TEHRAN - Old Dominion professor, Lawrence J. Hatab, believes that the most important question about the relationship between ethics and politics is the justification of force in politics.

Hatab made the remarks in interview with the Mehr News Agency.
Following is the text of the interview:
Q: What are the most important questions about the relationship between ethics and politics?
A: Typically the most important questions turn on the justification of force in politics. All political matters involve values, with the addition of force to compel people to comply. The differences in political forms involve the extent of force and how much personal lives can be affected. In Liberal thought (Mill especially), force should only concern the effects on other people's lives. So people should be able to lead their own lives as they wish, even if we think them wrong, as long as they don't harm others. Most systems, of course, regulate some forms of personal behavior for the person's own good (paternalism). The question turns on how much responsibility should be left to people on heir own or given to the state.
Q: Some thinkers have focused on the point that Kantian ethics is for personal spheres and utilitarian ethics for public spheres such as political environment. Do you agree with this view?
A: This is an interesting question. I happen to think that both Kant and utilitarianism are better applied to public spheres. Neither one does well in addressing ethical issues involving private lives in friendships, family life, etc. If I take care of my wife when she is sick, it doesn't follow from a cost-benefit analysis, or a ""spouse rule"" that is universalized. Even if it did, I wouldn't tell my wife that that is why I did it. Anyway, I tell my students that the American system of democratic procedures grounded in the Bill of Rights is a good way to show how utilitarian and Kantian elements are both operative in political life. Rights are universally guaranteed, regardless of majority rule. So the right to a fair trial is a Kantian universal. If a jury decided to convict an innocent person to serve some majority interest, that would negate the entire system of justice, because each case is really about all possible cases that come before the system. But once rights are honored, then majority interests can apply, as in the case of voting rights followed by majority rule in elections.
Q: Is 20th century the best century in the history of philosophy? Why?
A: This is a very difficult question to answer. In a sense, no century can match the 4th Century BC in ancient Greece, because there the very nature, shape, and scope of philosophy was created for the first time, and we still wrestle with the questions of Plato and Aristotle. But I think the 20th Century has one great element, and that is sometimes called the ""linguistic turn."" Here the questions of philosophy must begin with how our language operates, rather than with suppositions about certain ""realities"" to which our language only ""refers."" Two giants of 20th Century philosophy, Heidegger and Wittgenstein, both worked in this way. On the other hand, one of the worst parts of the 20th Century has been the ""professionalization"" of philosophy, where the discipline has become over-specialized, insulated in academia, and conversing mainly with fellow specialists, to the point where philosophy loses touch not only with concrete affairs of life, but also with an intelligent general readership. This is one reason why public discourse has become so much more shallow and thoughtless.
Lawrence J. Hatab is full professor at Old Dominion in U.S.A. His areas of specialization include 19th- and 20th-Century Continental Philosophy, Ancient Philosophy, and Social and Political Philosophy. He is author of “Nietzsche and Eternal Recurrence”, “Myth and Philosophy”, A Nietzschean Defense of Democracy: An Experiment in Postmodern Politics” and “Ethics and Finitude”