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Apr 29, 2009 · First published Wed Apr 29, 2009; substantive revision Mon Aug 7, 2023. Should political leaders violate the deepest constraints of morality in order to achieve great goods or avoid disasters for their communities? This question poses what has become known amongst philosophers as the problem of dirty hands.
The problem of dirty hands concerns whether political leaders and those in similar positions can ever be justified in committing even gravely immoral actions when "dirtying their hands" in this way is necessary for realizing some important moral or political end, such as the preservation of a community's continued existence or the prevention of ...
Oct 17, 2023 · Abstract. 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’. ‘Here is the moral politician: it is by his dirty hands that we know him.
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Mar 29, 2016 · The problem of dirty hands refers to situations where a person is asked to violate their deepest held ethical principles for the sake of some greater good. The problem of dirty hands is usually seen only as an issue for political leaders.
1 Michael Walzer’s ‘Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands’. Over the last 50 years anyone writing on the problem of dirty hands, be they sup‐ porters or critics, has needed to engage with the core claims made by Walzer in his ground‐breaking article ‘Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands’.
Apr 29, 2009 · The Problem of Dirty Hands. First published Wed Apr 29, 2009; substantive revision Mon Jul 6, 2009. Should political leaders violate the deepest constraints of morality in order to achieve great goods or avoid disasters for their communities? This question poses what has become known amongst philosophers as the problem of dirty hands.
May 20, 2021 · Dirty hands are those instances in which we have to forgo an important deontological principle to secure the “ongoingness” of a society and its “way of life” ( 2004, p. 43). For Walzer, “the survival and freedom of political communities […] are the highest values of international society” ( 2006, p. 253).
