Adrian Marius Tompea, Raporturile dintre politică şi morală în concepţia lui Petre Andrei
The relationships between politics and morality in Petre Andrei’s view
The relationship between morality and politics, due to its status as an ancient but still pressing problem of the history of social thought has been approached in different ways. The present paper highlights the way this relationship is seen by theRomanian savant Petre Andrei. We explore the main directions in the study of the connection between the two concepts, as they are presented by Petre Andrei and also his thoughts on how to find a middle-ground between the theoretical approaches. The first point of view that we present takes politics and moral norms and puts them on the same level; sometimes it even subordinates politics to morality. The second perspective considers that politics overruns morality. As Machiavelli preaches, the morality of the leader, of the state is different than the common morality. And we have a “third way”, that of an irreducible opposition of the two concepts. The Romanian sociologist and philosopher analyses the possibility of reconciliation of the apparently opposed views on the relationship between morality and politics, by finding a common ground,that the political leaders must embrace in order to avoid the dangerous crisis of morality.
Keywords: politics, morality, political morality, moral law, political interest, political leaders, state reason.
- Andrei, Petre, Sociologia revoluţiei. Studii de sociologie politică / Sociology of revolution. Studies of political sociology, Editura Polirom, Iaşi, 1998.
- James MacGregor Burns, Leadership, Harper and Row Publishers, New York, 1978
- Michael Walzer, ”Political Action: The Problem of ‘Dirty Hands’”, în Philosophy and Public Affairs, 2/1973.
