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A Virtue Ethical Case for Pacifism

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Virtues in Action

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Abstract

In this chapter I argue that the military’s attempt to instill in its soldiers a willingness to commit deadly violence morally harms them. This harm provides the impetus for a virtue ethical argument for pacifism. Soldiers are systematically trained to kill both through technical training, related to the proper handling of weapons, and through well-established psychological techniques, which are aimed at disabling empathetic responses and overcoming the resistance to killing. The military’s psychological training involves habituating soldiers in order to make them effective killers through the use of what Albert Bandura has called “mechanisms of moral disengagement.”1 One prominent mechanism involves dehumanizing of the enemy, by causing a soldier either to fail to consider the enemy as a human or to consider the enemy to be somehow less than human.2 I argue that the resistance to killing has moral significance for the development of virtue and, thus, that attempts to suppress the resistance can adversely affect one’s character. I further argue that the suppression of the resistance to killing is irresponsible since it cannot be done with enough fineness of grain to forestall inappropriate violence. Since training soldiers to kill and sending them into battle involves intentionally forming them in ways that are harmful to their characters and to their overall life prospects, I conclude that, on virtue ethical grounds, one should endorse contingent pacifism — a very strong presumption against the use of military force.

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Notes

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Authors
  1. Franco V. Trivigno
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Eastern Kentucky University, USA

    Michael W. Austin

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© 2013 Franco V. Trivigno

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Trivigno, F.V. (2013). A Virtue Ethical Case for Pacifism. In: Austin, M.W. (eds) Virtues in Action. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137280299_7

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