Reconciling morals with how a society is organized - in other words, reconciling ethics with politics - is one of humanity's oldest ambitions. Hammurabi, Raamses II, Solon, Confucius, and Pericles were among the first great figures to embark on this effort. The emergence of the nation-state in the eighteenth century, and the extreme level of barbarism reached in the twentieth century, may have created the impression that an ethical politics was an unrealizable dream, or that it was a dream growing ever more distant as it receded into the future.
Reconciling morals with how a society is organized - in other words, reconciling ethics with politics - is one of humanity's oldest ambitions. Hammurabi, Raamses II, Solon, Confucius, and Pericles were among the first great figures to embark on this effort. The emergence of the nation-state in the eighteenth century, and the extreme level of barbarism reached in the twentieth century, may have created the impression that an ethical politics was an unrealizable dream, or that it was a dream growing ever more distant as it receded into the future.