Moral ideals are not like principles or rules. Instead they indicate what things would be like under perfect, or extraordinarily good, conditions. Perfect or near perfect conditions probably will never exist. In fact, if we begin to approach a situation thought to be utopian, we will either drop, or redefine, our ideal as an ideal. After the four-minute mile became more common, it ceased to be held as an ideal. An ideal in current use has a suggestion of unattainability.
    Moral ideals are sometimes the full expression of more ordinary basic values. Some moral ideals, like ideal freedom, justice, and welfare, have initial statements that are not utopian. We can live in a society that supports envelopes of security, or horizons of freedom -- domains where we can do whatever wish -- without living in a fully free society. Freedom in its full sense, including full positive freedom, is a moral ideal, while having this or that freedom is something that can be called for in a moral principle or rule.
    Moral ideals may also be expressed by descriptions of the ideal life, the ideal society, the ideal teacher, or the ideal parent. As ideals, the described states are unattainable, but they are valuable as models and as goals toward which we may move. In distinction, moral exemplars are typically thought to be attainable. They are actual examples of someone or something that is considered especially morally good, perhaps a person we should in some way imitate.