Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

This paper explores the method of non-ideal theory in relation to social ontology, and compares it to critical theory approaches. Social ontology seeks to explain how the social world exists. Human social practices seem to give rise to kinds, like the kind judge, and entities, such as a twenty-dollar bill. Accounts of how this is possible often rely on a great deal of abstraction and simplification, but a new turn in social ontology has seen many adopting an approach that is more in line with non-ideal theory (Burman forthcoming). This paper compares non-ideal social ontology and critical social ontology, arguing that while critical social ontologists must also be non-ideal social ontologists, it is possible to do non-ideal social ontology without also doing critical social ontology. In both cases, however, the theorist must grapple with the real messiness of the social world as it exists, in contrast to many prominent examples of social ontology. The main contrast is therefore between ideal social ontology on the one hand, and non-ideal and critical social ontology on the other.