ABSTRACT
To walk in the dark is always a disconcerting and dangerous thing. Too often it is by groping in the dark that leaders must make decisions affecting the lives of millions of people; one understands their hesitations. When, to guide their decisions, they search for clear, reality-based principles suited to a world of multiple permanent tensions, they are in a void, and instead of taking calculated risks, they are forced to take blind risks. They do so because they lack sound ethical guiding principles, for, especially in matters of development, one searches in vain for a coherent body of principles capable of orienting political decision-makers. Contemporary political thinking tends either to be starkly Machiavellian (politics has nothing to do with ethics, and vice versa), or to pursue a vision of justice shrouded in a Utopian halo because it is not deeply imbedded in the world of real constraints. In a domain so important as that of development – however odd and abnormal this may seem – ethics has not until now assumed its full responsibilities and begun to play its proper normative role.
