Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. Paradoxes of Political Ethics
  • Cited by 21
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
September 2009
Print publication year:
2007
Online ISBN:
9780511487439
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511487439
Subjects:
History, Philosophy, History of Ideas and Intellectual History, Political Philosophy
Information

Book description

How do the hard facts of political responsibility shape and constrain the demands of ethical life? That question lies at the heart of the problem of 'dirty hands' in public life. Those who exercise political power often feel they must act in ways that would otherwise be considered immoral: indeed, paradoxically, they sometimes feel that it would be immoral of them not to perform or condone such acts as killing or lying. John Parrish offers a wide-ranging account of how this important philosophical problem emerged and developed, tracing it - and its proposed solutions - from ancient Greece through the Enlightenment. His central argument is that many of our most familiar concepts and institutions - from Augustine's interiorised ethics, to Hobbes's sovereign state, to Adam Smith's 'invisible hand', understanding of the modern commercial economy - were designed partly as responses to the ethical problem of dirty hands in public life.

Reviews

Review of the hardback:'Good books on the history of political thought achieve two things. They enhance our understanding of how certain political concepts developed through a historical period and they uncover lessons in the histories of the concepts they study for how we understand politics today. Professor John M. Parrish's book, while devoting most of its attention to the former task, also offers a good deal of the latter.'

Source: Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

'An unusual and highly erudite book about the history of getting one's hands dirty in public life.… The author urges us to call into question the variety of more excuses offered for public conduct and to compel our representatives to answer themselves - a bold and surely justified demand.'

Source: Network Review

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

Contents

Contents

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.