The Role of the Unrealisable: Study in Regulative Ideals.

There are certain ideals that will never be realized yet play an important role in people's thinking, morality and politics: the final truth, the good, the general will and certain religious ideals.

People's attempts to get closer to them influence what they do and inform the criticism of what is rejected.

The book looks at the role of such ideals by taking Kant's concept of the regulative ideal.

Other thinkers considered in relation to this range from Plato to Iris Murdoch.

Dorothy Emmet is the author of "The Passage of Nature".