Morals and Politics

Summary

My title, as it stands, is not very informative. The two terms that occur in it are so commonly conjoined, in the philosophical world, at any rate, that it can be no surprise to find them together. My aim, however, is to go some way, at least, towards disconnecting them. My thesis is, to put it briefly, that it is a mistake to see political philosophy as a subordinate part of moral philosophy and thus to suppose that the characteristic problems of the former are of the same kind as those of the latter. More concretely, the problems of politics itself are not generally or primarily, let alone exclusively, moral in nature. We all know that political problems are not, to any great extent, approached by those involved with them, from a moral point of view. I shall argue that it is not reasonable that they should be. But the philosophical habit of running the two things together encourages a kind of moral absolutism in political thinking, and from time to time in political practice, which has bad results, not necessarily morally bad, just bad.