Glen Newey wonders (
LRB 9 July 2009) "why anyone should think that morality is a given, while politics remains to be constructed. . . . The idea seems to be that morality is grander than politics, because it is more amenable to reason, for example, or has a longer use-by date; so the thing to do is to put politics on a firm moral footing. . . . One could just as well argue the opposite. Or that politics is just the same raree-show of cruelty, boredom, hope, obliquity, and stupidity as any situation where human beings act together."
If you accept "morals are forever, politics is just one dame thing after another" there are three key political questions, according to
Raymond Geuss:
- "Who whom?" apparently from Lenin
- "What is the thing to do here and now?"
- How do politicians legitimize their actions and decisions?
Flipping the "how can god allow evil" on its head, Newey sees politics as more hopeful than morality: "In the old days theologians had the task of explaining how god could permit evil to happen, to which the least bad answer was that he had to lump it, as the price of human freedom. No human agency, including the state, can do a remotely plausible impersonation of the almighty. By keeping that in mind, we might even come to see politics, and its forlorn theodicy, not with despair, but muted celebration."
