The Agony of Will”

Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men provides a vivid account of the tension between ethics and politics. Especially in studies of Adam Stanton and Willie Stark, scholars have used concepts such as “idealism” and “realism” to interpret this theme. Grounded in the secondary literature and political theory, this article provides an original, philosophically rigorous analysis of the moral problem of politics presented in the novel. It assesses the categorizations of Adam as an idealist and Willie as a realist, and it identifies the inadequacies of the idealism–realism dichotomy implicit in the scholarship. By examining Jack Burden, this article also claims that the novel offers a vision of political morality superior to both idealism and realism that can be described as “moral realism.” Beyond its contributions to the scholarship on the novel, this article offers an invitation to reconsider the topic of political morality in a field such as political theory

Aesthetics · Epistemology · Idealism · Morality · Political philosophy · Political science · Politics · Realism · Scholarship · Sociology · Theme (computing · Law · Philosophy · Research, Science, and Academia

• Robert Penn Warren and His Persistent Schism between Fact and Idea

  Douglas Scott Van•American Political Thought•2022

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• Democracy's Burden

  Eric C Sands•Perspectives on Political Science•2008

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• Willie Stark as Political Leader

  Steven D Ealy•Perspectives on Political Science•2008

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• The Achievement of Robert Penn Warren

  John L Stewart•South Atlantic Quarterly•1948

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• The Stark Regime and American Democracy

  Open Access•Joseph H Lane•American Political Science Review•2001

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