Academics working on military ethics and serving military personnel rarely have opportunities to talk to each other in ways that can inform and illuminate their respective experiences and approaches to the ethics of war. The workshop from which this paper evolved was a rare opportunity to remedy this problem. Our conversations about First Lieutenant (1LT) Portis’s experiences in combat provided a unique chance to explore questions about the relationship between oversight, accountability, and the idea of moral risk in military operations. (...) In this paper, we outline a particular experience of 1LT Portis’s that formed the basis of our discussions, before elucidating the ethical issues this experience raised. In particular, we see 1LT Portis’s experience as, first, illustrative of the problem of moral risk – when military personnel are placed in situations of moral temptation. The problem of moral risk, we propose, is best understood through the framework of the military’s duty of care. Second, we see his experience as highlighting tensions within the dominant moralized warrior model of the military profession. What we call a toxic warrior identity — a distorted form of the moralized warrior identity — can negatively affect the attitudes of military personnel toward rules, policies, procedures, and accountability mechanisms, particularly in relation to non-combat related roles and duties and when leaders must choose between competing bureaucratic demands. We see 1LT Portis’s experience as illustrative of these tensions, yet his experiences also highlight important concerns about the impact of increasing bureaucratic demands on military functioning. In the conclusion, we address the need to balance concerns about toxic warrior identity with legitimate criticisms of overly demanding bureaucracy and suggest avenues for further research on this issue. (shrink)

If, as asserted by the French collective Tiqqun, we are essentially living in a global colony, where the 1% control the 99%, then it follows that the revolutionary struggle should strategically reorient itself as guerrilla warfare. The agents of this war, Tiqqun characterize, in part, by drawing on ethnologists Pierre de Clastres and Ernesto de Martino, specifically their figures of the Indigenous American warrior and the Southern Italian sorcerer, respectively. Hybridizing these two figures into that of the “warrior-mage,” (...) the present article posits an actionable exemplar thereof in players of the massively popular trading and online card game, Magic: The Gathering (MTG). More specifically, I propose a strategic mapping of MTG’s five colors of magic onto the five divisions of a coalition against late capitalist Empire, which I call the “Warrior-Mage Guild,” including liberation clerics, animal rights activists, propagandists, anti-psychiatrists, hackers, saboteurs, and those who threaten decolonizing force contra Empire. (shrink)

This book provides a comprehensive examination of the police role from within a broader philosophical context. Contending that the police are in the midst of an identity crisis that exacerbates unjustified law enforcement tactics, Luke William Hunt examines various major conceptions of the police—those seeing them as heroes, warriors, and guardians. The book looks at the police role considering the overarching societal goal of justice and seeks to present a synthetic theory that draws upon history, law, society, psychology, and philosophy. (...) Each major conception of the police role is examined in light of how it affects the pursuit of justice, and how it may be contrary to seeking justice holistically and collectively. The book sets forth a conception of the police role that is consistent with the basic values of a constitutional democracy in the liberal tradition. Hunt’s intent is that clarifying the police role will likewise elucidate any constraints upon policing strategies, including algorithmic strategies such as predictive policing. This book is essential reading for thoughtful policing and legal scholars as well as those interested in political philosophy, political theory, psychology, and related areas. Now more than ever, the nature of the police role is a philosophical topic that is relevant not just to police officials and social scientists, but to everyone. (shrink)

Endre Begby’s Prejudice: A Study in Non-Ideal Epistemology engages a wide range of issues of enduring interest to epistemologists, applied ethicists, and anyone concerned with how knowledge and justice intersect. Topics include stereotypes and generics, evidence and epistemic justification, epistemic injustice, ethical-epistemic dilemmas, moral encroachment, and the relations between blame and accountability. Begby applies his views about these topics to an equally wide range of pressing social questions, such as conspiracy theories, misinformation, algorithmic bias, discrimination, and criminal justice. Through it (...) all, the book’s central thesis is that prejudices can be epistemically rational, a corrective against what Begby takes to be the received view that prejudices are always and everywhere bad. However, Begby’s arguments do not engage consistently with relevant empirical literatures, misrepresent the positions of his interlocutors, and rehearse ideas already well-established across a range of intellectual traditions. (shrink)

During a series of protests in Hong Kong about a leadership transition widely perceived to give Mainland China greater political influence, the Hong Kong Museum of History held a Special Exhibition of the Terracotta Warriors of Xian, China. Sponsored by "The Leisure and Cultural Service Department, " the exhibit featured the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty who ushered in "an epoch-making era in Chinese history that witnessed the unification of China" (Museum Exhibition). This essay explores the multi-media aspects of (...) the exhibit, arguing that encounters with dramatic music and fully immersive digital experiences are examples of an embodied, affective form of constitutive rhetoric. Put differently, the museum's multi-media elements demonstrate how Maurice Charland's theory of a constitutive rhetoric can be informed by recent work on affect and can provide one point from which to engage affect theory and the "affective dimension of politics.". (shrink)

This is a review of: God's Rational Warriors: The Rationality of Faith Considered.

George Sword an Oglala Lakota (1846–1914) learned to write in order to transcribe and preserve his people’s oral narratives. In her book Delphine Red Shirt, also Oglala Lakota and a native speaker, examines the compositional processes of George Sword and shows how his writings reflect recurring themes and story patterns of the Lakota oral tradition. Her book invites further studies in several areas including literature, translation studies and more. My review of her book suggests some ways it could be used (...) as a primary resource book in developing curricula in Indigenous philosophy . (shrink)

In so far as long-range tele-operated weapons, such as the United States’ Predator and Reaper drones, allow their operators to fight wars in what appears to be complete safety, thousands of kilometres removed from those whom they target and kill, it is unclear whether drone operators either require courage or have the opportunity to develop or exercise it. This chapter investigates the implications of the development of tele-operated warfare for the extent to which courage will remain central to the role (...) of the warrior and for the future culture of the armed services in the age of drone warfare. (shrink)

Policing in many parts of the world—the United States in particular—has embraced an archetypal model: a conception of the police based on the tenets of individuated archetypes, such as the heroic police “warrior” or “guardian.” Such policing has in part motivated moves to (1) a reallocative model: reallocating societal resources such that the police are no longer needed in society (defunding and abolishing) because reform strategies cannot fix the way societal problems become manifest in (archetypal) policing; and (2) an (...) algorithmic model: subsuming policing into technocratic judgements encoded in algorithms through strategies such as predictive policing (mitigating archetypal bias). This paper begins by considering the normative basis of the relationship between political community and policing. It then examines the justification of reallocative and algorithmic models in light of the relationship between political community and police. Given commitments to the depth and distribution of security—and proscriptions against dehumanizing strategies—the paper concludes that a nonideal-theory priority rule promoting respect for personhood (manifest in community and dignity-promoting policing strategies) is a necessary condition for the justification of the above models. (shrink)

A number of recent and influential accounts of military ethics have argued that there exists a distinctive “role morality” for members of the armed services—a “warrior code.” A “good warrior” is a person who cultivates and exercises the “martial” or “warrior” virtues. By transforming combat into a “desk job” that can be conducted from the safety of the home territory of advanced industrial powers without need for physical strength or martial valour, long-range robotic weapons, such as the (...) “Predator” and “Reaper” drones fielded by the United States, call the relevance of the “martial virtues” into question. This chapter investigates the implications of these developments for conceptions of military virtue and, consequently, for the future of war. (shrink)

*North American Society for Social Philosophy (NASSP) Book Award 2019.* -/- *International Studies Association (ISA) - International Ethics Section Book Award 2021.* -/- Although military mores have relied primarily on just war theory, the ethic of cooperation in warfare (ECW)—between enemies even as they are trying to kill each other—is as central to the practice of warfare and to conceptualization of its morality. Neither game theory nor unilateral moral duties (God-given or otherwise) can explain the explicit language of cooperation in (...) developing and enforcing principles of military ethics and the law of armed conflict. -/- The ethic of cooperation is borne of various motivations: reciprocity, self-preservation, and efficiency, to be sure, but also a sense of warrior honor and concern with human rights. This shared morality can persist despite making it more difficult for one side or the other to win and, unfortunately, its well-meaning motivations often lead to unintended tragic consequences. -/- This book explores three manifestations of this significant yet overlooked ethic of cooperation in warfare: (1) for a “fair fight,” (2) to protect classes of individuals (e.g., non-combatants or prisoners of war), and (3) to end the war quickly. Such cooperation can take unexpected forms, from ad hoc decisions on the battlefield to institutionalization in international law, and is the source of some critical tensions in one of the most significant developments in warfare in recent years: namely, how to handle terrorism or other forms of warfare that lie outside the purview of international law. -/- Each type of ECW raises questions internal to that ethic, such as inconsistencies in the concept of “parity” across different weapons bans, contradictions within the warrior ethic that heavily influence—and therefore confuse—notions of the “fair fight,” the disconnect between what protections a person receives and his responsibility for the war (e.g., political leaders), or the limited decisiveness of outcomes generated by very short wars. -/- Their simultaneous application also generates significant tensions and raises questions about the proper relationship of ECW to the immediate goal of war itself, which is to win, and thus yield either a political settlement or a justicial decision. For example, the ECWs for a “fair fight” and to protect classes of individuals can make it harder to win the war, but even more concerning is that they can also kill more people, which in the latter case contravenes its very purpose. -/- Human history is in some ways the story of trying to concurrently wage and tame war, and the architecture of warfare itself is informed by the ECW, in particular: (a) the political nature of war, (b) the abdication from jus ad bellum judgments in order to concentrate on justice within war (jus in bello), and (c) the ways in which modern nation-states collude to define “legitimacy” in war. -/- The combination of these three features leave questions of justicial right and responsibility for war disturbingly unresolved, it also generates new challenges in a geopolitical context in which cooperative and non-cooperative (e.g. contemporary terrorism) forms of warfare clash. (shrink)

Just War Theory (JWT) replaced an older "warrior code," an approach to war that remains poorly understood and dismissively treated in the philosophical literature. This paper builds on recent work on honor to address these deficiencies. By providing a clear, systematic exposition of "Honor War Theory" (HWT), we can make sense of paradigm instances of warrior psychology and behavior, and understand the warrior code as the martial expression of a broader honor-based ethos that conceives of obligation in (...) terms of fair competition for prestige. Far from being a romantic and outmoded approach to war, HWT accounts for current conflicts and predicts moral intuitions that JWT either rejects or cannot comfortably accommodate. So although it is not recommended as a replacement for JWT, there is good reason think that a fully mature, realistic, and yet properly normative theory of war ethics will incorporate a variety of insights from HWT. (shrink)

The Bhagavad Gītā has inspired more interpretive controversy than any other religious scripture in India’s history. The Gītā, a philosophical and spiritual poem of approximately seven hundred verses, is part of the ancient Sanskrit epic, the Mahābhārata. In the Gītā, the Lord Kṛṣṇa, who appears in the form of a charioteer, imparts spiritual teachings to the warrior Arjuna and convinces him to fight in a just war that entails the slaughter of many of Arjuna’s own relatives and loved ones. (...) Śaṅkara, the great eighth-century champion of the Advaita school of philosophy, wrote the first extant commentary on the Gītā. In this commentary, Śaṅkara interpreted the Gītā strictly in accordance with Advaita.. (shrink)

Not only the direct physical experiences of deployment can severely harm soldiers’ mental health. Witnessing violations of their moral principles by the enemy, or by their fellow soldiers and superiors, can also have a devastating impact. It can cause soldiers’ moral disorientation, increasing feelings of shame, guilt, or hate, and the need for general answers on questions of right and wrong. Various attempts have been made to keep soldiers mentally sane. One is to provide convincing causes for their deployment, which (...) risks an “end justifies the means” way of thinking. The good cause can provide a moral justification for horrible atrocities. Another method, introduced in the USA, Canada, and Australia, aims to strengthen military personnel’s resistance by promoting and maintaining a happy, optimistic state of mind through the use of positive psychology. Alongside making soldiers “morally fit” for all kinds of situations, the focus could also be on moral recovery and forgiveness. Such a care-based military ethics approach, aimed at mutual understanding and interdependence, could help soldiers handle the emotional impact of moral conflicts. This demands that military units reflect on their organizational culture and rethink oaths and codes of conduct that focus mainly on efficiency and readiness, as well as the soldierly self-image with its seemingly still deeply rooted warrior ethos. Today, resilience and positive psychology in the military is apparently mainly geared to assuring its soldiers’ readiness. An appropriate set of virtues and understanding of virtue ethics that are less centered on self-perfection and autonomy could point to a different form of character-building and lead to a better understanding of others. (shrink)

This article explores the history of Vodou from outlawed African dance to revolutionary magic to depoliticized national Haitian religion and popular dance, its present reduction to Diaspora interpersonal healing, and a possible future. My first section, on Kate Ramsey’s The Spirits and the Law: Vodou and Power in Haiti, reveals Vodou as a sociopolitical construction of racist legal oppression of Africana dances rituals, and artistic-political resistance thereto. My second section, on Karen McCarthy Brown’s Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn, (...) a “postmodern ethnography” of intersectional oppressions and Black female Haitian resistance in the Diaspora, foregrounds the figure of Gedelia, a feminist variant on Papa Gede, central Vodou spirit (lwa) of resurrection and healing. Finally, my last section, on the “observing participant” analyses of Black dance anthropologist Yvonne Daniel’s Dancing Wisdom: Embodied Knowledge in Haitian Vodou, Cuban Yoruba, and Bahian Candomblé, finds a dancing Gedelia in her centering of Oyá, a warrior spirit of storms and death. On this basis, I propose the figure of tornadic black angels as a possible magical tool (in Vodou, a pwen, or “point”) intended to re-spiritualize and thereby re-politicize the secularized and whitewashed social Latin dance called “salsa” for social justice. (shrink)

This dispatch tells the story of Julian, a librarian who left his stationary library job for a much more dynamic pursuit: to bring libraries to people instead of the other way around. Julian’s “mobile library” vision was to get new books – and new ideas – to people living in the most remote areas of Colombia. Books on his back, Julian criss-crosses the veredas (rural villages) and the corregimientos (indigenous areas) by motorbike or on foot. He visits small villages of (...) just one or two thousand people, scattered across the mountains. Villages, where there are no libraries, and where there may be no books. Villages, where schools have only textbooks, nothing more, and where it takes long walks for children to go to school. Julian tours his mobile library through the mountains of Cauca, a region in southwest Colombia. The Nasa indigenous people live in this region, as do guerrillas, paramilitaries and drug traffickers. Julian spreads media through his books and storytelling. He gives people a much more personal recounting of life and the country’s social condition. Words and ideas which may shine light on the actual enemy for all readers: the structural and historical inequalities, and the propaganda fuelling the violence against the wrong target. Once we understand the extent of Julian’s offer, it is no longer about the mobile library’s books and storytelling workshops, it is about offering paper mirrors to exhausted warriors on all sides. (shrink)

Why has modern American conservatism committed itself to gender binaries? Examining why this new categorizing unsettles conservatives (and how they have reacted against teacher unions and transgender influencers), this paper turns to Nietzschean analysis. It finds that the unsettling of heteronormative gender norms resulted in a pivot by conservatism to perpetuate a new gender identity politics in which nonbinary and especially transgender people are scapegoated. Imagining a nihilistic interpretation of gender, conservatives have made “transgender” a signifier of amorality and barbarism, (...) envisioning themselves as warriors of normalcy. Conservative activists have named their frontier “radical gender ideology” while contesting the legitimacy of diagnosed gender dysphoria, revising its pathology, and alleging clinical gender transitioning is a financial ploy. As a result, bodies have become sites of contestation between doctors, trans activists, and groups that advocate against gender-affirming care. This paper traces the conservative movement from resentment to opposition on three fronts – pathology, pronouns, and restrooms. (shrink)

Wittgenstein comes up with his model simply through starting with the assumption that language can be an accurate picture of the world, and realizing the failings of that idea. This makes him a rather odd outsider in the sociology and politics of modern philosophy. He’s a trained engineer. A soldier. An architect. A logician (including being the guy who invented Truth tables for logic). In other words, a total geek. He’s still part of the analytic tradition, dismissed and rejected by (...) many in the continental tradition. But he ends up saying the kind of things that drive your average conservative culture warrior harrumphing about \"post-modernism\" and \"relativism\" up the wall. Simply because he’s thought about it a lot. -/- The other thing that’s striking is how much he is an \"anti-philosopher\". Always running away from philosophy to do other things in his life. And his work is often intended as \"therapeutic\" not trying to \"solve\" philosophical problems so much as \"cure\" us of worrying about them. He emphasizes that philosophical \"problems\" are often just misuses and misunderstandings of words rather than deeper issues. In his first philosophy, many problems come from us not understanding the meaning of the words well enough. If only we could pin them down better, the problems would disappear. In his second, the fact that we have a word for something doesn’t mean that the world really has that thing. And many philosophical problems, he asserts, are nothing but trying to take words that have a \"function\" in a particular context and abstract them out and using them in a different context where they have no useful function. (shrink)

Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Sikh Guru, was a divine preceptor and crusader for noble cause of human welfare. He was a great religious leader, a poet and a mystic, a true scholar and philosopher. He was also a fearless warrior and a military commander, who always fought against tyranny and oppression, to establish a just and benign state. In his hymns of 'Bachitar Natak', he proclaimed his mission as 'to protect the righteous, oppressed and downtrodden people and to (...) destroy the evil-doers'. He stressed on the unity between humans, rejected all sorts of discriminations and preached equality and goodwill. Being a prolific writer and a poet of rare sensibility, Guru Gobind Singh greatly enriched the literary heritage of India. His poetic vision depicts the glorious epitome of medieval Indian literary traditions. Through his compositions, he enunciated a doctrine of armed struggle for the protection of truth and justice. The fusion of the devotional and martial, of the spiritual and the heroic ethos is the most important feature of his literary work and his charismatic leadership. With his spiritual dynamism, he attempted to reconcile the transcendent with the immanent through his creation of the Khalsa. The commonwealth of the Khalsa was founded based on all round equality and total dedication to one Supreme Reality. Guru Gobind Singh was a pioneer Indian leader to introduce republican set up and democratic institutions. His teachings have great relevance for the modern man to build a global society with a commitment to peace and goodwill across all sorts of constraints and geographical boundaries. (shrink)

Light is a symbol of deep meaning in many philosophical traditions and cultures. Often the sacred is associated with light, and the worldly and profane with darkness. Light was not always easily accessible, and therefore sometimes had mystical significance for different societies. Later it began to be used as a symbol. In human nature, such a concept has historically been entrenched as an archetype. During primitive society, leaders, priests and warriors were associated with the Sun, the divine light. They could (...) also differ in clothing or color on the face and body, clothing. Color has symbolic meaning for various cultures and peoples. Currently, some nations and religions have their own color tradition. Color associations are important in everyday life. The philosophy of Sufism also has a concept of light, darkness and color symbolism. In the works of Sufi philosophers one can find interpretations of various colors. In the tariqa of Kubrawiya there is a whole system of color sequence of the spiritual path. In addition, followers of tariqas can be distinguished by the shape and color scheme of everyday and ritual clothing. This article will examine the symbol of light in various religious traditions and philosophies, including the practice of light photisms of the Kubraviya tariqat. (shrink)

Guru Gobind Singh was a versatile genius, a unique personality of contrasting qualities of virtue and valour, the spirit of service and sacrifice, solider and scholar. He was not only a great warrior but also a prolific writer and a poet of high calibre. The brief span of forty-two years of his life is vibrant with activity. He wrote in several languages. It is said that fourteen maunds load of manuscripts were lost in Sirsa when the Guru was being (...) pursued from Anandpur to Chamkaur. Fortunately, part of his work survived and they afford a pretty clear view of his aims and ideals. The Guru compiled a variety of poetic compositions, some of which are considered masterpieces of medieval Punjabi poetry and Braj literature. His patronage of poets and scholars at his Darbar contributed a significant addition to the storehouse of Puranic Epics in Indian literature. (shrink)

Guru Gobind Singh was a many splendoured genius, possessed of extraordinary qualities of virtue and valour, service and sacrifice, solider and scholar. He was not only a great warrior but a prolific writer and a poet of high calibre. The brief span of forty-two years of his life is full of much activity. He wrote in many languages. It is said that fourteen maunds load of manuscripts were lost in Sirsa when the Guru was being pursued from Anandpur to (...) Chamkaur. Fortunately, some of his work survived and from this, we get a pretty clear picture of his aims and ideals. The Guru compiled a variety of poetic compositions, some of which are considered masterpieces of medieval Punjabi poetry and Braj literature. His patronage of poets and scholars at his Darbar contributed a significant addition to the storehouse of Puranic Epics in Indian literature. (shrink)