This is philosophy bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel War Burton.

Philosophy bites is available at www

philosophy bites.com. The former US Secretary of State for Defense, Robert McNamara, an instrumental

figure in the Vietnam War, offered a list of principles for the conduct of foreign policy.

Number nine was this.

In order to do good, you must engage in evil.

The idea that politicians have to follow a different moral code to the rest of us

has been explored by political theorists as varied as

Machiavelli in the early 16th century to in modern times, Princeton's Michael Woltser.

But what exactly is the claim being made here? Sure, politics is messy, but

does it really have its own specific moral realm? Here to tease out the arguments is the

renowned professor of moral philosophy Tony Cody who's based at the University of Melbourne.

Tony Cody, welcome to Philosophy Bites.

I'm very glad to be here Nigel and hope I don't get bitten too hard.

The topic we're going to focus on is dirty hands in politics.

Could you just explain what the problem of dirty hands is? Well, the technical problem of dirty hands is? Well the technical problem of dirty hands is one thing.

There's a more popular sense of dirty hands which is another thing again though

it's somewhat related. In the more popular sense, people say,

we're really in a difficult situation now with the war on terror and so

and we've really got to get stuck in and this is a time for tough measures.

We've got to get our hands dirty.

Now that can mean any one of numerous things.

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