Nonideal Ethics

EDUARDO RIVERA LÓPEZ

International Encyclopedia of Ethics. Second edition

Wiley-Blackwell

Año: 2017;

Our world is far from ideal: people kill, steal, and harm others; governments initiate unjust wars; material resources are sometimes scarce or unjustly distributed; and millions of people suffer extreme deprivation from social or natural causes. Any adequate moral theory should be sensitive to these unfortunate facts. Given these actual deficiencies, it seems obvious that the best, or most appropriate, actions, rules, and institutions in this nonideal world need to take these into account and would thereby differ from what they would be in an ideal world. I briefly delineate some problems that ethics and political philosophy face when dealing with imperfect moral agents and institutions.[Se trata de una versión actualizada de la misma entrada, publicada en 2013, para la segunda edición de la Enciclopedia]