Eating Chicken

“If we want to know the moral and political qualities of his actions, we must know them, not his motives.” Morgenthau talks of political realism and the need for judging statesmen on the basis of their actions and not the motives or intentions behind them. One can argue that the current state of politics; the elections, speeches and sermons of statesmen and politicians are full of lies and false promises, and that one becomes sick of what the statesmen claim and would rather have nothing to do with the intentions they have compared to the results they produce. It can also be said that this is true to some extent, but the problem becomes a slipperier slope if one, because of the bleak image of current politics, becomes rash and cuts out motives entirely in favor of the end result of the process. One must be aware that thought produces actions or different intentions translate into different actions. Therefore, to realize actions in all totality one must therefore know where they sprang forth from. As the current trend in modern academia, which focuses on the history and development of a field, we must too trace back and understand the processes through which a certain action came into play in order to understand it fully. Now one can say why bother with the intention if the action is clear cut in terms of either falling into the good or bad distinction. This distinction can help in meriting the action and steering clear from the dilemmas, burden and waste of time that such a study of intentions may give rise to. The problem however then becomes that of the ultimate goal and the ultimate action. Providing nourishment to anything can be said to be a good deed. However, we feed our chicken because we want to eat them.