Abstract

This thesis studies the history of the ethics of political action, and in particular the proposition that achieving the public benefit necessarily requires the cultivation of vice or corruption on the part of those who produce it . Part One of the thesis explores the origin of the conflict of values generally associated with the problem, that between the Roman ethic of political action and the ethic of the Christian religion, and the uneasy resolution of this conflict attempted by Augustine's moral psychology and two-cities metaphor. Part Two of the thesis examines the unraveling of this synthesis through a reading of Thomas More's Utopia, and then traces modern attempts to resolve this paradox which emerged in the thought of Machiavellii, Montaigne, and Hobbes. Part Three pursues a parallel development in the economic realm, recounting the democratization of the dirty hands dilemma in the "private vices, public benefits" argument of Pierre Nicole, Mandeville, and Adam Smith. The principal contribution of the thesis arises from its historical approach to a cluster of issues which have not been afforded an extensive historical treatment. Other distinctive features of the thesis include its virtue-oriented approach to the problem, its consideration of "democratic" as well as "heroic" conceptions of dirty hands, and its account of the development of the concept of pride in the history of political theory