IDEALS: SUBSTANTIVE

    Ideals are sometimes used to make moral judgments. For example, in deciding whether you have an obligation to help your friend move into a new apartment, you might consider the ideal of loving your neighbor as yourself. This is called an ideal rule; it is ultimately unobtainable because it demands such thorough love of all those near us. Nevertheless, we can use the ideal as a way to get guidance about what should be done. Ideals tend to be vague. They do not tell us exactly what to do, but they set the proper direction, give us a sense of how far from perfect things actually are, and tell us that one action -- for example, the more loving action -- is better than another.
    For some theorists equality is a social ideal; others see perfect freedom as setting the proper political direction. Loving your neighbor, equality, and freedom are substantive ideals. A substantive ideal tells us, in broad terms, what we should be attempting to achieve. It gives us a goal, a telos, to keep in mind. Even though it may be unattainable, we do have some idea what a perfectly equal society would be like. Our understanding of equality, freedom, and love could have some guiding effect on our actions, even though the goal is elusive.
    We may use a moral ideal to make judgments about the sorts of actions, virtues, practices and institutions, that bring us closer to the ideal outcome. For example, in choosing from among alternative paths of action, a moral ideal instructs us to select the action that helps to bring our reality into better conformity with the ideal. Since helping our friend is more loving than going about our own business, helping the friend moves the world toward being a more loving place.
    Of course, in the non-ideal world many circumstances, including moral obligations, may keep up from using a moral ideal as a way to gain guidance about morally proper actions.