Integrity, Personal, and Political

Book excerpt: Conventional philosophical wisdom holds that no agent can invoke its own moral integrity — no agent can invoke fidelity to its deepest ethical commitments — as an independent moral consideration. This is because moral integrity simply consists in doing what is, all-things-considered, the right thing. Integrity argues that this conventional wisdom is mistaken with regard to individual agents, but is especially misguided with regard to liberal democracies as collective agents. Even more than individual persons, liberal democracies as collective agents often face integrity considerations of independent moral force, affecting the moral status of actual political decisions. After defending this philosophical thesis, this book illustrates its practical value in thinking through a wide range of practical policy problems. These problems range from 'dirty' national security policies, through the moral status of political honours celebrating political figures of questionable integrity, to the 'clean hands' dilemmas of political operatives who enable media demagogues to scapegoat vulnerable ethnic and racial minorities.