The starting point of Michael Goodhart’s engaging and thought-provoking book, Injustice: Political Theory for the Real World, is his dissatisfaction with two influential approaches in current political theory: ideal theory and political realism. In Goodhart’s view, proponents of ideal theory try to have their cake and eat it too, by telling us what justice is and requires and at the same time insisting on its neutrality, impartiality, and objectivity. But because their suggested moral principles are tied to substantive moral and political values, they in fact often function ideologically, neglecting the concrete forms of injustice that people struggle with on a daily basis. However, political realism is not an attractive alternative either, according to Goodhart, for even though realists lay stress on the political nature of normative ideas such as democracy and justice, they are not sufficiently radical in their evaluation and critique of society. Departing from these deficiencies, Goodhart chisels out a third way forward for political theory. First, he develops a metatheoretical and methodological approach, a so-called bifocal approach to political theory; second, he presents a democratic account of injustice within this bifocal framework.

The bifocal approach makes the essentially contested status of justice the very subject of theorizing, while at the same time leaving space for substantive normative critique of social arrangements with the aim of promoting social change. It does so by incorporating two lenses to be adopted by the theorist: the “analytical” lens through which the theorist analyzes the core values and workings of ideologies—for example, how they are laden with interests and power— and the “partisan” lens through which the theorist works with a specific substantive normative view as ideologist, to formulate critique and recommend political action and reform. A focus on disagreement on the meaning of justice means first and foremost to treat all justice claims as ideological claims; that is, as claims that are inherently tied to evaluative and normative frameworks.

In his role as ideologist, Goodhart then develops a substantive democratic account of injustice from the core principles of freedom and equality for everyone. These two principles, which lie at the heart of modern democratic thinking, together undercut any kind of natural or arbitrary authority and oppressive rule. The account furthermore entails a commitment to a feminist epistemology—that is, the view of knowledge as unavoidably situated—through which the theorist can detect (analytical lens) and condemn (partisan lens) unjust power relations. On the proposed view, democratization aims at eradicating three forms of injustice: domination, oppression, and exploitation.

In the last part of the book, Goodhart discusses the practical implications of his metatheoretical and substantive view, elaborating what political theorists may do to respond to injustice. Among other things, he argues that responsibility for injustice must be reconceptualized as a political rather than a philosophical problem, which means that solutions must be sought in the counterhegemonic political struggles over the meaning of injustice.

Is the bifocal approach a new radical methodology in political theory, or is it rather a version of the methodology commonly used in normative theory? Goodhart argues for the former, objecting to the idea that the approach “is really the same as that taken by most ideal theorists, who also regard their arguments as contingent” (p. 129). But for all his insistence, most of Goodhart’s substantive explanation of the bifocal approach points to the latter, and we can only agree when he adds that little if anything of the old is lost, because his ideological view “lets theorists account for all the things that ideal moral conceptions of justice are supposed to do (albeit differently)” (p. 127). Indeed, the main upshot of his bifocal framework seems to be pedagogical. Like the ‘Smoking kills!’ signpost on a packet of cigarettes, it makes explicit something that we all implicitly know, but of which some of us might still need to be reminded: in the case at hand, to avoid overconfidence in our own theoretical position and to remember that values and norms have long served the interests of those in power.

Consider ideal theory’s “ur-mistake from which its other problems flow” (p. 115); namely, to deny the essentially contested nature of justice, and furthermore its denial of the ideological character of political accounts (for example, p. 121). Admittedly, to view political accounts as ideological may sound radical. But on Goodhart’s technical understanding of the term, this simply means that they are based on a system of values and ideas that explain and justify certain actions and policies (p. 113). And even if ideal theorists do not describe their theories as depending on an essentially contestable set of values and norms, it does not follow that they deny that every justificatory account depends on its basic values. On the contrary, we know of no theorist who would deny that the nature of justice is essentially contested, and it strikes us as more or less trivially evident that any political account, however thorough in its justification, relies on values and norms. This means that any normative account in political philosophy is ideological in Goodhart’s sense.

Consequently, labeling an account ideological does not have any theoretically demanding implications. Still, it may of course serve a pedagogical function: by making explicit that all accounts are ideological in the earlier sense, the connotation of the term may help remind us that the values on which our accounts rely may always be questioned. In his book, Goodhart nicely uses this pedagogical insight to argue (or at least articulate) how those in power have “rigged the system,” how under the disguise of objective and universal values they have brought forward values and principles from which they benefit.

Another central aspect of the bifocal approach that Goodhart takes to have substantial traction is that normative claims should be treated as hypothetical rather than categorical imperatives. Treating claims as hypothetical means taking them as applying to agents conditional on their interests and goals, as opposed to norms or principles that apply to agents regardless of their actual motivations, but simply in virtue of their being moral agents. This indeed sounds like a controversial position, one that would be denied by many (ideal) theorists in political theory who take value claims in general, and justice claims in particular, to be inescapable, categorical, or absolute (the exact gloss varies). But Goodhart then continues:

In other words, in actuality the account is neutral as to whether claims are hypothetical or categorical. What matters is that we, as theorists, do not forget that our normative accounts rely on values. With different values follow different accounts. Consequently, treating all justice claims as hypothetical imperatives is what we earlier called a pedagogical point, another way of saying that justice accounts are ideological.

To our surprise, however, things change when the topic of relativism is brought up. “The most frequent and fervent objection to my approach,” Goodhart writes, “is that it invites or embraces a dangerous moral relativism” (p. 128). Given that Goodhart already has explicitly stated that he does not take a stand on the metaethical question about whether value claims are in fact categorical or even about their truth, this comment seems strange. All the more so as he, initially, reasonably answers that “nothing in my approach denies the possibility that some particular ideological perspective might be true in some moral or philosophical sense; it’s just that nothing turns on that question” (p. 128). But then he envisions a critic who would complain that his account fails to provide categorical reasons for everyone to act and replies that such a critique “presumes what my approach rejects: that there is a special moral force of which justice claims of some special kind partake—that political oughts are or somehow can be categorical” (p. 128, our emphasis). From that point onward, Goodhart seems to have forgotten his previously noncommittal stance about metaethical questions, as well as his defense against relativism charges, treating his conceptualization of justice-claims-as-hypothetical as a substantive metaethical position.

Hence, at this point, the position changes. The initial description combined the insight that all political accounts are ideological/hypothetical with claims about how certain values and their interpretations have served the powerful, to reach plausible pedagogical conclusions about how the theorist should carefully state the grounding values and norms of her account and be humble about the possibility of finding one set of universal principles. But then Goodhart forgets his prior meta-normative neutrality and makes two questionable moves.

First, by suddenly substantially endorsing norms as hypothetical imperatives, he unnecessarily invites the threat of relativism into his account. We say unnecessarily, because not only does it make his account dependent on stronger, and thus more controversial, premises but also because nothing that he is interested in hinges on whether norms are hypothetical, which he also points out in several places in the book. Goodhart’s specific critique of competing accounts for not getting the focus and scope of their theories right—such as whether ideal theory is deficient because it has no means to combat injustice—relies for its plausibility merely on substantive arguments, not meta-normative ones.

Second, and more problematic in practice, Goodhart seems to throw the baby out with the bathwater when he treats his account as eschewing justification as such. Discussing his own normative account, he emphasizes that because it treats normativity as hypothetical rather than categorical, it does not “make any attempt to justify [its] values, ideas, and interpretations” (p. 133). Following Richard Rorty, Goodhart understands philosophical justification as “the search for moral grounds or foundations” and philosophical articulation as “the formulation and expression of values, arguments, and critiques” (p. 130), and concludes that the bifocal account relies on the latter. Indeed, the emphasis in his normative account is on articulating rather than reason-giving. But it is one thing to avoid foundational normative issues—much like Rawls did in his later writings—and instead develop an account whose success or failure is tied to a premised set of values and norms; it is quite another to eschew justification within that set of values and norms. Even the most empirically informed account of justice or injustice—taking into consideration all situated knowledge that oppressed people experience—must carefully justify the choices made with regard to how to best interpret its core values and their implications. This is particularly evident for values such as freedom and equality for everyone, which largely all contemporary theorists endorse. Without a thorough justification on the entire chain of claims, a normative theory is bound to be deficient, however reasonable its core premises.