Friedrich, Jasper: Ideal Theory as Fetishism

_Political Philosophy_ 3 (1):79-108. 2026This paper revisits the debate on ideal and nonideal theory by taking seriously Charles Mills’s suggestion that it should be understood as a dispute between idealism and materialism. I argue that by understanding different sides of the debates as relying on idealist or materialist assumptions, respectively, we can better make sense of disagreements where theorists otherwise seem to be talking past each other. In addition, I claim that the materialist obje