Principles may govern private life, but states must supposedly deal in necessity, compromise and force.

This 1972 collection rejects that convenient partition, asking contributors to examine how moral judgment operates within political life. These are done through questions of public interest, constitutional opposition, violence, obligation, universal principles and the conflict between what is right and what is politically possible. The essays ask what standards allow it to be criticised at all. 

The book belongs to a period when political theory was reasserting itself against the idea that politics could be studied as morally neutral behaviour. Some of its vocabulary is unmistakably of its era, but its central problem has aged rather well: whether appeals to realism are genuine recognition of difficult conditions or merely ethics being escorted quietly off the premises. A rigorous collection for readers of political philosophy, liberalism, state power and the moral limits of government.

First edition. George Allen & Unwin, 1972 paperback. Good condition with light rubbing, minor edge and corner wear, and a small crease to the upper front corner.