This book turns to virtue language as an important resource for understanding moral injury, a form of subjectivity where one feels they can no longer strive to be good as a result of wartime experience. Drawing specifically on Iris Murdoch’s moral philosophy, and examining the experiences of civilians during the Bosnian War, Joseph Wiinikka-Lydon argues that current research into war and current understandings of subjectivity need new ways to articulate the moral dimension of being a subject if we are to (...) understand how violence affects one’s moral being and development. He develops an understanding of the human person as a tensile moral subject, one that forefronts the moral challenges and vulnerability inherent in lives affected by war. With these resources, Wiinikka-Lydon argues for a moral vocabulary and images of the human as a moral being that can better articulate the experience of violence and moral injury. (shrink)

Moral injury describes the effects of violence on veterans beyond what trauma discourse can describe. I put moral injury in conversation with a separate but related concept, dirty hands. Focusing on Michael Walzer's framing of dirty hands and Jonathan Shay's understanding of moral injury, I argue that moral injury can be seen as part of the dirt of a political leader's dirty hands decisions. Such comparison can focus more attention on the broader institutional context in which such dirty hands decisions (...) are executed, while contributing to the growing vocabulary of moral conflict, trauma, and harm. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn clinical circles, the concept of “moral injury” has rapidly gained traction. Yet, from a moral philosophical point of view the concept is less clear than is suggested. That is, in current conceptualizations of moral injury, trauma’s moral dimension seems to be understood in a rather mechanistic and individualized manner. This article makes a start in developing an adequately founded conceptualization of the role of morality in deployment-related distress. It does so by reviewing and synthesizing insights from different disciplines into (...) morality and trauma. This discussion will lead to three positions: values and norms are by definition characterized by conflict, moral conflict may entail important social dimensions, and moral conflict may lead to altered beliefs about previously held values. These insights provide important steps in further developing conceptions of the role of morality in deployment-related suffering. (shrink)

Moral injury is a term whose popularity has grown in psychology and psychiatry, as well as philosophy, over the last several years. This presents challenges, because these fields use the term in different ways and draw their understanding from different sources, creating the potential for contradiction. This, however, is also an opportunity. Comparison between behavioral sciences and philosophy can help enrich understandings of harms considered not just psychological but moral. To this end, I provide an overview of the more influential (...) writing of moral injury, mapping them into three broad discourses: clinical, juridical-critical, and structural. This overview then leads to a discussion of how comparative engagement among these discourses promises to expand on current theories of moral harm. I argue that such a comparison will demonstrate that more emphasis on structural violence will strengthen current understandings of moral injury, often understood in a more narrow sense to be a result of more direct, physical violence, allowing us to view moral injury as a result of institutional and social violence and injustices. (shrink)

Combat deployments put health care providers in ethically compromising and morally challenging situations. A sample of recently deployed nurses and physicians provided narratives that were analyzed to better appreciate individual perceptions of moral dilemmas that arise in combat. Specific questions to be answered by this inquiry are: 1) How do combat deployed nurses and physicians make sense of morally injurious traumatic exposures? and 2) What are the possible psychosocial consequences of these and other deployment stressors? This narrative inquiry involves analysis (...) of ten deployed military nurses’ and physicians’ aversive or traumatic experiences. Burke’s dramatist pentad is used for structural narrative analysis of stories that confirm and illuminate the impact of war zone events such as betrayal, disproportionate violence, incidents involving civilians, and within-rank violence on military health care provider narrators. Results indicate cognitive dissonance and psychosocial sequelae related to moral and psychological stressors faced by military medical personnel. Discussion addresses where healing efforts should be focused. (shrink)