Introductory Session
Images (Warning: Some images are violent and troubling newspaper photos): http://digitalcollections.library.yale.edu/GroupsView.aspx?qid=5058
Niccolo Machiavelli, 1469-1527 (Wikimedia Commons)
Wearing the formal regalia of a scholar or officer of state
Masterminds of the RAF bombing campaign against German cities
Arthur Harris, Chief, RAF Bomber Command, WWII
(Wikimedia Commons)
The strategist of the RAF's saturation bombing campaign against German cities and their inhabitants
His Personal Staff Officer at Bomber Command until 1944 was T. D. Weldon, a well-known political philosopher who went on to write States and Morals (1947) and The Vocabulary of Politics (1953). For Weldon's conception of political philosophy in 1947, which must surely have been affected by his experiences of Bomber Command and the dirty hands problem, click here.
At extreme left, F. A. Lindemann, Lord Cherwell (Wikimedia Commons)
Scientific Advisor to the British Cabinet and author of the 1942 Cabinet minute proposing that the RAF bombers target working class neighborhoods in German cities. The Cabinet adopted this policy.
Saturation bombing of German Cities, WWII
http://tinyurl.com/cfta4g7
RAF bomber loading up for a saturation bombing run on a German city (Wikimedia Commons)
Dirty Hands & The Kid Gloves Metaphor
The dirty hands problem is one version of the paradox of critical and conventional morality. It consists in this. Individual morality consists of a set of requirements that tell us above all not to harm other people. But when we think from the standpoint of politics and economic policy, we sometimes conclude that we ought to achieve a general good or avoid a general evil, where the circumstances are such that it seems the only way of doing this is to violate the requirements of individual morality. And so--to save the republic, or to defend the people from mass devastation, or to rid the world of a great injustice--civic-minded persons and public officials sometimes think that as necessary means to those goals, they must violate the requirements of individual morality: lie, cheat, steal, assault, imprison without charge, defame, murder, torture, ethnically cleanse, and massacre.
Faced with such choices, people often demur. Must I really torture this suspect in order to save the republic and protect the people? The end can seem remote and abstract when the means contemplated are so immediate and awful. And yet, suppose that the end is in fact so morally urgent that it overrides the demands of individual morality. Who then are you to refuse the means because of your moral scruples? If you accept the end and agree the awful means are necessary to it, but refuse to use the means yourself, then you are free-riding on others' willingness to get their hands dirty. If you accept the end but deny those specific means are necessary to it, there is always the suspicion that you rejected the means because you did not want to dirty your own hands. If finally you deny that the end overrides individual morality, then you are morally wrong. That is the dilemma that dirty-hands reasoners press upon those with qualms.
To illustrate their reasoning, proponents of dirty means often use the metaphor of kid gloves. "Go ahead," they say to those who demur, "Stay out of it! Wear kid gloves!" Here they refer to the custom of men's wearing light-colored dress gloves with full dress: today's white tie and tails for evening and frock or morning coat for daytime. The custom, which lasted roughly from the beginning of the Victorian era until the Roaring Twenties, held that men in full dress should wear light-colored dress gloves indoors, and especially when dancing with gloved women in the evening. Full dress gloves had to be ivory, cream, or light yellow in color, and the finest and most expensive such gloves were made of kid leather, which is especially soft. Ivory-colored soft leather is difficult to keep clean, so the prudent wearer will avoid acts which might dirty them. (Cotton gloves were a much less expensive alternative, and much easier to clean.)
So by saying that the squeamish could or should wear kid gloves, the speaker implied that the squeamish was the sort of person who (i) would wear light-colored dress gloves (and thus probably full dress), (ii) choose to have those gloves made of kid leather, and (iii) be willing and able to pay the purchase and maintenance prices for such gloves. When uttered by a socialist to another socialist, then, the expression was probably meant to be insulting. For socialists of the end of the 19th century and the early 20th century made it a point of pride not to wear full dress on any occasion, deeming it the intentionally expensive and wasteful uniform of an oppressive ruling class.
Agents of the Cheka with "an enemy of the people," during the Russian Civil War (Wikimedia Commons)
They have gotten their hands dirty in pursuit of Bolshevik ends.
(A 1912 fashion plate from Blacktieguide.com. Click for larger image.)
Both men are wearing dress gloves, possibly of kid leather.
Dress gloves of kid leather (Blacktieguide.com)
Rosa Luxemburg, 1871-1919 (Wikimedia Commons)
Marxist philosopher and economist
Co-founder of the German Communist Party
Fomenter of socialist revolution in 1918 Germany
Critic of the Bolsheviks' horrific methods
Summarily put to death by the Freikorps during the Spartacist uprising
You can watch this biopic, Rosa Luxemburg, dir. Margarethe von Trotta (1985). It illustrates many dirty-hands scenarios.