Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

An Exchange Relevant to the Problem of Dirty Hands

From Robert Bolt's "A Man for All Seasons."

  • William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
  • Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
  • William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
  • Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

But what if giving evildoers the benefit of law leads to the permanent ascendancy of evil and the destruction of all civilization? You say that can't happen? How do you know that? Because God wouldn't allow it? How do you know that God exists? You don't know that; you believe it.  Belief is not knowledge even if supported by reasons.  Can you prove that the Good must triumph in the end?  No you can't. I myself believe that the Good must triumph is the end.  But this is  matter of faith, not knowledge.

Of course, you might just say: Fiat iustitia, pereat mundus! "Let there be justice though the world perish!" But what would be the good of abstract justice if we were all to perish? The administration of justice via the rule of law in general and laws in particular is for the sake of human flourishing, and not the other way around.  The law exists for us; we don't exist for the law. The same goes for government without which there could be no equitable administration of justice.  Government exists for the benefit of the people; the people don't exist for the benefit of government and those who control it.

Welcome to political aporetics! 

To put the aporia as sharply as possible, the following are individually plausible but mutually inconsistent:

A. Moral reasons for action ought to be dominant: they trump every other reason for action such as 'reasons of state.'

B. Some actions are absolutely morally wrong, intrinsically wrong, morally impermissible always and everywhere, regardless of situation, context, circumstances, consequences.

C. Among absolutely morally wrong actions, there are some that are (non-morally) permissible, and indeed  (non-morally) necessary: they must be done in a situation in which refusing to act would lead to worse consequences such as the destruction of one's nation or culture.

It is easy to see that this triad is inconsistent.  The limbs cannot all be true.  (B) and (C) could both be true if one allowed moral reasons to be trumped by non-moral reasons.  But that is precisely what (A), quite plausibly, rules out.  

The threesome, then, is logically inconsistent. And yet each limb makes a strong claim on our acceptance. To solve the problem one of the limbs must be rejected.  Which one? 

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Bill Vallicella

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4 responses to “An Exchange Relevant to the Problem of Dirty Hands”

  1. Vito B. Caiati Avatar
    Vito B. Caiati

    As you know, I am no philosopher, so my answer to which limb “must be rejected” is most likely inadequate, but I would choose “B,” conscious of the fact that in doing so, I violate a moral principle that I would otherwise uphold. Do I like making this choice? Obviously not, but we have been dealt a bad hand in this as in other essential matters where the uncertainty at the very heart of things sometimes forces us to make such choices. And we often make them not abstractly, as exercises in logic, but concretely in situations where what we decide has serious, even grave, consequences. In such moments, instinct and emotion (including love) assert themselves, and we, simply act. I will give you one example: You accept the moral maxim that is always wrong to lie, but one night, the secret police of an evil government knock on your door and ask you if you know the whereabouts of some saintly opponent, who they intended to torture and kill. You know where he is, but you say that you do not. Thus, you commit an immoral act or, in religious terms, a sin. But while we, in this and similar situations, bear some of the responsibility for our action, we do not bear all of it, for we find ourselves in the miserable position of making our way in the world ignorant of ultimate truths and facing much man-made wickedness, of suffering under two forms of evil. And given this, our choice to lie may be both ethically inexcusable but existentially justifiable.

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  2. Joe Odegaard Avatar
    Joe Odegaard

    Maybe not all problems need to be solved in this life, though.
    “A time for questions we can’t answer/But we ask them just the same.”
    — Kate Wolf
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DH9QnQdoKtY

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  3. BV Avatar
    BV

    Vito,
    I sympathize with your rejection of (B).
    On the level of theory, the problem of dirty hands strikes me as insoluble in the sense that there is no good solution to it. The only solution is on the practical level: one simply acts. One orders the nuclear annihilation of a couple of Japanese cities to bring the the war to an end and to save American lives, and this despite the horrific slaughter of non-combatants, many of them (e.g. infants) with no connection to the Jap war effort.
    But then we are nailed to the cross of an existential ‘contradiction’ — one between theory and practice . . . which suggests that human life is absurd.

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  4. Vito B. Caiati Avatar
    Vito B. Caiati

    “But then we are nailed to the cross of an existential ‘contradiction’ — one between theory and practice . . . which suggests that human life is absurd.”
    I agree, but I would rather live with the unpalatable possibility of the absurdity of human life than follow those who insist that B must always be upheld, whatever the cost.

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