Hobbes's account of the impersonal, sovereign state has been extraordinarily influential; yet (as the preceding chapter has tried to show) his concept of the state also constitutes a proposed solution to the recurring dilemmas of political agency and value conflict that we have denoted as the problem of dirty hands. That it does constitute a response to these issues, however, is not necessarily obvious, especially to contemporary political thinkers. This is partly by happenstance and partly by design. By happenstance: for we employ the concept of the state without recalling all of the apologetic functions it was originally introduced to serve. By design: for our acceptance of the outcome of the argument for the state, whether or not we recall its premises, serves to take the question of dirty hands – whether asked of the citizens or of the state – in large part off the agenda.

In Part III we will consider another approach to the problems of political ethics: an approach that on its face is perhaps even less obvious as a response to the dynamic of dirty hands.