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Political Violence: The Problem of Dirty Hands

Finlay, Christopher J

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Abstract

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.

Citation

Finlay, C. J. (2023). Political Violence: The Problem of Dirty Hands. The Journal of Ethics, 27(4), 561-583. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-023-09447-4

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jul 29, 2023
Online Publication Date Sep 26, 2023
Publication Date Dec 1, 2023
Deposit Date Aug 2, 2023
Publicly Available Date Sep 27, 2023
Journal The Journal of Ethics
Print ISSN 1382-4554
Electronic ISSN 1572-8609
Publisher Springer
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 27
Issue 4
Pages 561-583
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-023-09447-4
Keywords Max Weber, Michael Walzer, Republicanism, Domination, violence, Emergency Ethics, Terrorism, Machiavelli, Realism, Dirty hands, Power, Torture
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1709932

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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.





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