5 - Risks and rewards
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 December 2009
Summary
We do not need to discuss cut-throats, poisoners, forgers of wills, thieves, and embezzlers of public moneys, who should be repressed not by lectures and discussions of philosophers, but by chains and prison walls; but let us study here the conduct of those who have the reputation of being honest men.
Cicero, De OfficiisNo government should ever believe that it is always possible to follow safe policies. Rather, it should be realised that all courses of action involve risks: for it is in the nature of things that when one tries to avoid one danger another is always encountered.
Machiavelli, The PrinceTrust involves a complex anticipation of benefits and hazards. It depends, as Luhmann rightly remarks, “not on inherent danger but on risk.” However, risks have no dependent existence, but are created through human commitments, actions, and decisions. That a course of action involves risk tells us nothing about its morality. Its presence does not determine the Tightness or wrongness of an action. When, for example, Nancy in Dickens's Oliver Twist confides in Rose Maylie, she trusts the word of those who can save Oliver that her part in the affair will never be made public. She has to make this commitment if she is to save Oliver and protect Sikes, but in doing so the risk is greater than she thinks because she is in fact overheard. Trust is no longer an effective means of achieving a moral purpose, but a sign of vul-nerability, which places Nancy in great danger.
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- Frames of Deceit , pp. 106 - 135Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992