If you are looking for an accessible, practical introduction to moral psychology and ethics for undergraduate, Professional Military Education classes, or the general interest reader, look no further. Philosopher and psychology researcher Christian Miller’s The Character Gap distills much of his own scholarly work, as well as the thoughts and writing of others, into a readable, accessible volume with practical examples, citations from important studies, and popular culture references that bring alive questions of moral character and development. This volume asks us not just to consider others’ moral character, but also reflect upon our own, the gaps in it, and how we can improve it.
#Reviewing War As Paradox
We must rethink our reading of Clausewitz's work as a search for and a description of eternal principles for an objective understanding of war. The nature of war is one thing, but war as instantiated in actual conflict and combat is another thing altogether; yet, both must somehow be held together in order to understand war. It is in this paradox that Cormier thinks we must locate, evaluate, and apply Clausewitz's ideas.
Healing the Wounds of War: Moral Luck, Moral Uncertainty, and Moral Injury
Even a casual viewer of the recent Burns and Novack film, The Vietnam War, comes away an understanding of the central theme of moral injury and the difficulty of the moral impacts of war on the individuals who fought and the society that sent them. While Jonathan Shay coined the term ‘moral injury’ in his seminal 1994 book Achilles in Vietnam, this issue has more recently become a prominent part of the public discourse. Concerns about PTSD, moral injury, and the return of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan from the ‘Forever War,’ as well as an increasing awareness of the so-called military/civilian culture gap. Tim O’Brien’s reading from The Things They Carried at the end of the film is especially evocative because of the public moment we find ourselves inhabiting.
#Reviewing Soldiers and Civilization
What do the ideas of narrative as doctrine, Stoicism, defeat, chivalry, and fighting for pay tell us about the development of military professionalism in the West? In his new volume, Soldiers and Civilization: How the Profession of Arms Thought and Fought the Modern World into Existence, Reed Robert Bonadonna addresses the role these and other developments in military history played in the development of military professionalism. His book is a fascinating and deep journey through military and intellectual history, which seeks to bring a historical and literary focus to a topic that tends to be dominated by social scientists such as Samuel Huntington or by ethicists rooted in the military practice such as Anthony Hartle. This volume appears unique in its focus and brings an important voice to the debate over the sources and nature of military professionalism in the West.
Professional Disobedience: Loyalty and the Military
To be a professional member of the military means to be obedient; to be disobedient is, therefore, unprofessional. However, the Nuremberg trials and events of My Lai demonstrate the concept of obedience is not that simple. Military members are expected to disobey manifestly illegal or immoral orders, so obedience cannot be an unconditional virtue.
Professional Military Education: What is it Good For?
Professional Military Education (PME) covers a wide range of activities. In one sense it refers to a plethora of training, continuing education, and other activities designed to provide development to members of the military at various points in their career and to prepare them for the next level of responsibilities. The U.S. military requires professional education for both officers and enlisted personnel and its form, content, and objective varies across rank, service, and military role. But what is its overarching purpose? Why do we invest so much in this effort?
Six Questions on Ethics and #Leadership
In the wake of nearly every scandal and moral lapse in the military, we hear the same response, “This is a leadership issue.” This view is problematic as it seems to assume all ethical matters are reducible to leadership issues or these scandals are a product of the personal morality of the leader in question. Responses like these ought to push us to ask, What is the connection and overlap between ethics and leadership in the military?
Beyond the Ticking Time Bomb: A Case for NCO Ethical Education
Beyond the Band of Brothers: Henry V, Moral Agency, and Obedience
What level of moral agency, judgment, and responsibility do individual members of the military bear in war? In 2006 Lt Ehren Wahtada tried to selectively conscientiously object to deploying to Iraq, while in 2013 service members appeared on social media to proclaim they would not fight in a war in Syria[1] . These are only two examples that illustrate the way in which this debate is live and permeates military culture. On the academic side, Michael Walzer and Jeff McMahan (and their proxies) have been engaged in this debate for quite some time, pitting individualist accounts against the conventional view that soldiers are instruments of the State. I want to examine this debate and put forward an alternative view to those typically espoused, expanding and advancing the ethical discussion in the process.
#Reviewing Just War Reconsidered: Strategy, Ethics, and Theory
Just War Reconsidered is an absolute and urgent must-read for scholars of Just War, ethics, and strategy, as well as anyone involved in the enterprise of war—military and civilian alike. And after reading it, an energetic dialogue needs to develop and be sustained as the implications of this important contribution are gradually worked out.
Strategy and Ethics: Why Strategists Need Philosophical Back-Up
The philosophical tradition in the West began with Socrates asking difficult, important, and sometimes annoying questions of those in power to explore ethical life and the nature of human society. He claimed to be a midwife of ideas—to help others in the painful process of giving birth—and to the extent that strategists are birthing strategy and creating means to achieve political ends of the State, a partner seems in order.
#Reviewing Incoming: Veteran Writers on Returning Home
The pieces in this volume are staccato in pace, including powerful imagery and flashbacks, and representing a fleeting moment in time, a feeling, a picture, or an idea, rather than a traditional narrative arc that we have come to expect in war writing. Incoming is a volume about individual moments and battles rather than war. In this lies its power and impact.
#Monday Musings: Pauline Shanks-Kaurin
Perfection, Moral Clarity, and Impossible Expectations
I was not yet twenty one, had big metal-band-era hair and acid washed jeans, along with a night job that left a little time for watching cable television, when I met a guy named Wolf Blitzer narrating the opening of what would become the First Gulf War. I have many friends and colleagues who were part of Operation Desert Storm as military personnel; their reflections and recollections are fascinating and much different than mine. In this post remembering the 25th anniversary of Operation Desert Storm, I wanted to reflect on my personal impressions as a college student and civilian, to ask questions about the legacy of this conflict in terms of how civilians now view war, and the implications for the military-civilian culture gap. As a military ethicist now reflecting on those experiences, it is clear to me that this short conflict had profound impact on expectations of current and future conflicts, often in problematic ways that need to be directly addressed moving forward.
Questioning Military #Professionalism
On a rainy day in January I was doing what I usually do in the month of January: preparing for my philosophy class (Military Ethics) by picking the brains of smart and experienced people on Twitter about the class topic for the day. Like all good ideas, I appropriated this strategy from fellow military ethicist Rebecca Johnson, who hosted a military ethics discussion on Twitter with the hash tag #METC. I posed some questions about whether the military was a ‘profession’ and if it was, how that shapes ethical values. What followed was an energetic discussion that I mostly moderated, without weighing in — as is my practice in class.
To provide some context for the other posts in this series that stemmed from my questions, I want to provide some context — in other words, why I think they are important and some of my own thoughts to further the discussion.
First, why think about the military as a ‘profession’ and what does that mean? I am not asking whether members of the military can display a sense of ‘professionalism,’ that is doing your job well and in accordance with certain basic standards. When I refer to a ‘profession,’ I have some quite specific traits in mind:
A body of expert knowledge, on which basis,
the public accords certain privileges in exchange for,
an understanding that the members of the profession will self-regulate and,
operate for the common or public good.
Historically medicine, law and the clergy were the main professions that fit this bill.
However, another piece here is that the ‘professions’ also have their own code of ethical conduct that is generated based upon the nature and identity of the profession. It is not happenstance that medical professionals claim, “Do No Harm” as an ethical principle; it comes from the very identity of their profession as healers. To talk about the military as a profession is to say that the ethical values (and not simply the laws and procedures to which military members are subject) are generated from the identity and nature of the profession, that is they are not merely contingent or happenstance, but evolve necessarily and organically from the nature of that profession. Loyalty and courage (for example), are not virtues or traits that might be replaced with any other traits; these are essential to being a member of the military and one cannot be a good member of the military and fulfill one’s role without them.
An implication here is that these ethical values do not change as technology changes or as the conditions in which the profession practices changes (even if application changes), because they are rooted in the basic tasks, function and self-regulated understanding of that community of professionals. This provides a certain kind of rootedness and consistency that we can observe across time, and to some degree across culture and context. Being a medical professional means to heal, to be a member of the clergy means to represent and bring the presence of the divine and administer the community of faith in ways that we can recognize as having a great deal of consistency.
In the discussion and subsequent post, Jill Russell raised an interesting point about whether all members of the military are truly members of the profession in this sense. It might seem that the officer corps and possibly non-commissioned officers fit this description, but what about the private on the ground or the lowest level of military member? Doesn’t it seem more like that they are doing a job, for which they are trained and paid?
I take the question to be a more prescriptive or aspirational claim: we ought to think of the military profession in this way; this is the best way to think of the military and its role in society.
Her point raises an important distinction that I think is critical to the discussion. In my view, to ask this question is not a matter of whether it describes some empirical reality of military service in the 21st century. If this is the question, it’s a short discussion and the answer is no, the military is not a profession. I take the question to be a more prescriptive or aspirational claim: we ought to think of the military profession in this way; this is the best way to think of the military and its role in society. But why does this distinction matter? What is at stake in this debate?
If we think about the military as a profession as an aspiration or prescription/goal towards which to work, we can acknowledge two things. First, that the development of the military as a profession, as with other professions, is a work in progress and that the community must continually reflect on their profession, discuss their identity, function and the ethical standards that go with that identity, as well as inculcate new members into this context. In this process, there must be room for questions, critical questioning and reassessing of this identity and the ethical values that derive from it.
Second, it means that the ethical values of the military are rooted and grounded in a way that is fundamentally different than the ethical values of other vocations or jobs, like business, fashion, or child care. If the military is a profession, then the ethical values of the military must be grounded in the nature and identity of the military as a profession.
As for the Professor, I am inclined to think that, the military is in fact a profession (aspirationally) with the trust of the public, tasked with protecting the American homeland and interests by bringing war waging expertise to bear on that function, having been given license to kill and destroy property (amongst other things). There are rigorous and specific requirements for admission and certification to be a member of the profession and the military largely self-regulates with its own justice system to which members are subject and its own ethical code. The new challenges which the military faces, the new contexts in which they wage war, necessitate on-going and critical discussions about the nature and identity of the profession and the ethical values that derive from the profession.
Pauline Shanks Kaurin holds a PhD in Philosophy from Temple University, Philadelphia and is a specialist in military ethics, just war theory, social and political philosophy, and applied ethics. She is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, WA and teaches courses in military ethics, warfare, business ethics, and history of philosophy. Recent publications include: “When Less is not More: Expanding the Combatant/Non-Combatant Distinction;” “With Fear and Trembling: A Qualified Defense of Non-Lethal Weapons;” and Achilles Goes Asymmetrical: The Warrior, Military Ethics and Contemporary Warfare (Ashgate, 2014).
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