This article offers suggestions for categorizing combat-related moral injuries, highlights possible causes of these injuries in veterans, and touches upon broadly-conceived measures to prevent and repair them. The first part identifies three prevailing definitions – lost trust, guilt, and harm to one’s capacity for right action and moral virtue – and argues for an emphasis on the latter. In service of highlighting areas for future empirical research and clinical awareness, the second part outlines possible veteran-related causes associated with these three (...) definitions, including unwarranted distrust of authorities, misapplying the theodicy problem to human acts, undue survivor’s guilt, wars that fail to meet ad bellum criteria, causing permissible collateral damage, and killing combatants without regret and for pleasure. The third part mentions strategies for preventing character harm, and then discusses the cognitive, rehabituative, and psychological aspects of moral repair. (shrink)

Being on the side of the angels is tougher in some historical moments than others. Military ethicists are living through one such era now and taking our share of elbows every day. Consider how the...

Drawing on arguments in Doris (2002, 2022) [Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Character Trouble: Undisciplined Essays on Moral Agency and Personality. Oxford: Oxford University Press], this essay argues that good character is typically an insufficient “bulwark” against misconduct in military organizations, for two reasons: (1) the situational sensitivity of behavior and (2) the relatively small effect sizes associated with personality variables. Additionally, what is known about moral development and education gives limited reason to think (...) organizations are likely to have much success in inculcating reliably good character in their members. Instead, military organizations concerned to reduce misconduct should focus on developing organizational cultures structured by carefully crafted and assiduously enforced moral rules. (shrink)

This article is an examination of killing in war in its moral and normative dimension – with attention given to how killing affects the acting agent. The author argues against the commonplace belief – often tacitly held if not consciously asserted – among academics, the general public, and even – if surprisingly – military professionals, that killing, including in a justified war, is always morally wrong – even when legally sanctioned and necessary to avert a greater moral wrong. This critique (...) of the “killing is wrong but in war it is necessary” trope is motivated in part by the large numbers of psychiatric battle casualties (specifically moral injury) suffered during operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and which have attended military activity throughout history. The article approaches the issue through the field of Christian ethical reflection on just war. In building a moral framework for killing in combat, the article explores a typology of homicide, intention, double effect, love, and whether the attitudinal expectations of just warriors in the Christian tradition is realistic in combat. With this moral framework for killing in hand, this article concludes by drawing a critical distinction between moral injury and moral bruising. (shrink)

This article, originally presented as a keynote address at the 2019 McCain conference, proposes that we must take seriously the “moral” component of moral injury. In addition to psychological treatment, wounded warriors suffering moral injury require atonement for genuine transgressions, and insight when the conduct they regard as transgression actually is not. The article defines the dimensions of moral injury as parallel to those of physical injury: pain, loss of functionality, and (in some cases) disfigurement. It then asks how atonement (...) can be achieved, turning to an unusual source for inspiration: the laws of atonement set out by the medieval Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides. Maimonides proposes four requirements: verbal confession, repentance, reparation, and apology. The article explains their meaning in the context of contemporary wounded warriors. Finally, it argues that Judaism’s unique tradition of collective atonement offers an important model for the armed services. (shrink)

“Limited Force” in Braun’s title refers to the recent tendency to apply force selectively as an alternative to waging full-scale warfare when attempting to dissuade adversaries or resolve conflicts...

It is common to think of warfare as a setting in which emotion can lead combatants to engage in unethical behavior. On this view, it is natural to conceptualize the aim of military ethics training as quelling the influence of emotion in combat in order to reduce the risk that military personnel are vulnerable to its influence. Recent research, however, indicates that what is called “emotion processing” is connected in important ways with moral judgment and behavior. In this view, acting (...) ethically is not simply a matter of subordinating emotion to reason, but of responding with appropriate rather than inappropriate emotion. In this respect, such research challenges the powerful “rationalist” account of moral judgment and behavior. More fundamentally, it calls into question the distinction between reason and emotion as a way to understand our moral sensibilities. This article describes this research and discusses work on naturalistic decision-making and neuroscience that provide support for its insights. It then suggests ways in which such research is consistent with Aristotelian notions of character and virtue. Finally, it identifies ways in which some military training implicitly draws on lessons from this body of research, and suggests how it might do so more deliberately. (shrink)

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;An' T...

At this writing, late in 2023 and on the eve of 2024, we are approaching the seventy-fifth anniversary of George Orwell’s 1984 and its many quotable passages such as “WAR IS PEACE.” Like 1949, the...

Immanuel Kant adopted the imperative sapere aude (dare to reason, know, or be wise) as the guiding principle for his writings, and this maxim became recognized as the hallmark of the Enlightenment...

Tens of thousands of U.S. military personnel remain missing in action (MIA). U.S. law requires that our MIAs be accounted for and that the government maintain a comprehensive, coordinated, integrated and fully resourced program dedicated to accomplishing this enormous task. The aim of this paper is to show that there is also a moral requirement. There is a moral duty to repatriate U.S. military personnel, a duty that is grounded in our individual right to self-defense.

To be publishing this journal as the brutality of war is on display every night on our television screens may seem simultaneously futile and deeply meaningful. With the horrors of Gaza, Israel, and...