Agency for Real People

In this chapter, I discuss Galeotti’s enlightening and fruitful approach to the issue of respect for individual agency in non-ideal circumstances, which should be counted among her many substantial contributions to the normative theory of liberal and democratic institutions. I examine her approach to the issue by referring to her provocative and insightful discussion of how liberal institutions should address the life choices and claims of women who choose to abide by the patriarchal rules of their minority cultures. My main aim is to show that Galeotti’s powerful arguments illustrate and foreshadow a general liberal strategy for dealing with the problem of agency in non-ideal circumstances. In the second part of the chapter, I reconstruct two distinct lines of argument behind Galeotti’s approach, one grounded on the impossibility within the limits of liberal public reason to converge on a shared account of what counts as full agency, and the other grounded on the meaning and role of respect for individual agency in liberal theory. I maintain that only the second line of argument can grant respect for the agency of real people, as they exist in the present, non-ideal circumstances, without condoning the injustice that curtails the options and the capacity for the fullest exercise of autonomy of most members of present societies.