Teaching Virtues in the Military

ABSTRACT

In parts I and II, this article briefly sketches two approaches to virtue ethics – those taken by Aristotle and the contemporary exemplarist moral theory of Linda Zagzebski – with an eye to providing resources for miliary educators. Each section concludes with remarks about the pros and cons of the author’s experiences of teaching these theories to undergraduates. Part III deals with the social articulation of morality and its implications for war crimes. The social articulation of morality is the idea that moral principles cannot be applied in the abstract, but must be interpreted in terms of social backgrounds and norms. This draws on War Crimes: Causes, Excuses, and Blame (2019) by Talbert and Wolfendale, who consider how social articulations of morality led the military in various countries to commit war crimes in the mistaken belief that they were acting in accordance with moral principles. Democratic countries have commitments to free speech that enable us to resist such abuses. The implications for military education are that virtues such as intellectual discernment should be joined with discussions of ethical issues to ensure that future military leaders do not fall prey to false moral narratives.

KEYWORDS:

• Virtue
• Aristotle
• exemplarism
• social articulations of morality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For further information, see Snow (2020). Readers might note that there are two other ethical theory types on which military educators can draw – consequentialism and deontology. Since the topic of this article is teaching virtues in the military, I prefer to draw on theories that take virtue as its central ethical notion. It is not within the remit of this article to defend virtue ethics as superior to the alternative theory types for military education in ethics, but it should be noted that both virtue ethics and military education deal primarily with the ethical formation of the person. Though consequentialism and deontology do have things to say about persons, their primary focus is on advancing principles to guide ethical decision-making and moral choice. So, there are good reasons, though they cannot be fully articulated here, for preferring virtue ethics to competitors.

2 For further information, see Snow (2020). I draw minimally on that work for my comments on Aristotle and Zagzebski. I draw even more minimally on Snow (forthcoming) for my remarks about humility and exemplarism.

3 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle, accessed June 20, 2020. In addition to the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle’s views on ethics can be found in two lesser-known works, the Eudemian Ethics (Aristotle 2013) and the Magna Moralia (Aristotle 2015), as well as the Politics (Aristotle 2017) and the Rhetoric (Aristotle 2019).

4 I use the terms “practical wisdom” and phronēsis interchangeably throughout this discussion.

5 What the role of the phronimos is and what the phronimos knows has generated debate among ethicists. See, for example, Hursthouse (2011) and Sim (2018).

6 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_a_Wonderful_Life. Accessed June 20, 2020.

7 This analysis presupposes the operation of dual processing theories of cognition, according to which some cognitive processes operate at the level of conscious awareness, and some, outside of them. For example, as I type these words, I do not have to stop to think about where to place my fingers on the keys, nor do I need to tell myself such things as “Now depress your pinky finger,” and so on. I type without conscious awareness of my finger placements and movements on the keyboard. By contrast, if I interrupt myself to take a break, I am doing so with conscious awareness. For further explanation, see, for example, the essays in Chaiken and Trope (1999). For the relevance of dual processing theories to virtue ethics, see Snow (2010; 2016).

8 There are also cases in which phronēsis must adjudicate the competing claims of a single virtue, such as loyalty. A case described by Jean-Paul Sartre (1946) could be interpreted in this way. This is a case in which a young Frenchman must choose between staying with his ailing mother, and going to England to join Free French Forces fighting the Nazis. He is torn by his loyalty to his mother and his loyalty to France and the cause of freedom.

9 It has also been called the “reciprocity of virtues” thesis, and has been much discussed by philosophers. See, for example, Russell 2014, 213–217; Russell 2009, ch. 11; Wolf 2007; Swanton 2003; Hursthouse 1999, 153–157; Watson 1984; Flanagan 1991, 261ff; Badhwar 1996; and Lemos 1994.

10 For psychologists, see Colby and Damon (1992), Frimer et al. (2012), Walker and Frimer (2007), and Walker and Hennig (2004); for philosophers, see Blum (1988).

11 See Zagzebski (2017, 2010, and 2004).

12 Zagzebski develops this view as a parallel to work in the philosophy language. See Zagzebski (2017, 10–14).

13 For an excellent discussion of this and similar phenomena, see Applebaum (2020).

14 See, for example, Hallie (1979), Keneally (1983), Oliner and Oliner (1988), Blum (1988), and Monroe (2004).

15 For Grant, see Chernow (2017); for Sherman, see McDonough (2016).

16 See https://www.cmohs.org/recipients/james-b-stockdale. Accessed November 15, 2023.

17 See https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/my-lai-massacre-1. Accessed June 24, 2020.

18 A reviewer suggested that “ …  that there was widespread public support for torture of terrorists (based on several polls conducted at the time), and the narrative of the war on terror as a fight against an existential threat (a narrative that was used to justify the use of torture) was widely accepted in the media and in political discourse at the time.” This observation does not undermine my point – that controversy arose and vehement opposition was voiced.

19 I do not mean to suggest that Talbert and Wolfendale (2019) would disagree with the points made in this paragraph.

20 Thanks to a reviewer for raising this concern.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nancy E. Snow

Nancy E. Snow joined the University of Kansas (KU) Philosophy Department as a tenured full professor in late August 2022. She was formerly Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing at the University of Oklahoma. Her research interests are in virtue ethics, moral psychology, and virtue epistemology. She is the author of Virtue as Social Intelligence: An Empirically Grounded Theory (Routledge, 2010), Contemporary Virtue Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2020), and seventy papers on virtue and ethics more broadly. She is the co-author (with Jennifer Cole Wright and Michael T. Warren) of Understanding Virtue: Theory and Measurement (Oxford University Press, 2021), and has edited or co-edited seven volumes. She is the series editor of “The Virtues,” a fifteen-book series published by Oxford University Press. In addition to other projects, she is currently editing a book on hope, authoring a monograph on hope, and planning work on a monograph on virtue ethics and virtue epistemology.