Under the rubric of the problem of dirty hands, Sartre and Camus explored a new approach to political necessity. Yet it has always been difficult to translate the powerful dramatic image of dirty hands into a coherent account of a philosophical problem. Many Anglo-American philosophers have argued that such an account is impossible. In Dawn, however, Elie Wiesel resolves the relevant paradoxes by imaginatively exploiting the religious consciousness of the novel’s main protagonist. Specifically, Wiesel adapts a traditional Jewish image of (...) ghosts as a means of responding to the problem of dirty hands and then suggests a striking conception of God to complete this response. (shrink)

The subject of this paper, Excuses, is one not to be treated, but only to be introduced, within such limits. It is, or might be, the name of a whole branch, even a ramiculated branch, of philosophy, or at least of one fashion of philosophy. I shall try, therefore, first to state what the subject is, why it is worth studying, and how it may be studied, all this at a regrettably lofty level: and then I shall illustrate, in more (...) congenial but desultory detail, some of the methods to be used, together with their limitations, and some of the unexpected results to be expected and lessons to be learned. Much, of course, of the amusement, and of the instruction, comes in drawing the coverts of the microglot, in hounding down the minutiae, and to this I can do no more here than incite you. But I owe it to the subject to say, that it has long afforded me what philosophy is so often thought, and made, barren of -- the fun of discovery, the pleasures of co-operation, and the satisfaction of reaching agreement. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: A Problem in Applied Ethics or Ethical Theory? Opportunity Costs, Compromise, and Political Action The Conflict of Consequences and Principles Dirty Hands as a Dilemma Dirty Hands and Vice Dirty Hands as Coerced Betrayal Resulting from Evil Projects Conclusion.