Abstract
The use of child soldiers in armed conflict is an increasing global concern. Although philosophers have examined whether child soldiers can be considered combatants in war, much less attention has been paid to their moral responsibility. While it is tempting to think of them as having diminished or limited responsibility, child soldiers often report feeling guilt for the wrongs they commit. Here I argue that their feelings of guilt are both intelligible and morally appropriate. The feelings of guilt that child soldiers experience are not self-censure; rather their guilt arises from their attempts to come to terms with what they see as their own morally ambiguous motives. Their guilt is appropriate because it reaffirms their commitment to morality and facilitates their self-forgiveness.
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Notes
Although the exact number is difficult to determine, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was estimated that there were between 250,000 and 300,000 child soldiers worldwide.
Let me be clear that I am setting aside any questions about the extent to which child soldiers should be held legally responsible for the violence. I do not intend my arguments to support any recommendations about the possibility of punishing child soldiers. My arguments are moral, not legal; they are only meant to apply to the kinds of emotions child soldiers do and should experience.
This example is similar to Prinz’s (2004).
There is a complex discussion in the literature on emotions about whether intelligible emotions involve judgments, beliefs, or perceptions. These disagreements are subspecies of the cognitivist/non-cognitivist debates about emotions. I wish to remain agnostic about this debate. The notion of fit or intelligibility that I am appealing to could be compatible with either a cognitivist or a non-cognitivist account. Taylor (1985), Roberts (1988), Gibbard (1990), Greenspan (1992), Wallace (1994), D’Arms and Jacobson (2000, 2003), Prinz (2004), Raikka (2005), and Brady (2008) all address this debate to varying degrees in their accounts.
Rawls is often cited as the primary advocated of this definition (2003).
Recalcitrant (or irrational)
There are less clear cases, such as survivor’s guilt, but these cases are controversial precisely because we do not understand how the agent sees herself as connected to the wrong done. Survivor’s guilt is puzzling because we are unsure what the agent feels guilty for. It does not follow that survivor’s guilt is thus irrational. It only means that we must treat it as a special case. Greenspan addresses survivor’s guilt specifically (1992).
Darwall, for example, writes, “To feel guilt, consequently, is to feel as it one has the requisite capacity and standing to be addressed as responsible” (2006, 71). Gibbard says that guilt is “tied to the voluntary” (1990, 99). Likewise Taylor claims, “It is true to say that when feeling guilty…I must think myself responsible for the relevant state of affairs” (1985, 91). Taylor, however, envisions responsibility widely to include cases of causal responsibility (1985).
“[Child soldiers] are not robots who passively adopt the rhetoric and morals of the armed groups the live within” (Wessells 2006, 144). “Well aware that they have committed wrongs in the eyes of their community and society, many young people who have killed in war do experience and sense of shame or remorse and many yearn for forgiveness” (Boyden 2006, 356).
“This continuous dynamic of inflicting and withholding pain…puts the victim in the unavoidable position of betraying or colluding against himself, an experience the victim undergoes whether or not he actually informs or confesses” (Sussman 2005, 24).
For this distinction, see Thomason (2015).
La Caze makes this argument about envy (La Caze 2001).
Greenspan provides an example from Russell’s autobiography in which he breaks a promise to a woman with whom he was in love. He describes himself as feeling “sorrow for this tragedy” (Greenspan 1995, 116).
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Owen Ware and Aly Passanante for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers at Ethical Theory and Moral Practice for their helpful feedback and suggestions.
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Thomason, K.K. Guilt and Child Soldiers. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 19, 115–127 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-015-9595-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-015-9595-3