Public affairs are contentious in the great democratic nations, including in Israel and in America.

There's talk in the air of nations coming apart, since parts, parties, tribes, and factions

within disagree fundamentally with one another over the ends of

public policy and the direction of self-government. So why don't they split up? What's keeping

nations together? Actually, alongside the political questions, there's a very deep philosophical

one, too. If Americans on the Red Team and Americans on the blue team feel so repulsed by so much of what

the other side holds dear, what is the force that keeps them together? If Israelis who support

judicial reform and Israelis who oppose judicial reform, each believe that their political opponents

pose an existential threat to the fundamental basis of the regime. Why not

explore ways to separate from them? I think Israelis do not want a civil war, and Americans don't want

one either, or a national divorce or anything of the kind. They are rightly afraid of all the

intended and unintended consequences of what could be unleashed by the

prospect. But can an account be given of why they stand together? As it happens, modern approaches

to the study of moral psychology and ethical decision-making are not fully equipped to answer that

question, for reasons, as we'll see, that have to do with

first-order assumptions that lie at the root of the most popular schools of modern philosophy.

Do you pursue your ends based on the purity of your intentions?

Or do you pursue your ends based on the consequences they bring about?

Those are good questions, but can they offer an adequate

answer to the question of national unity at this moment when that's the very question our

politics put before us? Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Silver. My guest today

thinks that another approach is needed, an approach that begins not by asking

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