Out of Practice: Justice as Telos of Politics

Abstract: Those advocating practice-dependent approaches to political philosophy have tended to conceptualize justice as a constraint on politics—a position the author calls the "constraint model." This article instead argues that justice is a distinctive purpose or telos of politics—the "internalist model." If the internalist model is sound, justice is no more a constraint on politics than beauty is a constraint on art. The author argues that the constraint model cannot meet two challenges: It cannot distinguish the principles of justice from the requirements of political legitimacy, and it cannot explain how we can gain critical purchase on our practices without collapsing into practice-independent theory. By contrast, the internalist model is able to meet these challenges.