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Raino Malnes, Dept of Political Science, University of Oslo
Is political ethics an ethics apart?
1. What does it mean to say that political ethics is an ethics apart? Here is an illustration: Dean Acheson, who was advisor to President Truman, had to decide “whether and with what degree of urgency to press the attempt to produce a thermonuclear weapon”. He tells that a colleague said “it would be better that our whole nation and people should perish rather than be party to a course so evil as producing that weapon. I told him that on the Day of Judgment his view might be confirmed and that he was free to go forth and preach the necessity for salvation. It was not, however, a view which I could entertain as a public servant” (Acheson 1967: 13). Don’t mind the specifics of this example. I want to explore the general idea that it befits political actors to weigh competing ethical considerations in ways that would be indefensible if it had not been for the part these actors play in political decision-making.
2. Which considerations have a place in ethical deliberation? Here is a short-list. First, consequentialist considerations: In order to tell right from wrong, we should think carefully about how acts and institutions will affect the future state of the world. Secondly, deontological considerations: Certain acts have an odious or a fine character to them, regardless of their effects. A lie is a standard example of an inherently detestable act. Thirdly, backward-looking consideration: Sometimes, the right way of relating to people depends on what they have been up to, or what they have come out for, in the past. Finally, relational considerations: It is arguable, for example, that I have an obligation keep a promise as long as I didn’t give it under duress.
3. One line of argument will be mentioned only in passing. It rests on the premise that someone who exercises political authority is a trustee with a special obligation to look after the interests of those who have placed their trust in him or her. The obligation of a trustee derives from the fact that she has promised to look after someone’s interest, but this obligation is rather lightweight as compared to many other considerations that have a place in ethical deliberation.
4. One thing that may be distinctive about political ethics is that some ethical considerations matter more in politics than they do ordinarily, and that some considerations matter less. A case in point is deontological constraints. They may, for all their apparent timelessness and universality, owe their normative force partly to features of the context people find themselves in. Consider the idea that one should not lie. What is wrong with lying, apart from any harmful effect it may have (say, the fact that someone is tricked into taking a distorted view of her interests)? A character in Philip Roth’s novel Everyman says: “lying is cheap, contemptible control over the other person. It’s watching the other person acting on incomplete information – in other words, humiliating herself”. As ethical arguments go, this one is pretty strong, I think.
But in certain contexts, the reason why lying is contemptible may be absent. Among political actors, in particular, a fair amount of duplicity and manipulation belong to the order of the day. Spoken by a political actor, the denunciation of lying cited above loses its poignancy. The general idea here is that certain ethical concerns are deflated in political affairs.
5. Consider a concrete case that may be taken to confirm this idea, but may also point to another peculiarity of political ethics. When Francois Mitterrand challenged Charles de Gaulle in the French presidential election of 1965, there were some in the Gaullist party who wanted to denigrate Mitterrand by bringing up shady affairs in his recent past. He hardly deserved better, as he was unable to shelve of some fairly grave accusations against him. This is to say that backward-looking considerations paved the way for the denigration-strategy. But de Gaulle threw out the plan, arguing that “Mitterrand may be elected, and we must not debilitate the function [of president]” (Etchegoyen 2006). De Gaulle’s argument allows of two interpretations: (a) that backward-looking considerations are (more or less) out of place in politics, or (b) that political actors should let bygones be bygones, because what matters most (if not exclusively) are the consequences of what they do. Call (b) the idea that consequentialist considerations are inflated in political affairs.
6. The idea that consequentialist considerations are inflated may be elaborated by reference to an observation by Stuart Hampshire (1978: 49): “public policy is a greater thing … and an agent in the public domain normally has responsibility for greater and more enduring consequences and consequences that change more men’s lives”. What makes politics special on this view is that it brings a lot of power with it. The distinguishing feature of political action is that it can contribute to causes everyone ought to be concerned about, but few, apart from political actors, are capable of doing something about. Thus, the closer you are to political power, the more aware you should be of the consequences of what you do. (This is to say that there is no precise division between political ethics and the rest of ethics. Hillary Clinton, in her memoir Living History, says about the Lewinsky affair that as Bill Clinton’s wife, “I wanted to wring his neck. But he was not only my husband, he was also my president”.)
7. The ideas discussed above do not imply that political ethics is an ethics apart. To inflate the significance of deontological considerations in political affairs or inflate the importance of consequentialist considerations amounts to no more than accurate ethical bookkeeping under exceptional circumstances.
8. I shall turn to another, more radical argument, adapted from an article by Michael Slote. Consider the case of a partly imaginary Churchill:
… as a resolute wartime leader, we may imagine him single-mindedly devoted to crushing Nazism, to Allied victory. As a result, late in the war he approves the fire-bombing of certain German cities in the hope of breaking civilian morale and bringing Germany quickly to its knees, even though ultimate Allied victory is by that time reasonably assured. ...
... Churchill’s single-minded, passionate devotion to Allied victory would by its very nature impel him to do everything in his power to defeat the enemy (at the cost of fewer Allied lives), and so lead him to do the very things we have just said seem to be wrong. Yet we admire Churchill, and part of our admiration is directed towards the very single-mindedness which led him to act wrongly. (Slote 1989: 95)
Slote argues that single-minded devotion to a project is admirable, and one is single-mindedly devoted to a project only if one is prepared to do anything for the sake of it. Slote sets no store by the nature of the project. In this he obviously errs. Replace Churchill with Lady Macbeth in pursuit of the throne for her husband, and the argument comes out as a travesty. Only if it is revised to sidestep this objection will it be believable. Single-minded devotion is no candidate for admiration unless it accompanies the pursuit of a worthy cause. Call this appendage to the argument the worthy cause clause.
9. To get Slotes argument (after revision) in focus, consider a different one: We should be prepared to put up with certain kinds of wrongdoing – notably the neglect of deontological constraints – in politics. Great things, like political projects, can get the best of a person. She is liable to overlook and overstep limits that, in a quite hour, will not go unnoticed by decent people. Ideally, political actors had better pursue fine purposes with no more devotion than attentiveness to the whole range of relevant ethical considerations permit. But there are, alas, human limits to human virtue, and a case can be made for absolution of single-minded political actors.
10. Slotes argument goes further. It says that single-minded devotion to a political project is admirable. Can this position be defended? Consider Charles de Gaulle again.
… in June 1958, de Gaulle went to Algiers, where he performed what critics have called the greatest confidence trick in post-war France. Addressing an ecstatic crowd from the … balcony of the government building (4 June), he began with deliberate ambiguity: ‘Je vous ai compris’ – taken by his cheering listeners to mean ‘ I share your aims’, but seen in retrospect as signifying ‘I have got the measure of you’. (Larkin 1997: 272 – 273)
De Gaulle was seemingly blind to some ethical considerations. His mode of deliberation was, to all appearances, the opposite of what Martha Nussbaum (1990: 184) associates with a novelist’s “sense of life”, that is, “the vigilant and responsive imagination that cares for everyone in the situation”. De Gaulle did not have the “crowded consciousness of someone who is really making an effort to see” (ibid.: 185). And a good thing, too, one may argue. The fact that he had a sparsely populated consciousness made it possible for him to resolve the crisis of 1958. If, by contrast, he had been intent on taking every relevant ethical consideration into account, it is likely that he would have hesitated and procrastinated in a situation where success depended on resolute action. If we see single-mindedness in isolation from everything else, it is always a vice, but for a political actor it can be a virtue.
11. If there is something to Slote’s argument (as adopted here), political ethics is, in one respect, an ethics apart. I am attracted to the argument. Yet, I shall conclude by alluding to two problems. In the first place, single-mindedness on the part of political actors has a cost. It is not the kind of disposition that can be turned on and off, and it may not be desirable in run-of-the-mill politics. It may also be counterproductive in some crisis, notable those that call for sensitivity to different interests and concerns. De Gaulle’s handling of May 1968 was, for example, no obvious success.
In the second place, single-mindedness on the part of political actors involves risk. Political actors may be tempted to use unnecessary force in the pursuit of unworthy causes, and the more they are disposed for single-mindedness, the more exposed they will be this temptation. Take the case of Richard Nixon. He wanted Attorney General Elliot Richardson to dismiss the head of the Watergate investigation, Archibald Cox, who was zealous in his job. The reason was (as Nixon saw it) that vital state interests would be jeopardized if the president came to be perceived as a criminal. This brings us back to the worthy cause clause. It constitutes an essential appendage to Slote’s argument, and it is the Achilles’ heal of the argument we get after this revision.
References
Acheson, Dean. 1967. Ethics in international relations today. In: M.C. Raskin and B.B. Fall (eds.), The Viet-Nam Reader. New York: Vintage Books.
Hampshire, Stuart. 1978. Morality and pessimism. In: Stuart Hampshire (ed.), Public and Private Morality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Etchegoyen, Alain. 2006. Le “ségolisme”, cache-misère de la panne idéologique de la gauche. Le Figaro, May 30. (www.lefigaro.fr / debats / 20060530.FIG000000277_le_segolisme_cache_misere ...)
Larkin, Maurice. 1998. France Since the Popular Front. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Nussbaum, Martha C. 1990. Love’s Knowledge. New York: Oxford University Press.
Roth, Philip. 2006. Everyman. London: Jonathan Cape.
Slote, Michael. 1983. Goods and Virtues. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Williams, Bernard. 1978. Politics and moral character. In: Stuart Hampshire (ed.), Public and Private Morality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.