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  1. Punishing 'Dirty Hands'—Three Justifications.Stephen Wijze - 2013 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 16 (4):879-897.
    Should those who get dirty hands be punished? There is strong disagreement among even those who support the existence of such scenarios. The problem arises because the paradoxical nature of dirty hands - doing wrong to do right - renders the standard normative justifications for punishment unfit for purpose. The Consequentialist, Retributivist and Communicative approaches cannot accommodate the idea that an action can be right, all things considered, but nevertheless also a categorical wrong. This paper argues that punishment is indeed (...)
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  • Tragic-remorse–the anguish of dirty hands.Stephen De Wijze - 2005 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 7 (5):453-471.
    This paper outlines and defends a notion of tragic-remorse. This moral emotion properly accompanies those actions that involve unavoidable moral wrongdoing in general and dirty hands scenarios in particular. Tragic-remorse differs both phenomenologically and conceptually from regret, agent-regret and remorse. By recognising the existence of tragic-remorse, we are better able to account for our complex moral reality which at times makes it necessary for good persons to act in ways that although justified leave the agent with a moral stain and (...)
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  • When the Heavens Fall: The Unintelligible and the Unthinkable.Lisa Tessman - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (4):495-514.
    Moral dilemmas are a feature of moral life that make us vulnerable to tragic failures. But while all moral dilemmas involve unavoidable moral failure and leave a moral remainder, they do not all involve dirty hands. Recognizing that Thomas Nagel’s ideas about the availability of both agent-relative and agent-neutral perspectives from which to ask moral questions formed the backdrop to Michael Walzer’s work on dirty hands fifty years ago, this paper tries to explain why, when we must take both perspectives—thus (...)
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  • Are ‘Dirty Hands’ Possible?Stephen de Wijze - 2024 - The Journal of Ethics 28 (1):187-214.
    This paper argues that ‘dirty hands’ (DH) scenarios, where an agent is forced to do wrong in order to do right, are conceptually coherent. The charge of incoherence is a widespread and common criticism made by deontologists and consequentialists alike. They argue that DH theorists erroneously assume the existence of real moral dilemmas and then compound this error by claiming that it is possible to engage in justified moral wrongdoing. However, such critics argue that there are only _prima facie_ moral (...)
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  • Policing, Undercover Policing and ‘Dirty Hands’: The Case of State Entrapment.Daniel J. Hill, Stephen K. McLeod & Attila Tanyi - 2024 - Philosophical Studies 181 (4):689-714.
    Under a ‘dirty hands’ model of undercover policing, it inevitably involves situations where whatever the state agent does is morally problematic. Christopher Nathan argues against this model. Nathan’s criticism of the model is predicated on the contention that it entails the view, which he considers objectionable, that morally wrongful acts are central to undercover policing. We address this criticism, and some other aspects of Nathan’s discussion of the ‘dirty hands’ model, specifically in relation to state entrapment to commit a crime. (...)
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  • Dirty hands and the fragility of democracy.Berry Tholen - 2020 - Contemporary Political Theory 19 (4):663-682.
    Dirty hands cases are often seen as a crucial challenge for political ethics. Michael Walzer’s analysis of dirty hands cases has been especially influential. On closer inspection, however, Walzer’s analysis contains some serious flaws. This article examines how and to what extent the political ethics of Paul Ricoeur can remedy the problems in Walzer’s approach. It is shown that Ricoeur’s approach can offer a better understanding of what is at stake in dilemmas in political action and that it can provide (...)
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  • The Problem of Democratic Dirty Hands: Citizen Complicity, Responsibility, and Guilt.Stephen de Wijze - 2018 - The Monist 101 (2):129-149.
    This paper outlines and explores the problem of democratic dirty hands, the sui generis moral situation where democratic politicians justifiably violate both a cherished moral principle and the fundamental processes of democratic governance. Some recent contributions to the dirty-hands debate have argued that the principles of democratic governance render DDH impossible. The paper rejects this view as based on a misunderstanding of the minimal and necessary conditions for both DH and democratic overnance. However, DDH does raise interesting issues concerning the (...)
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  • ‘Learning How Not to Be Good’: Machiavelli and the Standard Dirty Hands Thesis.Demetris Tillyris - 2015 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 18 (1):61-74.
    ‘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 (...)
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  • Metaphysics, Deep Pluralism, and Paradoxes of Informal Logic.Jeremy Barris - 2015 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 23 (1):59-84.
    The paper argues that metaphysical thought, or thought in whose context our general framework of sense is under scrutiny, involves, legitimates, and requires a variety of informal analogues of the ‘true contradictions’ supported in some paraconsistent formal logics. These are what we can call informal ‘legitimate logical inadequacies’. These paradoxical logical structures also occur in deeply pluralist contexts, where more than one, conflicting general framework for sense is relevant. The paper argues further that these legitimate logical inadequacies are real or (...)
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  • The Challenge of a Moral Politics: Mendus and Coady on Politics, Integrity and ‘Dirty Hands’: Susan Mendus: Politics and Morality, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2009, 130 pp. C. A. J. Coady: Messy Morality: The Challenge of Politics, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2008, 123 pp.Stephen de Wijze - 2012 - Res Publica 18 (2):189-200.
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  • Can our Hands Stay Clean?Christina Nick - 2019 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 22 (4):925-940.
    This paper argues that the dirty hands literature has overlooked a crucial distinction in neglecting to discuss explicitly the issue of, what I call, symmetry. This is the question of whether, once we are confronted with a dirty hands situation, we could emerge with our hands clean depending on the action we choose. A position that argues that we can keep our hands clean I call “asymmetrical” and one that says that we will get our hands dirty no matter what (...)
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  • Dirty Hands and Moral Conflict – Lessons from the Philosophy of Evil.Christina Nick - 2021 - Philosophia 50 (1):183-200.
    According to one understanding of the problem of dirty hands, every case of dirty hands is an instance of moral conflict, but not every instance of moral conflict is a case of dirty hands. So, what sets the two apart? The dirty hands literature has offered widely different answers to this question but there has been relatively little discussion about their relative merits as well as challenges. In this paper I evaluate these different accounts by making clear which understanding of (...)
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  • Dirty Hands as a ‘Weapon of the Weak’: ‘Heroism’, ‘Aristocratism’, and the Ambiguities of Everyday Resistance.Demetris Tillyris - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (4):601-623.
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  • Civilian Immunity, Supreme Emergency, and Moral Disaster.Igor Primoratz - 2011 - The Journal of Ethics 15 (4):371-386.
    Any plausible position in the ethics of war and political violence in general will include the requirement of protection of civilians (non-combatants, common citizens) against lethal violence. This requirement is particularly prominent, and particularly strong, in just war theory. Some adherents of the theory see civilian immunity as absolute, not to be overridden in any circumstances whatsoever. Others allow that it may be overridden, but only in extremis. The latter position has been advanced by Michael Walzer under the heading of (...)
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  • The Non-Political Foundations of the Problem of Dirty Hands.Leo Zaibert - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (4):477-494.
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  • Political Realism and Dirty Hands: Value Pluralism, Moral Conflict and Public Ethics.Demetris Tillyris - 2019 - Philosophia 47 (5):1579-1602.
    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 involve. In illustrating that (...)
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  • Tragic-Remorse–The Anguish of Dirty Hands.Stephen Wijze - 2005 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 7 (5):453-471.
    This paper outlines and defends a notion of ‘tragic-remorse’. This moral emotion properly accompanies those actions that involve unavoidable moral wrongdoing in general and dirty hands scenarios in particular. Tragic-remorse differs both phenomenologically and conceptually from regret, agent-regret and remorse. By recognising the existence of tragic-remorse, we are better able to account for our complex moral reality which at times makes it necessary for good persons to act in ways that although justified leave the agent with a moral stain and (...)
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  • Dirty Hands, Cosmopolitan Value and State Evil: Reflections on Torture.Richard Matthews - 2006 - Animus 11:2.
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