Difficult Passage Essay
In this paper, I analyzed a passage from Charles W. Mills’s paper “‘Ideal Theory’ as Ideology.” My close read taught me the importance of nonideal theory to social progress. I learned that to close the gap between society’s existing shortcomings and a theoretical utopia, one must begin by working with the current situation rather than the ideal one. Mills constructs his argument in a way that proves this point even as he makes it.
My definition of justice relies on an idea of a gap between the moral law and the actual course of events in society. Mills’s work helped me to understand that filling that gap (the action that I call “justice”) can only be done if one moves toward, and not away from, the moral law.
