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123‘Learning How Not to Be Good’: Machiavelli and the Standard Dirty Hands ThesisEthical Theory and Moral Practice 18 (1): 61-74. 2015.‘It is necessary to a Prince to learn how not to be good’. This quotation from Machiavelli’s The Prince has become the mantra of the standard dirty hands thesis. Despite its infamy, it features proudly in most conventional expositions of the dirty hands problem, including Michael Walzer’s original analysis. In this paper, I wish to cast a doubt as to whether the standard conception of the problem of DH—the recognition that, in certain inescapable and tragic circumstances an innocent course of ac…Read more
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79Political Integrity and Dirty Hands: Compromise and the Ambiguities of BetrayalRes Publica 23 (4): 475-494. 2017.The claim that democratic politics is the art of compromise is a platitude but we seem allergic to compromise in politics when it happens. This essay explores this paradox. Taking my cue from Machiavelli’s claim that there exists a rift between a morally admirable and a virtuous political life, I argue that: a ‘compromising disposition’ is an ambiguous virtue—something which is politically expedient but not necessarily morally admirable; whilst uncongenial to moral integrity, a ‘compromising dis…Read more
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63Political Realism and Dirty Hands: Value Pluralism, Moral Conflict and Public EthicsPhilosophia 47 (5): 1579-1602. 2019.This paper draws on the underappreciated realist thought of Isaiah Berlin, Stuart Hampshire and Judith Shklar, rehearses their critique of moralism and extends it to a position which seems far from obvious a target: the dirty hands thesis, which is mostly owed to Michael Walzer, and which a number of contemporary realists have recently appealed to in their endeavour to challenge moralism and/or tackle the insufficiently addressed question of what a more affirmative, realist public ethic might in…Read more
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63After the Standard Dirty Hands Thesis: Towards a Dynamic Account of Dirty Hands in PoliticsEthical Theory and Moral Practice 19 (1): 161-175. 2016.This essay locates the problem of dirty hands within virtue ethics – specifically Alasdair MacIntyre’s neo-Aristotelian thesis in After Virtue. It demonstrates that, contra contemporary expositions of this problem, MacIntyre’s thesis provides us with a more nuanced account of tragedy and DH in ordinary life, in its conventional understanding as a stark, rare and momentary conflict in which moral wrongdoing is inescapable. The essay then utilizes elements from MacIntyre’s thesis as a theoretical …Read more
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34Dirty Hands and SufferingTheoria 66 (160): 95-121. 2019.Contra the prevalent way of thinking about the dirty-hands problem, this article suggests that dirty hands need not necessarily entail suffering and that a politician who does not suffer for his dirty-handed acts should not be cast as a bad politician. In so doing, the article: argues that the connection between DH and suffering is unsatisfactorily totalising and rests on a contentious conception of conflict as a dysfunction and develops an alternative account of the good dirty-handed politician…Read more
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29Flattery and the history of political thought: That Glib and Oily ArtContemporary Political Theory 18 (4): 263-266. 2019.
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28Reflections on a Crisis: Political Disenchantment, Moral Desolation, and Political IntegrityRes Publica 24 (1): 109-131. 2018.Declining levels of political trust and voter turnout, the shift towards populist politics marked by appeals to ‘the people’ and a rejection of ‘politics-as-usual’, are just some of the commonly cited manifestations of our culture of political disaffection. Democratic politics, it is argued, is in crisis. Whilst considerable energy has been expended on the task of lamenting the status of our politics and pondering over recommendations to tackle this perceived crisis, amid this raft of complaints…Read more
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28Value Pluralism and Public EthicsTheoria 66 (160): 1-8. 2019.‘The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing’. -Archilochus quoted in Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox, 22The fragment from the Greek poet Archilochus, quoted in Isaiah Berlin’s essay ‘The Hedgehog and the Fox’, serves as a metaphor for the long-standing contrast and rivalry between two radically different approaches to public ethics, each of which is couched in a radically different vision of the structure of moral value. On the one hand, the way of the hedgehog corresponds …Read more
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27‘Painted scenes’ or ‘empty pageants’? Superficiality and depth in (realist) political thoughtPhilosophy and Social Criticism 48 (9): 1277-1301. 2022.Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 9, Page 1277-1301, November 2022. The realist injunction to attend to the ‘realities of politics’ when we do political philosophy, though obviously appropriate, is highly platitudinous. By drawing on the underappreciated realist insights of Isaiah Berlin, Stuart Hampshire and Hannah Arendt, we elaborate a neglected distinction between two antagonistic conceptions of political reality – the realism of surface and the realism of depth – and consider …Read more
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25Arendt and political realism: towards a realist account of political judgementCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 24 (6): 821-844. 2021.This article argues that Hannah Arendt’s thought can offer significant insights on political judgement for realism in political theory. We identify a realist position which emphasises the need to account for how humans judge politically, contra moralist tendencies to limit its exercise to rational standards, but which fails to provide a sufficient conception of its structure and potential. Limited appeals to political judgement render the realist defence of the political elusive and compromise t…Read more
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17Dirty Hands as a ‘Weapon of the Weak’: ‘Heroism’, ‘Aristocratism’, and the Ambiguities of Everyday ResistanceThe Journal of Ethics 27 (4): 601-623. 2023.
Leeds, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Action |
Social and Political Philosophy |