PODCAST REVIEW: A Beauvoir-ian Analysis of “Moral Exploitation” from Hi-Phi Nation (S1E2)
Barry Lam opens the second episode of his popular philosophy podcast by asking a question: if war is sanctioned, are there tactics within the context of war that cross a moral line? Lam tackles this question by interviewing “solder philosophers,” or former soldiers who have pursued careers in philosophy. From these conversations, Lam ponders the possibility that soldiers who are bound to perform torture or arbitrary violence by their commanders (or by unclear statutes) undergo a kind of “moral exploitation:” their own morality is comprimised because they are coerced to do violence.
The project Lam undertakes in this episode is audacious. It is by no fault of his own that he omits an obvious connection between his ethical evaluation of violence and Simone de Beauvoir’s work, The Ethics of Ambiguity. Instead of problematizing Lam’s points, I want to examine how Beauvoir pushes a different, equally interesting conclusion.
First, Beauvoir proposes a definition of ethics that centers freedom: in her analysis, actions are “valid… only when they are assumed as a movement toward freedom” (86). The ethical good of indefinite freedom is different from the ethical good that Lam and the soldiers highlight. Take ex-soldier Mike Robillard’s definition of “ethical warfare:” he defines this term to Lam as leaders who do “due diligence ahead of time to make sure that what [the soldiers] do once they hit that context is the most ethical.” In the context of war, Robillard sees ethics as an a priori attempt to mitigate both physical carnage (to soldiers, enemies, victims, etc.) and psychological fallout. He wants to make sure that soldiers are not coerced to compromise their own ethics by leaders who make bad choices. Both Lam and Robillard begin from an assumption that violence will be done, and ethics must deal with this reality by making the violence less bad. Beauvoir, on the other hand, would counter that violence can become ethical with “due diligence.” This would imply that the violence is useful or necessary, an assertion that Beauvoir directly refutes. Usefulness, Beauvoir writes, has no “absolute meaning in itself,” thus it can’t be used to justify violent means as directing towards a meritorious end (120). Leaders during wartime can’t make ethical decisions (ethics qua indefinite movement towards freedom) under the pretext of utility.
Given that the violence of war is unethical, according to Beauvoir, are soldiers ever in a position to escape moral exploitation? Will following wartime leaders and rules always result in moral harm? Even further, would Beauvoir agree in the first place that soldiers following orders should escape guilt for their actions? On the first point, Beauvoir might say that if the soldier genuinely believes that his actions confer freedom on himself and others, he might have a chance of assuming an ethical position. But, in the case that soldiers have been mystified by “serious values” (i.e., a cause) to justify their violence as necessary or useful, the soldier is still responsible for their actions. Beauvoir would not go so far as to call that soldier guilty. With the case of the young Nazi soldier, Beauvoir argues, “Mystification is one of the forms of oppression… not everyone has the means of rejecting, even by doubt, the values, taboos, and prescriptions by which he is surrounded” (105). The young Nazi’s comprimised position is similar to Robillard’s description of moral exploitation. He describes that soldiers who enter the military before they reach full brain development—especially if they’ve been inundated with an “idealistic kind of naive sense of duty to one’s country”—are particularly vulnerable to moral exploitation. Beauvoir would agree that this kind of soldier, although “responsible for their presence in the world,” is “not guilty” for their acts (105).
Robillard and Ian Fishback, the other soldier philosopher who Lam interviews, are wrong to assume that any violence in war can be justified under a utilitarian ethic. At one point, Fishback argues that soldiers who “step over” a line in torture when “they don’t even know what the line is” should not be held to account. This implies that there is, in the first place, a space where torture is ok. Beauvoir would seriously challenge this premise. Contextualizing this episode with Beauvoir’s ethical philosophy, it seems clear that, while moral exploitation certainly exists, it is not apparent that soldiers can ever assume innocence for their acts, even if they are freely committed.
