The Dark Sides of Virtue.

• Date: 01 January 2005
• Author: Babson, Oliver
• Published date: 01 January 2005
• Author: Babson, Oliver

The Dark Sides of Virtue, by David Kennedy Publisher: Princeton University Press (2004) Price: $29.95

In the course of his two-decade career in the international human rights movement, Harvard Law professor David Kennedy has had ample opportunity to observe international humanitarians as advocates of tolerance and moderation in a harsh world of power politics. Humanitarians, says Kennedy, tend to think of themselves as champions of ethical decision making, a weak voice straining to humanize the Machiavellian princes who wield real power in the world. In The Dark Sides of Virtue (1) Kennedy traces the evolution of his own thinking about humanitarianism and arrives at the conclusion that such self-perceptions are frequently inaccurate--and sometimes dangerous.

The essential claim of The Dark Sides of Virtue is that humanitarians often make poor decisions because they are not sufficiently attentive to the potential costs of their advocacy. Why don't humanitarians do a better job thinking through the consequences of their policies? Because, says Kennedy, humanitarians are more comfortable thinking of themselves as powerless outsiders, critics and advocates who strive to influence the authorities that bear final responsibility for making policy--and also for the inevitably mixed results that attend difficult policy trade-offs. In other words, humanitarians want to...