Awakening Warrior

Timothy L. Challans

Description

2007 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title

Awakening Warrior argues for a revolution in the ethics of warfare for the American War Machine—those political and military institutions that engage the world with physical force. Timothy L. Challans focuses on the systemic, institutional level of morality rather than bemoaning the moral shortcomings of individuals. He asks: What are the limits of individual moral agency? What kind of responsibility do individuals have when considering institutional moral error? How is it that neutral or benign moral actions performed by individuals can have such catastrophic morally negative effects from a systemic perspective? Drawing upon and extending the ethical theories of Kant, Dewey, and Rawls, Challans makes the case for an original set of moral principles to guide ethical action on the battlefield.

"…[Challans's] call for reformation combined with a demand for a new set of moral principles to govern the ethical behavior on the battlefield is certain to garner the attention and ire of many readers and military leaders." — Parameters

"This is an important book that needs to be read and taken seriously. If it is, it could be as revolutionary as its subtitle suggests." — CHOICE
Preface
Acknowledgments

1. THE UNREFLECTIVE LIFE: THE SLEEP OF REASON

The Myth of Moral Progress

2. THE PSEUDO-REFLECTIVE LIFE: BATTLE SLEEP

Reflection Deferred and Moral Error
Moral Authority
Lost in the Particulars
The Vices of Virtue
Is Moral Progress without Reflection Possible?

3. THE SEMI-REFLECTIVE LIFE: INSTRUMENTAL MEANS

Instrumental Means and Moral Error
Inadequate Decision Procedures
A Philosophical Critical Method
Disregarding Ends: When Means Become Ends
Are Moral Means Possible?

4. THE QUASI-REFLECTIVE LIFE: INADEQUATE ENDS

Inadequate Ends and Moral Error
Disregarding Means: When Ends Eclipse Means
Presumed Ends
Deliberating New Ends
Are Moral Ends Possible?

5. THE FULLY REFLECTIVE LIFE: AUTONOMY FOR AUTOMATONS

Autonomous Modes and Methods of Philosophical Ethics
The Ethical Principles of War
From Heteronomy to Autonomy: Reformulating Moral Intuitions
Moral Autonomy: Creating Better Understanding and Motivation
Is Moral Autonomy Possible?

6. THE FULLY REFLECTIVE LIFE AND MILITARY ETHICS

The Possibility of Moral Progress

Notes
Bibliography
About the Author
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Éthique et morale
• Ethique et morale
• États-Unis
• Military history
• United States of America
• USA

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 10 mars 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791479919
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Awakening Warrior
SUNY series, Ethics and the Military Profession George R. Lucas Jr., editor
Awakening Warrior
Revolution in the Ethics of Warfare
Timothy L. Challans
Cover illustration: The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (Caprichos no. 43), 1796-97. Etching and aquatint. By Francisco de Goya (Spanish, 1746-1828). Used by permission, courtesy of Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
2007 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Production by Marilyn P. Semerad Marketing by Fran Keneston
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Challans, Timothy L., 1954- Awakening warrior : revolution in the ethics of warfare/Timothy L. Challans. p. cm.-(SUNY series, ethics and the military profession) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 13: 978-0-7914-7125-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 13: 978-0-7914-7126-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Military ethics. 2. War-Moral and ethical aspects. I. Title.
U22.C49 2007 172 .42-dc22
2006023733
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is dedicated to those warriors emerging from their battle sleep.
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. THE UNREFLECTIVE LIFE: THE SLEEP OF REASON
The Myth of Moral Progress
2. THE PSEUDO-REFLECTIVE LIFE: BATTLE SLEEP
Reflection Deferred and Moral Error
Moral Authority
Lost in the Particulars
The Vices of Virtue
Is Moral Progress without Reflection Possible?
3. THE SEMI-REFLECTIVE LIFE: INSTRUMENTAL MEANS
Instrumental Means and Moral Error
Inadequate Decision Procedures
A Philosophical Critical Method
Disregarding Ends: When Means Become Ends
Are Moral Means Possible?
4. THE QUASI-REFLECTIVE LIFE: INADEQUATE ENDS
Inadequate Ends and Moral Error
Disregarding Means: When Ends Eclipse Means
Presumed Ends
Deliberating New Ends
Are Moral Ends Possible?
5. THE FULLY REFLECTIVE LIFE: AUTONOMY FOR AUTOMATONS
Autonomous Modes and Methods of Philosophical Ethics
The Ethical Principles of War
From Heteronomy to Autonomy: Reformulating Moral Intuitions
Moral Autonomy: Creating Better Understanding and Motivation
Is Moral Autonomy Possible?
6. THE FULLY REFLECTIVE LIFE AND MILITARY ETHICS
The Possibility of Moral Progress
Notes
Bibliography
About the Author
Index
Preface
The war machine lumbers along as the ghost in the war machine slumbers. The war machine is competent yet unself-conscious, confident of its moral character yet unvirtuous. The military institution in America-the war machine-is asleep at the wheel, and the individuals within it are deep in dogmatic slumber. The military mind is still stunned in the twenty first century that military success doesn t win wars, that the larger logic of human action in the social and political realms remains unpersuaded by the logic of pure military force. The moral slumber deepens as reason itself sleeps. This book examines the war machine s sleep of reason.
I finished the basic manuscript for this book in the summer of 2001. The ideas explored in this critique pre-date the military adventures of the past five years. My critique concerns the moral education of the military, and I argue that an inadequate moral understanding developed by an inadequate system of moral education can lead to moral error. The large-scale systemic moral error present throughout military operations in the last six years flow logically from this inadequate understanding of the ethical dimension of conflict and warfare. It is important up front to understand the basic logic of my argument. I am not deducing that moral education is lacking based on the evidence of moral error. If I were to do so, I would be committing the formal fallacy of affirming the consequent . Nor am I inducing such. Instead, I offer a philosophical critique of the system of education. If the education is lacking, then moral error can result. Current evidence does not falsify my argument.
Reason buoys progress. Progress is properly an Enlightenment ideal, and philosophers often associate Descartes Meditations with the dawn of the Enlightenment and the spirit of those times, a spirit of reason that animated new possibilities for progress. Before Descartes, it was difficult to engage in any inquiry without first establishing or presuming the nature of reality. Metaphysics was the master discipline, the first philosophy. And in that time before the Enlightenment-perhaps an era of endarkenment -how could one gain an imprimatur on any potentially alternative reality while remaining subject to a regime of metaphysical truth? Descartes innovation was to assert that epistemology, not metaphysics, was the first philosophy. This declaration enabled him to explore the nature and limits of knowledge, unbounded by metaphysical presumptions. Guided by the primacy of reason and the valuing of free inquiry, modernity enjoyed the growth of science, an increase in the understanding of our universe, and the first viable vision of global peace and justice. In the spirit of the Enlightenment, I begin with the notion that ethics can be pursued as a first philosophy, too, dependent neither upon metaphysics nor upon epistemology. As such, this book is not a search for moral truths, ethical foundations, or fixed notions of human nature or psychology.
Moral progress? The possibility of progress was a feature of Descartes time, but more importantly the idea of moral progress signals a debt owed to Kant, a chief architect of and principal contributor to the Enlightenment. Kant talks in his historical writings of the vagaries of evaluating moral progress, reminding us that we could interpret moral change any number of ways: as progress, decline, or even cyclical change. Kant nevertheless gives us his assessment of moral progress. He argues that people as individuals have made little if any progress; however, progress is possible through the improvement of our institutions. Concomitant with Kant s penchant for systemizing is his large contribution of insights to what we call today systems theory. This book explores many aspects of moral progress in one particular institution, the American military-it s past, present, and future. Has the American military made any moral progress? Is it progressing right now in moral matters? How can the military best facilitate future moral progress? To answer these questions, we can turn to moral philosophy. My critique focuses on the institution and the institutional conception of morality and its relationship to the moral agency of the individual and the moral responsibility the individual has for the military institution as a whole. Moral error will of necessity be the result of individual human action-error, though, that is enabled, nurtured, sustained, accelerated, magnified, and multiplied by the not-so-obvious systemic nature of a large institution.
Our ideas about morality matter. These ideas come from our moral training and education. These ideas set the conditions, establish the parameters, and provide the possible solution sets for our actions. I do not attempt any systematic evaluation of moral progress based on empirical description, sharing Kant s skeptical view of such a project. So the reader should not expect an empirical project. A descriptive causal analysis, beginning with a search for correlations between moral thought and moral action would be quite overambitious. Since this project is not an empirical one, the reader should not mistake the examples I use as a basis for making inductive generalizations. Mistaking the project as an empirical one will lead the reader astray into thinking that I am simply relying on my own perceptions, impressions, personal experiences, and anecdotes to form the basis of my generalizations. The examples of moral error I use are not simply token anomalies that are exceptions to a sound, coherent, and legitimate system of moral training and education. These examples are evidence of wholesale systemic failure. But I think I can posit the much more modest commonsense claim that moral thought and action are connected. There are very likely connections between our thought-our moral perceptions, beliefs, judgments, explanations, interpretations, and theories-and our actions. And if this connection exists in the midst of systemic failure, then the moral error is not anomalous yet rather results from the old paradigm.
While drawing upon ethical theory and philosophical argument, this work contains examples from historical, psychological, sociological, legal, and literary sources. Yet it remains primarily a theoretical work of moral philosophy that surveys and evaluates sources of moral normativity. Let me qualify further how this book as a work of philosophy differs from an empirical work. If it were an empirical project then I would be inferring from the effect of moral error to the cause, which would be a bad moral education. Aristotle defines a paralogism-a mistake in logic-as the truth of an antecedent inferred from the establishment of the consequent. To infer a cause from an effect is to commit a paralogism. Kant famously challenges Descartes cogito (I think therefore I am) in his refutation of idealism. According to Kant, Descartes commits a paralogism when he infers his existence (I am) from his thinking (I think), because thinking is an effect of his being, his existence. His existence is in reality the cause of his thinking: I am, therefore I think. Likewis