Price of Ambition

The Price of Ambition: Success, Compromised Morality and the Limits of Justification

Abstract

Ambition is commonly understood as a virtue: the desire to improve one's circumstances, achieve distinction and exercise influence over the world. Yet ambition presents a persistent moral problem when the pursuit of success begins to demand the sacrifice of principle. At what point does determination become exploitation, pragmatism become dishonesty, or professional advancement become an excuse for conduct that would otherwise be condemned? This article examines the relationship between ambition, moral compromise and the human capacity for self-justification. Drawing on legal reasoning, classical philosophy and Catholic moral theology, it considers whether success can ever justify the abandonment of moral obligations. It argues that the difficulty lies not merely in recognising wrongdoing, but in the tendency to redefine wrongdoing when the anticipated reward becomes sufficiently attractive. Although ambition and compromise are not inherently immoral, the pursuit of wealth, status or power becomes ethically dangerous when other people are reduced to instruments of advancement and moral principles are treated as negotiable. Ultimately, the article asks whether an achievement can genuinely be considered success when its acquisition requires the destruction of the character that was supposed to make it worthwhile.

Keywords: ambition; moral compromise; Catholic moral theology; virtue ethics; self-justification; power; professional ethics; conscience.

1. Introduction

There is a question more revealing than what a person hopes to achieve: what are they willing to sacrifice to achieve it?

Ambition is frequently presented as evidence of discipline, determination and the capacity to endure difficulty. We admire those who pursue demanding careers, accumulate wealth, secure influence and overcome considerable obstacles. Success is often treated as its own form of vindication. The person who reaches the summit is presumed to possess qualities worthy of admiration, while the circumstances of the ascent receive comparatively little scrutiny.

Yet achievement and virtue are not synonymous. A person may be intelligent without being honest, influential without being just, and successful without possessing integrity. Indeed, the very qualities that facilitate advancement can become morally dangerous when detached from principle. Persuasiveness may become manipulation; confidence may become arrogance; strategic thinking may become calculated deception. The distinction is not always apparent from the outside, particularly when the resulting achievement attracts public approval.

The difficulty is that moral compromise rarely announces itself as corruption. It arrives disguised as necessity. One exaggeration becomes an acceptable embellishment. One act of disloyalty becomes a strategic decision. One instance of exploitation becomes an unfortunate feature of competition. Each is explained by reference to a larger objective, until the objective itself appears to excuse conduct that would otherwise be indefensible.

My legal studies have encouraged me to consider not only whether an argument is persuasive, but whether it is sound. Legal reasoning requires distinctions between assertion and evidence, justification and excuse, and a desired outcome and the lawful means by which it may be pursued. These distinctions have a wider moral significance. The fact that a decision produces a desirable result does not establish that the decision was justified.

The central question, therefore, is not whether success requires sacrifice. Almost every meaningful undertaking demands something of us: time, comfort, leisure, security or immediate gratification. The more difficult question is whether there are things we ought not sacrifice, even when doing so would make success easier to obtain.

2. The Moral Architecture of Ambition

Ambition is not inherently a vice. To pursue excellence, provide for one's family, develop professional competence or seek responsibility may express legitimate aspirations. Without ambition, many worthwhile achievements would never be attempted. It would be a mistake to treat every desire for advancement as evidence of vanity or greed.

The moral difficulty arises when ambition ceases to be directed towards a worthwhile end and becomes an overriding measure by which every other consideration is judged.

Consider the difference between wanting to become an accomplished barrister and wanting the status associated with being one. The two desires may coexist, but they are not identical. The former may be motivated by intellectual discipline, advocacy, service and the pursuit of justice. The latter may be motivated principally by prestige, income or social recognition. Neither professional ambition nor the desire for financial security necessarily implies an improper motive. However, when status becomes the ultimate objective, professional responsibilities risk becoming obstacles to be managed rather than obligations to be honoured.

Aristotle's account of virtue provides a useful starting point. In the Nicomachean Ethics, he treats human flourishing as something more substantial than the possession of external goods. Character is formed through habitual action, while practical wisdom enables a person to deliberate well about what is genuinely worthwhile. On this account, success cannot be assessed solely by the outcome achieved. The manner in which a person acts is itself relevant to the quality of the life they lead.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans Terence Irwin (2nd edn, Hackett Publishing Company 1999) bk I, bk II and bk VI.

This presents a challenge to a culture that often measures achievement through visible indicators: income, professional rank, reputation and access to influence. Such measures may reveal something about a person's circumstances, but they cannot independently establish the quality of their character.

Nevertheless, Aristotle's framework should not be reduced to the claim that a virtuous person must reject material success. External goods can contribute meaningfully to a flourishing life. Financial security can provide independence; professional influence can enable useful work; recognition can reflect genuine excellence. The problem is not possessing these things, but treating them as sufficient evidence that one's life is going well.

The distinction matters because ambition becomes morally unstable when its object is no longer something worth pursuing in itself, but a form of validation that must continually be renewed. Once success becomes the principal measure of personal worth, the temptation to compromise grows. Every ethical restriction can begin to look like a competitive disadvantage, and every rival becomes a potential threat.

The question then changes. Instead of asking, 'What is the right thing to do?', the ambitious person begins asking, 'What can I justify doing without jeopardising the outcome?'

That is the beginning of a different moral calculation.

3. The Manufacture of Moral Exceptions

People rarely abandon their principles by openly declaring that those principles no longer matter. More often, they preserve their moral self-image by creating exceptions to the rules they apply to others.

Dishonesty becomes necessary because the competition is dishonest. Exploitation becomes acceptable because the other person would do the same. Disloyalty becomes strategic because loyalty is said to be a luxury. An unjust decision becomes defensible because it serves a supposedly greater objective.

These explanations are not all equally implausible. Circumstances matter to moral judgment, and difficult decisions can involve competing duties. A person may need to choose between legitimate but incompatible responsibilities. An employee may face pressure to protect a colleague while also reporting misconduct. A professional may have to decide whether a confidential disclosure is legally and ethically permissible. Genuine dilemmas cannot always be resolved by appealing to a single principle in isolation.

But there is a difference between confronting a genuine conflict of duties and inventing a moral exception because compliance would be inconvenient.

The latter is especially dangerous because it permits a person to retain the language of principle while progressively emptying it of substance. Integrity is praised when it is advantageous and suspended when it becomes costly. Honesty remains important, except where the truth might threaten a promotion. Loyalty is treated as a duty, except where betrayal offers a better opportunity.

The principle survives rhetorically, but not practically.

Psychological research on moral disengagement offers one way of understanding this process. Albert Bandura examined how individuals can distance themselves from the moral consequences of their conduct through mechanisms such as moral justification, the displacement of responsibility and the minimisation of harm. A person may therefore engage in conduct inconsistent with their stated values without necessarily experiencing themselves as immoral.

Albert Bandura, ‘Moral Disengagement in the Perpetration of Inhumanities’ (1999) 3(3) Personality and Social Psychology Review 193.

This framework helps explain why the language used to describe a decision matters. Calling deception 'positioning', exploitation 'commercial reality' or betrayal 'career management' can make conduct appear less objectionable without changing what actually occurred.

However, psychological explanation is not moral exoneration. Understanding why people rationalise wrongdoing does not establish that their reasoning is justified. Nor does every act of self-justification prove deliberate dishonesty; people can sincerely misunderstand their obligations or face genuinely ambiguous circumstances. The relevant task is to examine the reasons offered, the evidence available and the interests served by the interpretation adopted.

A useful test is whether the person would accept the same justification if someone else used it against them. Would they regard dishonesty as legitimate if a competitor employed it to secure the position they wanted? Would they consider exploitation acceptable if they were the person being exploited? Would they excuse the betrayal of their trust because the betrayer stood to gain financially?

If the answer changes depending on who benefits, the justification deserves closer scrutiny.

The problem is not simply that people sometimes do wrong. It is that they can become skilled at constructing accounts of their conduct in which wrongdoing appears necessary, reasonable or even admirable.

4. The Legal Distinction Between Winning and Being Justified

Law offers a useful framework for examining the relationship between outcomes and moral justification, provided its limits are recognised.

In legal practice, an advocate may seek the most favourable outcome for a client, but advocacy operates within professional duties and legal constraints. A successful result does not retrospectively make every method used to obtain it permissible. A court may determine whether a legal requirement has been satisfied, but legal validity and moral virtue are not interchangeable concepts.

Something may be lawful yet ethically questionable. Conversely, a person's moral conviction does not itself entitle them to disregard the law. The relationship between legality and morality is complex, and neither can simply be substituted for the other.

This distinction is particularly important in commercial life. A transaction may be structured to comply with applicable legal requirements while still raising serious questions about fairness, candour or the treatment of vulnerable parties. Equally, a commercially unpopular decision may be legally and morally defensible because it honours a legitimate obligation rather than pursuing immediate advantage.

The purpose of this distinction is not to suggest that the law is irrelevant to morality, but to resist the assumption that compliance exhausts moral responsibility.

Legal reasoning also encourages attention to burdens of proof and the quality of evidence. When someone claims that a questionable decision was necessary, we should ask what made it necessary. Were there genuinely no reasonable alternatives? Was the anticipated harm proportionate to the claimed benefit? Who bore the cost of the decision? Did the person making it benefit from defining the circumstances as exceptional?

These questions do not produce an automatic answer, but they expose the weaknesses in arguments that rely on necessity without establishing it.

There is, however, a limit to the courtroom analogy. Moral life is not a trial in which every decision can be reduced to a verdict of guilty or innocent. People act under uncertainty, possess incomplete information and sometimes face pressures that materially restrict their freedom. A rigorous ethical assessment must consider intention, circumstances, foreseeable consequences and the degree of responsibility involved.

Yet complexity should not become a convenient refuge from judgment. The fact that a decision is difficult does not mean that every available option is equally defensible. Nor does the fact that a person can explain their conduct mean that they have justified it.

The more significant question is whether their reasoning would survive examination without relying on the special privilege of being the person who stands to benefit.

5. Can the End Justify the Means?

The proposition that the end justifies the means is attractive because it promises to resolve moral difficulty through a calculation of outcomes. If the reward is sufficiently valuable, the reasoning suggests, the costs incurred along the way may become acceptable.

There are circumstances in which consequences are morally relevant. Decisions can prevent harm, protect others or secure important goods. It would be irresponsible to ignore foreseeable consequences when choosing between competing courses of action.

But a purely outcome-driven approach faces a serious problem: who determines that the desired end is sufficiently valuable, and whose interests are included in the calculation?

A person seeking wealth may regard an employee's exploitation as an acceptable cost. A person seeking power may regard the destruction of a rival's reputation as strategically necessary. Someone pursuing professional advancement may consider another person's contribution expendable. In each case, the beneficiary is also tempted to act as the judge of the sacrifice required.

This creates an obvious conflict of interest. The person who benefits from the proposed exception is not necessarily the person best placed to determine whether it is justified.

Catholic moral theology rejects the idea that a good intention can make every chosen means morally acceptable. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains that the morality of a human act involves its object, the intention behind it and the circumstances in which it occurs. It expressly rejects the proposition that an evil action can be justified merely by reference to a good intention.

Catechism of the Catholic Church (2nd edn, Geoffrey Chapman 1999) paras 1750–1756.

This is a more demanding position than simply asking whether the outcome is beneficial. It requires consideration of what is actually being done, why it is being done and the circumstances that bear upon responsibility. A worthwhile objective cannot, by itself, transform every means of pursuing it into a worthwhile act.

The distinction is particularly relevant to the pursuit of money and power. Financial success may support a family, create employment or enable charitable work. Influence may allow someone to reform an institution or protect those who would otherwise be ignored. Yet the eventual use of wealth or influence cannot automatically redeem wrongful conduct employed to acquire it.

A person who acquires wealth through exploitation does not necessarily neutralise that exploitation by donating part of the proceeds. Someone who secures authority through deliberate deception does not necessarily become justified because they later exercise that authority competently. Subsequent good may have value, but it does not erase the moral character of earlier choices.

At the same time, the opposite conclusion must be avoided. Consequences are not irrelevant, and not every compromise constitutes wrongdoing. Negotiation, prioritisation and the acceptance of proportionate costs can be necessary features of responsible action. The moral question is not whether a decision involves a sacrifice, but whether the sacrifice is legitimate, proportionate and consistent with the obligations owed to others.

The principle is therefore not that outcomes do not matter. It is that outcomes cannot be permitted to settle every moral question in advance.

6. Catholic Moral Theology: Ambition, Conscience and the Disorder of Desire

Catholic moral theology offers a particularly direct challenge to the belief that personal advancement can excuse moral compromise. Its central concern is not merely whether an individual succeeds, but whether their actions are ordered towards the good.

The Catechism distinguishes the object of an action, the intention of the person acting and the circumstances surrounding the act. These elements must be considered together, rather than allowing a desirable intention to determine the moral assessment on its own.

ibid paras 1750–1754.

This distinction prevents a common error: assuming that a good purpose makes the pursuit of that purpose good in every respect.

Consider someone who seeks professional success to provide financial security for their family. That intention may be entirely legitimate. But if the person knowingly deceives colleagues, exploits employees or falsely accuses a competitor to secure advancement, the worthiness of the original objective does not settle the moral status of those acts.

The desire to provide for one's family does not make dishonesty harmless. The desire to influence public life does not make manipulation just. The desire to succeed does not remove obligations towards other people.

This is not an argument against ambition. Catholic teaching does not require the rejection of achievement, material provision or responsibility. It requires that such goods be pursued within a moral order that recognises obligations beyond the self.

The distinction between ambition and disordered desire is therefore essential. Ambition seeks to attain something considered worthwhile; disordered ambition allows the pursuit of that thing to override the moral considerations that should govern it. The difficulty is not necessarily the object desired, but the authority it is permitted to exercise over the person desiring it.

A further question concerns the formation of conscience. Conscience is not simply the feeling that one's conduct is acceptable. People can sincerely believe they are justified and still be mistaken. The Catechism recognises both the importance of conscience and the responsibility to form it through reason, moral reflection and attention to objective moral principles.

ibid paras 1783–1785.

This has significant implications for self-justification. It is insufficient to say, 'I believe I did the right thing,' if the belief has been formed by excluding inconvenient evidence, ignoring the interests of others or accepting only those moral principles that serve one's immediate objectives.

A conscience shaped exclusively by ambition becomes less a source of moral judgment than an instrument of permission.

Catholic thought also challenges the assumption that wealth and power are reliable measures of personal worth. Material goods can serve legitimate purposes, but they are not the ultimate measure of human flourishing. When they become objects of excessive attachment, they risk displacing the moral and spiritual goods they were supposed to serve.

The warning in Matthew's Gospel is therefore pertinent: 'What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?' The passage is not a simple rejection of worldly achievement. Its force lies in the disparity between the magnitude of what can be acquired externally and the value of what can be lost internally.

Matthew 16:26 (New American Bible).

Read in this context, the question becomes more unsettling. A person may obtain the position, the money, the recognition and the influence they sought, yet gradually sacrifice honesty, justice, fidelity and the capacity to recognise another person as possessing value independent of their usefulness.

What, precisely, has been gained if the pursuit of success has damaged the character needed to use that success well?

7. The Counterargument: Are Moral Principles a Luxury?

A serious analysis must acknowledge the strongest objection to this position. Moral principles can appear easier to defend when a person is financially secure, professionally established or free from serious external pressure. Someone struggling to support dependants may face choices that are qualitatively different from those confronting a person whose basic needs are already met.

Competition can also reward conduct that ethical individuals may refuse to adopt. A person who declines to deceive, manipulate or exploit others may lose opportunities to someone who is willing to do so. In institutions where unethical behaviour is normalised, principled conduct can carry genuine professional and personal costs.

It would therefore be simplistic to assume that every moral compromise is motivated by greed, or that every person has the same freedom to resist pressure. Coercion, dependency, economic insecurity and unequal access to opportunity may affect both the available choices and the degree of responsibility attached to them.

Catholic moral theology itself recognises that circumstances can affect responsibility. The relevant circumstances may aggravate or diminish the moral significance of conduct and may influence the extent to which an individual is culpable. However, circumstances do not automatically transform an intrinsically wrongful act into a morally good one.

Catechism of the Catholic Church (n 3) paras 1735, 1754 and 1756.

This distinction is important because it avoids two extremes. The first is moral absolutism without attention to human vulnerability, in which every difficult decision is judged as though it were made under ideal conditions. The second is moral relativism, in which the existence of pressure becomes sufficient to justify whatever conduct appears expedient.

Neither approach adequately accounts for moral responsibility.

A person acting under coercion may bear less responsibility than someone acting freely for personal enrichment. Someone who makes a difficult decision to protect another person may have a different moral justification from someone who inflicts harm simply to secure a promotion. Context matters, but it must be examined rather than assumed.

There is also a practical objection: what if refusing to compromise means losing an opportunity to do substantial good? What if a person must accept an imperfect arrangement to achieve a more important objective?

These questions cannot be dismissed merely by repeating that principles matter. They require careful assessment of the actual decision, the alternatives available, the nature of the harm and the obligations involved. But they do not establish that every morally questionable means becomes acceptable when the end is sufficiently attractive.

The more defensible conclusion is that ethical decision-making requires judgment rather than automatic permission. One must distinguish between sacrificing convenience and sacrificing integrity, between accepting an imperfect but legitimate arrangement and deliberately using wrongdoing as a means of advancement.

Moral courage is not demonstrated by refusing every difficult compromise. It is demonstrated by recognising that some costs must be accepted precisely because the alternative would demand something one has no moral right to surrender.

8. Power and the Instrumentalisation of Other People

The pursuit of power introduces a further danger: the temptation to view other people primarily in terms of their usefulness.

A colleague becomes a rival to be neutralised. A mentor becomes a connection to be exploited. A friendship becomes a source of access. A subordinate becomes an expendable resource. A person's value is measured not by their dignity, but by what they can contribute to the ambitions of someone else.

This is not merely a problem of individual character. It concerns the way instrumental reasoning can reshape relationships. When every interaction is assessed according to its strategic value, trust becomes difficult to sustain because apparent loyalty may conceal calculation.

Kant's moral philosophy offers a relevant challenge. His principle of humanity requires that persons be treated as ends in themselves and never merely as means. The qualification matters: ordinary cooperation inevitably involves relying on other people to achieve shared objectives. Employment, commerce and professional relationships would be impossible without such reliance. The objection is not to involving others in one's plans, but to treating their agency and dignity as disposable whenever doing so becomes advantageous.

Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans Mary Gregor and Jens Timmermann (rev edn, Cambridge University Press 2012) 4:429.

A commercial relationship, for example, may legitimately be organised around mutual benefit. It becomes morally troubling when one party deliberately conceals material information, manipulates the other's vulnerability or assumes that contractual or strategic advantage eliminates every broader obligation of fairness.

Power makes this problem more acute because it can insulate the person exercising it from the consequences of their choices. Those with influence may be able to shift costs onto employees, competitors, clients or the public while retaining the benefits for themselves. Their success can then be mistaken for evidence that their conduct was justified, when it may instead demonstrate that they possessed sufficient power to avoid accountability.

Nevertheless, power should not be treated as inherently corrupting. It can protect vulnerable people, correct institutional failures and make responsible action possible on a larger scale. The moral issue is how power is acquired, exercised and constrained.

The relevant test is not whether a person possesses influence, but whether they recognise limits on what they may do with it. Authority without accountability encourages self-exemption. Authority governed by principle acknowledges that the ability to act does not establish the right to act.

9. The Corruption of Character: What Does Success Cost?

The consequences of moral compromise extend beyond the immediate victim or the specific act. Repeated decisions can shape the person making them.

When dishonesty is repeatedly justified, honesty may begin to seem impractical. When loyalty is repeatedly sacrificed for advantage, relationships may increasingly be understood as temporary arrangements. When success is pursued without regard to justice, the distinction between what is achievable and what is permissible can gradually disappear.

This is not to suggest that every compromised decision irreversibly transforms a person's character. People can recognise wrongdoing, accept responsibility, make restitution and change their conduct. Moral failure need not be the final description of a life.

But the possibility of reform should not obscure the significance of habit. Aristotle's account of character is relevant precisely because repeated actions matter. We do not simply make decisions from a fixed moral identity; through our decisions, we also cultivate the dispositions with which we will approach future choices.

Aristotle (n 1) bk II.

The danger is cumulative. Each individual exception can be presented as too small to matter. Each sacrifice can be described as temporary. Each act of self-interest can be justified by reference to a future in which things will supposedly be different.

Yet the future does not necessarily restore what the present repeatedly erodes. A person who compromises integrity to obtain authority may discover that the habits developed during the pursuit of authority continue to govern its exercise. Someone who sacrifices trust to achieve independence may find that the relationships necessary for a meaningful life have been damaged along the way.

There is also a problem of measurement. Financial gain, professional status and public recognition are comparatively visible. Integrity, trustworthiness and moral consistency are less easily quantified. It is therefore possible to accumulate evidence of external success while overlooking losses that are more difficult to record.

The absence of an obvious penalty does not establish the absence of a cost. Nor does public admiration establish moral worth.

This leads to a distinction between possessing success and being worthy of the responsibilities success brings. A person may be capable of obtaining influence without possessing the judgment required to exercise it responsibly. They may be able to persuade others without being truthful, or command obedience without deserving trust.

The ultimate cost of ambition is therefore not always the loss of a relationship, a reputation or a professional opportunity. It may be the gradual normalisation of a way of living in which every moral obligation is treated as conditional upon personal advantage.

At that point, success no longer merely competes with integrity. It has become the principle by which integrity is defined.

10. A Moral Audit of Ambition

If ambition is not to become an unrestricted justification for self-interest, it must remain subject to examination. The relevant questions are practical rather than abstract.

1. What exactly is being pursued? Is the objective worthwhile in itself, or is it principally a means of obtaining admiration, superiority or control?

2. What means are being used? Would the conduct remain defensible if the anticipated reward disappeared? Does the decision depend on deception, exploitation or the deliberate violation of an obligation?

3. Who bears the cost? Are other people being asked to absorb risks or harms from which the decision-maker benefits? Have their interests been considered seriously, or merely acknowledged before being dismissed?

4. What alternatives exist? Is the claimed necessity supported by the circumstances, or is it a convenient description of the most profitable course of action?

Finally, what kind of person does the decision encourage one to become? This is not an appeal to vague feelings of guilt. It is a question about the habits, loyalties and standards that repeated conduct establishes.

These questions do not eliminate moral uncertainty. Nor do they guarantee that a person will always identify the correct course of action. They do, however, make it harder to confuse the desirability of an outcome with the justification of the conduct used to obtain it.

They also expose the limits of a purely private moral assessment. Where the decision-maker is the principal beneficiary, independent scrutiny may be especially valuable. Professional standards, legal accountability, institutional oversight and candid advice can all help prevent personal ambition from becoming its own final authority.

The purpose is not to make ambition timid. It is to make it answerable.

11. Conclusion

The most revealing measure of ambition is not simply the height of the position someone wishes to reach, but the limits they are prepared to recognise while pursuing it.

Success may require sacrifice. It may demand discipline, patience, discomfort and the abandonment of immediate gratification. These are not necessarily moral losses; they can be the conditions of achievement. The difficulty begins when the sacrifices demanded extend beyond convenience and security to include honesty, justice, loyalty and respect for other people.

The temptation to justify such compromises is understandable. Money offers security. Power offers influence. Professional distinction offers recognition. In a competitive environment, the person who refuses to pursue these goods at any cost may appear to be placing themselves at a disadvantage.

But the apparent disadvantage is not the end of the argument. The question is whether the reward is worth the means, and whether the proposed justification survives scrutiny beyond the interests of the person making it.

Catholic moral theology insists that the moral quality of an action cannot be determined by its intended outcome alone. Classical virtue ethics similarly directs attention towards character and the quality of practical judgment. Legal reasoning, for its part, reminds us that an assertion of necessity requires more than confidence and that a favourable result does not establish the legitimacy of every means employed.

None of these frameworks suggests that ambition should be abandoned. They instead challenge the assumption that success possesses an authority capable of overriding every competing obligation.

Perhaps the most uncomfortable possibility is that people do not always sacrifice their morals because they believe morality is unimportant. Sometimes they sacrifice them because they continue to believe themselves moral while making exceptions for the things they want most. Their ambition does not eliminate their conscience; it teaches them how to argue against it.

The question, then, is not merely what someone is willing to do to succeed. It is what they are willing to make acceptable to themselves, whom they are willing to treat as expendable, and which principles they are prepared to reinterpret when those principles become inconvenient.

There may be achievements for which a person must sacrifice comfort, certainty or opportunity. But when the price of success is the deliberate abandonment of the standards by which success ought to be judged, the achievement becomes difficult to distinguish from a failure of moral judgment.

To gain wealth is not necessarily to become corrupt. To exercise power is not necessarily to abuse it. To pursue distinction is not necessarily to sacrifice virtue. Yet none of these outcomes can be presumed morally admirable merely because they have been attained.

The final question is therefore more demanding than whether success is possible without compromise. It is whether the success being pursued remains worth having when the means of obtaining it are examined honestly.

What is the value of winning if, in the process, the person who wins becomes willing to justify anything?

Editorial note: This is an interdisciplinary legal-philosophical article rather than a doctrinal analysis of a particular area of law. Before academic submission or formal publication, verify any new editions and pinpoint references against the texts consulted and check the relevant OSCOLA 5th edition guidance. Use our contact page for any questions.

Primary sources

1. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans Terence Irwin (2nd edn, Hackett Publishing Company 1999)

2. Catechism of the Catholic Church (2nd edn, Geoffrey Chapman 1999)

3. Kant I, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans Mary Gregor and Jens Timmermann (rev edn, Cambridge University Press 2012)

4. The New American Bible, Matthew 16:26

Secondary sources

1. Bandura A, ‘Moral Disengagement in the Perpetration of Inhumanities’ (1999) 3(3) Personality and Social Psychology Review 193