In Breach of Trust, Raimond Gaita looks beyond the prism of the party to consider morality, truth and politics. This is an essay, of a kind hard to find anywhere in the world, that confronts essential questions about the practice of politics today. Does the war on terror authorise leaders to do thigs that once were considered beyond the pale? Gaita discusses why successful politicians must at time be economical with the truth, but shows a way beyond cynicism on the one hand and moralising on the other. Politics, he says, is conceivably a noble vocation, as well as potentially a tragic one. (Quarterly Essay)
How lucky we are to have a philosopher of the calibre of Raimond Gaita in our midst. Few writers or philosophers are able to tackle the moral dilemmas raised by controversial contemporary political events in such a rigorous yet inclusive and personal way.
It is always a joy to read a serious thinker capable of expressing complex ideas in simple, lucid language – [Gaita’s) arguments are driven by careful logic and a deep sense of personal and political morality.
Well after the ‘Christian triumvirate (Bush, Blair and Howard) have gone, this essay will continue to teach readers that ‘political ethics’ is not so much about the regulatory restraint of bad conduct by powerful people as about the promotion of the right way of life for those holding, or wanting to hold, public power.
Publishers Blurb
In Breach of Trust, Raimond Gaita looks beyond the prism of the party to consider morality, truth and politics. This is an essay, of a kind hard to find anywhere in the world, that confronts essential questions about the practice of politics today. Does the war on terror authorise leaders to do thigs that once were considered beyond the pale? Gaita discusses why successful politicians must at time be economical with the truth, but shows a way beyond cynicism on the one hand and moralising on the other. Politics, he says, is conceivably a noble vocation, as well as potentially a tragic one.
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