  The moral remainder and the remorse it generates signals the tribute that dirty hands pays to moral absolutism. While actually rejecting moral absolutes, the dirty hands theorist remains entranced by the significance they give to certain moral constraints. But how do we decide whether moral absolutism should be rejected? It is difficult in the nature of the case to see what could resolve a dispute between absolutists and non-absolutists. Absolutists do not typically regard all moral prohibitions as absolute; they restrict their claim to a few such prohibitions, such as those against intentional killing of the innocent, rape and (for some theorists) torture. Their opponents claim that, even for these cases, emergency scenarios can be imagined in which “our” intuitions accept the legitimacy of such acts. Where absolutists don’t reject the scenarios as merely fantastic (as some certainly are), they simply have different intuitions about the force of the examples. Moreover, they can point out that most moral theorists, including their opponents, are absolutists about some moral issues. Utilitarians allow no exceptions “whatever the circumstances” to their basic rule of maximising satisfactory outcomes, Rawlsian contractualism gives an absolute priority to certain principles of liberty, and similar points apply to other theories normally opposed to absolutism. It might be replied that the level at which absolutism applies is different, and this is true since the absolutist endorses specific moral prohibitions such as that on murder or torture whereas the other theories are usually absolute at a more abstract level. Yet it is unclear why this is an important difference, or why, if it is, it should count against the absolutist. After all, it is surely plausible that our conviction that murder or torture is always wrong has more authority than any conviction that we should always maximise the greatest happiness of the greatest number or always maximise preference satisfaction. Moreover, some specific moral prohibitions seem proof against even fantastic counter-examples, e.g., the principle that it is wrong to torture an innocent child for fun. But, even here, it may be hazardous to underestimate the ingenuity of philosophers in constructing bizarre counter-examples. Clearly, more remains to be said about the nature of a defensible (or objectionable) absolutism, but our discussion at least serves to indicate the significance of absolute prohibitions for the framing of dirty hands scenarios.