforms could forever block even
higher justice-enhancing reforms in the future.
Path-dependence considerations are therefore relevant for compara-
tive assessments of justice. We should be mindful of the possibility of
long-term, indirect paths to institutions with better justice performance.
This does not, however, by itself imply that we should have in mind the
perfect design. Arriving at this conclusion requires that we differentiate
between several meanings of the term “perfect design” (section 4.2)
and the related notions of “feasibility” and “circumstances” (4.1).
4.1. Feasibility and Circumstances

Let us begin by briefly approaching the idea of feasibility. First, we
need to distinguish two meanings of the claim that an outcome is feasi-
ble. It might mean either that the outcome is accessible or that it is sta-
ble (Cohen 2001). An outcome is accessible to someone if there is a
sequence of steps she can take to bring it about. An outcome is stable
if, once accessed, it remains in existence. For example, if someone says
that communism is infeasible he might mean either that there is no
sequence of steps that can bring it about or that even if we brought
communism about, we would not be able to sustain it. Accessibility
may be either direct or indirect. If it only takes one step to achieve the
outcome, then the outcome is directly accessible. If it takes more than
one, then the outcome is indirectly accessible.
Second, we should distinguish two ways to assess an outcomes fea-
sibility (Gilabert 2009; Lawford-Smith 2010). First, we may assess
whether there are any “hard” constraints on the agent achieving the
outcome. Hard constraints are facts that rule out an outcome or make
it impossible. Examples of hard constraints are logical and nomological
impossibility (nomological impossibility refers to what is impossible
according to natural-scientific laws). For instance, if producing a cer-
tain outcome would require violating the laws of physics, there are
hard constraints on that outcome. We may then say that the outcome
is infeasible in a binary sense (Lawford-Smith 2010, 106–8). By contrast,
if there are no hard constraints on an agent producing a certain out-
come, we may say that the outcome is feasible in a binary sense. Sec-
ond, we may assess whether there are any “soft” constraints on the
agent achieving the outcome. Soft constraints are facts that make an
outcome more or less likely to come about. Examples of soft con-
straints are economic, cultural, and political facts that make a certain
institutional reform less likely to succeed. Regarding soft constraints,
we say that an outcome is feasible in a graded sense, since soft con-
straints do not rule out the outcome, but they decrease their likelihood

V
to a certain degree (Gilabert 2009, 669–69; Lawford-Smith 2010, 121–

32). For example, we may say that certain educational reform is highly
feasible or not very feasible.
Third, feasibility considerations are a crucial dimension in compara-
tive assessments of justice. Out of two institutional designs, all other
dimensions being equal, we should choose the more feasible one. If two
alternative imperfect institutional designs perform equally in terms of
justice but one of them is more feasible given current circumstances, we
should choose the one that is more feasible. Sometimes, however, not
all other things are equal. It is often the case that alternative institu-
tional designs differ not only in their feasibility degree but also in their
justice-performance degree. In such cases, we must reach all-things-
considered judgments as to which alternative design to choose. We
need to assess which of them achieves the best balance between feasibil-
ity and justice performance. I do not claim that there is a precise mea-
sure for permissible trade-offs between both dimensions. I simply claim
that it is possible to make a rough assessment of whether a given
trade-off is permissible.
Fourth, in addition to these general ideas about feasibility it is
important to mention certain points about the relationship between
institutional reform, feasibility, and circumstances. The same set of
institutions might perform better or worse, in terms of justice, depend-
ing on the circumstances with which it is combined. “Circumstances”
are whatever affects the justice performance of a set of institutions:
preferences, talents, productivity, knowledge, resources, population,
expected compliance with new and old rules, and so forth. The interac-
tion between institutions and circumstances may be illustrated by the
following example. A piece of health care legislation probably performs
better if every subject complies with it than if many subjects do not,
and also if its subjects have healthy habits than if they do not.
4.2. The Different Senses of “Perfect Design”

The idea of a “perfect design” may be understood in at least four dif-
ferent senses. I next consider each sense separately and assess whether
it may contribute to comparative assessments involving path-
dependence considerations. The first two senses (“fantastic utopia” and
“utopia”) focus on justice performance, leaving feasibility considera-
tions aside or assigning them a secondary role. The other two senses
(“immediate best” and “realistic utopia”), by contrast, take graded-
feasibility considerations seriously.
The first sense we need to consider is that of a fantastic utopia,
which is the highest-performing design, regardless of feasibility consid-
erations. In this rather uncommon sense, “perfect design” refers to the

V
highest-performing combination of institutions and circumstances,

regardless of whether these institutions and/or circumstances are at all
feasible. If we imagined all possible combinations between sets of social
rules and sets of circumstances, the combination that would perform
highest in terms of justice is the fantastic utopia.
The fantastic utopia so defined leaves feasibility considerations aside.
Now, if we tried to imagine the combination of institutions and circumstan-
ces that would perform highest in terms of justice, we would most likely
include circumstances that are infeasible in a binary sense (hence “fantastic
utopia”). This is shown by the following example. Most institutions would
perform better in circumstances of endless resources than in circumstances
with limited resources, because with endless resources lack of food and other
deprivations could easily be avoided (assuming that justice requires that
those deprivations be minimized). Therefore, if we tried to imagine which
would be the highest-performing combination of institutions and circum-
stances, in that combination we would probably include endless resources.
But these circumstances could never be achieved, given the hard constraints
established by scientific laws. Therefore, fantastic utopia probably includes
circumstances that are infeasible in a binary sense.
Identifying the fantastic utopia cannot contribute to comparative assess-
ments of justice involving path-dependence considerations. If, as mentioned,
the fantastic utopia includes circumstances that are infeasible in a binary
sense, path dependence is conceptually impossible regarding the fantastic
utopia, because there is no path of institutional reform that could ever lead
to those circumstances. Therefore, no current policy decision could either
block or enable the reform path to the fantastic utopia.
Alternatively, we may take “perfect design” to mean utopia: the highest-
performing design that is feasible in a binary sense. More precisely, utopia is
the highest-performing combination of institutions and circumstances
among all combinations that are feasible in a binary sense. It should be
noticed that in this definition there is no mention of the degree to which this
combination is supposed to be feasible. Therefore, utopia suffers a problem
that is similar to the one that affected fantastic utopia. Most designs would
perform better under rare circumstances such as zero corruption, which
may not be impossible to bring about if we follow certain reform paths, but
which are nevertheless very unlikely to be achieved. This implies that uto-
pia—the highest-performing, binarily feasible combination of institutions
and circumstances—probably includes zero corruption, or other unlikely
circumstances. Utopia is therefore highly infeasible. Not impossible, but
highly infeasible.
Unlike fantastic utopia, it may be true that utopia can only be
achieved if certain reform paths are followed instead of others. Path-
dependence considerations are relevant if we want to reach utopia.
And since utopia is the highest-performing feasible design, there are
reasons to try to reach it. As mentioned, however, utopia is always

V
highly infeasible and a long-term project. Therefore, when compared to

immediate, but secure, lesser justice enhancements, utopia will most
times lose the contest. It would rarely make sense to relinquish cur-
rently feasible, and secure, benefits in order to avoid blocking the path
to highly uncertain, and indirectly accessible, benefits (unless the cur-
rently feasible benefits were extremely low). Identifying utopia cannot
therefore contribute to comparative assessments.
No author claims that utopias or fantastic utopias should play a
guidance role in comparative assessments of justice. The reason I intro-
duced these two senses of “perfect design” is to distinguish them
from—and so better understand—two different senses that I will now
explain, and that are actually helpful for comparative assessments.
A first sense is that of an immediate best, which is the best directly feasi-
ble design. If in a given policy-choice situation we consider several directly
feasible combinations of institutions and circumstances, and we compare
them in terms of justice performance and feasibility, we may find that some
combinations score very high in terms of justice but are very infeasible;
some other combinations score low in terms of justice but are highly feasi-
ble; others perform moderately in terms of justice and are moderately feasi-
ble; and so on. We therefore need to look for the directly feasible
combination that, when compared to all other directly feasible combina-
tions, achieves the most adequate balance between both considerations.
That is the immediate best. For example, among several highly feasible but
low-performing designs, there may be one that performs slightly better than
all the others. Or among several moderately feasible and moderately per-
forming designs, there may be one that is more feasible than all the others.
The immediate best plays an important role in comparative assessments
of justice. When choosing between several directly feasible designs, we
should always prefer, all other things being equal, the immediate best. But
to fully appreciate the role of the immediate best in comparative assessments
we need to introduce one last sense of “perfect design.”
The fourth meaning of “perfect design” is that of a realistic utopia,
which is the best indirectly feasible design. A realistic utopia is an indi-
rectly feasible combination of institutions and circumstances that
strikes the most adequate balance between justice performance and fea-
sibility considerations, when compared to all other indirectly feasible
combinations. I borrow the term “realistic utopia” from Rawls (1999 and
2001), who uses it to refer to his own favored institutional design, which is
supposed to be indirectly feasible and to strike a balance between feasibility
constraints and justice-performance considerations.10
10
Rawls claims that his proposal for national and international institutions attains a
balance between feasibility and justice performance (1999, 2; 2001, 13). He also claims
that his proposal is the best indirectly feasible design (2001, 5).

V
Is the realistic utopia helpful for comparative assessments of justice?

It seems that out of two directly feasible designs, we should always pre-
fer—all other things being equal—a design that enables the path to the
realistic utopia over a design that blocks that path. And in order to
know whether a design enables or blocks that path, we need to have a
picture of the realistic utopia first.
Even if all other things are not equal, it is important to know whether
our choices enable the path to the realistic utopia instead of blocking it.
Suppose that out of two directly feasible alternatives, J and K, design J
strikes a better balance between feasibility and justice performance, when
compared to the balance struck by K. Design K, however, enables the path
to realistic utopia L, while J blocks it. Depending on how high L scores in
terms of justice performance, it may be worthwhile to relinquish the direct,
feasible gains in justice that J would provide for the sake of enabling the
indirect gains that L would provide. Even if we end up concluding that this
sacrifice is not actually worthwhile, in order to reach that conclusion we first
need to have a picture of the realistic utopia.
The importance of path-dependence considerations should not be
overstated, however. The fact that a policy choice blocks the path to a
realistic utopia should not count as a decisive reason against it. Giving
up the possibility of achieving a highly just society in the future might
be all-things-considered justified if it is necessary for solving severe
injustices or emergency situations in the present. Moreover, it is often
not clear which decisions would block the path to the realistic utopia,
since our knowledge of indirect feasibility is very week. Thus, path-
dependence considerations should not be given absolute weight. The
argument in this section must not therefore be interpreted as providing
a complete refutation of Sens claims. Sens basic insight is broadly
right: political philosophy should not make identifying utopias its sole
or primary task (at least once principles of justice have been properly
justified and refined). What I am trying to point out is merely that
leaving the path open to utopia is a relevant (although not trumping)
consideration, especially in situations that are not critical or strongly
unjust (and when it is sufficiently clear which decisions would block the
path to utopia). In this sense, Sens broader claim that identifying a
(realistic) utopia is “of no particular help” for comparative assessments
of justice is inaccurate.11
5. Conclusion
I have argued here that identifying the perfect design could contribute
to comparative assessments of justice. It is true that these assessments
11
I thank an anonymous referee for prompting me to clarify this point.

V
should not be grounded in the degree of institutional resemblance to

the perfect design, because this may lead us to choose designs that
actually score lower than others in terms of justice. Principles of justice,
not perfect designs, are the proper comparison standard. A crucial step
in justifying those principles, however, requires that we imagine institu-
tional schemes that would fully implement them, in order to check
whether those perfect schemes differ in important ways from the
schemes that are just, according to our considered judgments. The
method of reflective equilibrium requires that we revise our principles
in cases when the institutions that implement them clash with our con-
sidered judgments. Furthermore, I introduced a distinction between
four different senses of “perfect design” and then I argued that accord-
ing to two of these senses, which take graded-feasibility considerations
seriously, the perfect design should play an important guidance role in
policy decisions. The reason is that when comparing alternative cur-
rently feasible institutional designs, we should bear in mind that choos-
ing certain designs today might block or enable the possibility of
achieving better institutions in the future. Without having a picture of
these better institutions, it is not possible for us to assess whether cur-
rent decisions actually lead—or block the path—to them.
Salguero 2577, 5to B

Buenos Aires
Argentina 1425
garciagibson@gmail.com
Acknowledgments
I thank Marcelo Alegre, Corrado Fumagalli, Florencia Luna, Pablo
Gilabert, Ignacio Mastroleo, Julio Montero, Eduardo Rivera L opez,
Andres Rosler, and attendees at the Colloquium at the Institut f€ur
Politikwissenschaft at Mainz University and the Political Philosophy
Group (GFP) Colloquium for helpful comments. Research leading to
this article was financed by the Argentine National Research Council
(CONICET).
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What Went Wrong? edited by Edward Broadbent, 58–78. Toronto:
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Daniels, Norman. 2001. “Reflective Equilibrium.” In The Stanford

Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2013 Edition). Edited by Edward
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equilibrium/ (accessed 10 October 2014).
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——––. 2012. “Comparative Assessments of Justice, Political Feasibility,
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Lawford-Smith, Holly. 2010. “Feasibility Constraints for Political The-
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——––. 1999. The Law of Peoples. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer-
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——––. 2001. Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. Cambridge, Mass.: Bel-
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14679973, 2016, 1, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/meta.12172 by Ub Frankfurt/Main Universitaet, Wiley Online Library on [20/03/2023].

UTOPIAS AND COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENTS OF JUSTICE

FRANCISCO GARCIA GIBSON

Keywords: Amartya Sen, comparative assessments, justice, utopia.

C 2016 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

2. Principles, Institutional Designs, and Comparative Assessments

C 2016 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

C 2016 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

had to choose between establishing one imperfect set of social rules or

3.1. The Perfect Design as a Comparison Standard

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of justice). Suppose we had to make a comparative assessment of jus-

Design A is the perfectly just institutional design. Since A is not fea-

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performed worse than C, if B resembles the perfect design A to a

3.2. Perfect Designs and Reflective Equilibrium

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particular help” for comparative assessments of justice (Sen 2009, 16).

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But do we need a detailed, complete description of the perfect design in

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4. The Argument from Path Dependence

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4.1. Feasibility and Circumstances

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to a certain degree (Gilabert 2009, 669–69; Lawford-Smith 2010, 121–

4.2. The Different Senses of “Perfect Design”

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highest-performing combination of institutions and circumstances,

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highly infeasible and a long-term project. Therefore, when compared to

C 2016 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Is the realistic utopia helpful for comparative assessments of justice?

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should not be grounded in the degree of institutional resemblance to

Salguero 2577, 5to B

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Daniels, Norman. 2001. “Reflective Equilibrium.” In The Stanford

C 2016 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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