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  1. 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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  • Official apologies as reparations for dirty hands.Christina Nick - forthcoming - Journal of Social Philosophy.
    The problem of dirty hands is, roughly speaking, concerned with situations in which an agent is faced with a choice between two evils so that, no matter what they do, they will have to violate something of important moral value. Theorists have been primarily concerned with dirty hands choices arising in politics because they are thought to be particularly frequent and pressing in this sphere. Much of the subsequent discussion in the literature has focused on the impact that such choices (...)
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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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  • 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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  • National Security, Self-rule, and Democratic Action.David McCabe - 2021 - The Journal of Ethics 25 (2):181-202.
    Most discussions of the relationship between liberty and security focus on the idea that enhancing citizens’ security may require imposing constraints on their civil liberties. This paper explores the question of how measures to enhance security stand vis à vis the idea of political liberty, i.e. the idea of citizens’ collectively directing the power of their state. It distinguishes two models whereby citizens might enact that ideal of self-rule and argues that with respect to issues of national security, the less (...)
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  • Dirty Virtue.Joseph Wiinikka-Lydon - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (4):515-537.
    Michael Walzer’s foundational essay on dirty hands raises the very possibility of a good person in politics. Dilemmas in the context of high stakes situations sometimes require politicians to compromise their morality and character for the sake of the greater good by choosing the lesser evil. Much has been written about dirty hands, but little has been said about Walzer’s implicit virtue ethics. This essay sketches this implicit virtue ethics, which is central to Walzer’s argument. These are “dirty” virtues, however, (...)
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  • The problem of dirty hands.C. A. J. Coady - 2010 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • 50 Years of Dirty Hands: An Overview.Christina Nick & Stephen de Wijze - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (4):415-439.
    This chapter introduces the Special Issue and offers an overview of the corpus of work on the topic since the publication of Michael Walzer’s seminal article, ‘Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands’.
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  • The Institutional Laundry: How the Public May Keep Their Hands Clean.Nikolas Kirby - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (4):539-560.
    A number of recent authors have argued for the problem of ‘democratic dirty hands’. At least within a democracy, public officers can be rightly said to act in the name of the public; and thus, as agents to principals, the dirty hands of public officers are, ultimately attributable to that public. Even more troubling, so the argument goes, since dirty hands are necessary for public officers in any stable political order, then such democratic dirty hands are necessary for any stable (...)
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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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  • Fighting fire with fire: the ethics of retaliatory gerrymandering.Gianni Sarra - 2024 - Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 27 (7):1089-1110.
    Focusing on the contemporary US context, this article examines the ethical quandaries raised by partisan gerrymandering, where constituency boundaries are manipulated for electoral benefit. More specifically, it will examine the ethics of retaliatory gerrymandering. Though gerrymandering cannot be defended as a political practice by any agent who assigns intrinsic value to democracy, it might be justified as a ‘dirty hands’ (DH) practice, where it is all-things-considered justified as a lesser evil that still leaves a moral residue. However, it does not (...)
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