THE VIRTUE OF COMPROMISE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21814/eps.2.1.100Keywords:
Compromise, self-torturer, virtue, political virtueAbstract
Compromise is the virtue of political agents. This picture of the political is as common and familiar: politics is a realm where the reasonable, the compromising politicians get things done and the unreasonable and uncompromising are doomed to fringes. Thus, it is always right and reasonable make good compromises. The paper argues that under certain conditions, it is better and more effective to have non-compromising politicians. For example, think of a political party that every election moves towards the political center to maximize its chances of winning, but loses the elections at the cost of having the political center move further away from its original positions. If the process repeats itself, then a series of compromise would be disastrous, much as the considerations of the self-torturer are disastrous. Thus, there are systematic ways in which the reasonable compromises of a virtuous politician are sometimes (ultimately) unreasonable. Political virtue is all too often self-defeating, and therefore a curse in disguise.
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