1. Introduction 1.1 A first look at our problem 1.2 A political debate 1.3 A brief outline of the argument 2. The circumstances of politics 2.1 Two faces of politics 2.2 Insufficient compliance 2.3 Preliminary remarks on politics as a moral problem 3. Realism: the unconstrained thesis 3.1 Machiavelli’s paradox 3.2 Explaining the paradox 3.3 From explanation towards solution 3.4 Hobbes’ treatment of the laws of nature 3.5 Generalizing Machiavelli’s conception 3.6 The thesis of realism 3.7 Transition to the thesis of indirect motivation 4. Indirect motivation: the narrow thesis 4.1 Hume’s knave 4.2 Kant’s “nation of devils” 4.3 Virtue replaced by self-interest 4.4 Difficulties with the classical theory 5. Outlines of a neo-classical theory 5.1 The thesis of realism constrained 5.2 The thesis of indirect motivation extended 5.3 “...to publicly let his opinion known” 5.4 Summary 6. Realism: the constrained thesis 6.1 The ethics of responsibility limited by the ethics of conscience 6.2 A principle of accountability 6.3 The constraint: its content and scope 6.4 Institutional rules 6.5 Willy Brandt’s resignation 7. Indirect motivation: the wide thesis 7.1 Common deliberation and strategic interaction 7.2 Deliberative democracy: its internal limits 7.3 Truth and democracy 7.4 Deliberation in indirect motivation 7.5 Populism 7.6 The Spiegel affair 8. Dirty hands in politics 8.1 A quasi-Weberian argument 8.2 The “Catholic” model 8.3 A fresh start 8.4 “Democratic dirty hands” 8.5 The moral risks from disagreement 8.6 Tony Blair’s war 9. Dirty hands in moral theory 9.1 Moral dilemmas: the tragic account 9.2 The moral doubts account 9.3 The tragic account revisited: moral residues 9.4 Dirty hands 9.5 The dirty hands account of moral dilemmas 9.6 Dirty hands in the absence of moral dilemmas 9.7 Concluding remarks Appendix “Living in truth”, Index