Hat hier jemand gesagt, der Kaiser sei nackt?

What (if anything) is ideological about ideal theory?

“…If ideal theories commit this idealizing assumption, this will have the effect of diverting "attention away from the dependency of some form of consciousness on a particular configuration of power" (Geuss, 2008: 53), which stabilizes certain configurations of power by making it more unlikely that critical questions will be asked. Geuss, therefore, proposes a genealogical approach as an alternative to ideal theory (and to much of nonideal theory in the liberal tradition as well) because it is less ideological and thus more critical and less prone to wishful thinking (Freyenhagen and Schaub, 2010;Geuss, 2010). Such a genealogical approach examines how our concepts have been shaped by social circumstances, interests, and relations of power, and it thus allows us to gain some critical distance from them.…”

“…It is plausible that (a) the basic concepts of political theory reflect the practical distinctions of this underlying political practice, (b) the choice of which concepts are used in political theory will have at least a minimal effect on people's political self-understanding and thus their political agency, and (c) the conceptual distinctions that are dominant in the intellectual practices of thinking about politics will have a tendency to reflect the perspectives and interests of dominant groups, or will at least be less open to conceptual challenges by subordinate groups. In particular, we must assume that subordinated groups will be subject to a range of forms of hermeneutical injustice in such societies (Fricker, 1999), meaning that they will be excluded from shaping the “hermeneutical resources” of political practice in an equal capacity.…”