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Critical attention directed to John Rawls's ideal theory has in particular leveled three charges against it: first, its infeasibility; second, its inadequacy for providing normative guidance on actual injustices; and third, its insensitivity to the justice concerns of marginalized groups. Recently, advocates for Rawls's ideal theory have replied that problems arising at the stage of ideal theory can be addressed at the later stage of his nonideal theory. This article disputes that claim by arguing that although Rawls's nonideal theory provides a good answer to the infeasibility charge, it does not do so for the second and third charges. To argue for this thesis, I illustrate that nonideal theory in Rawls's Law of Peoples is unable to identify crucial injustices that emerge in the nonideal conditions of real world globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Michael Sandel's formative project about perfectionism, freedom, and virtue. With regards to perfection-based politics, Sandel works as a republicanism that is teleology or perfectionist in evaluating public rules in terms of the moral worth or intrinsic good of the ends they serve. On this view, the right is determined by what honors or advances some important human good. Furthermore, Sandel goes to defend a positive conception of freedom and the public promotion of substantive virtues linked to the realization of that freedom and that good.

The article presents the author's views on the idea of liberal education as approached by British philosopher Michael Oakeshott. The author says that it is commonly observed these days that liberal arts colleges and universities of the U.S. are facing one or the other state of crisis. Oakeshott argues on the role played by universities in promoting the ideal of liberal education. But this argument is defended by the author. The author says that theoretical positions of Oakeshott may prove to be other than what he expects in some of the situations.

This article focuses on the concept of justice and its relationship to desert and the ideal theory in philosophy. Justice requires that a person get what he or she deserves. It is a widely accepted claim, although the exact nature of the relationship between justice and desert becomes controversial as these concepts are specified in greater detail. John Rawls's rejection of desert as a basis for the just distribution of social resources is well known. According to Rawls, there is a tendency for common sense to suppose that the good things in life should be distributed according to moral desert. According to virtue, justice is happiness and justice as fairness rejects this conception. It is also crucial to remember that Rawls is interested in the principles of justice with which the basic structure of society can be evaluated. This structure consists of a society's political, social and economic institutions. It also considers how the social institutions fit together into one unified system of social cooperation. Therefore, when he asserts that the concept of moral worth does not provide a first principle of distributive justice, implicit is the addendum, for the purpose of evaluating the basic structure.