‘Barbarians at the Gates’: The Moral Costs of Political Community

Abstract

The phenomenon of ‘dirty hands’ is often held to be endemic to political life. Success in politics, it has been argued, requires a willingness to sacrifice our moral principles in order to pursue worthwhile goals¹ I want to argue that the tension between morality and politics goes deeper than this. The very existence of ‘politics’ requires that morality is routinely violated because political community, within which political discourse is possible, is based on denying the moral claims of nonmembers. Political community requires borders and borders require keeping outsiders out. Yet there is no justification that we can provide to someone outside of our political community as to why they are denied membership. The price of political community is therefore the unjust exclusion of others. In a world characterized by the movement of peoples as a result of large-scale and systematic international injustices, this exclusion often involves acts that violate important obligations of compassion and respect. Thus, ‘we’ are the barbarians my title refers to. In order for political community to exist, we must act like barbarians at the gates. A problem of ‘dirty hands’ therefore lies at the very foundation of political community.