Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Friday, March 29th, 2024

Role of Ethics in Politics

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Role of Ethics in Politics

There have been different discussions regarding the role of ethics in politics. Some believe that is impossible to separate them and it would be even unwise to do so, while there are others who believe that separation of ethics from religion is necessary to ensure proper political developments. Among the political philosophers who were the founders of idea of separation of ethics from politics in modern political study was the Italian political philosopher and politician, Machiavelli.

Machiavelli broke away from the tradition upheld by Plato, Aristotle and medieval thinkers which looked at the state in terms of ethical end and purpose of making men happy and good. Machiavelli ignored the ethical purpose of the state. The state was not a means to an end but an end in itself with its own interests. State power was an end in itself and not a means to gig her moral end of promoting social welfare. To Machiavelli, it was clear that the interests of the state justified everything. The end justified the means. Public necessity knows no law. State actions were not to be judged by individual ethics. Machiavelli prescribes a double standard of conduct for the ruler and for the individual citizens on the basis that the ruler is a creator of law as also of morality for moral obligations must ultimately be sustained by law. As such he is above both. It will be the ruin of the state, were it to be weighted down by individual ethic. Public and private standards of conduct were different. It was always wrong for an individual to tell a lie but sometimes necessary and good for the ruler to do so in the interests of the state. The state has no ethics. It is a non ethical entity. Machiavelli believed that the justice of the state was the interest of the sovereign. The safety of the state was the supreme law.

Machiavelli believed that the state was the highest form of human association and had a superior claim to a man’s obligations. Reasons of state must outweigh any ethical considerations. Public interests were the most potent of all motives for political action. Public standards of action were different from private standards. It is wrong for a private individual to kill but it is not wrong for the state to kill by punishment for crime. The state hangs a murderer because public safety demands it and because public interests are more important than private interests of the criminal. Private interests of ethics have nothing to do with public action. Public conduct is neither inherently good, nor bad. It is good if its results are good. A good citizen may be a bad man of whom patriotism is the only moral law. Citizen acts for himself; the state acts for all and therefore the same principles of conduct do not apply to both. The state is neither moral nor immoral but non-moral. It is not a moral entity like the individual and, therefore, individual ethics do not apply to it.

From the foregoing, it is obvious that Machiavelli had little place for ethic or for that matter, for religion in a system or political philosophy and that formed the chief difference between him and the medieval writers. Aristotle had already distinguished ethics from politics but had not separated the two whereas Machiavelli brought about a complete divorce between them. Moral virtues had their own value but he refused to assign them any place in his scheme of things. Machiavelli agrees that qualities like liberality, mercy, fidelity, courage, chastity and sincerity make a good man and add, “I know that everyone will congress that it would be most praiseworthy for a prince to possess all the above mentioned qualities which are held to be good.” Again, “one cannot call it a virtue to murder one’s fellow citizens, to betray one’s friends, to be without faith, without mercy, without religion.” Here the word virtue is used by Machiavelli in the conventional sense. Morality was not denied but was subordinated to polities and, therefore, Machiavelli, is not immoral but unmoral in his polities. To Machiavelli there is no absolute good or evil. That is good which serves the interests of the individuals and of the community and which brings security. With Machiavelli, the end justified the means. Machiavelli may be called the “founder of utilitarian ethics”.

Machiavelli, also, does not believe in a supernatural end for man. Men value material prosperity, power and fame, etc. Disbelieving in a supernatural end for man, Machiavelli has no use for divine law. Machiavelli not only separated morality from politics, but also relegated religion to a very subordinate position in his political system, and it is because of this that we think that the modern study of politics begins with Machiavelli. For centuries politics and religion had been intertwined. Politics was, in fact, the handmaid of religion. Some of the best medieval thinkers subordinated the state to the church. As a political realist Machiavelli realized that passive Christian virtues, like gentleness and meekness, had little bearing on the sordid Italian politics of the day where success followed only the pagan virtues of courage, audacity, cunning and duplicity. Italy had no place for Christianity for, as represented by papacy, it was deliberately impeding the realization of Italian unity. Once again, Machiavelli was not irreligious but non-religious. He was more attracted by the propagandist utility than by the doctrinal virtues of Christianity. Machiavelli knew the public utility of the binding force of religion without which the state could not exist and he looked upon devotion to religion as a useful weapon in the hands of statement to be skillfully used in furtherance of the ends of the state.  

An important contribution of Machiavelli to political science was his rejection of medieval thought with its emphasis on the supernatural end of man, its Natural and Divine Laws and its universal authorities in the Papacy in the Roman Empire sapping the life out of the state. Machiavelli rescues the state out of these shackles and gives it a modern touch. His repudiation of medieval Universalism, his attempt to create a strong, centralized and independent state and his insistence that a state should expand up to the limits of its racial homogeneity and no further pave the way for the most central subject of modern thought namely the concept of the nation-state.

Dilawar Sherzai is the permanent writer of the Daily Outlook Afghanistan. He can be reached at email.urya@gmail.com

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