Military Virtues

By RADM Alan Baker, Col. David Barnes, Dr. Edward Barrett and 30 more

Up until now, there has been no extant book focusing on military virtues aimed at professionals.  Like personnel in other professional organizations, service personnel at every stage of their careers need a complement of virtues (excellent traits) in order to navigate the stress, decisions, and temptations they face.

At a minimum, military professionals need to have a clear and working knowledge of the ethical decision-making process that underpin their profession in order to evaluate situations quickly.  In the search for such clarity, this volume identifies 14 key virtues of the military professional and through introductory essays and real world examples of those virtues in practice, it provides guidance for service personnel at every stage of their career.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Howgate Publishing Limited
• Release date: May 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781912440108

RADM Alan Baker

Alan T. ‘Blues’ Baker is a retired officer who served as the 16th Chaplain of the United States Marine Corps from 2006 to 2009.  Dr. Baker was the first graduate of the United States Naval Academy and former Surface Warfare Officer selected as a Chaplain Corps Flag Officer.  He established and served as principal of Strategic Foundations where he taught, coached, and catalyzed organizations valuing the intersection of learning, leadership and faith.  He is a deeply experienced executive with over 20 years of international leadership in complex organizations.  His former public service spanned from Dean of the Chapel at the U. S. Naval Academy to the Presidential nomination and Senate appointment as Rear Admiral where he provided executive oversight to a global team of several hundred professionals.  Blues brings extensive background in ethical leadership, education, organizational development, and strategic planning. 

Book preview

Virtues or Values?

Philip McCormack

Introduction

When an organisation produces and issues its code of ethics, often specific to the needs of that particular organisation or institution, it frequently contains a brief introduction from the Chief Executive, Chairman or within the military, a Service Chief. The British Army’s Values and Standards booklet is a classic example. This is a top down exercise. Very good reasons why this should be so can be easily imagined. In some instances, the ‘brand’ of the organisation will be inextricably linked with the professional behaviour of its people. In others, the conduct of its personnel outside of the workplace might affect public perception of the ‘brand.’ The approach taken by institutions regarding a code of ethics, however, is frequently premised upon certain assumptions: firstly, that personnel within an organisation/ institution will understand the ethical language used; secondly, that the shared, societal frameworks necessary for ethical concepts to be understood are known, recognised and accepted; and thirdly, that those using the code of ethics understand the moral landscape they have to navigate. This chapter will explore the problem of this approach, before setting the question of virtues or values in an operational dimension. It will contend that a virtue ethics approach is better suited to equip preparing professional militaries for operational service, especially in hostile and contested environments.

Virtues and Values: A Brief Description

The Greek word for virtue is arete (ἀρετή), which means excellence. Virtue ethics focuses upon the person and what their action(s) or behaviour reveals about the moral character of that individual.¹ This theory therefore, looks at the virtue or moral character of the person carrying out an action, rather than at ethical duties and rules, or the consequences of particular actions. Unlike the other major ethical theories, virtue ethics is concerned with the whole of a person’s life, rather than particular episodes or actions. The creation of moral character was thought by the Greeks to enable Eudaimonia, which can be translated as ‘well-being,’ ‘happiness’ and in the context of virtue ethics, ‘human flourishing.’ Eudaimonia in this sense is not subjective but an objective state. It characterises, to the community that espouses a virtuous life, the well-lived life. It is in Plato’s The Apology of Socrates, that we find that a virtuous life is the product of an examined life. In the Apology, Socrates is on trial for his life. He is charged, among other things, with corrupting the youth of Athens. Towards the end of the trial he makes his famous statement ‘that the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.’ Socrates’ commitment to life lived according to virtue, or moral excellence, compelled him to live an examined life. An unexamined life was not worth living because it would not be his life but one already determined by others. Although Socrates expounded the virtuous life, he would not have desired anyone, especially the youth of Athens to embrace his theory of an examined life unthinkingly.

Each individual has natural tendencies: some positive and some negative. These can be encouraged, developed or discouraged by a range of influences. In Greek culture it was understood that moral development relied upon good role models. The virtuous agent acts as a role model and the student emulates his or her example, from which ‘right’ habits could be developed. In virtue ethics, the moral agent does not act merely out of an unreflective response, but has come to recognise the value of virtue and why it is the appropriate response. Virtue is chosen knowingly for its own sake. In this regard, good habits shape the growth of character, which in turn influences decisions. The Greeks understood that the development of moral character takes time: many viewed it as a lifetime exercise. But once it is firmly established, one will normally act consistently, predictably and appropriately in a variety of situations. There are four cardinal virtues:²

• Prudence (φρόνησις, phronēsis ) or the practical application of wisdom

• Justice (δικαιοσύνη, dikaiosynē ) meaning that which is right or fair

• Temperance (σωφροσύνη, sōphrosynē ) the practice of self-control or moderation’

• Courage (ἀνδρεία, andreia ) the ability to act in the face of fear.

When taken together the virtues provide a moral framework³ from which an individual can construct their unique character. The Greeks believed that a life lived according to virtue was a life well lived.

For any culture or society to exist there must be some ethical standards that are shared and these are often reflected in the common values of that culture or society. Frequently there are common values that do not vary substantially from culture to culture.⁴ In their work to create a meta-inventory of values, Cheng and Fleischmann identified 16 value concepts from 12 different value inventories created by leading experts from a wide range of disciplines that focus on human values.⁵ These 16 value concepts were: 1) freedom, 2) helpfulness, 3) accomplishment, 4) honesty, 5) self-respect, 6) intelligence, 7) broad-mindedness, 8) creativity, 9) equality, 10) responsibility, 11) social order, 12) wealth, 13) competence, 14) justice, 15) security, and 16) spirituality.⁶ This list indicates that values may have a moral content (honesty or equality) or they may be morally neutral (intelligence or creativity). In this chapter, the word ‘values’ is employed in the context of ‘moral value’: i.e., that this value has a moral or ethical good. In a post-modern age⁷ values are often understood as being subjective, and therefore they can mean whatever an individual or group wants them to mean.⁸ Unless values are ground upon and derived from an ethical good they can become morally subjective, even within a social group that claims to adhere to them.⁹ This fluidity of meaning in combination with multifaceted societal changes has created profound problems for any military wishing to prepare its professional forces for service in complex operational environments.

Stating the Problem

The Fragmentation of Ethical Language

In 1981, the Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre published his well-known work After Virtue.¹⁰ Although it has gone through several editions, apart from his response to criticism, he stated in the 2007 edition that "I have found no reason for abandoning the major contentions of After Virtue."¹¹ It is his claim concerning the use of ethical language that is a particularly relevant starting point to sketching out a significant problem. MacIntyre’s ‘Disquieting Suggestion’ in Chapter 1 is based upon an imaginary world he constructs where a

… Know-Nothing political movement takes power and successfully abolishes science teaching in schools and universities, imprisoning and executing the remaining scientists. Later still there is a reaction against this destructive movement and enlightened people seek to revive science, although they have largely forgotten what it was. But all they possess are fragments: a knowledge of experiments detached from any knowledge of the theoretical context which gave them significance; parts of theories unrelated to the other bits and pieces or theory.¹²

In this imagined world the language of natural science although used, is in a grave state of disorder.¹³ MacIntyre uses his allegory to explain the impact of Enlightenment philosophy, from his perspective, upon moral theory, maintaining that it was doomed from the start precisely because it used ethical language that had been detached from its source, namely Aristotelianism with its teleological idea about human life. He states that the language and the appearances of morality persist even though the integral substance of morality has to a large degree been fragmented and then in part destroyed.¹⁴ MacIntyre’s argument is a carefully constructed critique of moral discourse emerging from Enlightenment philosophy, which from his perspective was a failure. The point he makes is that Enlightenment philosophers were the inheritors of both a moral language and the substance that gave that language meaning and shape. The rejection of Aristotelian virtue ethics with its teleology, led to the fragmentation of moral language and the substance from which it is derived being ignored and then destroyed.

This is not the occasion to engage fully with MacIntyre’s overall argument. What is important to highlight, however, is the suggestion that moral language has become fragmented. I contend that, not only has the process of fragmentation continued, but even the ethical frameworks created by Enlightenment philosophers and their successors are now largely unknown. What little knowledge of them that remains among the general public, is disjointed at best. Abundant evidence may be discerned through watching a television debate purporting to examine an ethical subject. When organisations/institutions issue their organisational ethic, it is done so with the implied assumption that their personnel will understand: 1, the ethical language used; and 2, the authority underpinning it that gives it moral force. It is not at all certain that personnel within an organisation will understand the language used in ethical codes and comprehend it in the manner the organisation expects. One only has to consider how problematic the concept of loyalty has been and continues to be for militaries.¹⁵

The Changing Social Imaginary

A second aspect to the problem lies in the assumption that the shared, societal frameworks necessary for ethical concepts to be understood are known, recognised and accepted by the personnel working for that organisation or institution. I want to go much further than MacIntyre and suggest that not only is moral/ethical language fragmented and detached from the substance that gives it meaning, but that the shared societal frameworks within which ethical concepts must be understood are unknown, forgotten by many or have been transformed without much social awareness that this has taken place.

The philosophical observations concerning modern social imaginaries by Charles Taylor are pertinent.¹⁶ According to Taylor, the social imaginary is not a set of ideas; rather, it is what enables, through making sense of, the practices of a society;¹⁷ it is the ways people imagine their social existence, he contends, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie those expectations.¹⁸ His focus is primarily Western history and the social imaginary that underpinned the rise of Western modernity.¹⁹

One of the characteristics of a social imaginary, according to Taylor, is that it can eventually come to count as the taken-for-granted shape of things too obvious to mention²⁰ and seems the only one that makes sense.²¹ Social imaginaries can change over time. How people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met has evolved in the past. The point is not that social imaginaries change but that the societal frameworks from which our ethical frameworks emerged is unknown to many, perhaps even the majority, and that a process of transformation has occurred without much social awareness that this has taken place. The taken-for-granted shape of things too obvious to mention has been forgotten or has become unknown, precisely because it had the characteristic of being too obvious to mention.

The Fluidity of Ideas and Concepts

The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman introduced the idea of Liquid Modernity into our modern vocabulary²² using it as a powerful metaphor to articulate the changes taking place within our everyday lives.²³ Bauman’s phrase captures the increasingly rapid changes that have taken and are continually taking place to ‘solid’ structures that underpinned Western modernity. He argued that Modernity melted the foundational ‘solids’ that gave pre-modern social structure its essential character in order to reshape and mould them to fit its needs.²⁴ The consequence of globalisation and what Bauman referred to as individuality, has resulted in societal ‘solids’ being thrown into the melting pot of fluid modernity.²⁵ Concepts like love, fear, social structure resemble the characteristic of a liquid in that they do not stand still for long and keep its shape for long.²⁶ The idea of liquid modernity can be illustrated in the topical issue of gender fluidity. ABC News has identified 58 different gender options currently being used.²⁷

Not only are once fixed societal solids becoming increasingly fluid, a hollowing out of traditional ideas may also be occurring. One eye-catching example of this phenomenon is the striking idea of the eminent sociologist Ulrich Beck and what he referred to as ‘zombie categories’ in twenty-first-century life.²⁸ He explained his idea of ‘zombie categories’ in an interview with Jonathan Rutherford in London on February 3, 1999. Beck uses what he describes as ‘individualization’ to explain the disembedding of the ways of life of industrial society, for example class, family, gender and nation. Individualization does not, he maintains, mean individualism.²⁹ Individualization creates a lot of zombie categories.³⁰ When asked for illustrations Beck cited family, class and neighbourhood as examples.³¹ It is sobering to think that one of the most distinguished sociologists of our age, described institutions traditionally understood as being critical to modern life, as husks whose life has been hollowed out: transformed into the living dead.

An Increasingly Unknown Moral Landscape

The moral beliefs and moral reasoning among ‘emerging adults’ may offer an insight into the impact of the fragmentation of ethical language, the ‘unknownness’ of historical social foundations, the fluidity of concepts and the hollowed out nature of social categories like family and neighbourhood. This subsection is indebted to the impressive sociological research by Christian Smith and his collaborators that resulted in their book Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood.³² The main conclusion from this important book is that – not withstanding all that is genuinely good in emerging adulthood – emerging adult life in the United States today is beset with real problems.³³ Smith and his colleagues choose the phrase ‘emerging adulthood’ from the array of labels used to describe the period in an individual’s life between 18 and 30. While one should exercise caution in transposing an academic study from one country to another, the themes are identifiable in the U.K. and I suspect in other Western democracies. Sociological studies have demonstrated that "the transition to adulthood today is more complex, disjointed, and confusing than it was in the past