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Résumé: Le rapport entre la morale et la politique est un des plus vieux problèmes et des plus durables que s’est posé la philosophie morale, la philosophie politique, et plus récemment la philosophie du droit. Pour certains, la Morale, au sens large, doit guider les actions humaines dans toutes les sphères d’activité et les individus devraient ainsi, au mieux de leur capacité, chercher à se conformer à ses exigences. Dans ce cas, il ne peut y avoir de dilemme moral entre les exigences normatives issues de l’univers politique et les exigences, prétendument universelles, de la Morale. En contrepartie, d’autres suggèrent que l’on peut être justifié d’enfreindre, à certains moments, les exigences que l’on considère comme morales dans la vie « ordinaire » étant donné le caractère adversatif de la politique. Le dilemme se présente, ainsi, comme une tension entre deux normativités qui suggèrent une distinction entre ce qui relève du public et ce qui relève du privé. C’est en voulant répondre à ce dernier problème que s’est développé une littérature qui porte au cœur de sa conception le problème de la justification morale d’une action politique qui est moralement condamnable. Dans son ensemble, ce mémoire s’intéresse à analyser comment la littérature portant sur le problème des mains sales traite la question du couple conceptuel public – privé. Nous soutenons, qu’en retenant la possibilité d’une réelle distinction entre ces deux univers à normativités différentes, l’hypothèse qu’il y a effectivement une tension entre le domaine privé et le domaine public, qui ne peut totalement se soumettre aux exigences de la morale étant donné les particularités de l’action politique. Ceci étant dit, nous désirons nuancer une telle prise de position qui fait écho aux écrits de Machiavel. Ainsi, nous soutiendrons que cette distance entre le public et le privé est bien réelle, cependant, elle ne se présente pas aussi radicalement. Plutôt, elle se présente comme une distinction qui est liée à l’enjeu de l’évaluation, du jugement moral, faite par les individus qui sont hors de la politique et de ceux étant à l’intérieur de la politique. / Abstract: The relationship between Morality and the political reflection is one of the oldest problems and of the most long-lasting that arose in moral philosophy, political philosophy, and more recently in philosophy of law. For some, Morality, in its broader sense, has to guide human actions in all the spheres of activity and individuals should so, at the best of their capacities, try to conform to its requirements. Which amount to say that it cannot have a moral dilemma between the normative requirements from the political realm and the requirements, supposedly universal, of Morality. In return, others suggest that it can be justified to violate requirements which we consider, in « ordinary life », as moral, given that the purpose of the so immoral, political, action is exactly the preservation and the development of morality. Here, the dilemma appears as a tension between two normativities who suggest a distinction between what is a matter of the public and what is a private matter. In the attempt to address this problem a vast literature has developed and it carries at the heart of its conception a debate which seems difficult to solve: the problem of the moral justification of a political action which is morally reprehensible. In overall, this master thesis is interested to analyze how the literature, concerning the « problem of dirty hands », handle the question of the abstract couple « public and private ». We support, by retaining the possibility of a real distinction between these two normative realms, the hypothesis that there is an actual tension between the private domain and the public domain, which cannot totally submit itself to the requirements of the morality, given the peculiarities of the political actions. Having said that, we wish to temper such a stand, which echoes Machiavelli’s papers. We shall argue that this tension between the public and the private is real; however, it does not appear so radically. Rather, it appears as a distinction which bound to the stake of the evaluative approach, in the moral judgement, between individuals who are outside the realm of politics and those being inside its realm.

This paper revisits one of the more frequented stops at the crossroads of politics and morality in contemporary ethical theory, Michael Walzer’s essay “Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands.” The aim is to provide a fresh assessment of Walzer’s project, and to evaluate the tenability of its core notion of “dirty hands.” In pursuit of this aim, the effort is made to reopen the paths which take Walzer to his celebrated impasse, from two directions. The first of these resituates Walzer’s analysis in the context of the debate within Anglo-American ethical theory in which it is originally expounded. The second route seeks to recapture the trail of thinkers who guide Walzer to his conclusions from more remote locations in intellectual history, in order to determine the reliability of his intriguing constellation of Machiavelli, Weber and Camus as lodestars. Writing thirty years later, one of Walzer’s friendliest interpreters, Jean Elshtain, in the midst of her enthusiasm for ‘dirty hands,’ renews doubts about his recommendation of “casuistry.” Hints from throughout Walzer’s essay, incompletely elaborated there, are parceled together into closing suggestions as to an alternative approach to so-called ‘dirty hands’ situations. / text

When faced with an emergency situation, politicians are often forced to sacrifice their core moral principles in order to better serve the immediate public interest. This is commonly described as the Dirty Hands dilemma. Dirty Hands theorists conditionally defend politicians, but they leave the dilemma under-defined. Realists think that politicians do not even need defence, but their approach is overly relativistic and fails to distinguish between moral and immoral exercises of political authority. The present study critically engages with both sides of the debate in two parts. First, I use the method of conceptual analysis — and specifically conceptual disambiguation — to find out how each side conceives of the nature of the Dirty Hands dilemma. I find that (1) the dilemma emerges when a politician is forced to disregard the core human rights of certain individuals or groups to safeguard similar rights of others, and (2) the Realists fail to distinguish the concept of Dirty Hands from the concept of Political Compromise and Dirty Hands dilemmas from ordinary moral dilemmas. Second, using the method of reflective equilibrium, I advance the normative judgement that, instead of expressing guilt and paying the price, politicians should commit to not making their actions easy precedents when they confront a Dirty Hands dilemma. This study offers a better theoretical understanding of the Dirty Hands dilemma and a practical approach to distinguishing between moral and immoral exercises of political authority.

The normative political theory problem of dirty hands (DH) concerns the troubling possibility that political leaders, from a (mostly) consequentialist perspective, might sometimes be morally required to make exceptions from sensitive rules like prohibitions of extremely harmful practices (e.g. torture) in order to avert catastrophic threats and crises, while such rules are still considered so important and such crises so rare that one nonetheless feels inclined to deem dirty exceptions categorically wrong so as to prevent their unnecessary proliferation through a slippery-slope type development.  How can we conceptualize such a problematic necessity? A latent but insufficiently explored idea in the DH literature is that the normatively preferrable approach to such a wicked problem might be to not try to conceptualize it at all, or at least not in our public work as academics. In this thesis, I introduce the straightforward suggestion that if the DH problem cannot be discussed without risking slippery-slope demoralization of the partaking deliberators and/or audience, we seem to be morally required to content ourselves with terming it an unspeakable, taboo subject in non-crisis times, as a meta-level ersatz solution to the core-level political problem conventionally centered in the DH literature.  I also discuss to what extent the mainstream, weak rule utilitarian (WRU) DH literature can themselves be understood as intentionally testing the limits of consequentialist reasoning in a search for a 'higher' moral truth than what their ethical position might entail at first glance.