The phrase “realistic utopia” is used by Rawls in his later work to contrast his view with conceptions, which are “utopian in the pejorative sense” or “unrealistic” (JF 188). This is the case, for instance, of his own “unrealistic” “idea of a well-ordered society by justice as fairness” and of “the account of stability in Part iii of TJ” (PL xix). On the other hand, Rawls rejects mere political realism and, quoting Rousseau, wants to “take men as they are and laws as they might be” (LP 7; LHPP 193, 207).

The expression has three main occurrences. First, it applies to political philosophy and its ambitions as Rawls sees them (JF 4–5; LHPP 10–11; PL 45). Second, and more importantly, it applies to the possibility of reaching an overlapping consensus on a public conception of justice (PL 133–172; JF §58). Third, it applies to the possibility of a reasonably just Society of Peoples (LP 127).

Political philosophy is “realistically utopian” (JF 4–5; LP 4 and §§1, 5–6, 7–11, 124) in the sense that it should try “not to withdraw from society and the world” (PL 45), but to reconcile us with our social world (LP 124; JF 3–4), to strike a balance between ideals and facts, between “the real and the rational,” to use Hegel’s phrase (JF 3).