Every problem of dirty hands is a moral conflict in which a highly unpalatable course of conduct is chosen for the sake of fulfilling a stringent moral duty, and in which either the chosen course of conduct is evil or else it would have been evil in the absence of the exigent circumstances to which it is a response. To support this conception of problems of dirty hands, this paper endeavors to elucidate the nature of moral (...) conflicts and the nature of evil. (shrink)

This understanding of dirty hands should dispell the air of paradox so often associated with it. Dirty hands is a genuine moral problem, but not a conceptual one. The temptation to see it as a conceptual one arises from a hasty acceptance of these assumptions:Moral criticism is appropriate if and only if we can always do what is right. If we cannot do X or avoid doing Y, we cannot be criticized for failing to do X (...) or for doing Y.We are always free to avoid moral compromise since goodness is a matter of having the will to do what is right.We are morally compromised if and only if we either intentionally do what is wrong, or if we do what is right for the wrong reasons.As a general description of conscientiousness, these conditions are uncontroversial. However, conscientiousness does not exhaust the moral realm. The problem with the individuals in the cases above is not that they are guilty of being unconscientious. They are conscientious and still cannot avoid dirtying themselves.The Kantian aspiration to render ourselves invulnerable to moral compromise is well-intentioned and deserves our respect insofar as it alerts us to the importance of struggling with courage and imagination against evil. But to the extent that it rejects or ignores the possibility of moral tragedy, the Kantian conception paints too optimistic and artificial a picture of the human condition. We are complicated creatures with diverse and often conflicting ethical loves. Rigging our ethical theories to eliminate such conflicts does nothing to change life as real-life moral agents experience it. As with any kind of theory, we need to be careful about unwittingly deforming the world in order to make it conform to the beloved castles we so often build in the air. (shrink)

This thesis explores the concept of dirty hands in democracies. It argues that dirty hands are instances of moral conflicts in which some of our core moral values and commitments clash. Accepting the existence of such a clash, contrary to what some critics have argued, does not have to be irrational and we can make sense of this phenomenon irrespective of the wider beliefs about the nature of rational moral judgement that we hold. The thesis goes (...) on to defend the view that getting one’s hands dirty results in a moral remainder that can best be described as “tragic-remorse”. Experiencing this emotional response, it is argued, fulfils important functions because it helps the agent understand what is morally required in the situation, ensures that they deliberate in the right way, and makes their behaviour intelligible to others. The thesis then goes on to argue that being confronted with a dirty hands conflict is particularly pernicious because, once faced with such a situation, it is impossible to keep our hands clean. Dirty hands therefore point us towards morality’s tragic nature. The thesis then questions what this means for democratic politics. It rejects criticisms that dirty hands can, neither in theory nor in practice, be compatible with democratic politics. If dirty-handed measures can indeed be a part of democratic politics, we should then ask who gets their hands dirty and can share the moral responsibility for the dirty-handed outcome. The thesis emphasises that political leaders do not share this burden alone. They act in a complicated web of relations with other politicians and public officials and many of them will get their hands dirty as well. Additionally, it is argued, to the extent that citizens voluntarily participate in or contribute to a given dirty-handed decision or the wider democratic process, they will also share some of the dirt and moral responsibility for what their politicians do for them and in their name. The thesis concludes by arguing that dirty hands in democratic politics are not borne by a single political leader acting alone, but are shared by many in the polity. (shrink)

This paper argues that the reason why political leadership often involves dirty hands is because of its relationship with violence. To make the case, it maintains that violent means create and assert a form of dominating power that is in tension with the proper ends of political action. This power casts a wide shadow, frequently dominating large numbers of non-targets and empowering unscrupulous agents. On the other side of the balance, characteristically political justifications for violence are ‘supra-moral,’ meaning (...) that they are motivated by the value of a conception of morality taken as a whole (or, indeed, morality as such) rather than by any particular moral value. The weight that ought to be given to such ends is indeterminate in a way that makes uncancelled remainders arising from the evil of violence likely in many cases. (shrink)

According to one understanding of the problem of dirty hands, every case of dirty hands is an instance of moral conflict, but not every instance of moral conflict is a case of dirty hands. So, what sets the two apart? The dirty hands literature has offered widely different answers to this question but there has been relatively little discussion about their relative merits as well as challenges. In this paper I evaluate these (...) different accounts by making clear which understanding of concept distinctness underlies them and which of them is, ultimately, the most plausible one in the case of dirty hands and ordinary moral conflict. In order to do so, I will borrow from the terminology employed in recent debates in the philosophy of evil which have tackled a similar problem to the one at hand, i.e. defining what sets evil apart from ordinary wrongdoing. Here it has been argued that concepts could be distinct in three ways: they can have a quantitative difference, a strong qualitative or a moderate qualitative difference. I conclude that the most convincing definition of dirty hands draws a moderate qualitative distinction between ordinary moral conflict according to which dirty hands are those moral conflicts that involve a serious violation or betrayal of a core moral value. (shrink)

Traditional articulations of the conception of dirty hands, as the doing of wrong in order to do right, invite construals of the issues raised thereby as mired in conceptual confusions and inconsistencies, and moreover as generating unproductive discussions of the scope of the proposed notion itself. The status of the concept of dirty hands is thus precarious, in spite of its provenance in the work of political thinkers such as Machiavelli. This essay articulates one nonparadoxical conception (...) of dirty hands, as the uncomfortable phenomenology of agents authorized to act on behalf of others, when they are called upon to do things that, while morally correct, are also personally or morally distasteful. The key point is that the dirt of action remains on these agents’ hands, even if moral responsibility for the relevant actions should be conceived as falling on the persons in whose name they take the said action. This articulation opens up for investigation questions about the phenomenology of authorized agency, as well as the moral labor involved in leadership and in other contexts of authorized distasteful action. These are questions of social ontology. Here there is important philosophical work that remains to be done. (shrink)

Neither the apparently cold-blooded murder of a complete stranger, the central event in The Stranger, nor Hugo's murder of Hoederer in Dirty Hands—a political assassination or crime of passion, depending on how one views it—can be considered unusual acts, in literature or in life. The topic of murder has itself created an extremely popular genre: the detective novel or "whodunit," which has become a huge industry and has aficionados everywhere, Sartre being one. In French theater, the topic of (...) political assassination has resulted in such famous plays as de Musset's Lorenzaccio (1834), which ostensibly deals with Florence in the sixteenth century and the tyrannical Alexandre de Médicis, who is assassinated by his young cousin, but is in fact "a limpid transposition of the failed revolution of July 1830." It is well known that Sartre was an admirer of Musset and Romantic theater. In 1946, Jean Cocteau, who helped with the staging of Les Mains sales (Dirty Hands), wrote L'Aigle ` deux têtes (The Two-Headed Eagle), which was inspired "by the sad life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria and her tragic death by the hand of the Franco-Italian assassin, Luigi Lucheni." Sartre himself, in Nausea, has Anny use the engraving in Michelet's Histoire de France depicting the assassination of the Duke de Guise as a perfect illustration of "privileged situations.". (shrink)

Moral injury describes the effects of violence on veterans beyond what trauma discourse can describe. I put moral injury in conversation with a separate but related concept, dirty hands. Focusing on Michael Walzer's framing of dirty hands and Jonathan Shay's understanding of moral injury, I argue that moral injury can be seen as part of the dirt of a political leader's dirty hands decisions. Such comparison can focus more attention on the broader institutional context (...) in which such dirty hands decisions are executed, while contributing to the growing vocabulary of moral conflict, trauma, and harm. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: A Problem in Applied Ethics or Ethical Theory? Opportunity Costs, Compromise, and Political Action The Conflict of Consequences and Principles Dirty Hands as a Dilemma Dirty Hands and Vice Dirty Hands as Coerced Betrayal Resulting from Evil Projects Conclusion.

This essay examines how Michael Walzer and Dietrich Bonhoeffer understand practical moral dilemmas—what Walzer calls the problem of dirty hands—and how both conceive of the solution to the problem in terms of the concept of judgment. Walzer's judgment is strictly political, and tragic; Bonhoeffer's retains this political account but grounds it theologically, so as to overcome its finally tragic element.

Contra the prevalent way of thinking about the dirty-hands problem, this article suggests that dirty hands need not necessarily entail suffering and that a politician who does not suffer for his dirty-handed acts should not be cast as a bad politician. In so doing, the article: argues that the connection between DH and suffering is unsatisfactorily totalising and rests on a contentious conception of conflict as a dysfunction and develops an alternative account of the good (...) dirty-handed politician, which is associated with what proponents of the prevalent view of the problem find impossible: calm acceptance of – even indulgence in – one’s dirt. This recognition has important implications for our contemporary culture of contrition and for the way we evaluate the characters of our politicians. (shrink)

How do the hard facts of political responsibility shape and constrain the demands of ethical life? That question lies at the heart of the problem of 'dirty hands' in public life. Those who exercise political power often feel they must act in ways that would otherwise be considered immoral: indeed, paradoxically, they sometimes feel that it would be immoral of them not to perform or condone such acts as killing or lying. John Parrish offers a wide-ranging account of (...) how this important philosophical problem emerged and developed, tracing it - and its proposed solutions - from ancient Greece through the Enlightenment. His central argument is that many of our most familiar concepts and institutions - from Augustine's interiorised ethics, to Hobbes's sovereign state, to Adam Smith's 'invisible hand', understanding of the modern commercial economy - were designed partly as responses to the ethical problem of dirty hands in public life. (shrink)

The period known as the “War on Terror” has prompted a revival of interest in the idea of moral dilemmas and the problem of “dirty hands” in public life. Some contend that a policy of targeted killing of terrorist actors is (under specified but not uncommon circumstances) an instance of a dirty-handed moral dilemma – morally required yet morally forbidden, the least evil choice available in the circumstances, but one that nevertheless leaves an indelible moral stain on (...) the character of the person who makes the choice. In this chapter we argue that, while dirty hands situations do exist as a persistent problem of political life, it is generally a mistake to classify policies of target killing (such as the current US policy) as examples of dirty hands. Instead, we maintain, such policies, if justified at all, must ordinarily be justified under the more exacting standards of just war theory and its provisions for justified killing – in particular the requirement that (with limited and defined exceptions) non-combatants be immune from intentional violence. Understanding this distinction both clarifies the significance of dirty hands as a moral phenomenon and also forestalls a set of predictable and all-too-easy appropriations of the concept to domains it was never intended to address. (shrink)

‘It is necessary to a Prince to learn how not to be good’. This quotation from Machiavelli’s The Prince has become the mantra of the standard dirty hands thesis. Despite its infamy, it features proudly in most conventional expositions of the dirty hands problem, including Michael Walzer’s original analysis. In this paper, I wish to cast a doubt as to whether the standard conception of the problem of DH—the recognition that, in certain inescapable and tragic circumstances (...) an innocent course of action is unfeasible—fully captures Machiavelli’s message and its terrifying implications. In particular, I argue that the standard DH thesis is inadequately ‘static’: it conceives the conflict between ordinary morality and political morality as a stark, momentary and rare paradox of action—an anomaly disrupting the normality of harmony. As such it misconceives both the extent and the nature of the rupture between morality and politics. In this sense, the argument I shall advance does just involve an exercise in the history of political thought. Rather, I want to suggest that, by virtue of its failure to take Machiavelli’s insights seriously, the standard DH thesis fails to live up to its purported capacity to capture the complexity and fragmentation of our moral cosmos and that, consequently, it is nothing more than a thinly veiled version of the idealism and monism it purports to reject. (shrink)

Using five different child–sacrifice cases, I argue that the relationship between the ethics of care and the ethics of justice is not that one is wholly right while the other is morally wrong or irrelevant, or that one somehow has priority over the other, or that one is supererogatory while the other is required, or that one is a role ethic while the other is a real ethic, or that they are equivalent. Instead, I propose that the ethics of justice (...) and care are simply descriptions of the virtues of justice and care, understood richly and broadly. Each prescribes perceptions, values, self–conceptions, etc. as well as actions and passions in every sphere of human life. Like other actual (rather than idealized) virtues, justice and care sometimes conflict with each other. They demand incompatible actions, passions, perceptions, etc. The available options in conflict situations feel both right and wrong because they are admirably immoral acts and/or dirty hands acts. I argue that these conflicts do not undermine the primacy, practicality or consistency of morality. (shrink)

The example of a political leader who has to decide whether he would allow the torture of a suspect in order to get information about a ticking bomb has become notorious in ethical discussions concerning the tension between moral principles and political necessity. The relation between these notions must be made as clear as possible before a sincere moral evaluation of ticking bomb situations can be given. The first section of this article considers whether the concept of political obligation is (...) different from moral and legal obligations or whether it is a special kind of moral obligation. In the second section, the idea that the dirty hands problem confronts us with the ambiguities of moral life is rejected because it would imply an untenable moral paradox. The thesis that is developed is, namely, if there is such a thing as political necessity, it must be some form of moral obligation. The third section analyses the concept of political necessity and concludes that it cannot overrule basic moral principles and that the international legal prohibition of torture must be considered to be a categorical imperative. In the last section, these ideas concerning political and moral necessity are brought in against the defence of torture, which should be tolerated in the ‘War on Terror’. There it will be argued that the use of the ticking bomb argument not only supports a highly hypocrite political practice but is also deceptive as a moral and political argument. (shrink)

In this article, I undertake three main tasks. First, I argue that, contrary to the standard view, moral injury is not a species of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) but rather, on the most coherent conception of moral injury, PTSD is (in effect) a species of moral injury. In doing so, I make use of the notion of caring deeply about something or someone worthy of being cared deeply about. Second, I consider so-called “dirty hands” actions in police work (...) and in war, and distinguish these from the morally legitimate, but harmful, actions of police officers and of war fighters, such as the morally legitimate use of coercive force and lethal force (respectively). While the morally legitimate use of harmful methods is constitutive of these occupational roles, “dirty hands” methods are not. Roughly speaking, a “dirty hands” action is one that is morally wrong and (typically) unlawful but done for the sake of a good outcome. Both categories of action are conducive to moral injury, but “dirty hands” actions much more so, especially given the slippery moral slope from “dirty hands” actions to egregious moral wrongdoing. Third, I offer some recommendations for reducing moral injury among police officers and war fighters. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:'0". J.~·VleWS GETTING ONE'S HANDS DIRTY; OR, PRACTISING WHAT YOU TEACH DAVID HARLEY Finlayson House, 40 Dumfries Street Paris, Ont., Canada N3L 2c8 Brian Patrick Hendley.. Dewey, Russell, Whitehead: Philosophers as Educators. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois U. P., 1986. Pp. xxi, 177· US$19.95; paper $9·95· B rian Hendley's book is more than a well-written account of three eminent philosophers who wrote about and participated in educational (...) theory and reform. The author has in fact selected Dewey, Russell and Whitehead as three stallions to draw a chariot. The precise nature of this "chariot" is indicated in the chapter entitled "The Philosopher as Educator Today" appearing at the end of the book: My intention throughout has been to suggest a way out of the current impasse in the philosophy ofeducation by reopening a conversation regarding a more productive role for philosophers to play, rather than merely analyzing concepts and policing arguments. My claim has been that philosophers of education can learn from their past, that we can see in Dewey, Russell and Whitehead instances of a productive approach to educational problems through thought and action. (P. 105) Having said this, the structure and contents of Hendley's book fall squarely into place. Chapter One, entitled "The Reconstruction of the Philosophy of Education", argues that there is a crisis in the current state of educational philosophy. The ensuing three chapters are devoted individually to Dewey, Russell and Whitehead. The concluding chapter, resting upon the strength of the examples given of three constructive contributors to the field, suggests new directions for the philosophy of education. It is clear that Hendley's book is more than an interesting account of the practical and theoretical educational activities of three of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. Dewey, Russell and Whitehead are not gathered together between the. same covers in order to explore or present a detailed analysis of their theoretical similarities or who may have influenced Reviews 219 whom. Instead, one gathers that the author has selected them on the basis of his own admiration and preference rather than for any shared theories which connect them. The point is made, however, that the strongest common element, and the most significant one, is that each man had ideas about education, each was a philosopher, and each attempted to exert some practical influence upon the educational institutions and practices of the day. In short, Dewey, Russell and Whitehead were theorists who were prepared to get their hands dirty. Hendley argues that after the death of John Dewey in 1952 educational philosophy was neglected and· philosophers tended to pay less attention to education. The author goes on to suggest some renewed interest in the field on the grounds of contributions made to the fifty-fourth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education in 1955 under the theme "Modern Philosophies and Education", a special issue of the Harvard Education Review published in 1956; the publication of Israel Scheffler's edited collection of readings entitled Philosophy and Education in 1958; and R. S. Peters' Inaugural Address given at London in 1963, and his publication of Ethics and Education in 1966. According to this argument, we witness a general lapse after the death of Dewey, a rekindling in the mid-1950S and a broader resurgence in the 1960s. On the basis of the author's own account, I think that it is very difficult to argue that Dewey's death initiated any period of calm or disinterestedness. Furthermore, it is very problematic to point to various yearbooks or publications as indicators. The point is that with the death of Dewey there were numerous contenders to fill his position as the pre-eminent American philosopher of education. The extent to which anyone has been able to do so is a different matter. What I believe Hendley is really trying to say here is implicit in his argument, namely, that after the death of Dewey, no philosopher of equal stature took his place. The reason why no candidate equal to the task emerged is also suggested by the author. Dewey, Russell and Whitehead are to be admired because they had the... (shrink)

This paper outlines and defends a notion of tragic-remorse. This moral emotion properly accompanies those actions that involve unavoidable moral wrongdoing in general and dirty hands scenarios in particular. Tragic-remorse differs both phenomenologically and conceptually from regret, agent-regret and remorse. By recognising the existence of tragic-remorse, we are better able to account for our complex moral reality which at times makes it necessary for good persons to act in ways that although justified leave the agent with a moral (...) stain and a particular emotional response. (shrink)

Accepted standards of parental decisional autonomy and child best interests do not address adequately the complex moral problems involved in the care of critically ill children. A growing body of moral discourse is calling for the recognition of `tragedy' in selected human problems. A tragic dilemma is an irresolvable dilemma with forced terrible alternatives, where even the virtuous agent inescapably emerges with `dirty hands'. The shift in moral framework described here recognizes that the form of conduct called for (...) by tragic dilemmas is the practice of phronesis. The phronetic agent has acquired a capacity to discern good agency in tragic circumstances. This discernment is practiced through the artful creation of moral narratives: stories that convey that which is morally meaningful in a particular situation; that is, stories that are `meaning making'. The phronetic agent addresses tragic dilemmas involving children as a narrator of contextualized temporal embodied human (counter)stories. (shrink)

I examine the problem of dirty hands, suggesting that there is a possibility for the individual decision-maker to do bad to achieve good consequences. According to Consequentialism, because the consequences are what counts in morality, then there seems to be no phenomenon of dirty hands. I will first present what Jean-Paul Sartre meant by the problem of dirty hands, after which I will describe how contemporary philosophers have identified that problem. Finally, I will argue (...) that Consequentialism does not negate the phenomenon of dirty hands on the grounds that consequences determine the ethical nature of action. Statements of “good” “bad”, or “the best” consequences are subjective and ambiguous in which case the phenomenon of dirty hands exists. Thus, action that produces positive consequences may not be morally justified. (shrink)

This paper argues that the dirty hands literature has overlooked a crucial distinction in neglecting to discuss explicitly the issue of, what I call, symmetry. This is the question of whether, once we are confronted with a dirty hands situation, we could emerge with our hands clean depending on the action we choose. A position that argues that we can keep our hands clean I call “asymmetrical” and one that says that we will get (...) our hands dirty no matter what we do I call “symmetrical”. Not acknowledging this distinction is a problem because, firstly, it adds to the existing confusions about how best to define what dirty hands are. Secondly, it prevents the concept of dirty hands from being applied properly to other contexts such as, for example, the responsibility and accountability of politicians. I argue that we have good reason to favour a symmetrical understanding because it gives a more convincing account of what makes an action dirty and because it more accurately captures our complex moral decision-making when faced with dirty hands situations. The paper concludes by outlining possible implications that the distinction between the symmetry view and the asymmetry view has on wider debates surrounding the problem of dirty hands. (shrink)

This paper outlines and defends a notion of ‘tragic-remorse’. This moral emotion properly accompanies those actions that involve unavoidable moral wrongdoing in general and dirty hands scenarios in particular. Tragic-remorse differs both phenomenologically and conceptually from regret, agent-regret and remorse. By recognising the existence of tragic-remorse, we are better able to account for our complex moral reality which at times makes it necessary for good persons to act in ways that although justified leave the agent with a moral (...) stain and a particular emotional response. (shrink)

This article discusses gift authorship, the practice where co-authorship is awarded to a person who has not contributed significantly to the study. From an ethical point of view, gift authorship raises concerns about desert, fairness, honesty and transparency, and its prevalence in research is rightly considered a serious ethical concern. We argue that even though misuse of authorship is always bad, there are instances where accepting requests of gift authorship may nevertheless be the right thing to do. More specifically, we (...) propose that researchers may find themselves in a situation much similar to the problem of dirty hands, which has been frequently discussed in political philosophy and applied ethics. The problem of dirty hands is relevant to what we call hostage authorship, where the researchers include undeserving authors unwillingly, and only because they find it unavoidable in order to accomplish a morally important research goal. (shrink)

The alleged problem of the dirty hands of politicians has been much discussed since Michael Walzer’s original piece (Walzer 1974). The discussion has concerned the precise nature of the problem or sought to dissolve the apparent paradox. However there has been little discussion of the putative complicity, and thus also dirtying of hands, of a democratic public that authorizes politicians to act in its name. This article outlines the sense in which politicians do get dirty (...) class='Hi'>hands and the degree to which a democratic public may also get dirty hands. It separates the questions of secrecy, authorisation, and wrongfulness in order to spell out the extent of public complicity. Finally it addresses the ways in which those who do and those who do not acknowledge the problem of dirty hands erroneously discount or deny the problem of complicity by an appeal to the nature of democracy, a putatively essential need for political openness or to the scope of ideal theory. (shrink)

This essay locates the problem of dirty hands within virtue ethics – specifically Alasdair MacIntyre’s neo-Aristotelian thesis in After Virtue. It demonstrates that, contra contemporary expositions of this problem, MacIntyre’s thesis provides us with a more nuanced account of tragedy and DH in ordinary life, in its conventional understanding as a stark, rare and momentary conflict in which moral wrongdoing is inescapable. The essay then utilizes elements from MacIntyre’s thesis as a theoretical premise for Machiavelli’s thought so as (...) to set the foundations for a nascent but richer framework of DH in politics and move beyond the standard, ‘static’ conceptualization of the problem within this context. In developing a dynamic account of DH, I conceive of politics as a distinct practice and way of life, with its own demands and standards of excellence, and draw on Machiavelli’s thought to sketch some of these. The dynamic account uncovers an inexhaustible tension between two ways of life, each with its own demands and standards of excellence: a virtuous politician should become partially vicious and no longer innocent. Understood in dynamic terms, DH in politics involves a paradox of character, not just a paradox of action as the standard, ‘static’ DH thesis suggests. (shrink)

This chapter introduces the Special Issue and offers an overview of the corpus of work on the topic since the publication of Michael Walzer’s seminal article, ‘Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands’.

Contemporary philosopher Michael Walzer described the Problem of Dirty Hands as the choice between achieving a morally good end by violating one's own moral principles and sticking to one's moral principles without achieving this end. Walzer specifically explored this problem in the context of someone in the position of political power who can make a significant impact on the greater good but only through performing morally problematic deeds. In the 2016 film Doctor Strange, there are three characters who (...) see themselves as presented with this problem: the Ancient One, Kaecilius, and Doctor Stephen Strange himself. Of the three characters we've considered, the Ancient One most obviously faced the Problem of Dirty Hands. Dark magic is one of those things that are so dangerous that they're simply forbidden, even by the most adept of users, such as the Ancient One. (shrink)

Coady explores the challenges that morality poses to politics. He confronts the complex intellectual tradition known as realism, which seems to deny any relevance of morality to politics, especially international politics. He argues that, although realism has many serious faults, it has lessons to teach us: in particular, it cautions us against the dangers of moralism in thinking about politics and particularly foreign affairs. Morality must not be confused with moralism: Coady characterizes various forms of moralism and sketches their distorting (...) influence on a realistic political morality. He seeks to restore the concept of ideals to an important place in philosophical discussion, and to give it a particular pertinence in the discussion of politics. He deals with the fashionable idea of "dirty hands," according to which good politics will necessarily involve some degree of moral taint or corruption. Finally, he examines the controversial issue of the role of lying and deception in politics. Along the way Coady offers illuminating discussion of historical and current political controversies. This lucid book will provoke and stimulate anyone interested in the interface of morality and politics. (shrink)

H.L.A. Hart’s lost and found essay ‘Discretion’ has provided new insight into the issue of how legal systems can cope with indeterminacy in the law. The so-called ‘open texture’ of law calls for the exercise of judicial discretion, which, I argue, renders judges susceptible to the problem of dirty hands. To show this, I frame the problem as being open to an array of appropriate emotional responses, namely, various senses of guilt. With these responses in mind, I revise (...) an example from Michael Walzer’s original analysis in a way that highlights purely personal sacrifices in solutions to dirty hands situations. I then turn to an account of moral emotions in legal decision-making and show how judges—in failing to advance all interests—might be left with a unique sense of guilt. With an application of this account to Hart’s legal positivism, it can be seen that a judge’s hands are often dirtied in resolving borderline cases. If discretion leaves judges in situations where they must do wrong in order to do right, Hart’s endorsement of a closure view of wrongdoing will lead to difficulties in how he can explain the presence of moral remainders in jurisprudence. (shrink)

In his classic essay “Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands,” Michael Walzer claims that “the dilemma of dirty hands is a central feature of political life, that it arises not merely as an occasional crisis in the career of this or that unlucky politician but systematically and frequently.”1 Defining the dilemma of dirty hands as a generic problem inherent in political life, Walzer then turns to Machiavelli’s provocative statement that a ruler must “learn (...) to be able not to be good,”2 yet without subscribing to the Machiavellian severance of morals from politics. That is, while knowing what the moral good is or what makes a good man, a ruler must be able to violate the good in order to achieve some morally.. (shrink)

Dirty hands cases are often seen as a crucial challenge for political ethics. Michael Walzer’s analysis of dirty hands cases has been especially influential. On closer inspection, however, Walzer’s analysis contains some serious flaws. This article examines how and to what extent the political ethics of Paul Ricoeur can remedy the problems in Walzer’s approach. It is shown that Ricoeur’s approach can offer a better understanding of what is at stake in dilemmas in political action and (...) that it can provide guidance for dealing with such issues. Ricoeur’s analysis, furthermore, provides the foundation for a more critical political ethics than Walzer can offer. (shrink)

The problem of “dirty hands” has become an important term, indeed one of the most important terms of reference, in contemporary academic scholarship on the issue of torture. The aim of this essay is to offer a better understanding of this problem. Firstly, it is argued that the problem of “dirty hands” can play neither within rule-utilitarianism nor within absolutism. Still, however, the problem of “dirty hands” represents an acute, seemingly irresolvable, conflict within morality, (...) with the moral agent understood, following Nagel, as necessarily holding mixed, absolutist-consequentialist moral intuitions, pulling in opposite directions. Secondly, a distinction is drawn between real situations of “dirty hands,” and other conflictual scenarios, which are commonly, but unjustifiably placed under the metaphorical title of “dirty hands.” Finally, it is suggested - utilizing Nagel’s own ideas, as developed in his later work, and Sen’s notion of evaluator relativity—that the moral “blind alley” manifested in the problem of “dirty hands” may not be totally blind after all, at least from the situated agent’s own internal point of view (as opposed to that of an external observer trying to put herself in the agent’s position by way of moral simulation). Thus, contrary to Walzer’s approach, it is possible for a person (politician) acting in a situation of “dirty hands,” not to believe herself to be guilty, but still be a moral person. (shrink)

This paper considers three arguments by David Shugarman and Maureen Ramsay for why dirty hands cannot be democratic. The first argues that it is contradictory, in principle, to use undemocratic means to pursue democratic ends. There is a conceptual connection between means and ends such that getting one’s hands dirty is incompatible with acting in accordance with democratic ends. The second claims that using dirty-handed means, in practice, will undermine democracy more than it promotes it (...) and therefore cannot be justified. The final criticism states that politicians with dirty hands are a sign that politics is no longer meeting the criteria necessary to be called democratic. The paper shows that such rejections of democratic dirty hands are based on misunderstandings of the nature of dirty hands and democratic politics. (shrink)

We studied the role of social dynamics in moral decision-making and behavior by investigating how physical sensations of dirtiness versus cleanliness influence moral behavior in leader–subordinate relationships, and whether a leader’s self-interest functions as a boundary condition to this effect. A pilot study (N = 78) revealed that when participants imagined rewarding (vs. punishing) unethical behavior of a subordinate, they felt more dirty. Our main experiment (N = 96) showed that directly manipulating dirtiness by allowing leaders to touch a (...) dirty object (fake poop) led to more positive evaluations of, and higher bonuses for, unethical subordinates than touching a clean object (hygienic hand wipe). This effect, however, only emerged when the subordinate’s unethical behavior did not serve the leader’s own interest. Hence, subtle cues such as bodily sensations can shape moral decision-making and behavior in leader–subordinate relationships, but self-interest, as a core characteristic of interdependence, can override the influence of such cues on the leader’s moral behavior. (shrink)

The article connects the debates surrounding the problem of dirty hands with those regarding collective responsibility, mainly via René Girard’s scapegoat mechanism and his view on mimetic violence. By virtue of the distinction between group intentions and individual pre‐reflective intentions, the article will explore the notion that groups are morally responsible for acts accomplished with dirty hands, and whether individual participants in group actions are also responsible. Moreover, the article introduces a reflection on the collective shame (...) of a larger community for what only a small group has done in its name. In a religious framework of thought, both the idea of a limited individual responsibility and that of collective guilt are valuable for furthering the dialogue on religious reconciliation. (shrink)

‘Dirty hands’ scenarios require politicians to commit moral violations to achieve worthwhile goals. To mitigate the harm done to the fiduciary relationship underlying a democratic society, I argue for the adoption of two procedures: retrospective accountability and special oversight committees. I also offer three criteria for a much-required political ethic.

The experience of ‘moral distress’ is an increasing focal point of contemporary medical and bioethics literature, yet it has received little attention in discussions intersecting with ethical theory. This is unfortunate, as it seems that the peculiar phenomenon may well help us to better understand a number of issues bearing both practical and theoretical significance. In this article, I provide a robust psychological profile of moral distress in order to shed a newfound light upon the longstanding problem of ‘dirty (...) hands’. I argue that moral distress offers evidence of the existence of dirty hands situations. By examining moral distress and its relationship to cases of dirty hands, it appears that few of us are completely immune to susceptibility to these sorts of troubling experiences. With this concern in mind, I provide various recommendations to help alleviate our morally distressing personal and professional lives. (shrink)

In this paper, a number of lines of argument buttress and support the contention that Dirty Hands is a comparatively undervalued part of the Sartrean oeuvre. Using commentary from Bell and Pellauer, and employing categories relevant also to the work of Beauvoir and Camus, the paper comes to the conclusion that Hugo, as the central character of the play, is an exemplary Sartrean protagonist, and that the play is worthy of more attention than it has received. An important (...) part of the central assertion is that the play is as critical a part of the Sartrean dramatic canon as The Flies and No Exit. (shrink)

Should those who get dirty hands be punished? There is strong disagreement among even those who support the existence of such scenarios. The problem arises because the paradoxical nature of dirty hands - doing wrong to do right - renders the standard normative justifications for punishment unfit for purpose. The Consequentialist, Retributivist and Communicative approaches cannot accommodate the idea that an action can be right, all things considered, but nevertheless also a categorical wrong. This paper argues (...) that punishment is indeed appropriate for those who dirty their hands and that there are three normative justifications that can be used to support this claim. These are the justifications from ‘Catharsis’, ‘Recognition of Evil Suffered’ and ‘Causal Responsibility’. Together they provide the sui generis justifications for punishing dirty hands. (shrink)

Organisational politics can raise the problem of “dirty hands,” illustrated in this paper by an example drawn from a textbook on organisation theory. The initial question is whether the main character has different ethical and political obligations, but this leads on to the question to what extent we can distinguish various different categories of obligation. The example may be of special interest because of the importance of close personal relationship in organisational politics, which brings the dirty (...) class='Hi'>hands problem together with the question to what extent friendships generate distinctive obligations. However, it is doubtful whether the allocation of obligations to different categories can be sustained in a useful way. It may be that we can put aside loyalty to an organisation, as a consideration which does not generate any distinctive obligation, but balancing other factors against one another may require the sort of judgment that has sometimes been called “political wisdom,” and sometimes “moral imagination.”. (shrink)

We studied the role of social dynamics in moral decision-making and behavior by investigating how physical sensations of dirtiness versus cleanliness influence moral behavior in leader–subordinate relationships, and whether a leader’s self-interest functions as a boundary condition to this effect. A pilot study revealed that when participants imagined rewarding unethical behavior of a subordinate, they felt more dirty. Our main experiment showed that directly manipulating dirtiness by allowing leaders to touch a dirty object led to more positive evaluations (...) of, and higher bonuses for, unethical subordinates than touching a clean object. This effect, however, only emerged when the subordinate’s unethical behavior did not serve the leader’s own interest. Hence, subtle cues such as bodily sensations can shape moral decision-making and behavior in leader–subordinate relationships, but self-interest, as a core characteristic of interdependence, can override the influence of such cues on the leader’s moral behavior. (shrink)

Garrett assesses the morality of leaders' political choices. Does the nature of leadership force us to tolerate or even accept marginally moral acts? Do acts considered unethical in one's private life become ethical when performed by a public servant for the good of the public?

There is widespread agreement that politics calls for dirty hands in general, and for secrecy and duplicity in particular. The claim is, of course, most famously made by Machiavelli in The Prince, but it is also to be found in Book 3 of Plato’s Republic. However, in arguing that politics calls for duplicity, neither Plato nor Machiavelli was writing about democratic societies, and we might therefore wonder whether, in democratic societies, the problem of dirty hands should (...) be differently understood. (shrink)