1 - Public and private trust
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 December 2009
Summary
Show me the man who rules his household well: I'll show you someone fit to rule the state.
Sophocles, AntigoneStatecraft in modern states is not: what must one do in order to be a minister, but: what one must do in order to become a minister. More than that they do not understand, and consequently they use what knowledge they have as a sort of introductory science, in order to become ministers. In that way the state will inevitably break up, for in point of fact nobody rules or governs.
Søren Kierkegaard, The JournalsIf we cannot trust rulers when they appear to act well, how can we trust them when we know they are acting badly? If we cannot trust them when their hands are clean, how can we trust them when their hands are dirty? In politics we want rulers to be trustworthy, but we treat them as if “every man ought to be supposed a knave, and to have no other end … than private interest.” We want rulers to possess the morality of doves, but we wish them to act as if they were serpents. We want them to act well toward ourselves but badly toward our enemies. We hope they are successful as long as the benefit is ours and we are not the victims of their success. They should be both lion and fox, honest and deceitful in turn for the protection and furtherance of our common purposes. We wish them to be “trusting but not credulous.” In political morality such ambivalences are endemic.
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- Frames of Deceit , pp. 5 - 26Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992