Beyond right and wrong: on the conditionality of dirty hands

Abstract

AbstractDirty Hands theorists disagree about how agents should resolve a high-cost moral dilemma, but their disagreement is partly because they tend to discuss widely different cases of a broad and heterogeneous phenomenon. Moralists are typically concerned with problems that often involve an agent who is under coercion and is asked to engage in an activity that will cause severe and certain harm to individuals. Realists, on the other hand, base their observations on cases where political parties negotiate to form coalitions or policy platforms; these compromises may affect the political integrity and representative credibility of the agent, but less so their moral integrity as measured by universal moral standards. Yet, both types of Dirty Hand scenarios concern the same phenomenon: an urgency to make a morally costly compromise. As a result, we propose to evaluate Dirty Hands problems by placing them on a dual continuum based on two conditions: their projected outcomes, and their external circumstances. We propose that the position of a moral problem on this continuum affects the extent to which a compromise is or is not excusable. Finally, we consider the implications of our findings for the Dirty Hands debate and for the study of political ethics more broadly.