Galeotti v. Mills About Non-Ideal Theory: A Defense of Reparatory Justice

In her 2022 paper “Is the Demand for Reasonableness Unreasonable?”, Elisabetta Galeotti sketches her own version of non-ideal theorizing, situating her position against both Rawlsian ideal theory, and Charles W. Mills’ version of non-ideal theory. Galeotti’s core, realist objection to Mills’ theory is actually the same as to Rawls’: neither the Rawlsian ideal theory of justice as fairness nor Mills’ non-ideal reparatory racial justice is capable of satisfying a feasibility requirement. After arguing that Galeotti and Mills’ critiques of Rawls’s ideal theory are much less divergent than would prima facie appear, I will concede that their non-ideal positive theoretical propositions are irreconcilable: Mills views reparatory justice as a new paradigm for theorizing social justice, which Galeotti rejects—both in terms of its justification and in terms of its capacity to provide racially privileged people enough moral motivation to engage in the effective realization of justice. I will try to defend that, contrary to Galeotti’s conviction, it is reasonable to conceive of reparations as a sound motivating ideal for social justice. But this requires to reassess the relation between guilt, blame, and remedial responsibility, on the one hand, and to understand reparative justice as primarily based on normative forward-looking, rather than backward-looking, arguments, on the other hand.