The Non-Political Foundations of the Problem of Dirty Hands.

The Catholic approach demands some "determinate" (Walzer [24]: 178) and "socially expressed" (Walzer [24]: 177) punishment - and this is I the i reason why Walzer prefers it. And, more importantly, it obscures the fundamental nature and importance of the problem of dirty hands.[6] Consider how, for example, although Walzer concedes that we all - politicians and non-politicians alike - can face dirty hands dilemmas, he still insists that there is something special about the way in which politicians face these (or about what is at stake when it is politicians who face these dilemmas, etc.). Tellingly, Walzer suggests that this alleged right that non-politicians may have (and that politicians, regarding their political activity, certainly lack) "might be regarded as the moral equivalent of our legal right not to incriminate ourselves" (Walzer [24]: 165). The protestant approach exemplified by Weber also prescribes a punishment, but in Walzer's estimation, such punishment is too private and indeterminate, entirely left to the conscience of the tragic hero, thus giving us reason to suspect the politician with dirty hands of "either masochism or hypocrisy or both" (Walzer [24]: 177).[17] Walzer prefers the Catholic approach over the Protestant approach - Camus over Weber - because only the former prescribes a "determinate penalty" for a "determinate crime" (Walzer [24]: 178). [Extracted from the article]