Abstract

This essay argues that treason by means of espionage is ethically justified when six factors are present, two of which are: that the political community being betrayed fails to secure for its citizens basic human rights and other means of peaceful or otherwise lawful protest are unavailable. The paper begins by analyzing the application of several theories of ethics to treason, including: consequentialism, deontology, the Just War tradition, and Michael Walzer’s influential concept of ‘dirty hands.’ It then criticizes these points of view and offers an account of jus ad proditione per intelligentia (just treason by means of espionage) based upon Aristotelian thinking about ethics and politics.