1 00:00:01,040 --> 00:00:05,959 It's really a great pleasure to introduce to you this afternoon, Professor Cheney. 2 00:00:05,960 --> 00:00:13,970 Ryan Cheney. Many of you will have known already is he's been writing and thinking about these issues for many, many years. 3 00:00:14,990 --> 00:00:18,500 He's certainly one of the reasons why I started working in this field. 4 00:00:19,550 --> 00:00:22,730 He brings to these discussions, I think, 5 00:00:22,730 --> 00:00:28,970 in a way that nobody else does a real historical and intellectual richness and appreciation 6 00:00:29,300 --> 00:00:36,680 of the particularly of the status of different actors operating in this area. 7 00:00:36,690 --> 00:00:43,130 And I think that today's discussion of taking soldier seriously is going to be very much a manifestation of that. 8 00:00:43,490 --> 00:00:46,700 But if I can just about this one for 40 minutes or so. 9 00:00:46,790 --> 00:00:53,300 Thanks very much. Well, thanks, everyone, for coming out on this glorious day. 10 00:00:54,080 --> 00:01:00,020 Let me just say one or two words about the background to this and that. 11 00:01:00,020 --> 00:01:06,290 I'm going to read the paper. Someone commented a few weeks ago that philosophers tend to do this. 12 00:01:06,500 --> 00:01:15,379 I actually find that if I read the paper, first of all, I can make sure I say everything that I want to say. 13 00:01:15,380 --> 00:01:21,910 And also, I certainly make sure that I don't run over the time limit a lot, and that's the best way I found to do that. 14 00:01:21,920 --> 00:01:29,450 Now I am both a philosophy professor originally, and now I'm a law professor in the United States when I'm not here. 15 00:01:30,230 --> 00:01:32,660 And I want to mention both of those things. 16 00:01:33,680 --> 00:01:43,850 The interest in law is related to the fact that I'm going to be talking today about what kinds of reasons soldiers are given for the things they do. 17 00:01:44,630 --> 00:01:48,800 And one background for that is that in the legal profession of the United States, 18 00:01:48,800 --> 00:01:54,140 I serve on a committee that studies what kind of reasons lawyers have for what they do and 19 00:01:54,140 --> 00:01:58,940 how they their lives fit together in terms of the justifications and motivations for things. 20 00:01:59,360 --> 00:02:06,320 Once in a while you'll see me alluding to the parallel with attorneys, and that's that that's the background of that. 21 00:02:06,860 --> 00:02:11,300 Now, as a philosopher, I've been working on issues of war and peace for quite a long time. 22 00:02:12,530 --> 00:02:22,730 And one of the things that will show through it in the paper I'm going to read to you is that when I first taught Just War Theory, 23 00:02:23,630 --> 00:02:29,030 I taught it in conjunction with a Vietnam Marine combat veteran. 24 00:02:29,840 --> 00:02:33,079 And we talked about those things together. 25 00:02:33,080 --> 00:02:39,680 His name was Ron Phillips. And one of the things we did in the course of the class was talk about the theories 26 00:02:39,680 --> 00:02:44,060 about it and then talk about what they meant to someone who was actually in combat. 27 00:02:44,450 --> 00:02:51,980 And it was an extraordinary experience for me and one that I'm actually really still wrestling with and continuing to wrestle with. 28 00:02:53,000 --> 00:03:00,020 I refer at one point to my offer, my experience in officers candidate school, and I certainly don't want to make too much of that. 29 00:03:00,710 --> 00:03:07,100 Every young man of my generation in the United States was required to be in ROTC if you went to a public school. 30 00:03:07,490 --> 00:03:13,219 And so interestingly, you had no matter who you were, you had experience with several years, in my case, 31 00:03:13,220 --> 00:03:22,010 four years of ROTC leading nowhere in my case, because the Vietnam War was going on and I really didn't have any intention of serving in it. 32 00:03:22,880 --> 00:03:26,210 So I want to make sure that I'm not drawing on any experience. 33 00:03:26,220 --> 00:03:34,970 And in fact, I'm very aware that I need to learn a great deal from people who had more experience like that than I am. 34 00:03:35,390 --> 00:03:44,600 Finally, the thing that I'll move towards in the end is the fact that we have America just concluded the Iraq war. 35 00:03:45,860 --> 00:03:53,570 My concern is that like other wars that in my view were terrible mistakes, that this will now be forgotten about conveniently. 36 00:03:54,170 --> 00:03:58,840 But the problem is, how do you remember something like that? What is the proper way to remember it? 37 00:03:58,850 --> 00:04:02,210 So that's one of the things that I'll I'll bring up at the end. 38 00:04:02,630 --> 00:04:07,940 I'm a philosopher, which means that I'll raise more questions than I'll answer a lot of things I'll bring up, 39 00:04:07,940 --> 00:04:14,390 and I won't give you my own sort of solution to it. So I invite you to to share with me your own thoughts about it afterwards. 40 00:04:20,240 --> 00:04:25,340 The young George Washington admired European military doctrine. 41 00:04:27,200 --> 00:04:32,090 Washington had read the European authorities as a commander of the Virginia militia. 42 00:04:32,990 --> 00:04:38,090 And Washington's experience in the French and Indian War had confirmed their basic teachings. 43 00:04:39,380 --> 00:04:44,420 Washington wrote in 1757, Discipline is the soul of an army. 44 00:04:46,700 --> 00:04:47,479 Unfortunately, 45 00:04:47,480 --> 00:04:56,870 Washington's experience commanding the Virginia militia only raised doubts about whether ordinary citizens were capable of such discipline. 46 00:04:58,730 --> 00:05:03,830 These doubts remained with him when he took command of the Continental Army 20 years later. 47 00:05:06,170 --> 00:05:12,530 Absent the aristocratic virtues of honour, fame and glory, Washington wondered, 48 00:05:13,790 --> 00:05:19,250 could the citizen soldiers of the New Republic stand up to the professionals of the British Empire? 49 00:05:21,830 --> 00:05:23,450 The beginning was not auspicious. 50 00:05:24,980 --> 00:05:34,940 At the Battle of Long Island in August 1776, Washington lost his composure at the sight of his soldiers running from the oncoming British. 51 00:05:36,320 --> 00:05:37,129 In a rage, 52 00:05:37,130 --> 00:05:46,400 he took to flogging the fleeing officers and men with a writing cane until his aide grabbed the bridle of his horse and led him out of danger. 53 00:05:46,550 --> 00:05:50,930 Apparently, he came very close to being captured by the British when he lost control like that. 54 00:05:53,120 --> 00:06:01,190 In a letter to the Continental Congress, Washington voiced strong doubts about whether all of his troops would do what he called their duty. 55 00:06:03,170 --> 00:06:08,960 By this, he meant, would his troops stand their ground even when things seemed hopeless? 56 00:06:10,160 --> 00:06:13,370 Would they continue to fight even in the face of death? 57 00:06:15,890 --> 00:06:21,140 If discipline was the soul of an army, could a democratic army possess a soul? 58 00:06:23,540 --> 00:06:30,560 An answer of a sort presented itself in February 1778, in the darkest and coldest days of Valley Forge. 59 00:06:33,950 --> 00:06:40,730 His name was Friedrich Wilhelm August Heinrich Ferdinand Von Steuben, Baron von Stoiber, 60 00:06:42,470 --> 00:06:51,200 a former Prussian officer whose résumé was almost entirely fabricated but who offered his services to Washington for no pay, 61 00:06:51,740 --> 00:06:58,760 just the honour of serving the cause. He proved to be an effective trainer of men. 62 00:06:58,850 --> 00:07:02,989 In fact, one stipend is generally credited with a major, 63 00:07:02,990 --> 00:07:08,330 major role in the survival of the Continental Army and then the ultimate victory of the Americans. 64 00:07:08,330 --> 00:07:13,610 So von Stoiber proved to be an effective trainer of men, even though he actually knew no English. 65 00:07:15,230 --> 00:07:21,590 His orders were issued in French and then translated by his military secretary to the troops. 66 00:07:23,330 --> 00:07:26,660 Periodically he would scream the only two English words he knew. 67 00:07:26,690 --> 00:07:32,810 God damn. But his efforts proved invaluable in keeping the army together. 68 00:07:35,960 --> 00:07:45,050 But one storm in two was impressed by the differences between American soldiers and those back home, especially in their attitudes to authority. 69 00:07:46,880 --> 00:07:51,800 One strong man has served under Frederick the Great, who had famously remarked, 70 00:07:51,800 --> 00:07:55,430 If my soldiers began to think, not one of them would remain in the ranks. 71 00:07:57,170 --> 00:08:01,730 By contrast, Von Stoiber wrote to a friend, these are his words. 72 00:08:04,040 --> 00:08:12,230 The genius of this American nation is not in the least to be compared with that of the Prussians, Austrians or French. 73 00:08:14,060 --> 00:08:17,300 You say to a Prussian, Do this, and he do with it. 74 00:08:18,980 --> 00:08:23,210 But here I am obliged to say this is the reason why you want to do it. 75 00:08:24,410 --> 00:08:31,180 And only then do the soldiers obey. Now Americans are tired. 76 00:08:31,210 --> 00:08:38,380 A great deal of nonsense growing up. Every American, when you're in school in the United States, 77 00:08:38,380 --> 00:08:44,800 every American is told that we won the revolution because our soldiers hid behind trees when they fired. 78 00:08:45,700 --> 00:08:49,090 And in six years, the forces of the British Empire could never figure this out. 79 00:08:51,400 --> 00:08:54,400 But the story about Von Steuben turns out to be actually true. 80 00:08:55,510 --> 00:08:58,570 And his letter home captures an important contrast. 81 00:09:00,740 --> 00:09:08,900 The conception of the American citizen soldier as both demanding and deserving reasons for what they do, 82 00:09:10,160 --> 00:09:19,030 played a vital role in the ideology of the early American Republic and played a vital role in civic Republican ideology. 83 00:09:19,040 --> 00:09:26,480 Generally in this era of. The contrast is captured in Thomas Paine's remark. 84 00:09:26,490 --> 00:09:30,930 This is actually an article he wrote on agricultural issues. 85 00:09:31,770 --> 00:09:37,770 Thomas Paine remarked that the army of the United States was an army of principles 86 00:09:39,120 --> 00:09:43,230 whose soldiers are treated with the respect that democratic citizens deserve. 87 00:09:45,210 --> 00:09:49,830 By contrast, Paine said, despotic governments. 88 00:09:49,860 --> 00:09:54,180 These are his words. Consider man merely as an animal or a child. 89 00:09:56,430 --> 00:10:01,080 The soldier of a despotic government has nothing to do with the laws but to obey them. 90 00:10:02,970 --> 00:10:10,710 For Benjamin Franklin, writing at the same time, the condition of the soldiers of Europe was actually worse than slaves. 91 00:10:12,840 --> 00:10:20,010 Benjamin Franklin wrote, The soldier of a monarchy is not to inquire whether a war be just or unjust. 92 00:10:21,690 --> 00:10:25,230 That soldier, wrote Franklin, is just to execute his orders. 93 00:10:27,220 --> 00:10:33,240 Now Franklin goes on to make an interesting contrast. Franklin says A Negro slave in our colonies, 94 00:10:34,980 --> 00:10:46,080 being commanded by his master to rob or murder a neighbour may refuse and the magistrate will protect the slave in his refusal. 95 00:10:48,260 --> 00:10:56,570 The slavery then of a soldier is worse than a Negro because the soldier has to obey an order no matter how immoral. 96 00:10:59,120 --> 00:11:04,579 I'm not sure what Franco saying is true. By the way, I tried to research about the law of slavery. 97 00:11:04,580 --> 00:11:08,510 The problem is, is that it was entirely dependent on which part you were in. 98 00:11:08,510 --> 00:11:18,670 But I think that would be an interesting fact if a slave could refuse on moral grounds in order of his master the brainless status of such soldiers. 99 00:11:18,680 --> 00:11:24,620 That is, the perception of European soldiers as brainless was immortalised in Washington. 100 00:11:24,620 --> 00:11:31,250 Irving's Legend of Sleepy Hollow, whose headless horseman is the ghost of a Hessian missionary. 101 00:11:33,680 --> 00:11:38,750 Finally, Mary Wollstonecraft, the great feminist thinker. 102 00:11:39,950 --> 00:11:49,730 Mary Wollstonecraft, in her vindication of the rights of women, goes so far as to liken the standing army to a bunch of infantilized females. 103 00:11:52,520 --> 00:11:59,090 She writes, The military man, like the young girl, is sent into the world before his mind has been fortified by principles. 104 00:12:01,160 --> 00:12:07,490 As a result, she writes, soldiers like women practice the minor virtues with punctilious politeness. 105 00:12:09,860 --> 00:12:18,140 European officers in particular are particularly attentive to their persons, fond of dancing and crowded rooms. 106 00:12:19,520 --> 00:12:25,940 And they only live to please. Hence they blindly to submit to whatever they're told to do. 107 00:12:28,040 --> 00:12:36,709 Now, let me just comment and some of you may know this, that the contrast between the American soldier and some a little bit later, 108 00:12:36,710 --> 00:12:44,570 the French soldier, the Republican soldier and the soldier of monarchy was was a major, major issue for ideology at the time. 109 00:12:45,380 --> 00:12:49,130 Adam Smith writes about it at length in his lectures on law. 110 00:12:49,550 --> 00:12:56,450 Adam Fergusson writes about it as well. So this is not just something that is sort of self-congratulation of the new United States. 111 00:12:56,450 --> 00:13:02,929 It was it was the perception was, was that the difference between the thinking soldier and the unthinking soldier in 112 00:13:02,930 --> 00:13:07,970 some sense was what the creation of a democracy or a new republic was all about. 113 00:13:10,100 --> 00:13:14,600 But Paine, Franklin and Wollstonecraft knew little about the realities of war. 114 00:13:16,400 --> 00:13:22,310 A logical question about their army of principles is whether it is capable of fighting a war at all. 115 00:13:24,410 --> 00:13:28,040 The Standard Guide for Foot Soldiers. At the time of the American Revolution, 116 00:13:28,100 --> 00:13:37,790 Humphrey plans an abstract of military discipline called for 17 separate commands to be given to soldiers when loading their muskets. 117 00:13:39,410 --> 00:13:42,980 Obviously, arguing about each one of these would mean that no one ever fired a shot. 118 00:13:45,260 --> 00:13:54,139 The question for George Washington, though, was whether the prosaic concerns of reason could truly motivate what was required of 119 00:13:54,140 --> 00:14:00,440 soldiers or whether they needed augmenting by the more poetic concerns of honour, 120 00:14:00,440 --> 00:14:13,220 fame and glory. This was something that the founders of American politics, of modern politics are worried about a great deal in his leviathan. 121 00:14:13,240 --> 00:14:21,490 Thomas Hobbes wondered how the principles of rational prudence could ever be squared with the sacrifices required of soldiers. 122 00:14:23,140 --> 00:14:33,400 Hobson's answer was they couldn't. What he says is the principles of rational prudence could never warrant sacrificing your life has soldiers, 123 00:14:33,400 --> 00:14:37,750 even in the military, reserve the right to want to run away when their life was threatened. 124 00:14:38,530 --> 00:14:40,689 Now, those of you know Hobbes also know that. 125 00:14:40,690 --> 00:14:46,659 But at the same time, he said that the military reserves the right to prevent them from running away when their life is threatened, 126 00:14:46,660 --> 00:14:50,590 leading to a picture of battle, which is fairly incoherent in that later, 127 00:14:50,590 --> 00:15:00,760 critics of Hobbes picked up on John Locke doubted that a soldier sacrificing his life could ever be grounded in the principles of a social contract. 128 00:15:01,870 --> 00:15:04,690 Wasn't it odd? Locke asked. 129 00:15:05,020 --> 00:15:13,240 Wasn't it odd that a sergeant could command a soldier to march up to the mouth of a cannon where the soldier is almost sure to perish? 130 00:15:14,800 --> 00:15:18,340 But at the same time, the soldier could not command the soldier. 131 00:15:18,790 --> 00:15:22,510 The officer could not command the soldier to give him one penny of his money. 132 00:15:23,410 --> 00:15:26,710 How do you explain that? How can you demand the ultimate sacrifice? 133 00:15:26,980 --> 00:15:31,690 What? You can't ask a soldier to give you a pound or a dollar made no sense. 134 00:15:32,950 --> 00:15:36,610 What then, is the logic behind the call for ultimate sacrifice? 135 00:15:40,850 --> 00:15:47,240 Classical accounts of heroism have held that there is no logic beyond the value of heroism itself. 136 00:15:49,840 --> 00:15:54,070 Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote Heroism, feels and Never Reasons. 137 00:15:55,150 --> 00:16:07,390 And this is why we admire it. Emerson said the military attitude of the soul is contemptuous of safety and ease and blindly indifferent to all danger. 138 00:16:09,910 --> 00:16:13,030 It is a divine folly, said Oliver Wendell Holmes. 139 00:16:13,030 --> 00:16:16,300 Folly because heroism rejects self-reflection. 140 00:16:16,750 --> 00:16:21,490 Divine because heroism is, these are Holmes's words, sufficient to itself. 141 00:16:23,440 --> 00:16:29,799 This is a thought, by the way, in this address essay called On the Moral Equivalent of War by William James. 142 00:16:29,800 --> 00:16:35,560 Which one more famous American Essays on war? This is something that James talks about quite a lot. 143 00:16:35,590 --> 00:16:44,130 He says, actually, that the heroism required for sacrifice in war is not just illogical, but that's why people are attracted to it. 144 00:16:44,140 --> 00:16:50,560 He sort of thought that was the kind of attraction of a logic, and he had an interesting remark that I always thought was interesting, he says. 145 00:16:50,560 --> 00:16:57,160 And so the problem with pacifism is that they shouldn't harp on the irrationality of war, because that's what makes it attractive to people. 146 00:16:57,430 --> 00:17:05,040 They'll just make it seem more interesting the crazier it is. That was what James kind of said about that, concluded Emerson. 147 00:17:05,050 --> 00:17:08,500 Our culture must not permit the arming of the man. 148 00:17:11,380 --> 00:17:17,530 Emerson wrote, Let him here in season that he is born into the state of war and that the Commonwealth 149 00:17:17,530 --> 00:17:23,260 and his own well-being require that he should not go dancing in the weeds of peace, 150 00:17:24,580 --> 00:17:28,240 but fortified by honour, should never dread the thunder. 151 00:17:31,840 --> 00:17:37,840 George Washington never resolved his worry about an army of ordinary citizens. 152 00:17:37,840 --> 00:17:45,549 And those of you familiar with American military history may remember that as soon as the republic was founded, 153 00:17:45,550 --> 00:17:49,330 there was quite a long argument about the nature of the military establishment. 154 00:17:49,930 --> 00:17:54,470 And behind that argument was the issue of could you have a military of citizen soldiers? 155 00:17:54,700 --> 00:17:59,320 Or did you have some kind of professional army? And how could those two things be squared with each other? 156 00:18:01,000 --> 00:18:04,480 Washington never resolved his worry about an army of ordinary citizens. 157 00:18:04,840 --> 00:18:09,999 Could the common sense that inspired Paine's Democratic soldier be reckoned with? 158 00:18:10,000 --> 00:18:13,030 The divine folly that facing the sun required? 159 00:18:14,200 --> 00:18:17,470 Could an army of principles also be an army of passion? 160 00:18:20,140 --> 00:18:27,790 Washington's distrust of civilian and arms ran so deep as to blind him to the possibility realised 20 years later in the 161 00:18:27,790 --> 00:18:36,220 French Revolution blinded him to the possibility of drawing an entire population into war through the power of nationalism, 162 00:18:36,910 --> 00:18:41,170 nationalism with his particular blend of high ideals and the martial spirit. 163 00:18:43,630 --> 00:18:47,850 But I want to suggest that the general problem here has not gone away. 164 00:18:47,860 --> 00:18:51,970 The problem of the Democratic soldier, that problem has actually not gone away. 165 00:18:52,540 --> 00:18:57,880 And in fact, it is reappeared today in what I call the problem of the cosmopolitan soldier, 166 00:18:58,480 --> 00:19:05,340 because just as Washington worried whether ideals were enough to motivate the citizen soldiers of a democracy, 167 00:19:05,350 --> 00:19:15,040 today there is a discussion about whether cosmopolitan ideals are sufficient to motivate the sacrifices required of cosmopolitan soldiers. 168 00:19:16,750 --> 00:19:25,120 So I'll get back to that a little bit later. But first, what I want to do is step back and consider some of the philosophical issues about reasons, 169 00:19:25,750 --> 00:19:29,290 reasoning and soldiering that have just been raised. 170 00:19:29,470 --> 00:19:34,480 Okay, so I step back a moment and make some philosophical comments on the issues we've been talking about. 171 00:19:36,910 --> 00:19:43,270 Contemporary philosophers have come to see a close connection between taking someone seriously and 172 00:19:43,270 --> 00:19:49,150 respecting them as a rational adult and the kinds of reasons you give them for how you treat them. 173 00:19:51,190 --> 00:19:53,140 The idea comes from a manual count. 174 00:19:54,220 --> 00:20:03,850 Treating someone as an autonomous agent, in his words, means acting towards them on reasons that are responsive to their autonomous status, 175 00:20:04,810 --> 00:20:10,960 hence acting to work towards them on reasons that they themselves would accept as legitimate. 176 00:20:13,180 --> 00:20:16,719 As a result of this way of thinking and what it means, take someone seriously. 177 00:20:16,720 --> 00:20:21,070 Philosophers train their attention on what counts as a good or bad reason to 178 00:20:21,070 --> 00:20:25,210 give another autonomous person for what we ask of them or what we do to them. 179 00:20:28,520 --> 00:20:37,280 This emphasis on the reasons we give others leads to another important idea the link between justification and dialogue. 180 00:20:40,310 --> 00:20:47,570 This is the idea that we should always act towards others in ways that we could explain to them face to face, 181 00:20:48,470 --> 00:20:56,330 mindful of the fact that they might challenge us back. This holds for our institutions as well as our actions. 182 00:20:57,080 --> 00:21:01,010 The reason behind our laws or practices should also be ones that can be explained 183 00:21:01,010 --> 00:21:05,060 to people face to face and mindful that they might challenge them back. 184 00:21:06,500 --> 00:21:12,080 In philosophical parlance, our reasons cannot be just third person or third person reasons. 185 00:21:12,620 --> 00:21:18,380 Ones that speak about other people or about them. Our reasons must be second person reasons. 186 00:21:18,590 --> 00:21:21,450 Reasons as to other people and with them. 187 00:21:23,930 --> 00:21:30,830 Now, in the realm of politics especially, I think this stress in dialogue often plays an important role in bringing things back to Earth. 188 00:21:32,300 --> 00:21:39,590 It is easy to speak of abstract policies carried out by abstract people attentive to their abstract rights and duties. 189 00:21:41,390 --> 00:21:49,610 The stress on dialogue requires that our judgements be ones that we could explain to the people themselves that are most impacted by things. 190 00:21:50,960 --> 00:21:56,600 We must think of people involved. We must think of the people involved as well as the policies at issue. 191 00:21:57,710 --> 00:22:02,960 Taking others seriously means acting towards them in ways that are answerable to this dialogue. 192 00:22:03,680 --> 00:22:05,960 We might call this the dialogue of dignity. 193 00:22:06,410 --> 00:22:14,360 Those of you who study just war theory will recognise that this is the fight at the heart of Thomas Nagel's classic essay War and Massacre, 194 00:22:14,690 --> 00:22:18,410 where he basically sort of said that the way to understand the kinds of 195 00:22:18,620 --> 00:22:22,820 prohibitions and requirements on people is to imagine them having a dialogue with 196 00:22:23,030 --> 00:22:26,450 another person about the person they're going to injure and whether they can 197 00:22:26,450 --> 00:22:30,380 explain in terms that the reasons that person could understand what they're doing. 198 00:22:32,540 --> 00:22:38,089 Now, my title, Taking Soldiers Seriously, means to suggest that we extend this thought to soldiers. 199 00:22:38,090 --> 00:22:44,210 And what we ask of them. Taking soldiers seriously means giving them reasons for what they do. 200 00:22:45,290 --> 00:22:52,100 And not just any reasons, but ones that are responsive to their status as autonomous agents are fully adult persons. 201 00:22:53,450 --> 00:22:58,160 Both thoughts, I think, are implicit in the views of democratic soldiering we just met. 202 00:22:59,810 --> 00:23:03,379 I think we are repelled by Frederick the Great's remark that soldiers should 203 00:23:03,380 --> 00:23:07,910 never think because we believe that soldiers deserve reasons for what they do. 204 00:23:09,650 --> 00:23:12,110 And we are attracted to the views of Thomas Paine, 205 00:23:12,110 --> 00:23:18,860 Benjamin Franklin and Mary Wollstonecraft because we agree that those reasons must not treat soldiers as slaves. 206 00:23:18,860 --> 00:23:25,070 Children are lesser forms of humanity. Soldiers deserve good reasons and they deserve the reasoning behind them. 207 00:23:26,600 --> 00:23:32,420 Finally, I think this is why we worry about conceptions of heroism like the ones of Ralph Waldo Emerson. 208 00:23:33,860 --> 00:23:39,380 At best, there seems to be something adolescent about talk of a divine folly that never drives the thunder. 209 00:23:41,300 --> 00:23:46,070 It reminds me of adolescent views of love as something that has nothing to do with reasons and reasoning. 210 00:23:47,660 --> 00:23:52,070 It's no surprise, by the way, that Emerson was a very young man when he wrote these words, 211 00:23:52,820 --> 00:23:56,330 and Oliver Wendell Holmes was a very old man wishing he was a young man again. 212 00:24:00,140 --> 00:24:09,950 Sometimes the dialogue is hypothetical. Taking another seriously means acting on reasons one could give them and that they could accept. 213 00:24:10,460 --> 00:24:13,490 But sometimes the actual dialogue is simply not possible. 214 00:24:14,480 --> 00:24:18,920 An officer cannot always give his soldiers the reasons for what he orders them to do. 215 00:24:20,510 --> 00:24:25,190 Any more than a professor can always give his or her students the reasons for his demands or her demands. 216 00:24:26,870 --> 00:24:31,850 The enterprises in question, soldiering or whatever are incompatible without amount of discussion. 217 00:24:33,860 --> 00:24:37,370 But if the officers demands of the professor's demands are legitimate, 218 00:24:38,300 --> 00:24:43,820 then there will be good reasons for them that could be given if need be, and if the proper occasion arose. 219 00:24:45,260 --> 00:24:52,670 Now, the hypothetical element here, it does introduce some slack into the requirement, but I don't think it renders it meaningless. 220 00:24:53,570 --> 00:25:04,010 It commands us to reflect on whether our grounds for asking things of soldiers or students or clients or whatever are in fact backed by good reasons, 221 00:25:04,370 --> 00:25:16,040 ones that could be given and accepted in a spirit of mutuality. Now, in reality, everything I've said so far just leads to the $64 question. 222 00:25:16,610 --> 00:25:23,240 What's a good reason? What counts as a good reason to give soldiers for what they do and what counts as a bad reason? 223 00:25:23,420 --> 00:25:30,110 And what are the terms that we can assess this on? What counts as a good reason for soldiers. 224 00:25:30,950 --> 00:25:34,550 We can probably agree that cursing at them doesn't count. 225 00:25:37,120 --> 00:25:41,330 You might disagree about that, but that's all you do. 226 00:25:41,350 --> 00:25:45,429 That doesn't count, you know? So just a curse is not a reason. 227 00:25:45,430 --> 00:25:55,150 So it's neither good or bad reason. When I was an officer's training school, most of my inquiries were met with the response because I told you so. 228 00:25:56,530 --> 00:25:58,360 By itself, that didn't seem like a good reason. 229 00:25:59,500 --> 00:26:06,460 Beyond this, though, people can disagree sharply about what are good or bad reasons for asking things of soldiers. 230 00:26:07,810 --> 00:26:13,060 So addressing these disagreements will mean a number of things. It will mean addressing a host of issues. 231 00:26:13,570 --> 00:26:18,730 Some of them are more philosophical. What does it mean to respect a soldier as an autonomous agent? 232 00:26:19,120 --> 00:26:24,609 Assuming they do not forfeit that status when they enlist. Some of the issues are more empirical. 233 00:26:24,610 --> 00:26:29,200 What, in fact, are today's soldiers asked to do? And how does it continue? 234 00:26:29,200 --> 00:26:31,060 And how does that, in fact, continue to change? 235 00:26:32,710 --> 00:26:39,550 For us to discuss these kind of concerns for fields of law and medicine under the topic, professional responsibility. 236 00:26:39,550 --> 00:26:45,520 And so my suggestion is that taking soldier seriously means extending these discussions to the enterprise of soldiering. 237 00:26:47,760 --> 00:26:51,870 Now philosophers have actually haphazardly talked about this topic. 238 00:26:51,870 --> 00:26:59,190 What are the reasons and good reasons for soldiers? They've already talked about this topic of so somewhat on systematically. 239 00:27:00,240 --> 00:27:06,090 As I mentioned, Hobbes and Locke worry whether the reason soldiers are given could justify the sacrifices asked of them. 240 00:27:07,560 --> 00:27:13,770 Critics of mercenaries have always felt that money is a bad reason for soldiers to do what they do. 241 00:27:14,490 --> 00:27:20,670 So this is a framework for looking at the problem of mercenaries and asking, is paying someone a good or bad reason? 242 00:27:20,670 --> 00:27:26,159 If not, what's exactly wrong with it? We pay, by the way, almost everybody else for the things they do in college. 243 00:27:26,160 --> 00:27:33,030 Professor, include college professors. So why is it that soldiering is something that seems to be particularly obnoxious to do for pay? 244 00:27:33,210 --> 00:27:37,170 I'm not answering that. I'm simply saying this is one of the questions that falls under this framework. 245 00:27:38,730 --> 00:27:45,420 Reason discussions have used in Bello have asked whether soldiers on the unjust side of a conflict can ever have good reasons for what they do. 246 00:27:45,670 --> 00:27:54,900 Is it example have talked about? Now what we need is a larger framework for approaching these issues together though and I so sketch one in a moment. 247 00:27:57,900 --> 00:28:03,120 But first let me remark on a second less philosophical sense of taking soldier seriously. 248 00:28:06,190 --> 00:28:12,070 The second sense in which I think we must take soldier seriously is is the sense in which we must talk about them at all. 249 00:28:14,050 --> 00:28:18,850 Philosophers used to say things about soldiers, not just harm, lock and can't. 250 00:28:20,680 --> 00:28:30,970 Sometimes their views in the past were strange. Hagel has a long discussion of the courage of British soldiers in the philosophy of right wing. 251 00:28:31,000 --> 00:28:41,020 Hagel maintains that the reason 500 men could conquer 20,000 in India was their greater capacity to subsume themselves to the world spirit. 252 00:28:43,360 --> 00:28:47,290 It is for this reason that is so the British could conquer India. 253 00:28:47,980 --> 00:28:51,400 For this reason, Hagel says that rational thought invented the gun. 254 00:28:53,380 --> 00:28:56,290 At other times, the discussion is more sensible. 255 00:28:57,310 --> 00:29:05,020 No topic gets more attention in the Federalist Papers of Hamilton, J and Madison than the Organisation of the Army and the soldiers it should attract. 256 00:29:07,060 --> 00:29:13,840 But a striking fact is how the problem of soldiers and the reasons for what they do disappears in the mid-19th century. 257 00:29:14,560 --> 00:29:20,440 There seems to be something happening in the mid-19th century where previously philosophers talked about this a lot, 258 00:29:20,740 --> 00:29:25,510 and that is very, very hard to find any philosophical discussions starting in the late 19th century. 259 00:29:26,710 --> 00:29:31,500 I would conjecture that this is due to the rise of nationalism. That would be my conjecture. 260 00:29:31,510 --> 00:29:36,819 That has something to do with the rise of nationalism and nationalism at times being a sentiment 261 00:29:36,820 --> 00:29:41,880 which he says even to ask questions like this can show you you're unpatriotic or whatever. 262 00:29:41,890 --> 00:29:45,879 So that's just a conjecture. But, but I don't really have much evidence for that. 263 00:29:45,880 --> 00:29:52,150 Just seems to me that this is what happened at the same time. So since the 19th century, it seems to me, 264 00:29:52,150 --> 00:29:58,180 basically philosophers have said very little about the question of why one should fight or how one should fight, 265 00:29:58,180 --> 00:30:03,760 etc., etc. It's changing now, but it still has not changed very much. 266 00:30:03,790 --> 00:30:10,600 Isn't this weird? War and soldiering are two of society's most serious enterprises, 267 00:30:11,620 --> 00:30:16,510 yet one looks in vain for much discussion of them outside of the speciality of just war theory. 268 00:30:18,310 --> 00:30:20,200 John Rawls has a theory of justice. 269 00:30:20,200 --> 00:30:28,750 The canonical text of modern political philosophy devotes two of its 550 pages to the question of war and military service. 270 00:30:29,890 --> 00:30:33,190 And this isn't a book, by the way, that was written during the Vietnam War. 271 00:30:35,800 --> 00:30:40,630 Contemporary philosophy has produced thousands of articles on questions like Who you should have sex with. 272 00:30:41,680 --> 00:30:49,839 It is hard to find a single discussion of whether you should join the military, despite the importance of that question for many young people, 273 00:30:49,840 --> 00:30:54,430 including constantly my students at the State University back in the United States. 274 00:30:55,570 --> 00:31:02,290 Now, my own rather cynical view is that the whole question of military service makes privileged academics uncomfortable, 275 00:31:02,950 --> 00:31:04,480 at least in the United States. 276 00:31:05,320 --> 00:31:11,320 In the United States in particular, it raises the issue of race and class, which come very, very close to home to higher education. 277 00:31:11,320 --> 00:31:17,980 And I think it's just more difficult to talk about that than the issue of who you should have sex with, what you can all sympathise with. 278 00:31:19,630 --> 00:31:23,000 So privileged academics are happiest talking about just an unjust war. 279 00:31:24,070 --> 00:31:29,260 And they're happiest if they talk about just an unjust wars without any attention to who is actually fighting them. 280 00:31:31,090 --> 00:31:36,010 By contrast, I would argue that taking soldiers seriously should be a central part of just war theory. 281 00:31:37,360 --> 00:31:40,410 Currently, just war theory is divided into two parts. 282 00:31:40,450 --> 00:31:47,980 You saw battle armour, the justice of war, focusing on relations between warring states and use symbol of justice in war, 283 00:31:48,700 --> 00:31:53,650 focusing on the relations between members of those states, soldiers and soldiers or soldiers and non-combatants. 284 00:31:54,460 --> 00:32:03,550 But a third issue concerns the relation of a state to its own citizenry, what it asks of them by way of military service, taxation and so on. 285 00:32:04,600 --> 00:32:12,610 I would call this just as at war. Traditional just war theory ignored just as at war because it regarded as a matter 286 00:32:12,610 --> 00:32:17,440 of internal sovereignty of no concern with particularly international law. 287 00:32:19,930 --> 00:32:26,290 But it seems to me those days are past use. And Bello insists that we treat that soldiers treat each other with proper regard. 288 00:32:26,920 --> 00:32:33,250 An expanded just war theory would insist that such societies treat their own soldiers with the same regard take them seriously as persons. 289 00:32:35,410 --> 00:32:41,500 Now, one final note before I sort of say some general things about the reasons for what soldiers do and drawing of distinction here, 290 00:32:41,920 --> 00:32:44,980 I have asked what constitutes a good reason for soldiering? 291 00:32:46,360 --> 00:32:54,430 I do not want to assume at the start that there are such reasons or that the reasons can be rendered internally coherent. 292 00:32:55,870 --> 00:33:02,380 Both Hobbs and Locke had serious doubts about whether the enterprise of soldiering was compatible with liberal assumptions about the person. 293 00:33:03,700 --> 00:33:07,970 We tend to assume that if a war. Just then, soldiers must have a good reason to fight it. 294 00:33:08,420 --> 00:33:10,610 But this is exactly what Hobbs rejected. 295 00:33:12,380 --> 00:33:18,110 Now, there has always been a strain of pacifism that holds that soldiers never have a good reason for what they do. 296 00:33:18,770 --> 00:33:21,950 Specifically, soldiers never have a good reason for killing and dying. 297 00:33:24,080 --> 00:33:28,820 In the eyes of the pacifists, taking soldier seriously means ending the enterprise of soldier. 298 00:33:30,050 --> 00:33:34,730 Now, I'm not going to argue for that position here, but I am going to say I'm going to leave it open. 299 00:33:34,760 --> 00:33:41,630 It seems to me that we have to leave it open. Philosophically, we can't assume that there must be a good reason and therefore let's go find it. 300 00:33:41,660 --> 00:33:46,790 We have to assume that we characterise what good reasons look like and then we ask are there really any around? 301 00:33:46,830 --> 00:33:52,010 Okay, so I'm not going to go into that here, but I just wanted to say I leave open that possibility. 302 00:33:53,870 --> 00:33:57,650 Let me suggest that we can distinguish two types of reasons that we give to soldiers. 303 00:33:59,000 --> 00:34:07,850 And much is to be gained by keeping them to state. The first type of reason involves the justification for how they fight, or for the first time. 304 00:34:07,850 --> 00:34:11,120 A reason involves the justification for why they fight and how they fight. 305 00:34:12,350 --> 00:34:16,430 A reason in this sense is something that warrants the doing of something, the doing of acts. 306 00:34:17,150 --> 00:34:25,070 Let us call this a justifying reason. They pertain to the normative realm of what we are obliged to do in virtue of the claims upon us. 307 00:34:26,690 --> 00:34:30,890 But in speaking of why soldiers fight, we sometimes have in mind a second type of reason. 308 00:34:31,610 --> 00:34:34,700 The second type involves the motivation for why they fight. 309 00:34:35,600 --> 00:34:40,190 What actually causes, compels, or brings about their doing of what they do. 310 00:34:41,480 --> 00:34:45,530 These pertain to the motivational realm. What moves them to do acts? 311 00:34:45,710 --> 00:34:49,700 So I'll call these motivating reasons. Now, 312 00:34:49,700 --> 00:34:56,959 my distinction between justifying and motivating reasons is related to one that philosophers will recognise between internal and external reasons. 313 00:34:56,960 --> 00:35:05,600 But I'm going to leave that issue aside for now because I think my distinction does work, even though it's related to some other philosophical issues. 314 00:35:07,220 --> 00:35:12,200 Let me explain the distinction between justifying and motivating reasons with a humdrum example. 315 00:35:12,290 --> 00:35:15,290 I can give you an example. It was not from soldiers from something else. 316 00:35:16,200 --> 00:35:23,010 What I have in mind, why do I hold my office hours for students during my third term in America? 317 00:35:23,030 --> 00:35:26,510 You have to haul 3 hours of off 3 hours office hours for your students. 318 00:35:27,290 --> 00:35:35,330 Why do I hold my office hours? My justifying reason would refer to the considerations that warrant my doing so as a professor. 319 00:35:36,590 --> 00:35:42,050 My justifying reasons would refer to the institutional factors of the mission of higher education, 320 00:35:42,470 --> 00:35:46,129 the place of student advising within it, and the personal factors. 321 00:35:46,130 --> 00:35:50,030 My justifying reasons would refer to why I became an educator in the first place. 322 00:35:50,360 --> 00:35:54,020 All of these justify why I spend my time in office hours. 323 00:35:55,520 --> 00:35:59,030 But do these reasons actually motivate my going to office hours? 324 00:36:00,320 --> 00:36:01,280 Well, sometimes. 325 00:36:01,280 --> 00:36:09,170 But frankly, most of the time, my my reasons for holding office hours is that people might yell at me if I didn't or I might even be fired. 326 00:36:11,390 --> 00:36:17,540 The fact that people might yell at me doesn't justify my holding my office hours, but it certainly motivates it. 327 00:36:19,130 --> 00:36:24,500 Now the relation between justifying and motivating reasons is complex, and in part because they're not mutually exclusive, 328 00:36:24,680 --> 00:36:27,980 and in part because the same reason can shuttle back and forth between them. 329 00:36:28,670 --> 00:36:34,729 A focus of personal relationships is that the link between justifying and motivating reasons is quite intimate. 330 00:36:34,730 --> 00:36:39,510 It's a distinct fact about personal relationships that one justifies what you do, 331 00:36:39,710 --> 00:36:43,700 motivates you to, and your relationship to your spouse or loved one tend to be the same thing. 332 00:36:44,510 --> 00:36:49,830 I think it is a characteristic of professional relationships or professional roles that they can come apart so that 333 00:36:49,850 --> 00:36:54,860 what actually only justifies what you're doing is not the thing which actually motivates you most of the time. 334 00:36:55,850 --> 00:37:03,320 Now, my suggestion is that soldiers have both justifying and motivating reasons, and the taking soldier seriously means attending to both. 335 00:37:04,130 --> 00:37:08,810 Specifically, it means attending to the kinds of reasons that can fully justify what they are asked 336 00:37:08,810 --> 00:37:13,220 to do and attending to the kinds of reasons that can properly motivate what they do. 337 00:37:13,650 --> 00:37:17,450 They both raise distinct problems and ask to say a few words about both. 338 00:37:18,560 --> 00:37:23,240 Right away, though, this distinction helps us frame Washington's worry about an army of principles. 339 00:37:24,770 --> 00:37:26,830 You can put George Washington's worry this way. 340 00:37:26,840 --> 00:37:34,220 Principles may be great as justifying reasons for what soldiers do, but are they sufficient as motivating reasons for what they do? 341 00:37:34,370 --> 00:37:39,110 Or do we need something more like hero ism or things like that to motivate them? 342 00:37:41,180 --> 00:37:43,520 So let me say first more is about justifying reasons. 343 00:37:44,870 --> 00:37:50,570 Contemporary just war theory focuses almost entirely on the justifying reasons for what soldiers do, 344 00:37:51,890 --> 00:37:55,580 and contemporary just war theory tends to ignore the question of motivating reasons. 345 00:37:57,290 --> 00:38:03,830 This is understandable, I think, but unfortunate because motivating reasons also raise interesting normative questions as we shall see. 346 00:38:04,970 --> 00:38:11,550 It is. Also unfortunate because the focus on justification over motivation gives contemporary just war theory an air of unreality. 347 00:38:13,710 --> 00:38:19,020 There is a lot of discussion of what one ought to do with a soldier, but not as much about what it means to be a soldier. 348 00:38:19,290 --> 00:38:27,239 The reasons inspired people to become soldiers or remain soldiers once, once they do so clearly, 349 00:38:27,240 --> 00:38:33,510 the reasons that justify a soldier's going to war begin with the reasons that justify their nations going to war more generally. 350 00:38:34,620 --> 00:38:37,980 In a democracy, soldiers have additional reasons for going to war. 351 00:38:38,010 --> 00:38:44,340 But the principles of civilian control of the military means that the military cannot have separate reasons for going to war. 352 00:38:44,370 --> 00:38:47,339 That's one way to think about the structure of justifying reason. 353 00:38:47,340 --> 00:38:52,409 Soldiers might have additional reasons for justifying what they do, but they can't have separate reasons, 354 00:38:52,410 --> 00:38:57,000 because the reasons must be the ones that the society as a whole endorses. 355 00:39:01,170 --> 00:39:06,870 In my view, the United States Constitution was too designed to make take these matters very seriously. 356 00:39:08,010 --> 00:39:12,329 The idea that a war must be declared and not just wandered into embodies the notion 357 00:39:12,330 --> 00:39:16,950 that its justifying reasons must be clearly spelled out delegating the war, 358 00:39:16,950 --> 00:39:22,020 making power to Congress and body. The further idea that the declaration should be the result of deliberation. 359 00:39:22,680 --> 00:39:27,000 The decision to wage war should be discussed not just because people differ about it, 360 00:39:27,210 --> 00:39:31,710 but because the full reasons for doing it will only become clearer through discussion. 361 00:39:32,580 --> 00:39:38,370 This is why the constitutional scholar Joseph Story insisted that war is something that must be entered into slowly. 362 00:39:40,680 --> 00:39:45,990 That was the original idea, at least. I am probably not the only American who wonders whatever happened to it. 363 00:39:47,040 --> 00:39:51,119 I remember when I was in school reading of World War One and how for several years the 364 00:39:51,120 --> 00:39:55,710 parties to the conflict of World War One refused to say exactly what they were fighting for. 365 00:39:56,760 --> 00:40:04,049 This struck me as bizarre. But now I have lived through several wars in which the aims of the United States are either nonexistent, 366 00:40:04,050 --> 00:40:07,110 hopelessly vague, or, in the case of Iraq, built on falsehoods. 367 00:40:08,730 --> 00:40:12,300 And none of them were initiated by the procedures the U.S. Constitution required. 368 00:40:13,530 --> 00:40:20,640 There are many reasons to fault this, but the one I want to just mention now is that it seems to me that it doesn't take soldiers seriously. 369 00:40:20,790 --> 00:40:24,000 Soldiers must be given reasons to justify what they do. 370 00:40:24,120 --> 00:40:30,180 If the government does not provide clear reasons, among other things, it's not taking the actions of soldiers seriously enough. 371 00:40:32,550 --> 00:40:38,280 I have said that contemporary just war theory focuses entirely on justifying reasons, not motivating reasons. 372 00:40:39,180 --> 00:40:45,930 More specifically, contemporary just war theory tends to focus almost entirely on the reasons for killing in war. 373 00:40:49,300 --> 00:40:56,830 My biggest criticism of contemporary just war theory is that while it says a great deal about the justification for killing and war, 374 00:40:57,070 --> 00:41:00,310 it says very little about the justification for dying in war. 375 00:41:00,760 --> 00:41:02,980 The justification for war sacrifices. 376 00:41:05,020 --> 00:41:10,659 Now, this is striking for several reasons, starting with the fact that dying in war was the issue that so exercised earlier. 377 00:41:10,660 --> 00:41:17,740 Philosophers like Hobbes and Lock Horns, as I have noted, worry about the justification from the standpoint of rational prudence. 378 00:41:18,220 --> 00:41:20,860 Locke worried about it from the standpoint of the social contract. 379 00:41:22,150 --> 00:41:27,880 It is especially odd that philosophers would ignore the question of what justifies dying in war, 380 00:41:28,690 --> 00:41:33,070 since the issue of what is worth dying for is the founding question of their field. 381 00:41:35,080 --> 00:41:40,719 The question what is worth dying for was first posed by a distinguished military veteran of ancient Greece, 382 00:41:40,720 --> 00:41:46,600 Socrates, who had distinguished himself as a Hoplite soldier in three of its most important battles. 383 00:41:48,220 --> 00:41:53,560 The occasion, which he raised the question of what is worth dying for was the sentence imposed on him by the citizens of Athens, 384 00:41:53,560 --> 00:41:56,740 giving him the option of drinking the hemlock or fleeing the city. 385 00:41:58,270 --> 00:42:03,219 Socrates rejected the latter in military terms. I remained at my post in battle. 386 00:42:03,220 --> 00:42:07,090 Socrates as an apology, and I cannot retreat from philosophy now. 387 00:42:08,050 --> 00:42:13,510 To do so would mean choosing dishonour over death. But dishonour is something that runs faster than death. 388 00:42:13,720 --> 00:42:20,560 Socrates says the philosopher is someone who's willing to die because the philosopher has pondered what is worth dying for. 389 00:42:23,510 --> 00:42:29,030 Taking soldier seriously means assessing and more seriously the reasons they are given for dying in war. 390 00:42:30,140 --> 00:42:40,740 And let me say that what strikes me as odd about the neglect of this question is that I don't see that you can answer what's worth killing for. 391 00:42:41,120 --> 00:42:42,620 If you don't answer at the same time, 392 00:42:42,620 --> 00:42:49,250 what's worth dying for does seem to me like so interconnected that it seems to me you have to look at the two of them together. 393 00:42:50,060 --> 00:42:54,790 Now, we could talk about that, and I might have more, more to say about it, but that's especially odd to me. 394 00:42:54,800 --> 00:42:58,640 There's so much stress on killing what is worth killing? 395 00:42:58,640 --> 00:43:05,000 What is worth sacrificing a human life of someone else for? Not much discussion of what might be worth sacrificing your own life for. 396 00:43:06,920 --> 00:43:14,210 We move on to motivating reasons. Washington did not doubt the democratic ideals justified killing and war. 397 00:43:14,540 --> 00:43:21,080 His question was whether they provided sufficient motivating reasons or did they need augmenting by more aristocratic virtues? 398 00:43:22,790 --> 00:43:31,100 Let's call this the dilemma of the Democratic soldier. In the end, it did not prove much of a dilemma due to the rise of modern nationalism. 399 00:43:31,220 --> 00:43:37,010 One of the most powerful motivating reasons that history has seen in recent years, 400 00:43:37,010 --> 00:43:41,360 though some have taken the decline of nationalism to pose a new dilemma called the dilemma 401 00:43:41,360 --> 00:43:46,100 of the cosmopolitan soldier involved in the relation of justification to motivation. 402 00:43:47,900 --> 00:43:53,630 A good statement of this is provided by Mary Kaldor. Soldiers used to fight for national values. 403 00:43:54,050 --> 00:43:59,480 Soldiers of the 21st century will be asked to fight for cosmopolitan values like universal human rights. 404 00:44:00,140 --> 00:44:03,410 Counter asks Are these sufficient to motivate fighting and dying? 405 00:44:04,700 --> 00:44:08,420 She writes, Does the individual have to be prepared to die for humanity? 406 00:44:08,900 --> 00:44:15,740 At the very least, she notes, the individual has to be prepared to risk his life for humanity, but not in an unlimited way. 407 00:44:16,370 --> 00:44:22,190 Nevertheless, in the new war, is is it possible to find cosmopolitans who will risk their lives to save others? 408 00:44:22,580 --> 00:44:29,090 Or is this ridiculously utopian, our cosmopolitan values enough? 409 00:44:29,960 --> 00:44:35,810 I don't have an answer to this question, and let's talk about it in the discussion. 410 00:44:36,770 --> 00:44:41,450 Instead, let me say a bit more about the nature of motivating reasons that serves to frame the problem here. 411 00:44:43,250 --> 00:44:49,970 You might think that if I'm justified in doing something, indeed, if I'm obligated to do it, then it wouldn't much matter what motivates me to do it. 412 00:44:50,930 --> 00:44:56,000 All that matters is I do it. Motivating reasons on this view are purely pragmatic. 413 00:44:56,570 --> 00:45:03,890 Their only concern is do they do the job? But an interesting fact is that we don't think of motivating reasons in this way. 414 00:45:03,920 --> 00:45:10,190 There are good and bad motivating reasons. So taking soldier seriously means attending to this distinction as well. 415 00:45:12,110 --> 00:45:19,220 Take my example of office hours. I've confessed that my reasons for doing so are often things like not wanting to be yelled at. 416 00:45:19,520 --> 00:45:24,980 This is not a noble reason, but it doesn't strike me as a bad reason because it's kind of a human reason. 417 00:45:26,480 --> 00:45:33,110 But suppose I told you that what moves me to drag myself to office hours is my sadistic impulse to hope 418 00:45:33,110 --> 00:45:37,640 that a student will wander in so incompetent stupid that he will give me a chance to humiliate him. 419 00:45:39,110 --> 00:45:43,130 Most of us would think that sadism is a bad motivating reason for doing that, 420 00:45:43,970 --> 00:45:48,140 even if their actions serve the cause of education or justice or whatever. 421 00:45:49,490 --> 00:45:59,390 By the same token, in the case of soldiers, Augustine held that hatred should never be a motivating reason for why a soldier fights. 422 00:46:01,310 --> 00:46:05,510 In the 20th century, racism was constantly exploited as a motivating reason. 423 00:46:06,110 --> 00:46:12,350 And I think we're uncomfortable with this, even if we think that the cause for which the war was being fought was a just one. 424 00:46:12,770 --> 00:46:17,629 And one of the things that I've admired about Franklin Roosevelt was that Roosevelt, actually, during World War two, 425 00:46:17,630 --> 00:46:23,150 was mindful of the potential for racism against Japanese and actually did take measures to try and rein it in, 426 00:46:23,600 --> 00:46:32,630 even though one could argue that that motivation might have led to heroic actions on the part of American soldiers that have expedited the war. 427 00:46:39,440 --> 00:46:41,899 Now a couple of others have. I'll skip skip over time. Okay. 428 00:46:41,900 --> 00:46:49,250 So I've thought a lot about is the use of stimulants in getting soldiers to fight as a motivation motivating reason. 429 00:46:50,060 --> 00:46:55,250 The phrase the Dutch courage originally referred to a type of gym dispensed to English soldiers and 30 years war. 430 00:46:55,250 --> 00:47:01,100 Prior to battle, soldiers brought the gym back to England, making John a favourite of the English population. 431 00:47:01,100 --> 00:47:05,420 Generally, alcohol played a role in the battles of World War One, 432 00:47:05,750 --> 00:47:14,030 though General Pershing prohibited the use of alcohol by American troops on the grounds that ideal should be enough sentimental of Thomas Paine. 433 00:47:15,260 --> 00:47:22,430 Instead, Pershing made a deal with the American tobacco companies to distribute cigarettes to all the troops, which gave rise to the modern cigarette. 434 00:47:22,430 --> 00:47:30,020 In American culture, one worry about such things reflects the view that soldiers should be taken seriously. 435 00:47:30,320 --> 00:47:34,700 Even if a cause is just, you don't drug someone to fight it. 436 00:47:35,420 --> 00:47:40,340 Drugs are not a reason. On the contrary, they now muster questions of why we fight and how we fight. 437 00:47:41,270 --> 00:47:46,069 That said, if we have good reasons for what we do, 438 00:47:46,070 --> 00:47:53,870 what's the matter with making it easier with stimulants now you might be expecting a justification for why I have a few drinks before office hours, 439 00:47:53,870 --> 00:47:59,839 but I'm actually not thinking of that. I'm thinking of the fact that we anaesthetise people before operations. 440 00:47:59,840 --> 00:48:02,120 We sedate people in certain situations. 441 00:48:02,360 --> 00:48:08,479 We don't sort of feel that that's disrespecting them as persons, even though it makes easier what they have to endure. 442 00:48:08,480 --> 00:48:16,370 And so the question I'm raising is I don't have an answer to what would be the matter with doing that with soldiers if they are given for reasons, 443 00:48:16,370 --> 00:48:27,670 etc., etc. Let me suggest a general contrast between justifying and motivating reasons that illuminates the problem with cosmopolitan soldiering. 444 00:48:28,720 --> 00:48:31,870 Justifying reasons refer us to the aims being achieved. 445 00:48:32,500 --> 00:48:37,480 Reasons for fighting a war include the defence of the homeland, the defence of ideals and so on. 446 00:48:38,620 --> 00:48:42,580 Motivating reasons, though, often refers to the identity being expressed. 447 00:48:43,270 --> 00:48:49,000 We are moved to great sacrifice by our sense of what it means to be a soldier or what it means to be a citizen. 448 00:48:50,110 --> 00:48:55,570 Appeals like this are often couched in terms of historic models that we should seek to emulate the heroes of the past. 449 00:48:56,170 --> 00:49:03,810 We are motivated to action because we want to be like them. The worry of Mary Calendar and others about the Cosmopolitan Soldier. 450 00:49:03,820 --> 00:49:11,380 The Soldier for Humanity is not whether the cause this provides is just enough, but whether the identity it involves is thick enough. 451 00:49:12,310 --> 00:49:16,300 We are motivated by what we care about and what we care about. Crowns our identity. 452 00:49:16,480 --> 00:49:20,230 We fight because we are Americans. Because a country is something we can care about. 453 00:49:21,100 --> 00:49:27,790 Will people fight because they are human beings? Will they fight because they care about humanity generally? 454 00:49:28,720 --> 00:49:32,770 We have tombs of the unknown soldier, while we have tombs of the unknown human being. 455 00:49:33,730 --> 00:49:36,680 Proponents of cosmopolitan soldiering, it seems to me, 456 00:49:36,730 --> 00:49:41,920 have to address this as do particularly with relation to the issue of humanitarian intervention. 457 00:49:44,110 --> 00:49:49,240 Now, discussions of all these matters is hampered, I think, by today's schizophrenic attitude towards soldiers, 458 00:49:49,450 --> 00:49:53,290 perhaps reflecting an ambivalence towards war generally at the end of the 20th century. 459 00:49:55,330 --> 00:50:00,070 We witness, on the one hand, the national desire to honour the sacrifices of their soldiers. 460 00:50:00,940 --> 00:50:04,930 In the United States. Efforts have proliferated to honour the troops, especially the fallen. 461 00:50:05,440 --> 00:50:12,640 Australia has its Anzac Day, whose war memorial describes the spirit of Anzac as courage, mateship and sacrifice. 462 00:50:13,420 --> 00:50:19,150 All of them, in the words of the Australian War Memorial, having meaning and relevance for our sense of national identity. 463 00:50:21,190 --> 00:50:26,860 I can't speak for Australia, but I can tell you that in the United States the celebration of soldiering first it 464 00:50:26,860 --> 00:50:32,020 focuses entirely on the nobility of the motivating reasons for what soldiers do. 465 00:50:32,560 --> 00:50:36,219 While adamantly insisting that we ignore the question of justification, 466 00:50:36,220 --> 00:50:43,540 the question of justifying reasons whether the cause they fought for is a just one above and beyond the nobility with which they fought. 467 00:50:44,320 --> 00:50:51,549 In my view, this may honour the troops, but it doesn't take them seriously because taking someone seriously means, frankly, 468 00:50:51,550 --> 00:50:58,810 assessing the reasons they were given to justify their actions and facing up to the fact that those reasons may not have been good ones. 469 00:51:00,370 --> 00:51:05,410 Now, this may explain the second part of the attitude towards soldiers, at least in the United States. 470 00:51:06,580 --> 00:51:11,800 Soldiers are praised for their sacrifice, but then everything is done to deny the fact that they actually die. 471 00:51:13,180 --> 00:51:20,230 People may know Dover Air Force Base in Dover, Delaware, home of the Defence Department's Centre for Mortuary Affairs, 472 00:51:20,320 --> 00:51:27,190 where the bodies of dead soldiers first arrived for years, executive orders prevented photographs of soldiers caskets. 473 00:51:27,910 --> 00:51:33,430 A reporter I was actually given a lengthy sentence in federal prison for taking a photograph of one of those caskets. 474 00:51:34,390 --> 00:51:40,390 We honour sacrifice. We avoid death. America seems particularly bad in this regard. 475 00:51:40,390 --> 00:51:43,420 When 19 Italian soldiers died in a suicide bombing. 476 00:51:43,930 --> 00:51:51,490 A day of grief was proclaimed at a state funeral held. President Obama has lifted the restrictions on photographing caskets at Dover, 477 00:51:51,910 --> 00:51:59,050 but neither he nor George W Bush nor any president since the Second World War has actually attended the funeral of a soldier. 478 00:52:01,810 --> 00:52:07,930 But perhaps I'm too hard on people here. Perhaps I minimise how difficult it is to talk about these things. 479 00:52:09,940 --> 00:52:14,470 For any discussion of death in war must ultimately confront the problem of grief, 480 00:52:15,850 --> 00:52:19,720 the grief of loved ones for lost family members or society as a whole. 481 00:52:20,290 --> 00:52:27,580 The grief of society as a whole for the cost of its wars. Yet grief, by its very nature, seems to resist articulation. 482 00:52:28,630 --> 00:52:32,830 Grief needs to be shared, but it cannot be represented. It resists. 483 00:52:32,830 --> 00:52:36,610 That is the logic of reason and reasoning that I've been assuming so far. 484 00:52:40,610 --> 00:52:48,950 To me one of the most striking features of my lens, Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. To me, one of the striking, 485 00:52:48,950 --> 00:52:55,970 most striking features of her design for the Vietnam War Memorial was how it confronted the question of grief head on. 486 00:52:57,560 --> 00:53:04,969 For those of you who've not seen it, the Vietnam War Memorial is two long slabs of reflective rock dotted with the names of 487 00:53:04,970 --> 00:53:09,350 thousands of Americans who died with rooms for names to be added as they are discovered. 488 00:53:10,700 --> 00:53:13,940 The slabs are stuck in the earth like two large tombstones. 489 00:53:15,230 --> 00:53:22,100 They're inscribed with names like two big dog tags, resisting any further expression. 490 00:53:23,600 --> 00:53:30,260 The Vietnam War Memorial is actually not far from the World War Two memorial, which was actually built after the Vietnam War Memorial. 491 00:53:30,710 --> 00:53:34,580 And yet the World War Two memorial seems like a relic from a forgotten age. 492 00:53:34,940 --> 00:53:42,590 Compared with the Vietnam War Memorial. Taking people seriously, I claim, means an openness to reasoning and dialogue. 493 00:53:42,980 --> 00:53:47,720 But grief seems to defeat all that. Raising questions about how we proceed next. 494 00:53:49,140 --> 00:53:54,680 We begin with some words from Ralph Waldo Emerson, written as a young man in celebration of sacrifice. 495 00:53:56,540 --> 00:54:04,700 Here are some words Emerson wrote later on in life in his essay experience describing the grief he felt at the death of his young son. 496 00:54:07,160 --> 00:54:10,940 Emerson wrote I cannot shake off the lethargy of noonday. 497 00:54:11,870 --> 00:54:14,960 Sleep lingers all our lifetime before our eyes. 498 00:54:15,290 --> 00:54:18,920 As night hovers all day. And the boughs of the fir tree. 499 00:54:20,630 --> 00:54:28,580 My life is not so much threatened as my perception goes like a glide through nature and shall not know my place again. 500 00:54:30,800 --> 00:54:39,500 The ghost like existence that Emerson describes is one of being cut off from others by grief, of no longer being in dialogue with those around us, 501 00:54:40,340 --> 00:54:47,390 but more importantly, of wanting dialogue, but by being incapable of dialogue with someone who has now departed. 502 00:54:48,680 --> 00:54:54,230 This desire for dialogue with those who must be silent might be a name for grief. 503 00:54:55,130 --> 00:54:59,270 It is captured, I think, in another striking feature of the Vietnam War Memorial. 504 00:55:00,950 --> 00:55:10,790 There are memorials, shiny black surfaces, such that when you stand up close to read the names of the dead, you see the reflection of your own face. 505 00:55:12,500 --> 00:55:16,970 Perhaps unwittingly, the memorial captures the fact that the dead on the wall are our dead, 506 00:55:17,330 --> 00:55:21,560 our soldiers, and we must answer to them for having sent them there. 507 00:55:22,730 --> 00:55:31,010 Standing close, your reflection is in fact a ghostly one, as if those who died in Vietnam are not the only ghosts left by the war. 508 00:55:33,020 --> 00:55:34,399 Taking soldiers seriously. 509 00:55:34,400 --> 00:55:40,010 This last part taking soldier seriously means asking if they are reasonably is the reasons they are given for dying are good ones, 510 00:55:40,670 --> 00:55:44,990 but a good means ultimately acceptable to them. How do we answer this ahead of time? 511 00:55:45,860 --> 00:55:48,890 For it seems to require a dialogue with the departed. 512 00:55:50,840 --> 00:55:55,340 The answer is that we cannot answer it. We can only imagine it. 513 00:55:55,790 --> 00:56:03,290 And this is exactly what the literature of war does both the literature that celebrates war and the literature that condemns it. 514 00:56:04,340 --> 00:56:10,520 In my view, it is the inconclusive nature of such imaginings that speaks to the tragic nature of war itself. 515 00:56:12,560 --> 00:56:19,790 The literature that celebrates war constantly tells us of how the dead must feel now that they have given their lives. 516 00:56:20,990 --> 00:56:29,600 The most famous modern poem of pro-war literature genre craze in Flanders Field recounts the voices of We the Dead, 517 00:56:30,680 --> 00:56:35,839 urging us to take up our quarrel with the foe to you from failing hands. 518 00:56:35,840 --> 00:56:39,490 We throw the torch, be yours to hold it high. 519 00:56:39,500 --> 00:56:42,800 The dead speak to us from their graves. Carry on the fight. 520 00:56:44,930 --> 00:56:50,090 But the standpoint of the dead is also the perspective of the greatest modern anti-war novel. 521 00:56:50,120 --> 00:56:54,920 Dalton Trumbo's. Johnny got his gun turning the greatest anti-war model in the English language. 522 00:56:57,210 --> 00:57:00,990 Johnny. God is gone. If you haven't read it is told from the perspective of a World War. 523 00:57:00,990 --> 00:57:02,640 One soldier, Joe Bonham, 524 00:57:03,660 --> 00:57:14,820 who lies in a hospital bed after his face has been blown off and his arms and legs have been amputated from combat injuries to his dead to the world. 525 00:57:16,050 --> 00:57:21,240 His lack of a face and mouth dramatises. His inability to engage in dialogue with the world anymore. 526 00:57:22,680 --> 00:57:27,360 I've often thought this dramatises the fate of many combat veterans whose experiences 527 00:57:27,360 --> 00:57:30,990 render them so terribly isolated from the normal world to which they must return. 528 00:57:32,580 --> 00:57:39,450 Johnny God is Gone is an extended interior monologue by one whose greatest desire is to be seen, 529 00:57:39,450 --> 00:57:44,250 to be sent around the country to display what happens to people in war. 530 00:57:45,750 --> 00:57:52,770 At one point, the young man, musing to himself, poses the question of dialogue directly. 531 00:57:52,800 --> 00:57:57,700 Here's the words from the novel. Did anybody ever come back from the dead? 532 00:57:57,720 --> 00:58:00,330 Any single one of the millions who got killed? 533 00:58:00,960 --> 00:58:07,590 Did any one of them ever come back and say, By God, I'm glad I'm dead because death is always better than dishonour? 534 00:58:09,150 --> 00:58:12,900 Did they say I'm glad I died to make the world safe for democracy? 535 00:58:13,770 --> 00:58:16,590 Did they say I like death better than losing liberty? 536 00:58:17,580 --> 00:58:22,650 Did any of them ever say, It's good to think I got my guts blown out for the honour of my country? 537 00:58:23,670 --> 00:58:27,480 Did any of them ever say I've been rotting for two years in a foreign grave? 538 00:58:27,720 --> 00:58:32,970 But it's wonderful to die for your native land. Did any of them say, Hooray? 539 00:58:32,970 --> 00:58:39,480 I died for my country and I'm so happy. See how I sing even though my mouth is choked with worms. 540 00:58:41,970 --> 00:58:49,620 Let me conclude by returning to the importance of dialogue. Discussions of war like war itself can fly off into space. 541 00:58:51,030 --> 00:58:57,750 I am a professor of law, but the problem with legalistic discussions is they can hover too high above the personal realities. 542 00:58:58,440 --> 00:59:00,570 They can stand too far away from them. 543 00:59:01,740 --> 00:59:09,060 Justification is a matter of dialogue requires, as I have said, that we bring things back to Earth or keep them down to earth. 544 00:59:09,930 --> 00:59:14,550 I see this as a moral imperative, as a responsibility to soldiers and fellow citizens. 545 00:59:15,990 --> 00:59:20,790 I started writing this the week the United States officially concluded its war in Iraq. 546 00:59:22,230 --> 00:59:27,240 The newspaper that morning carried the story about the last American to die in that conflict. 547 00:59:28,290 --> 00:59:34,230 Army Specialist David Heckman was a 23 year old African-American from Greensboro, North Carolina. 548 00:59:34,740 --> 00:59:42,990 A former high school linebacker, much beloved for his sense of humour, who was blown to pieces by an improvised bomb just two weeks before going home. 549 00:59:44,460 --> 00:59:47,670 The average age of Americans who died in Iraq was 26. 550 00:59:48,150 --> 00:59:53,010 But David was not untypical. Nearly 1300 Americans were told age 22 were younger. 551 00:59:55,500 --> 01:00:00,239 The newspaper tells us that David's mother does not want to concern herself with 552 01:00:00,240 --> 01:00:03,840 thoughts about the cost of the war or whether it was worth her son's life. 553 01:00:05,340 --> 01:00:09,600 Indeed, the story notes that war generally has faded from America's thoughts. 554 01:00:12,080 --> 01:00:17,900 Reports of David's death dwell entirely on the nobility of the motivations for his actions, 555 01:00:18,380 --> 01:00:25,850 with studious avoidance of any doubts about whether the death of Army Specialist David Heckman was ultimately justified. 556 01:00:27,020 --> 01:00:28,490 But this cannot be avoided. 557 01:00:29,540 --> 01:00:37,010 Indeed, I would suggest the test of whether any war is justified is whether it can be justified to the last person who dies in it. 558 01:00:38,270 --> 01:00:43,220 This is the sense in which taking soldier seriously is the key to taking seriously war itself. 559 01:00:43,730 --> 01:00:44,060 Thank you.