{"id":57151,"date":"2019-06-10T19:58:11","date_gmt":"2019-06-10T16:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=57151"},"modified":"2023-01-02T13:30:39","modified_gmt":"2023-01-02T11:30:39","slug":"the-political-and-the-moral-which-the-ends-and-which-the-means","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-political-and-the-moral-which-the-ends-and-which-the-means\/","title":{"rendered":"The Political And The Moral: Which The Ends And Which The Means?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[436,423,503,839],"acf":{"old_id":"57151","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":56443,"related_cahpter":"238","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"As power becomes an end for a sovereign clinging desperately to it, other intrinsically worthy ends turn into disposable means","content":"

Our author\u2019s initial and arguably most striking revelation concerning power is that the paramount aim of those who successfully attain supreme authority is often reduced to nothing more exalted or idealistic then staying in power. This obsessional fixation on the means and trappings of power, independent of the greater or lesser purposes it can serve, defines not only the psychic life of many of those who exercise great political power, but also the way in which politics is institutionally structured to sustain and secure the ruler\u2019s privileges and capacities. Whenever retaining hold on high office, rather than realizing an ideological vision or implementing a political program, becomes the dominant aim of politics, sovereign power becomes wielded as an end in itself, even while being publicly justified as a means for providing collective security. <\/span><\/p>\n

Although power is always justified to subjects as a means of repelling foreign conquest and attaining other collective goods, for the one who exercises it, sovereign power may easily turn into something desired for its own sake. This inversion of a means into an end, all too common in modern as well as archaic politics, causes another inversion in turn. As power becomes an end for a sovereign clinging desperately to it, other intrinsically worthy ends turn into disposable means.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rulers who wield their authority in the service of power as an end in itself regularly convert such ends as love, loyalty, the sacred, and moral obligation into mere means for eliminating dangerous rivals and staving off the loss of power, a loss that they morbidly dread.<\/span><\/p>\n

Instrumentalizing such inherently valuable ends and turning them into mere means has a further fateful consequence for human politics. Since sovereigns are always able, and often tempted, to turn morality into an instrument, their observable actions become chronically ambiguous. Observers of such sovereign actions find themselves in perennial doubt as to their genuineness. Is the moral justification adduced by the wielder of power a mere pretext covering a purely self-serving political motivation, or is the action principles and driven by a moral quest? As our author details with exceptional subtlety, the irresolvable ambiguities of political action and passion are rooted in the deeply enigmatic and hugely consequential relation between public justification and private motivation. Although – and indeed because – the instrumentalization of morality is pervasive in political life, the political and the moral are thoroughly intertwined in ways in which even the sovereign himself cannot always disentangle. The exploration of these interconnected themes – the double reversal of turning means into ends and ends into means that lies at the heart of politics and the resulting ambiguity of political action – runs through much of the Book of Samuel, but it initially comes into focus as our author meticulously examines the corrosive impact of the psychological and political imperative to retain power on the life of Saul, the first king and the first genuine political figure known to the Bible.<\/span><\/p>\n

E<\/span>xcerpts from The Beginning of Politics: Power in the Biblical Book of Samuel<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 Moshe Halbertal and Stephen Holmes, Princeton University Press, 2017, pp. 1<\/span>7-18<\/span>. Re-printed with permission of the author.<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":56668,"id":56668,"title":"halbertal-book cover.jpg","filename":"halbertal-book-cover.jpg.png","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/halbertal-book-cover.jpg.png","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-fine-grained-phenomenology-of-political-power\/halbertal-book-cover-jpg\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"halbertal-book-cover-jpg","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":56661,"date":"2019-06-02 14:58:58","modified":"2019-06-03 03:02:25","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/png","type":"image","subtype":"png","icon":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":2000,"height":2000,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/halbertal-book-cover.jpg-150x150.png","thumbnail-width":150,"thumbnail-height":150,"medium":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/halbertal-book-cover.jpg-300x300.png","medium-width":300,"medium-height":300,"medium_large":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/halbertal-book-cover.jpg-768x768.png","medium_large-width":768,"medium_large-height":768,"large":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/halbertal-book-cover.jpg-1024x1024.png","large-width":1024,"large-height":1024,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/halbertal-book-cover.jpg.png","1536x1536-width":1536,"1536x1536-height":1536,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/halbertal-book-cover.jpg.png","2048x2048-width":2000,"2048x2048-height":2000,"post_full_size":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/halbertal-book-cover.jpg-1200x1200.png","post_full_size-width":1200,"post_full_size-height":1200,"home_baner":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/halbertal-book-cover.jpg-420x420.png","home_baner-width":420,"home_baner-height":420}},"embedded_video":"","video_duration":"","show_fb_comments":true,"credit_media":""},"tile":{"top_caption":"Excerpts 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