Book contents
- How to End a War
- How to End a War
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The Lament of the Demobilized
- Chapter 2 Moral Injury and Moral Failure
- Chapter 3 Stoic Grit, Moral Injury, and Resilience
- Chapter 4 Political Humiliation and the Sense of Replacement
- Chapter 5 Minimum Moral Thresholds at War’s End
- Chapter 6 Ending Endless Wars
- Chapter 7 Forever Wars
- Chapter 8 Two Conceptions of the Proportionality Budget for Jus Ex Bello
- Chapter 9 Toward a Post Bellum Lieber Code
- Chapter 10 Reconciliation Is Justice – and a Strategy for Military Victory
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 3 - Stoic Grit, Moral Injury, and Resilience
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 March 2023
- How to End a War
- How to End a War
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The Lament of the Demobilized
- Chapter 2 Moral Injury and Moral Failure
- Chapter 3 Stoic Grit, Moral Injury, and Resilience
- Chapter 4 Political Humiliation and the Sense of Replacement
- Chapter 5 Minimum Moral Thresholds at War’s End
- Chapter 6 Ending Endless Wars
- Chapter 7 Forever Wars
- Chapter 8 Two Conceptions of the Proportionality Budget for Jus Ex Bello
- Chapter 9 Toward a Post Bellum Lieber Code
- Chapter 10 Reconciliation Is Justice – and a Strategy for Military Victory
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
There is a tension in military culture between the growing acceptance of moral injury and an idealized view of Stoicism that leaves little room for the guilt and shame, mercy and forgiveness characteristic of moral injury and repair. Does that emotion-lean view do justice to ancient Stoic doctrine? I argue that it does not. The emotions of the Stoic moral aspirant, such as shame and moral distress, bear striking similarities to the negative self-reactive attitudes that P.F. Strawson famously discusses. Notions of mercy and forgiveness speak to the positive reactive attitudes. I develop my argument by turning to Seneca’s essay, On Mercy and his play, the Trojan Woman. Mercy, Seneca insists, makes good on the gentler side of Stoicism. Learning from the mercy others show us, and that we would show them, is one way that soldiers can begin to show mercy towards themselves.
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- Information
- How to End a WarEssays on Justice, Peace, and Repair, pp. 59 - 76Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023