Learning How Not to Be Good: Machiavelli and the Standard Dirty Hands Thesis
It is necessary to a Prince to learn how not to be good. This quotation from Machiavellis The Prince has become the mantra of the standard dirty hands (DH) thesis. Despite its infamy, it features proudly in most conventional expositions of the dirty hands (DH) problem, including Michael Walzers...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
[2015]
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| In: |
Ethical theory and moral practice
Year: 2015, Volume: 18, Issue: 1, Pages: 61-74 |
| IxTheo Classification: | NCD Political ethics VA Philosophy |
| Further subjects: | B
Machiavelli
Dirty hands
Moral conflict
Political virtue
Moral vice
Innocence
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | It is necessary to a Prince to learn how not to be good. This quotation from Machiavellis The Prince has become the mantra of the standard dirty hands (DH) thesis. Despite its infamy, it features proudly in most conventional expositions of the dirty hands (DH) problem, including Michael Walzers original analysis. In this paper, I wish to cast a doubt as to whether the standard conception of the problem of DHthe recognition that, in certain inescapable and tragic circumstances an innocent course of action is unfeasiblefully captures Machiavellis 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 actionan 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 Machiavellis 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. |
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| ISSN: | 1572-8447 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Ethical theory and moral practice
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1007/s10677-014-9508-x |