This article aims to rebut the claim about Dirty Hands in politics and reorient the issue. Allegedly, decent politicians must sometimes do what is right by means that are deeply wrong and they are morally tainted as a result. DH is here rejected as contradictory since there can be no dirtying or guilt given the presumption of ultimate rightness, and politics is demeaned by supposing otherwise. DH is not entailed by moral complexity or conflicting duties or circumstantial regret, and does (...) not hinge on utilitarianism versus deontology. A significant real-world case is explored where DH might seem manifest but is not. With DH dissolved, the refocussed and urgent question involves discerning apt personality-types for politics and its hard cases. The ideal: persons exceptional in being morally conscientious but more tough-minded than tender-hearted. (shrink)

This article contends that in crucial respects effective soldiers are ethical soldiers, that good soldiers in the military sense are good soldiers in the moral sense, and that this is so for quite traditional reasons. The thesis is defended by identifying and then resolving basic paradoxes regarding what soldiers must be trained to do or be, e.g.: be trained to kill but also not to be brutal; be trained to react in combat situations almost automatically but also to deliberate and (...) decide if a command is unlawful; as peacekeepers, be trained to be impartial but also to know right from wrong and be firmly committed to upholding the former and opposing the latter. It is shown that contradictory things are not really thus being called for. With the aid of a blend of deontology and virtue theory, it is argued that certain standard qualities of effective soldiers have an associated moral dimension. For example, true military courage implies an unwillingness to engage in cruelty; the self‐control on which success of missions depends implies eschewing motives of personal vengeance; and the capacity for comprehending complex equipment and data implies a mentality for assessing the validity of orders. (shrink)

Weber’s notion of ideal-types has most frequently been rejected as incoherent or overly abstract. This article maintains that it insightfully addresses explanatory issues in social science by encompassing the agents’ subjective understanding and the need for theorists to comprehend, explain, and evaluate it. As such, ideal-types are not versions of established models in natural science or economics. Further keys are seeing ideal-types as blending interpretive understanding and causal explanation but not thereby causal generalizations, and rational appraisals as consistent with value (...) pluralism. (shrink)

This article asks about the justification for the principle of political equality in the sense of equal entitlement to basic rights. A preliminary portion criticizes standard justifications that refer to a property or properties all human beings share; these fail because they are untrue, irrelevant, or question-begging. The more substantial and constructive portion of the article then argues for a different, indirect mode of justification, based on rebuttals of historical presumptions of inequality and the actual evolution of the idea of (...) equality through partial steps and specific precedents. The justification of political equality is thus connected to the explanation of its emergence. (shrink)

Is the endeavour to probe the meaning of modernity other than a form of self-obsession, a kind of collective and conceptual narcissism, characteristic of the perhaps peculiarly modern preoccupation with abstract notions and inwardness? And whatever the motivation and origin, is the endeavour likely to issue in something better than doubtful or empty pronouncements, true to the extent that they are platitudes and false or obscure for the rest? Encountering the title Modernism as a Philosophical Problem one can imagine a (...) Rortyean reading: modernism a philosophical problem?—and the commentary: well, if you think that, you do have a problem, namely, philosophical pretentiousness and an affliction for foundations, for ultimate principles that, if truly ultimate, are unattainable and also unnecessary. In a different voice, a similar cynicism can be heard, the Lyotardean lament at the announcement of yet another unneeded philosophical meta-narrative, a new, idle tale about history, ideas and development, culminating in grand notions confounded by facts. (shrink)

“Marxists,” Eugene Kamenka has written, “have failed to develop an original or comparatively coherent view of ethics that can be ranked as a type of ethical theory finding its natural place beside utilitarian ethics, ethical intuitionism, existentialist ethics, or even Greek ethics.” This judgment, that Marxism has no theory of ethics or no coherent one or that if it does have a coherent theory that theory is just a version of some type of ethical theory that is independent of Marxism, (...) seems supported by various recent philosophical discussions of Marx or Marxism and morality. Thus, Marx himself has been taken to be everything from a moral skeptic or relativist to an ethical intuitionist to a utilitarian to a proponent of a quasi-Aristotelian morality based on a notion of the function of man. (shrink)

Professor Allen acknowledges that Marx's writings underdetermine the nature of his ethical views and that, with due caution, "the attribution of ethical views to Marx will have to be inferential; they will not be supportable merely by direct quotation". I am therefore rather puzzled by Allen's unease with the general nature of my project and by his repeated insistence for more direct texts. I confess that I am also somewhat surprised that Allen's exegetical concern has led him in dealing with (...) the moral theory I have adumbrated to ask for the most part just, Is it Marx? and not also, in any detail, Is it true? I think it is clear though, by inference, that Allen has his doubts on the latter score, but what I must deal with are the various questions or problems Allen has regarding my attributions to Marx and the implications I find in his texts. There are as I see it four such questions, though each is perhaps the heading for a cluster of ones. (shrink)

Since its coinage in the eighteenth century, the concept of ideology has been recurrently invoked as a tool of analysis, a term of abuse, or both together. The concept is central to the theories of Marx, Mannheim, and others, and the whole subject of the sociology of knowledge is an elaboration upon it. But just what the concept is meant to convey is normally so unclear or controversial, even question-begging, that it is natural to want to dispense with the concept (...) entirely. That, in part, was what the advocates of the end-of-ideology—like Raymond Aron, Edward Shils, and Daniel Bell—urged back in the 1950s. But these would-be defenders of reason, pragmatism, and political centrism were almost immediately and quite predictably attacked for themselves being the victims or purveyors of an ideology. Whether or not they were, the lesson is evident: the issues of ideology are not likely to go away. (shrink)

This paper presents criticisms of the method for moral and political philosophy known as ?reflective equilibrium? (RE), or in its fuller form ?wide reflective equilibrium? (WRE). This negative purpose has an ulterior positive aim: to set off, by favourable contrast, an alternative approach based on analogical argument as an instrument of an evolving (liberal) tradition. WRE derives from John Rawls but has been broadly endorsed. Though a meta?theory, it involves a certain way of construing liberalism. This essay's target is in (...) key part that construal. It seeks an approach to moral?political philosophy, and to liberalism in particular, that is at once rationally grounded and contextually oriented, and provides for explanation as well as justification. WRE fails on all counts, plus others. Section I presents WRE and suggests the alternative. Section II presents the critique of WRE, partly drawing on established criticisms and partly presenting new ones. Section III opposes the application suggested for WRE by (surprisingly) a critic of Rawls, M. Sandel. The preferability of the analogical alternative is demonstrated throughout. (shrink)

Abstract Juxtaposing Pierre Trudeau and Charles Taylor allows for assessing not simply an epoch in Canadian political life but more fundamentally two contrasting visions of modern government and society. The key is not in the usual contrasts: liberalism versus communitarianism or individual rights versus collective rights; but in the opposition between Trudeau?s centralized and Taylor?s decentralized vision of federalism. What emerges from analyzing that familiar difference is significant and ironic. While Taylor?s view seems more cognizant of government?s formative activity and (...) of culture in politics, it is Trudeau?s view that better upholds: (1) the role of government as both an instrument of common purposes and a protector of individual rights; (2) the significance of culture as both a carrier of democratic values and an array of distinctive ways of life. (shrink)