A Critique of Integrity: Has a Commander a Moral Obligation to Uphold his Own Principles?

Integrity is generally considered to be an important military virtue. The first part of this article tries to make sense of integrity’s many, often contradicting, meanings. Both in the military and elsewhere, its most common understanding seems to be that integrity requires us to live according to one’s personal principal values and principles we have a moral obligation to do so, and it is a prerequisite to be able to ‘look ourselves in the mirror.’ This notion of integrity as upholding personal values and principles is a very problematic one in itself, especially to those working in the military. For several reasons, perhaps the role that the virtue of integrity has in a military organization could in fact be better played by other virtues.