This contradiction ”1. The universal right to free speech did not exist before the European Enlightenment, at which time it came into existence. 2. The universal right to free speech has always existed, but this right was recognized only at the time of the European Enlightenment.” (Searle) draws on two common and conflicting intuitions: The human right to free speech exists because institutions, or the law, says so. In contrast, the human right to free speech can exist independently of institutions—these institutions simply recognize a right we already have. John Searle argues that his status function account of human rights can preserve both intuitions by showing that the inconsistency between (1) and (2) is merely apparent. I argue that this solution works for tokens of human rights but not for types, while the contradiction concerns types. Hence, the status function account of human rights fails to preserve both intuitions.

This chapter characterizes nonideal social ontology, including a special branch of nonideal social ontology called emancipatory social ontology, by showing what influential accounts of nonideal social ontology have in common and how these features differ from the standard model of ideal social ontology. Ásta’s conferralism, Johan Brännmark’s theory of nonideal institutions, Sally Haslanger’s analyses of gender and race, and Katharine Jenkins’ work on ontic oppression are discussed as examples of nonideal social ontology. More specifically, it is argued that nonideal social ontology can overcome some of the major limitations of ideal social ontology, such as an overemphasis of collective intentionality and too little attention to oppression. More generally, characterizing nonideal social ontology is vital for understanding the paradigm shift from ideal to nonideal social ontology that is currently underway in contemporary social ontology.

This chapter characterizes ideal social ontology by developing the standard model of ideal social ontology. The standard model is exemplified by the works of Margaret Gilbert, John Searle, and Raimo Tuomela. This model thus synthesizes central assumptions from the three works that shaped the research field of ideal social ontology and shows their explicit and implicit assumptions about social reality. This standard model has a crucial implication: it has shaped what social ontologists understand the social phenomena to be analyzed to be—direct, transparent, and deontic social phenomena built on consensus. Consequently, this model offers only a partial view of the social world while claiming it is general, and it is too limited to serve as the foundation of the social sciences.

I argue that a central claim of Ásta’s conferralist framework – that it can account for all social properties of individuals – is false, by drawing attention to (opaque) class. I then discuss an implication of this objection; conferralism does not meet its own conditions of adequacy, such as providing a theory that helps to understand oppression. My diagnosis is that this objection points to a methodological problem: Ásta and other social ontologists have been fed on a “one-sided diet” of types of examples, resulting in a limited view of the paradigmatic social phenomena, thus making conferralism too narrow to fulfill its intended role.

This chapter criticizes the standard model of ideal social ontology. It provides two reasons for shifting away from this standard model. The first reason being that one essential feature of the standard model—that collective intentionality is the basic building block of social reality and a necessary condition for the existence of either all institutions or standard institutions—is false. Second, some essential features of the standard model of ideal social ontology, such as reflexivity and performativity, keep central social phenomena out of sight. Examples include economic classes, opaque social structures, and social power that is invisible to some or all members of a particular society. These phenomena belong to the first kind of social kind in Muhammad Ali Khalidi’s classification of social kinds. Consequently, the standard model of ideal social ontology makes the social world unduly narrow.