Philosophy

Kant and Machiavelli
Isnt it utterly necessary to construct a pure moral philosophy that is completely freed from everything that may be only empirical and thus belong to anthropology (Kant amended 2008).  The place of morality in politics, is there a place in morality for politics or even better is politics moral and is it meant to be moral  Many people would answer yes that politics should be moral though it might not be. This writer tends to disagree and believes that Kan and Machiavelli also do. This paper will discuss the views of Kant, Machiavelli and Walzer in relation to those questions.

Walzer tells us that the politicians are worse than the rest of us because they rule over us and that the average politician who is victorious uses violence or at least the threat of violence to control the people.  For us, the public, issues such as war are morally not correct as well as morally debatable  but to the politician they may be morally correct and not debatable.  A politician must choose between the utilitarian point of view and the absolutist point of view on a regular basis. One cannot take office and rule under their own beliefs. This is one of the reasons there is such a debate at every Presidential nomination as to what the Presidents religion will be. Everyone is always afraid that the new President will rule according to his own religion. This is not likely to happen though because they are not longer religious in the same sense, they are politicians.  On average they will choose the utilitarian point of view because in order to perform their job correctly they must. Candidates must make deals with dishonest people to do their jobs and therefore they are no longer innocent and their hands are dirty. (pg.164).

Kant believes that everyone will do the thing morally that secures their own happiness. This is even more important to the politician however, because if he does not solve his own needs and cares there is the chance that he will transgress to temptations against his duties again stated as the principle on which the will acts--and never mind the ends that may be achieved by the action.  An example would be the scolding that the new President gave the banks for spending money on expensive flights to come to the while house summits while he and his wife gave the most expensive White House banquet that has ever occurred. It is not because he did not believe what he said about the banks. It is because he did not notice that he was being extravagant.

Politicians must act out of respect for the law regardless of its morality. It really does not matter what they believe in as humans, they have made a pact to do what needs to be done for the majority. This may be completely against their own moral opinion. However, most politicians in the opinion of Kant and Machiavelli will say most anything to get elected, believing that those are the right things and change completely with what they find in the office. After all, before they enter the office they are like the majority of people, they think they know what goes on in those offices but once they are there they have to adjust what they said to fit what truly is happening. 

Machiavelli advocated duplicity, craftiness and expedience for those who wanted to advance their careers in politics and many are now comparing the Obama campaign to those things that Machiavelli advocated. This writer would say that Obama is only one example. In one years time, most of the campaign promises made have been rethought and changed to meet the needs of other than the average person but meeting the needs of those funding campaigns. (Breen, 2009). Essentially every President we have had has been accused of breaking his campaign promises. Machiavelli say they are only doing what they need to do to get elected so they can bring importance to the world in what they think we all need.

In Kants case, his doctrine of virtue and his doctrine of morality have often been debated. These are the two branches of his moral philosophy. Of course there is the kingdom of ends in this philosophy in which the end justifies the means. Bush for example thought the war was the right thing to do so he was not necessarily truthful with the American people and he got his war. The end justified the means, at least to he and his administration (Habermas  Rawls, 2009).  To this day he does not apologize for what he thought he had to do to save the American people from Sadam Hussein.

The question becomes, if Kant and Machiavelli are correct, then is there morality in this Does the government work for the  people and by the people If a President makes decisions based on his own needs first how can it be a government of the people This writer would like to say it isnt so but after reading the works of these two writers there is uncertainty. Certainly there is a stimulus to think about it differently and evaluate what is being said and done with a different lens. If the law is always the law and morality is always morality then why are both different from the chairs of politicians
In both these cases, the comparison to Walzers dirty hands philosophy pretty well matches up. He tells us that those that govern us are not innocent. They often choose between two issues that are morally difficult. They must choose between what the country believes is morally right and what they themselves believes is morally right. Some, like Mr. Bush may make it morally right for everyone by not being truthful. Violence and the threat of violence is often used against the public in some way either to convince or to move on in an issue (Walzer, 1973).

In conclusion, it is interesting that the older traditional philosophers in political science such as Kant and Machiavelli seem to know what is going on in politics today. Their ideas seemed so radical at the time and to many, ma today. However, when compared to the overall political atmosphere they seem to fit the bill. It appears from their philosophy as well as the real world, that politics is a matter of choosing the most advantageous choice and not the most moral choice though I think we would like to see our government and ourselves in another way. The debate is quite interesting and could go on for some time.