On Ends Justifying Means

Some excuse is needed for still another attack on the question of whether ends can justify means.

Some excuse is needed for still another attack on the question of whether ends can justify means. The present attempt is occasioned by the conviction that the pendulum of thought concerning the issue seems fixed at an extreme and simple-minded point of reaction. From all too many vantage points it is nowadays a commonplace to observe that recent political experience has demonstrated that ends can never justify means. What I shall try to argue is that the watchword, “The end can never justify the means,” does not compel, even in the glare of contemporary politics, outright agreement–or, for that matter, unqualified dissent. Like most shibboleths, it rather requires an effort to become clear about the difficulty or difficulties to which it is addressed. The same may be said of the apparently contrary maxim, “The end always justifies the means.”

Rational consideration of the issue is at present markedly inhibited. It is felt that, should one admit in any instance that an end justifies a means, this breath of a utilitarian breeze will be followed by the totalitarian whirlwind. The crucial expression of this anxiety in our time is a vision of Stalinism as the “logical outcome” of a belief in the justification of means by ends, once there is a commitment to socialist goals. But this is a fantasy, if ever there was one, of ignorance so compounded as to be malicious. Among its incredible presuppositions are these: Stalin’s aims throughout were socialistic; Stalin had recourse only to those means which appeared absolutely necessary for the attainment of Socialist goals; Stalin, and his many agencies, shared the consensus of latter-day European morality as to what means were to be deemed objectionable and, therefore, if employed, had to be justified.

Some persons, I suppose, may find these presuppositions credible. Short, however, of the definite establishment of all of them—and, it should be added, of others also—it is to forgo pontificating about the bearing of Soviet politics upon the problem of ends and means.

In what follows I shall be mainly concerned to show the sensible and, as it were, logical limits of the maxim, “The end justifies the means”; my approach will be philosophical and not immediately political; and the few examples adduced will be of crude moral conflicts rather than of the complex sorts that may trouble political persons. (With due caution, some extrapolation can be made, I presume, from the sphere of personal conduct to that of politics.) Throughout, I shall be trying to allay exaggerated worries concerning the notion that ends can sometimes justify means.

III

Among philosophers who have exerted extra-academic influence, none was as concerned with ends and means as John Dewey. He found himsef aroused by the topic in a variety of context...