Shaun McVeigh and Raimond Gaita: International Law and Ethical Tragedy(Festival of Conversations)

McVeigh and Gaita discuss the relations between morality, law and politics. Gaita has argued in, amongst other places, his contributions to 'Who’s Afraid of International Law', (which he edited with Gerry Simpson) that morality, law and politics are distinctive forms of the ethical and that, as seen from a particular ethical perspective in the Western tradition, each is sui generis. He does not equate the ethical with morality. He believes that law and politics are answerable to morality, but not reducible to it in their ethical dimensions. To see morality, law and politics as different forms of the ethical, he has argued, enables one to see why the different conceptions of responsibility distinctive to each sometimes bring (especially parts of international) law and politics into irreconcilable conflict with morality and politics sometimes with law.