Political Idealism

The political tradition that takes seriously the question of what an ideally just society would look like, regardless of whether such a society could actually exist. Plato is the founding figure of political idealism in this sense. His Republic asks not "how do we improve the city we have" but "what would justice itself look like if we built a society around it." Political idealism has had defenders and critics in every subsequent era, and the tension between idealism and realism remains one of the defining axes of political thought.