ABSTRACT
How do moral considerations bear on politics? In this book I have stressed the importance of moral disposition. This entails a shift away from formal theory towards an account of the moral standpoint of the agent in political contexts. I have emphasized that certain moral dispositions exclude politics, are deeply incompatible with it, and in fact endanger it. Such an exclusion does not arise from politics. It is not that politics sets the limit to morality. On the contrary, such moral dispositions as innocence in a variety of ways exempt themselves from politics. We are made aware both of the intrinsic limits to morality and of the autonomy of politics. Moral ideas do not filter political proposals, allowing some to pass but not others, a picture which gives morality an exaggerated ascendancy. It is rather that certain moral dispositions disqualify themselves from politics, so establishing a limit which is set from within morality. This book is in praise of politics. Politics has a conceptual identity which need not take second place to morality. And as morality sets its own limits on itself there is no necessity to describe this identity in terms derived from realism.
