El derecho a la libre movilidad

The debate over whether character development is even possible is just one component of a broader discussion as to whether the focus of military ethics education should be functional or aspirational. On the functional approach, moral education should focus on educating soldiers to “follow the principles of military ethics necessary for the functioning of the military force, but avoid any attempt to change their characters in a deep way.”257 Conversely, the aspirational approach aims to educate military personnel who are virtuous persons as well as professionally effective soldiers.258 The aspirational approach aims to promote meaningful changes in

257 _{Asa Kasher, “Teaching and Training Military Ethics: An Israeli Experience” in Ethics Education in the Military,}

ed. Paul Robinson, Nigel De Lee and Don Carrick (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2008), 163.

258 _{Jessica Wolfendale, “What is the Point of Teaching Ethics in the Military” in Ethics Education in the Military,}

soldiers’ characters that not only guide their behavior on the battlefield, but in their personal lives as well.

Initially, it would seem that the overwhelming consensus among philosophers would be in favor of an aspirational approach, that a nation would want its soldiers to be ethical men and women, as well as ethical soldiers. In fact, the latter would seem to depend upon the former. However, some philosophers working in the field of military ethics, such as Peter Olsthoorn, worry that an aspirational approach to ethics education, such as that espoused by virtue ethics, sets the bar for ethical behavior beyond the reach of the average soldier.259 _{On Olsthoorn’s} view, most professional soldiers join the armed forces for “post-traditional” reasons, such as salary and adventure, and not to fight for morally worthy goals. He notes that patriotism and other abstract ideals do not appear to be the primary factor motivating soldiers, particularly in combat scenarios, where social pressures, such as loyalty, exert a stronger motivational influence.

Olsthoorn also notes that soldiers generally have little say about the causes for which they fight. On this view, professional soldiers are merely instruments of politics and, as such, it is irrelevant to them whether they are sent abroad to promote freedom and democracy or for less noble reasons such as oil and electoral politics. In light of these considerations, Olsthoorn sees a dissonance between the aspirational goal of ethics education and how soldiers behave in actual practice:

On the one hand, the subject matter of ethics is how people ought to behave, and not how they actually do behave; yet, on the other hand, ‘any persuasive account of what makes men willing to fight ethically must be compatible with a more general account of what makes them willing to fight at all’ (Osiel 1999, 202). A military ethics that does not take men’s actual motives into account seems a bit too academic. For the education

259 _{Peter Olsthoon, “The Ethics Curriculum at the Netherlands Defence Academy and Some Problems,” in Ethics}

Education in the Military, ed. Paul Robinson, Nigel De Lee and Don Carrick (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing,

of ethics, such an overly academic approach would, first, mean that the education would be ineffective and second that the above-mentioned drawbacks of social cohesion would go unattended.260

Olsthoorn believes that an aspirational approach to ethics education does a disservice to soldiers by neglecting to address the more pragmatic concerns, such as loyalty, that motivate soldiers to fight and risk their lives. Given the pragmatic concerns of most soldiers, Olsthoorn believes the military should take a less idealistic approach to ethics education, focusing exclusively on

promoting compliance to the ethical rules that demarcate soldiers’ professional obligations.261 The views of Asa Kasher and his colleagues at the Israeli Defense Force College are closely aligned with those of Olsthoorn and, taken together, they are representative of the ‘functionalist’ approach to military ethics education. Kasher notes that any project of ethics education is more effective if it is presented in terms of professional development:

What one has to do, when introducing military ethics to students of a military college or course is: first, to discuss with them their being members of certain military professions; second, to inform them that they are expected to know much more about their own profession than what meets the eye or is already known to them; third, convince them that each of them is expected to develop their professional identity; and finally, show them that military ethics is directly related to their professional identities. In our experience, such an approach encounters neither resistance in terms of relativism, nor resentment in terms of allegations of heteronomy. It provides the officers with the most natural means of introducing military ethics into their professional lives.262 In some respects, this approach coincides with a view that I promote in Chapter Four; developing a relationship between ethical conduct and a soldiers’ identity as a professional can assist in internalizing the ethical ends of military service, the primary difference being that I maintain that professional and personal ethics cannot be neatly bifurcated in the way that the functionalists endorse. This is an important point about which more will be said later.

Unfortunately, the functionalist perspective endorsed by Kasher and company leads them to the conclusion that military ethics courses devoted to the discussion of moral issues are

260 _Ibid.,128. 261 _Ibid.

misguided and, thus, largely ineffective. Kasher believes the source of this defect is attributable to a failure to differentiate between morals and ethics, with ethical considerations, rather than moral, being the proper focus of military ethics education.263 _{In articulating the difference} between moral and ethical considerations, Kasher relies on the use of “thin” and “thick” concepts.264 Thin concepts, such as good and right, are primarily “action guiding” whereas thick concepts such as courage, prudence and rudeness, while also action guiding, possess the additional feature of being “world guided,” meaning that their application is primarily

determined by conditions found within the world. Thick terms are context sensitive and, as such, form the basis of what is considered ethical knowledge within the perspective of a particular society or culture.265 For instance, describing a particular act as good or bad says something important about it and recommends that it should either be encouraged or

discouraged. Describing an act as courageous or cowardly functions in a similar fashion, but reveals more about why that action is good or bad and why it is recommended or avoided.

An example of the context sensitivity of thick terms can be seen in how the concept of cowardice can encompass different types of behavior depending on the culture in which the term is employed. During the Second World War, soldiers in the Imperial Japanese Army were taught that surrender, even in the face of hopeless odds, was a cowardly act. In contrast, for their American and European opponents, surrender was not cowardly under circumstances where continuing to fight would only result in meaningless sacrifice. Depending on the cultural context in which it is used, a thick term can convey approbation or disapprobation in regards to

263 _Ibid. 264 _Ibid.,139.

265 _{Timothy Chappell, "Bernard Williams," The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2013 Edition),}

similar types of behavior and, in this sense, can come to represent a form of ethical knowledge within a particular society.

Thick and thin concepts are pivotal in Kasher’s explication of why military ethics should focus on ethical rather than moral considerations. For Kasher, thin concepts (right, good) describe relations between individuals as persons, independent of any professional relationship between them. Thin concepts are used to described moral behavior, defined as how we treat other persons as persons. Conversely, thick descriptions describe relationships that are not just between two persons, but between two persons with distinctive professional or role dependent identities, such as the professional relationship that exists between a military commander and his subordinate.

Functionalists view ethical considerations as those that pertain to persons interacting under thick descriptions, whether they are professional or societal. It is these ethical, rather than moral, considerations that are the proper subject of military ethics education. The functionalist rationale for this position is the belief that military ethics is largely a matter of persons

interacting with one another under some type of thick, professional description, rather than on a fundamental personal level. As Kasher explains:

The problem of devoting a course in military ethics to moral issues that arise in military affairs is that during the discussions held in such a course, the principles to be applied are moral ones, that is to say, principles that apply to persons as such in general. The particular features of a military situation will serve as the ‘input’, so to speak, of the moral deliberation in terms of the moral principles. However, there is no reason to assume that a delineation of propriety in military interaction [between two military members] is possible in terms of moral principles alone. Put differently, it does not seem right to hold that all the elements of propriety in military interaction are morally required. Is military discipline a moral necessity, or rather a feature of the capacity of being a military

commander or a subordinate? Is unit cohesion a moral necessity? Is professionalism itself justified by moral considerations, on grounds of general principles such as respect for human dignity in general?266

It is important to note that Kasher is not advocating that the discussion of moral principles be entirely eliminated from military ethics courses, at least not in the passage cited above. However, he is adamant that moral principles do not adequately capture the complexities of highly contextual, professional relationships that define the practice of military ethics and, therefore, should be subordinate to ethical considerations when developing the content of military ethics courses.

One unfortunate conclusion drawn by functionalists is the view that it is not the task of ethics education to impart moral virtues or attempt to change a soldier’s character in any fundamental way. Rather, functionalists believe ethics education should confine itself to promoting principle-guided behavior that is immediately relevant to the performance of a

soldier’s professional duties.267 This position is grounded in the belief that liberal democracies, if they are to be faithful to their founding principles, should respect the moral autonomy of the volunteers that constitute the armed forces and that deliberate efforts to modify the character of soldiers are an affront to their dignity and independence.268 From the functionalist perspective, character development is not an essential requirement of ethical behavior for, as Kasher notes in reference to military ethics education, “A change of character can take place and, we assume, often does, but it is not a necessary condition for having ability and commitment to always behaving properly.”269

267 _{Ibid, 139.} 268 _Ibid. 269 _{Ibid., 140.}