Question to what extent and by what means is

In no time, what series! Eric Woerth must be explained every day on a new topic. Previously, Christian Estrosi has been faulted for his apartment, Christine Boutin's accumulation of wages, Jeannette Bougrab increase, Christian white bills of cigars... It may be that I forget. In any case, the list is obviously not close and will lie. To make the "perfect" Republic, should every day that a Minister was pinned, a leader suspected of abuse and summoned to account immediately... Really

In this vortex, is shared feelings. It is desirable, essential to democracy, journalists stalk the abuse, open records that some would prefer to keep closed. It is obvious. But, on the other hand, it is not assured that a deep discernment always presides over these outpourings. Some seem random, based on anecdotal information. Others evoke the concerted because of the political and social calendar. The effects, inevitably, are double-edged: more transparency and rigour, but also more populism and failed.

Behind these records is a philosophical question old and embarrassing: how to articulate individual and common good virtue For Rousseau, the two can and should be confused. His eyes, virtue - in its political dimension - is to prefer the collective interest in its own interest. This requires, inevitably sacrifices. Person, indeed, cannot forget his own me in common without lose me an any advantage. "Will you righteous when it cost nothing to be" reads "the new Héloïse. The price of virtue is always a personal retreat.

But, of course, all renounce not! Public stress therefore requires everyone to be virtuous despite him. Necessarily imperfect, the individual contravened the laws. It must therefore be punished, depending on the severity of his crimes. Question to what extent and by what means is. It is here that the moral moult in inquisitorial requirement. Rousseau can then turn into Robespierre, public virtue in terror. The scaffold final, lack of virtue, "opposed to the happiness of the people and the glorious March of the Republic". Virtue is a substance of risk: it is pure, the more it becomes deadly.

From one extreme to the other, so was his trial. Nietzsche, in fighting the evils of the "moraline", shows that virtue is driven by resentment, equality by the desire for revenge, the dreams of purity by rage to destroy. Would advocate corruption, as did the Mandeville, from 1714, "The fable of the bees" Indeed, he maintained that "the vices of individuals contributed to public bliss." The paradox is known: make a society moral and integrity, it languishes on the hour; Instead let stand "fraud, luxury and vanity", its prosperity is assured. The risk, this time, is to give free rein in the worst violence.

The difficulty, in sum, is to accept that men might be impeccable, but stop to reduce abuse. Just show the biologist and philosopher Henri Atlan in a recent book, "of the fraud" (threshold) should develop a universe of the intermediate. Fraud is inevitable, impossible to eradicate, but this is not a reason to give up the fight. Instead dreamed an absolute purity, or even to abandon any morals, it is to learn to think and act in a world of the Entre-Deux - quite virtuous totally corrupt, nor really innocent or completely criminal. The chiaroscuro of the real, must be exercised to discern degrees in fraud, tick marks in the lie. And define, case by case, what is acceptable and what is not.