Just War and Ethics

In ‘Two Versions of the Moral Life in Time of War I’ (see below) the distinction was drawn between traditional morality with its focus on the exercise of the virtues and reflective morality with its focus on the application of rules. The two moralities were exemplified in the work of Michael Oakeshott and John Rawls respectively.

Despite substantial disagreements elsewhere, both philosophers appear to acknowledge, implicitly at least, the special affinity that exists between traditional (that is, unreflective) morality and war.

Rejecting the notion that traditional morality is primitive or outmoded and destined to be replaced by its reflective counterpart, Oakeshott argues that, at the very least, traditional morality remains

the form which moral action takes (because it can take no other) in all the emergencies of life when time and opportunity for reflection are lacking. (Rationalism, 62).

Similarly,while restricting its role in fundamental social arrangements in favour of more enlightened options, Rawls recognises the need to preserve certain aspects of the morality of authority ‘for special occasions’,

when the unusual demands of the practice in question make it essential to give certain individuals the prerogatives of leadership and command

(Theory of Justice, 462 and 467

Why might traditional morality be seen as more in tune with the reality of war than reflective morality?

Perhaps the first point in its favour is its practical bias which gives it a built-in sensitivity to the specific demands of the practice with which it deals – in this case of war. This is a concrete form of understanding which searches for moral meaning within a practice rather than seeking to impose that meaning from without via a process of abstract reasoning.

According to Clausewitz, such a nuanced and receptive approach is essential in dealing with war, since in war

the light of reason is refracted in a manner quite different from that which is normal in academic speculation. (On War, p.133)

Though Clausewitz does not have moral understanding as such in mind, his observation has important implications for a morality of war. Without that process of refraction any understanding of war, including moral understanding, seems likely to be found wanting.

Traditional morality’s understanding of moral agency is much more adaptable to the experience of war than the rational agency that reflective morality upholds. The latter seems ill equipped to respond to the real pressures and constraints under which moral agents labour in time of war and which ensure that, in large part at least, war is not a reflective activity.

The difficulties which war places in the way of moral agents are partly cognitive and partly volitional. The nature of war both clouds the understanding and weakens the resolve of the moral agent.

Cognitively, the exceptional and complex circumstances of war impede moral reasoning and moral judgement. The difficulty of knowing what to do (or what not to do) is often pronounced and the truth frequently obscured. Clausewitz characterises the ‘climate’ of war as the realm of danger, of physical exertion and suffering, of uncertainty, and of chance, in which the participants are engaged in a ‘relentless struggle with the unforeseen’ (pp. 116-7). As a result,

Action can never be based on anything firmer than instinct, a sensing of the truth. … Often there is a gap between principles and actual events that cannot always be bridged by a succession of logical deductions. … Frequently nothing short of an imperative principle will suffice, which is not part of the immediate thought-process, but dominates it. (p. 125)

Though Clausewitz’s main concern is with military rather than moral understanding, the point can be applied to both and ‘instinct’, ‘sensing of the truth’, and ‘imperative principle’ are more in keeping with the idiom of traditional morality than that of reflective morality.

The ubiquity of the unforeseen in war impedes reflection and strengthens the claims of a character-based account of agency. As Aristotle argues,

Acts that are foreseen may be chosen by calculation and rule, but sudden actions must be in accordance with one’s state of character.  (Ethics, 1117a. 20)

It is not just the opaque and unpredictable nature of much of the business of war that causes problems. The difficulties of determining the right course of action, moral as well as strategic, are greatly compounded by the sheer immediacy and brutal urgency of combat.

During an operation [Clausewitz observes] decisions have usually to be made at once: there may be no time to review the situation or even to think it through. … In the rush of events a man is governed by feelings rather than by thought’ (pp.117 and 118)

In war moral agents rarely have time or opportunity for moral or any other kind of reflection. Typically, action must take an instinctive and instantaneous form.

A platoon leader’s account of an incident during the battle for Mount Tumbledown – a battle on the outcome of which the taking of Port Stanley and the result of the Falklands War hinged – illustrates the difficulty attached to moral as well as tactical decision-making in war.

In the middle of this enemy position we suddenly felt the resistance crash. It was a tangible thing. Suddenly the Argentines … were now streaming down the hill, running away …. I will always remember my machine-gunner who was beside me. He said: “What shall I do sir?” There were many Argentines running down the hill. Because they didn’t have their weapons with them, I didn’t give the order to fire. I have often wondered about that, because some of these people were later involved in mortaring our stretcher parties … nevertheless that’s what I did. (Bilton, p. 206)

Traditional morality is better equipped to respond to the urgency of war than reflective morality. Among its principal strengths, Oakeshott argues, are the power that it gives ‘to act appropriately and without hesitation, doubt or difficulty’ and its provision of a range of behavioural responses sufficient ‘to meet all situations without the necessity of calling upon reflection’.

Contrastingly, reflective morality is marked by a ‘resistance to the urgency of action’. Its dominant influence can lead to ‘a loss of spontaneity and confidence’ (Rationalism, pp.63, 66-7, 78), in other words, to the loss of the very qualities that the moral conduct of war demands. Where reflection fails the moral agent, the virtues, ‘those psychical habits … which work spontaneously and thus free the moral subject precisely for his great decisions’ (Rahner, p.109), empower and sustain him.

In the extreme emergencies that often confront moral agents during war decisions cannot depend on a complex process of moral reasoning which needs to be applied afresh in each particular instance.

In traditional morality, moral decisions are not made discretely or independently of one another (like ‘a series of unconnected acts’, as Burke puts it) but are linked through the behavioural constant that is the moral character of the agent. Character determines the response, with the moral predispositions or moral prejudices of the agent coming into play, enabling him or her to respond quickly and, as it were, instinctively.

Prejudice [Burke wrote] is of ready application in an emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision, sceptical, puzzled, and unresolved. (Reflections, p.183)

The problems of moral agency are, of course, volitional or conative as well as cognitive. Even where clarity of moral judgement is achieved, the will and the resolve to act accordingly cannot be taken for granted. As Clausewitz remarks,

Truth in itself is rarely sufficient to make men act. Hence the step is always long from cognition to volition, from knowledge to ability. The most powerful springs of action in man lie in his emotions (p.130)

The willingness to act does not follow automatically from knowledge or understanding (as some are inclined to believe).

 Very often, perhaps more often than not, volition clashes directly and obstinately with reason. (Underground, p.36)

Dostoevsky applies that remark to the moral life in general, but how much more applicable is it to the special case of war where the costs of acting (morally as well as militarily) are often so high.

Reflective morality – the morality of rules – neglects the fundamental issue of will or motivation by assuming (wrongly) the self-motivating power of reason.

[R]ules and principles [Oakeshott writes] cannot provide the impetus of the activity [so that] complete mastery of these principles may exist alongside a complete inability to pursue the activity to which they refer. (p.101)

In fact, it is not just a matter of neglect. Reflective morality exacerbates the problem through its systematic opposition to the principal means of moral empowerment. The distrust of feeling or inclination, the opposition to habit and moral disposition, the insistence on detached reasoning, all undermine the roots of moral action and threaten to leave the moral agent powerless.

Traditional morality, by contrast, does not take the volitional capacity of the agent for granted. It acknowledges that to be effective moral judgements require the support of moral feelings and inclinations. Such support should not be overlooked or, even worse, excluded on principle. Traditional morality is an affective morality, a morality of feeling or emotion as well as reason, of the heart as well as the mind, a morality that embraces and takes hold of the moral person as a whole and which, as an engaged or situated morality, does not spurn the contingent moral lessons and moral incentives that arise from social attachments. In this rooted morality, as Oakeshott remarks,

the spring of [a man’s] conduct is not an attachment to an ideal or a felt duty to obey a rule, but his self-esteem. (p.63)

The contrast with reflective morality is acute and fundamental. While reflective morality prises duty and inclination apart, traditional morality seeks their ever closer union. And on that union the efficacy of the morality of war can be seen to rest.

The notion of rational agency advanced by reflective morality struggles to engage with the collective aspect of war. Its focus on the autonomous individual obscures essential features of the conduct of war. Its abstract understanding of moral agency overlooks the social and cultural influences that predispose belligerents to conduct war in the way that they do.  In these various respects the experience of war appears at odds with reflective morality. If the moral life necessarily takes this reflective form, then perhaps the realist is right – the moral life is not sustainable in time of war. But this version of the moral life is not exhaustive or definitive.

The traditional account, with its focus on the habitual, dispositional and social nature of moral agency, seems better equipped to meet the moral challenge of war than reflective morality. Recognition of the acute moral vulnerability of belligerents and of their consequent need for moral support and empowerment is entirely congruent with traditional morality’s conception of moral agency. The embedding of moral principles in the collective structures of war is an essential part of that empowerment.

However (as suggested earlier) it would be misleading and damaging to see these two versions of the moral life as mutually exclusive. In real life these ‘ideal extremes’ are typically (though not always) found together. The moral life that characterises most societies (especially modern ones) is a mix of the traditional and the reflective. The nature of the mix can vary. In some societies traditional morality may be in the ascendant, in others reflective morality may dominate, but it seems clear that the kind of mix that befits war is one in which traditional morality is dominant, though not exclusive.

In such a mix the primary focus is on moral action or moral conduct. The source of that action lies in the virtues, in the moral habits and dispositions which moral agents acquire in community with others and under the influence of prevailing customs and institutions. Such a rooted morality breeds confidence and spontaneity in action, diminishing the need for reflection and reducing moral uncertainty. The character-based nature of the moral life yields moral stability and continuity of action, giving it a coherence it might otherwise lack.

These are real gains, making the leading of a moral life feasible even in the midst of war. However there is a potential downside. The more ‘traditional’ morality becomes, the more ossified and uncritical it may become, turning in on itself and losing its moral energy or vitality. This is where reflective morality has a key role to play in the moral mix.

Critical reflection is an indispensable part of any complete morality of war. Fundamentally, it upholds the critical distance between the ideal and the real without which there is a danger of both societies and individuals lapsing into moral self-complacency.

The moral threat posed by a morality wedded to practice is that it becomes so accommodating that it loses its moral force. Reflective morality’s formulation of a moral ideal can help to reveal the shortcomings of a traditional morality and provide impetus for reform where that is needed. Likewise, its articulation of moral principles improves the moral self-understanding of societies and of individuals and facilitates moral communication across cultures.

Tradition and reflection, virtues and principles need to work together. Advancing the claims of moral habit or disposition does not render moral principles redundant. This is not an argument for dispensing with principles but for making principles more effective by rooting them in supportive moral cultures and dispositions.

This is an ethics focused on the virtues that are required to uphold just war principles. However, the vices of unjust belligerents are of at least as much interest as the virtues of just belligerents, being as germane to the moral restraint of war.

The capacity to act unjustly should be no more taken for granted than the capacity to act justly. It should be a source of genuine moral puzzlement, calling for sustained investigation. Unjust action in war is not simply a function of the nature of war in some abstract sense (as the ‘War is Hell’ characterisation encourages us to believe). More often than not, particularly in the case of the most serious violations, the spring of unjust action lies in the distorted moral dispositions which belligerents have acquired as a result of their particular social and cultural upbringing, not of some natural or internal necessity of war.

Achievement of the overall aim of just war thinking – the moral restraint of war – depends on the curtailment of vice and the advancement of virtue. It is not simply a matter of applying the rules or of appeals to individual conscience. Moral agents need to be empowered (or disempowered) . The habits or dispositions which incline belligerents to violate just war principles must be replaced by habits or dispositions which lead them to uphold those principles.

References:

Aristotle (1941), Basic Works, ed. R. McKeon, Random House, New York.

Bilton M. & Kosminsky P. (1989) Speaking Out, Untold Stories From The Falklands War, Andre Deutsch, London.

Burke, E. (1969), Reflections on the Revolution in France, Penguin, London

Dostoyevsky, F., Notes from Underground, Jessie Coulson trans.,Penguin, London.

Oakeshott, M. (1962), Rationalism in Politics, Methuen, London.

Rahner, K. ( 1974), Opportunities for Faith, SPCK, London.

Reichberg, G.M. et al. (eds.), (2006) The Ethics of War, Blackwell Publishing, London.