FCEA Blog: Dirty Hands and Geoengineering
„I want to suggest that this middle ground is captured by the philosophical idea, popularized by Michael Walzer, of ‘dirty hands.’ Dirty hands occur when a person must do something that violates the principles of normal morality—dirty one’s hands—in order to generate some significant good. Typical, though not unproblematic, examples would be that of a person who must torture a terrorist in order to defuse a nuclear bomb or Churchill ordering the carpet bombing of German cities during the Blitz.“