What gives the problem of dirty hands its intuitive power? Certainly one important reason the problem so forcefully grips us resides in the great moral weight we assign to claims of public responsibility. The idea that political leaders may have special moral permissions not afforded to ordinary citizens rests at least in large part on the fact that the goods of the public are placed in their care. It is right, we think, for political leaders to feel they are not morally entitled to forego or sacrifice the goods of those for whose welfare they bear responsibility, as perhaps they could if only their own personal welfare were at stake.

In investigating the historical roots of this problem, then, we can begin with the following question: where does this idea of differential ethical requirements for public and private responsibilities originate? Where in our shared intellectual past do we find the beginnings of the intuition that it is permissible to do on behalf of others what it is not permissible to do on our own behalf?

The roots of this issue stretch back to the foundations of the Western tradition.