Torture, Terrorism, and the Use of Violence Review Journal

Torture, Terrorism, and the Use of Violence

Review Journal of Political Philosophy Volume 6, Part 2

Torture, Terrorism, and the Use of Violence,

Review Journal of Political Philosophy Volume 6, Part 2

Edited by

J. Jeremy Wisnewski

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Torture, Terrorism, and the Use of Violence, (Review Journal of Political Philosophy Volume 6, Part 2) , Edited by J. Jeremy Wisnewski

This book first published 2008

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2008 by J. Jeremy Wisnewski and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or

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ISBN (10): 1-4438-0023-6, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-0023-5 ISSN 1752-2056

TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ................................................................................... vii 1. “Just War Theory and Selective Conscientious Objection” Robert L. Muhlnickel .................................................................................. 1 2. “[Un]feeling: Embodied Violence and Dismemberment in the Development of Ethical Relations” Victoria Palmer.......................................................................................... 17 3. “The Annihilative Potential of Immortality Beliefs: Examining Immortality’s Interconnection with Violence” Geoffrey Karabin....................................................................................... 34 4. “Gerald Dworkin and the Permissibility of Pro-active Law Enforcement Techniques” Todd Furman and Bill Hartmann............................................................... 66 5. “Upholding the Law of All the Greeks: Lessons on Humanitarian Intervention from Euripides” José-Antonio Orosco ................................................................................. 80 6. “Philosophy and Disaster” Naomi Zack ............................................................................................... 96 7. “On Executing Executioners” Trudy Conway......................................................................................... 114 8. “Speaking Power to Truth: Female Suicide Bombers and the Gendering of Violence” Michael B. Jones ..................................................................................... 128

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS All journals benefit from the good graces of those academics who volunteer their time to make journals run smoothly and professionally. This Journal has had more of its share of good grace. The lion’s share of thanks for the journal goes to members of the editorial board. In particular, I would like to thank the following individual persons for their continual help: Thom Brooks, University of Sheffield Janet Donohoe, West Georgia State University R. D. Emerick, Palomar College Gordon Hull, Iowa State University Glen Pettigrove, Massey University Jose-Antonio Orosco, Oregon State University Mark Sanders, University of North Carolina, Charlotte P.A. Woodward, East Carolina University I would also like to thank Meghan Lonergan, my editorial assistant, for her assistance in preparing the manuscript, as well as the editorial staff at Cambridge Scholars Publishing, and in particular Amanda Millar, for continuing support of the journal. Work on this journal was supported through a Hartwick College Faculty Research Grant.

JUST WAR THEORY AND SELECTIVE CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION1

ROBERT L. MUHLNICKEL

Introduction

Selective conscientious objection is one’s refusal to fight in a specific war or obey a specific command from a superior officer because one judges that the war or command is morally unjustified. SCO is not legally recognized in U.S. selective service law, while general conscientious objection (GCO) enjoys legal recognition. In addition, there is little political or popular support for legal recognition of SCO. In this paper I show that minimal assumptions about just war theory imply that SCO is morally permissible. I then respond to one objection that would undermine the claim that SCO is morally permissible.

Section 1 distinguishes general conscientious objection from selective conscientious objection. Section 2 shows that just war criteria straightforwardly imply SCO. Section 3 responds to what I call the informational objection to legal recognition of SCO. The informational objection claims that potential selective objectors do not have the information needed about the reasons for and conditions of particular wars to reasonably judge whether a particular war is morally permissible. I show that under contemporary conditions of widespread information collection, storage, and transmission, the informational objection is without merit.

1 I have presented versions of this paper at the Minnesota Philosophical Society 2007 Annual Meeting and the Society for Philosophy in the Contemporary World panel on Terrorism, Torture and the Uses of Violence at the 2008 Pacific Division American Philosophical Association. Among the participants whose comments benefited this paper, Jeremy Wisniewski’s stand out in my memory.

Just War Theory and Selective Conscientious Objection

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1. General and Selective Conscientious Objection

An issue that arises when considering conscientious objection is that the legitimacy of the state or its lack of legitimacy lead to different conclusions as to when individual citizens may refuse to become agents of state purposes. Wars serve state purposes and citizens who perform military service in war become agents of those purposes.2 The citizen who fights in a war on behalf of state purposes thus has a different moral status from that of the citizen who is obliged to comply with a law in the conduct of ordinary life. These issues are most pressing in legitimate states, in contrast to states that lack legitimacy, because legitimate states have at least a pro tanto claim that citizens comply with just laws. The legitimate state is one in which the individual freedoms associated with the liberal tradition receive some recognition and there are customary or legal grounds that constraint interference with individual exercise of those freedoms. The legitimate state is one in which there is legal recognition of negative rights, freedom of association, freedom of speech, and minimal legal restrictions on the distribution of information in print and electronic media and some positive rights.3

In contrast to the legitimate state, there is little reason to question the permissibility of individual citizens’ refusal when the state lacks legitimacy. On views that consider authoritarian states to possess legitimacy, the state may require citizens to fight in any war its leaders choose and to kill and be killed in fighting those wars. States that recognize any legal right to conscientious objection, no matter how limited, are non-authoritarian in this regard. In this paper I set aside authoritarian views of the legitimacy of the state because on those views legal recognition of SCO would be contrary to the basic principles that determine state authority and individual liberty.

I assume here that a legitimate state in which individual freedoms are recognized gives rise to greater pluralism of moral views than the authoritarian state.

Conscientious objection becomes a significant problem in the legitimate state since in the legitimate state a plurality of groups promotes

2 M. Walzer (1970), Obligations (Cambridge: Harvard UP), pp. 135-136 notes the more basic distinction on which this one is based. A law designates both ‘subjects’ who are required to obey it and ‘servants,’ whose are administer it. Henry Sidgwick (1919) The Elements of Politics, 4th ed.(London: Macmillan), pp. 35-36 makes the same distinction, using the same terms, ‘subject’ and ‘servant.’ 3 The main distinction here is between legitimate and non-legitimate states, without entering the contemporary debate about the exact criteria of legitimacy.

Robert L. Muhlnickel

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distinct moral views among their members. The presence of a plurality of groups with diverging moral views increases the likelihood of conscientious objection.

Start by distinguishing general conscientious objection from selective conscientious objection. GCO is:

GCO: the refusal to fight voluntarily or comply with legally compulsory military service due to the belief that no war is morally justified.

GCO enjoys legal recognition in many states. GCO is explicitly pacifist, claiming that no war is morally justified. In most liberal states, GCO enjoys legal recognition even if the pacifism that supports it is separated from the religious beliefs that were the historical precedents leading liberal states to recognize GCO as a consequence of constitutional guarantees of religious liberty. In other words GCO is recognized as a distinctively moral view; not necessarily a religiously motivated view.

Selective conscientious objection, SCO, is non-pacifist because it claims that some wars are justified and some are not:

SCO: the refusal to fight voluntarily or comply with legally compulsory military service in a specific war or obey a specific command due to the judgment that the specific war or command is not morally justified.

Some remarks about SCO are in order. The concept includes both voluntary and conscripted military service. Thus, a selective conscientious objector is a citizen who refuses to volunteer for military service or comply with conscription for military service. This conception of SCO is also broad enough to include both refusing to fight in a specific declared war and refusing to obey a command given once a war has been declared. So this concept of SCO covers both citizens who refuse to fight in a war and soldiers, voluntary and conscripted, who refuse to obey a command, due to judgments that the war or command is not morally justified. There are many differences of detail between citizens who refuse conscription and soldiers who refuse to obey a command. However, this broad concept of SCO is useful because it allows us to think about the general arguments advanced in support and rejection of SCO.

Political and personal conflict about SCO and the legitimate expectation of citizen defense by performing military service is most intense when military service is compulsory. However, the conflict also arises for career officers and volunteer soldiers who are not conscripts. Non-conscripted military personnel who object to particular wars or military actions on moral grounds can find themselves facing the possibility of conscientious objection.


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The concept of SCO entails the judgment that some wars and military actions are morally permissible and some are morally impermissible. If it is reasonable for someone to be a selective conscientious objector there must be some criteria by which he or she can reasonably determine when war or military action is morally right.

2. Just War Criteria and SCO

Just war theory seems an obvious place to look for criteria that would justify a potential selective objector in determining whether a particular war or military operation is morally permissible. Just war theorists aim to provide criteria that determine when it is morally permissible for a state to go to war and the permissible means a state may use in making war. This is the traditional division into the jus ad bello and the jus in bello conditions.

The Purpose of Just War Criteria

Just war theorists generally believe their criteria aim at deliberation. If they are successful, then they provide criteria guide deliberation about which wars are morally right and morally wrong.4

James Turner Johnson summarizes the purpose of just war criteria this way. Johnson’s summary is a useful starting point because he is a mainstream just-war thinker. In stating the purposes of the just-war criteria, he states a widely accepted interpretation without explicitly considering SCO. Johnson lists three purposes of the just war criteria.5 In addition to the purpose of guiding political leaders and military commanders, Johnson’s third purpose is the guidance of individual conscience.6

Johnson’s table of the purposes of the just war criteria is reproduced in slightly adapted form below:

4 See James Childress (1982), Moral Responsibility in Conflicts, (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP), p. 90. 5 Johnson calls this a summary of the just war “tradition,” the institutionalized thinking about just war that has been transmitted in the West. 6 James Johnson Turner (1999), Morality and Contemporary Warfare, New Haven: Yale UP, p. 26


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Purposes of the Just War Tradition7

(1) A Guide to Statecraft • Theory of the use of force by the political community • Understanding of the moral qualities of political

leadership • Protection of fundamental rights and values • Relations of ends to means in political life

(2) A Guide to Commanders

• Relation of military command to the authority and purposes of the political realm

• Understanding of the moral qualities of military leadership

• Protection of fundamental rights and values during armed conflict

• Moral limits on means and methods during armed conflict

(3) A Guide to the Consciences of Individuals

• Claims on the moral consciousness of individuals at all levels of political community and military organization

• Definition of responsibility for the use of force by the political community

• Definition of the individual’s rights and responsibilities for the use of force

Johnson’s purposes of just war criteria imply that just war criteria

constitute a system that guides individual citizens as well as political leaders and military commanders. This lends support to other just war thinkers who explicitly endorse SCO. The United States Catholic Bishops Conference and many JW thinkers in or influenced by the Roman Catholic tradition endorse SCO.8 In addition, thinkers who endorse participatory

7 Slightly adapted from James Johnson Turner (1999), Morality and Contemporary Warfare, New Haven: Yale UP, p. 26 8 See John Courtney Murray (1968), War and Conscience, in J. Finn, A Conflict of Loyalties: The Case for Selective Conscientious Objection,. (NY: Pegasus Books).and M. Noone, ed. 1989. Selective Conscientious Objection: Accommodating Conscience and Security (Boulder, Westview Press).


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decision-making as a theory of democratic governance support SCO.9 Among just war thinkers, however, some deny the moral rightness of SCO. They are the source of the objection considered in Section 3.

An Argument for SCO based on Just War Criteria

The intent of just war thinkers or the purpose of the just war criteria do not settle the question whether just war criteria morally justify selective conscientious objection. I shall propose an argument that they do.

Just war thinkers commonly assume that just war criteria do not provide a checklist that can be applied without difficulty to determine whether a particular war satisfies the criteria for moral permissibility. I agree that just war criteria cannot successfully be stated in the form of a checklist or algorithm. Rather, we should assume theorists have stated just war criteria that are plausible and feasible. It is plausible to think just war criteria are justified if the criteria meet the same standard of reasonableness as other criteria of applied moral thinking. The feasibility of the criteria means only that the criteria yield reasonable beliefs about the moral permissibility and impermissibility of war; just war criteria need not yield universal or even widespread agreement.10

Assuredly, any plausible and feasible just war criteria require the exercise of practical judgment about factual conditions ‘on the ground,’ the policies of potential belligerent nations, and the intentions and capacities of leaders, military forces, and the populations whose support is required for the prosecution of war. The exercise of practical judgment in the application of just war criteria introduces uncertainty into judgments about the moral permissibility of wars and of military actions. This uncertainty does not eviscerate just war criteria, since reasonable criteria adopted for other problems in applied moral thinking are subject to the same uncertainty.

9 Brough, Lango, and van der Linden (2007), Preface, p. ix; Appendix, p. 243, state the participatory democratic theorist position. 10 I assume that some version of just war criteria is correct for the purposes of the selective objector. The other assumption is that just war criteria are not extremely demanding. If one interprets just war criteria as especially demanding, then one decreases the possibility that a particular war is morally permissible and reduces the weight of reasons for the claim that selective objection is morally permissible. G. A. Ruesga, (1995) Selective Conscientious Objection and the Right Not to Kill, Social Ttheory and Practice, 21, 61-81 appeals to a very demanding interpretation of just war criteria to justify selective objection. This seems to me to gain selective objection too easily.


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To present the argument for SCO based on just war criteria, consider a potential selective conscientious objector. Call our potential objector S, for ‘someone.’ S applies the just war criteria reasonably: S is thoughtful, takes account of the information S has and its limits and flaws, applies appropriate standards of evidence, and takes account of personal prejudices and predilections. S reaches a conclusion, the judgment that a particular war (or military operation) is wrong. This gives us the first premise in an argument that it is morally right for S to refuse to fight in a particular war:

(1) S judges that a particular war is morally wrong based on reasonably applying just war criteria.

The fact that S applies the just war criteria in a reasonable way and

judges a particular war (or military operation) to be morally wrong is necessary for S to be a selective conscientious objector, but it is not sufficient. For S to have the status of conscientious objector, the matter about which he reaches the judgment must be of great enough importance that S is justified in refusing to do what S is legally required to do by a legitimate law or administrative order. War, which involves putting the resources of the state to the purpose of taking life, is unquestionably of enough importance that S is so justified. I shall not state this claim in what follows.

The fact that S applies just war criteria in a reasonable way specifies our conception of S’s reasons more than in some discussions of conscientious objection. For example, C. D. Broad appeals to a sense of obligation in which S ought to refuse to fight that is less specific. On Broad’s conception,

[I]t does not matter how ignorant or deluded the agent may be about the relevant facts, how incompetent he may be to make reasonable inferences from them, nor how crazy or perverted his judgments about right and wrong, good and evil, may be.11

This agent considering conscientious objection is not construed as reasonably applying just war criteria. Broad argues that the less constrained the objector’s obligation by standards of reasonableness, the less the obligations of state officials who might require the objector to do what she objects to doing are also constrained by standards of reasonableness. Broad’s conclusion is well-justified since it instantiates a

11 C. D. Broad (1940) Conscience and Conscientious Objection, Philosophy 15, 115-130.


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version of the universalization requirement that treats agents and their reasons and circumstances similarly. Broad’s construal of the objector as unresponsive to reason weakens the requirements that the state act reasonably in response and weakens the requirement that the state recognize the objector’s refusal as legitimate. Broad’s construal of the objector as unresponsive to reason weakens the case for the all-things-considered judgment that conscientious objection, whether general or selective, is morally permissible.

My construal of S as someone who reasonably applies the criteria of just war theory requires that S’s reasoning to the judgment about the war satisfy recognized standards of inference, make plausible predictions of future events, and apply plausible conceptions of right and wrong in his judgments. But just as S is required to judge in accordance with standards of reasonableness, the state or other agents who would oppose the objector are simultaneously required to give greater credence to S’s judgment than in Broad’s case. My construal reflects the possibility of reasonable disagreement, in which parties who disagree about some proposition each lack full justification for their epistemic judgment. In addition, each lacks the evidence to fully undermine the support for the position with which they disagree.12 My case of the agent who applies just war criteria reasonably makes it more plausible that such an agent deserves moral and legal recognition than Broad’s case, where the agent’s claim to be accorded the respect due to a reasonable agent is not assumed.

The argument requires a second premise stating that S’s judgment that the war is morally wrong implies that S should not fight in it. Given that the intent of just war theorists is that the criteria guide deliberation, this is not a surprising result. Here are our second and third premises:

(2) If (1) then S judges that it would be morally wrong for S to fight in the war.

(3) S judges that it would be morally wrong for S to fight in the war.

The conclusion reached in (3) is a specification of a venerable

principle about the authority of individual moral judgment for the individual whose judgment it is. The venerable principle is that conscience is authoritative for the individual whose conscience it is.13 The venerable principle can function as a premise in the argument: 12 See Richard Feldman (2006), Epistemological Puzzles about Disagreement, in Epistemology Futures, ed. S. Hetherington. (NY: Oxford UP), pp. 216-236. 13 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologia, Part I-II, Qu. 19, Article 5. Also P. Foot (2001) Natural Goodness (Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp. 72-75. The conscience


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(4) If it is morally wrong for S to do what S judges would be morally wrong for S to do, then it is morally wrong for S to fight in a particular war in which S judges it would be morally wrong to fight.

The antecedent states the venerable principle and the consequent applies it to the case of S’s judgment about the war. Our full argument would then be stated as follows:


(2) If (1) then S judges that it would be morally wrong for S to fight in that war.

(3) S judges that it would be morally wrong for S to fight in that war.

(4) If it is morally wrong for S to do what S judges would be morally wrong for S to do, then it is morally wrong for S to fight in that war in which S judges it would be morally wrong to fight.

(5) It is morally wrong for S to fight in that war

The premises that the just war criteria are applied reasonably and that it is morally wrong to do what one judges it would be morally wrong to do entail that it is morally wrong for someone to fight in a war she judges to be morally wrong. The argument does not imply that it would be morally right for S to fight in the war that S judged to be morally right. That an employer with racist convictions judges that it is morally right to hire a less qualified candidate over a more qualified candidate, and in doing so harms the more qualified candidate, does not make it morally right for the employer to do so. The judgment of the agent is one contributing factor to the moral status of an action, but is not the overriding factor for determining moral rightness. However, the judgment of the agent is decisive regarding what it would be morally wrong to do at a time because for the agent the judgment that an action is morally wrong at a time is indistinguishable from its being morally wrong at a time.14

principle is also endorsed by Henry Sidgwick (1907), The Methods of Ethics, 7th Edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 208-209. That natural law, virtue, and utilitarian moral philosophers endorse the conscience principle attests to its wide appeal. 14 Sidgwick (1907), pp. 208-09 states that the question whether it is morally better that an agent do what is morally right or do what she believes to be morally right is not a question that can arise for the agent. It can only arise for the observer who


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That is, just war criteria are reasonably applied and the conscience principle entail that it is morally wrong for S to fight in a war that S judges to be morally wrong. Further, when just war criteria are generalized to apply to distinct military operations that occur as parts of wars, the generalized criteria imply that S is justified in refusing to participate in military operation that S judges to be morally wrong. If we adopt Broad’s criteria that it is morally right for the agent to refuse to fight no matter how ignorant of the facts or how deluded about the importance of the facts or the predictions following from the facts, then we would read the conclusion rejected above. The conscience principle as I have stated it implies a difficult problem for the agent who judges moral status incorrectly, but it does not have the conclusion that one who performs an action he judges to be morally right thereby does what is morally right.

Despite this argument, which seems compelling to me, not all just war thinkers think selective conscientious objection is morally permissible. I now turn to their objections.

3. Objections to Moral Permissibility of SCO

Objections to SCO fall into three broad categories: epistemic objections, psychological objections, and political objections. Each sort of objection attempts to show that the selective conscientious objector fails to possess grounds for reasonably exercising individual judgment on the morality of war. Notice that reasons to deny SCO cannot target the authority of the individual to make moral judgments about policies and decisions of the state. In the legitimate state, the individual right to thought and conscience is assumed. In addition, on many views, the judgment of individual citizens is the basis for the legitimacy of decisions and policies by the state; to deny the authority of the individual’s moral judgment is to deny the state the basis of the authority for state decisions and policies. So, reasons to deny SCO must claim that conditions for the exercise of individual judgment cannot be fulfilled or cannot feasibly be fulfilled

deliberates about whether to influence the agent to do what is morally right rather than what the agent judges to be morally right. The agent is not so situated. The agent makes a judgment to act at a time, not a deliberative judgment regarding a future action or a rueful or laudatory judgment about a past action. See also M. Murphy (1997), The Conscience Principle, Journal of Philosophical Research, 22, 387-407. Full defense of the conscience principle would appeal to some version of ‘ought implies can,’ since the denial of the conscience principle implies that the agent judge an act differently at a time than the agent actually judges that act, and at the time the agent cannot judge that act differently than s/he does.


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when it comes to judgments about the morality of war. The grounds for responsible exercise of the individual choice are individual reasoning (the epistemic ground), individual ability to oppose authority and make judgments contrary to the judgment of others (the psychological grounds), and the political consequences of the individual acting on that judgment (the political grounds).

The Informational Objection

Here I consider one reason thought sufficient to deny the moral permissibility of SCO on epistemic grounds. Epistemic grounds could be one of the three elements in the inferential process: the character of the reasoner as reasoner, the validity or cogency of the reasoning, and the soundness of the reasoning. The objection to SCO I am going to consider does not cite reasons having to do with the character of the reasoner or the validity of the reasoning. The objection claims that lack of adequate information undermines the soundness of the reasoning because a potential selective objector does not have access to the information necessary to determine whether a war is just. I call this the informational objection.

Michael Walzer appeals to the informational objection to defend his claim that individuals are not responsible for the wars in which they fight:

It might, however, be thought a matter of individual volition whether particular men join the army and participate in the war. Catholic writers have long argued that they ought not to volunteer, ought not to serve at all, if they know the war to be unjust. But the knowledge required by Catholic doctrine is hard to come by.15

Walzer envisions the case of individual citizens deciding whether or not to participate in a particular war based on its justice or injustice. Walzer’s target is the concept of selective conscientious objection discussed above. Individuals should not serve if they know the war is unjust but the knowledge that the war is unjust to difficult to obtain for individuals to make the judgment. It could be that the “Catholic writers” Walzer mentions set high standards for knowledge, making it hard to come by. However, I have claimed that a modest standard of justified belief is appropriate to practical moral decision. So we can set aside the high

15 M. Walzer (1977), Just and Unjust Wars (NY: Basic Books), p. 39. It is not clear that this is Walzer’s final judgment on the matter. See the essay cited earlier. Also see B. Orend (2000) Michael Walzer on War and Justice (Kingston: McGill-Queens UP), p. 97.


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standard interpretation of the informational objection and consider a version of the informational objection that requires that the potential objector apply the just war criteria in a reasonable way.

The informational objection should be understood as an objection that applies to practical decision-making, not a matter of epistemic possibility. So the objection concerns feasibility of obtaining information pertaining to the justice of a war in the liberal state. Walzer supports his claim that the knowledge that a war is unjust is infeasible for individual citizens to obtain by citing two factors.

The first factor Walzer cites is that political and military leaders “are not able” and “ought not” to disclose the actual reasons for war to citizens.16 Call this the strategic factor. The strategic factor suggests that strategic interests of the state justify withholding information about the reasons for war. So, citizens who seek the reasons for war in order to assess the moral permissibility of volunteering to fight in it are justifiably prevented from obtaining that information. If citizens are justifiably prevented from obtaining that information, they are unable to make moral judgments about the war on the basis of it and are thereby relieved of responsibility for the war. They cannot be selective objectors because they lack access to the information needed for sound reasoning about the war.

The strategic factor has some weight. Political and military leaders are in possession of information that ordinary citizens are not; if the information were public it would give away strategic advantage or compromise intelligence.

The second factor Walzer cites is that even if leaders “render reasons” for going to war the reasons given are not “honest” ones.17 That is, the leaders do not give their actual reasons for going to war. Call this the dissembling factor. It, too, is familiar. The dissembling factor suggests that in giving citizens reasons for war state leaders lack veracity and that the leaders’ lack of veracity makes the information they disclose to citizens unreliable. Since potential selective objectors lack reliable information, they are prevented from obtaining the information to make sound judgments about the morality of war.

The informational objection concerns the quantity and quality of the information available to the potential objector. The strategic factor seems to reduce the quantity of information available to the potential objector. The dissembling factor affects the quality of the information available to

16 Walzer (1977), p. 39. 17 Walzer (1977), p. 39.


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the objector. The informational objection targets the first premise of the argument for SCO based on JW criteria:


If the information about the war is justifiably withheld from S or if the information about the war is so doubtful that S cannot reasonably believe it, then S cannot apply the just war criteria in a reasonable way.

Reply to the informational objection

An adequate reply to the informational objection requires showing that the strategic and the dissembling factors do not have the effects that Walzer claims they do. We need to show that strategic withholding of information and dissembling by military and political leaders do not plausibly prevent potential selective objectors from obtaining the quantity and quality of information needed to make a reasonable judgment about the moral permissibility of a particular war.

The first step is to describe the means by which a potential selective objector would seek the needed information. The assumption of a liberal state implies that political and military leaders are only one source of information about the war. Contemporary information distribution systems are not hierarchical, top-down processes similar to government-controlled broadcast technology in North Korea. Rather, increased computational power, connectivity, and activity makes contemporary information distribution less hierarchical and more, though not completely, democratic. The print press, non-governmental groups, electronic media, and reports from citizens of other nations provide alternative sources of information. These media make it possible for potential selective objectors to obtain information from a wide range of sources representing various viewpoints. The information requires intentionally seeking it out. The availability of alternative sources of information leads me to claim that the potential selective objector has available at least contradictory claims about the moral permissibility of the war. The presence of contradictory claims that affect judgments about the morality of a war could reflect the presence of disinformation promoted by any party with an interest in the war. So the potential selective objector must not merely possess information, the objector must also evaluate that information.

Possessing information that embodies contradictory claims about the moral permissibility of war is not adequate for the potential selective objector. The potential objector needs to evaluate the evidence for the


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contradictory claims. The variety of information sources available gives us good reason to think that the information available would include information political and military leaders might justifiably have withheld for strategic reasons. The sources of information in the liberal state include many sources whose interests differ to some degree from the interests of political and military leaders. Those sources would be justified in disclosing information supporting the moral status of the war that official sources would believe they must withhold. The interests of the non-governmental information sources also support the claim that the selective objector would have available information that a dissembling leader would not disclose. A dissembling leader would not disclose information damaging to the claim that the war the leader intends to fight or is fighting is morally impermissible. Non-state information sources lack the leader’s interest in dissembling, so it seems likely the variety of information sources limits the importance of the dissembling factor.

The potential selective objector would have considerable information available other than that provided by political and military leaders. If that information supports the judgment that the war is morally impermissible, the selective objector at some point has good reason to refuse to serve the state’s objectives. The variety of information sources and the divergence of viewpoints and interests of those information sources give us good reason to think the strategic factor and the dissembling factor would not prevent the potential selective objector from obtaining information needed to make a reasonable judgment based on just war criteria.

One might think the information needed for reasonable judgment would be unavailable because official efforts to keep information secret make it so difficult to obtain that no information source makes it available to the potential objector. Efforts to keep information secret challenge the claim that the potential objector would have the information needed available. There is good reason to deny that efforts to preserve secrecy would effectively prevent the needed information from becoming available.

The massive amounts of information stored, processed, and transmitted in carrying out any military campaign and the great number of information gatherers makes it unlikely that sufficient information can be withheld so that the potential selective objector is prevented from obtaining the information needed. I say this because we are approaching what William Gibson calls a state of “informational transparency.” Collection, transmission, and storage of information are not activities solely of governments and their agents. The global system of information


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collection, storage, and transmission is increasingly beyond government control.

Gibson continues:

In the age of the leak and the blog, of evidence extraction and link discovery, truths will either out or be outed, later if not sooner. This is something I would bring to the attention of every diplomat, politician, and corporate leader: the future, eventually will find you out. . . In the end, you will be seen to have done that which you did.18

Gibson’s warning applies equally to military leaders. The ability to keep secrets about the kind of large-scale activities required for military and espionage operations is severely compromised.

Gibson points out that the information will be available at some time, perhaps some future time. Perhaps the future time when the crucial information is disclosed by leaker or blogger comes too late? If our potential selective objector already is in uniform, an officer prepared to lead a squadron or platoon to an overseas military operation he concludes is morally impermissible. Contemporary just war theorists take into account the problem of timing. They point out that just war criteria are applicable to distinct operations within wars and military operations and that the moral status of wars and military operations can change over time, so that military operations that initially satisfied just war criteria can later fail to satisfy them. We know of cases like that of Lt. Erin Watada, who was scheduled to lead a platoon to Iraq, and was directed by a commanding officer to read everything he could on the Iraq campaign before his scheduled deployment. Lt. Watada did as commanded and reached the judgment that the Iraq campaign, unlike the Afghanistan campaign, was morally wrong. He thereupon refused deployment to Iraq.19

The widespread availability of information, the reduced effectiveness of secrecy efforts, and the times at which facts about the moral status of particular wars and military operations are discovered render the informational objection less weighty than it might have been in an era when fewer information sources and fewer viewpoints were available.

18 W. Gibson, “The Road to Oceania,” New York Times, June 25, 2003. 19 M. Barber and K. Murakami, “Convictions vs. Conviction,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Feb. 5, 2007; Erin Watada, “Án Unjust War,” Vital Speeches of the Day (2003), Vol. 73, Issue 3, pp. 115-121.


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Conclusion

The quantity and quality of information that can reasonably be expected to be available to a potential selective conscientious objector is a factor in the potential objector’s reasoning that changes with the social, technological, and media of particular societies in which the potential objector deliberates. Of the three objections to selective conscientious objection mentioned above, the informational objection is the one most influenced by contemporary trends in communication and technology. Given the liberal state and the information saturation of contemporary culture, the information objection to SCO is no longer a reason to deny the moral permissibility of SCO.

The next step in the larger project of considering whether it is reasonable to legally recognize selective conscientious objection is to respond to the psychological and political challenges.

[UN]FEELING: EMBODIED VIOLENCE AND DISMEMBERMENT IN THE DEVELOPMENT

OF ETHICAL RELATIONS

VICTORIA J PALMER, THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE

Abstract

Feelings are not merely an adjunct of cognition, but they are also embodied phenomena that construct what Judith Butler (2004) calls a ‘corporeal vulnerability’. This paper examines the relationship between corporeal vulnerability, embodied violence and forming ethical relations. The paper discusses how the disembodiment of violence is used to silence and obscure our feelings about the socio-political vulnerability of other bodies which results in a moral imaginary that simply cannot feel others. The result is ‘unfeeling’ an inability to [re]cognise the faces of others. [Un]feeling is a characteristic affect of violence that forecloses the possibility of a dialogical self emerging. Without dialogical self, transforming forms of violence and creating ethical relations are limited.

Introduction

Feelings and their effects are difficult when considered together with the problematic of violence. Institutional violence, the conduct of bodily acts of violence directed unto one’s self, and abhorrent physical acts of violence conducted against others confound our feelings. We embody them, they echo and resonate, maintaining a history within us recalled at different moments. This complication alerts one to the possibility that our understanding of some of these extremely violent acts might only exist in the realms of the ‘unknowable’ and ‘unimaginable’. How these realms of the unknown might shape what some have called our ‘moral imaginary’ (Popke 2004) is inconclusive. In spite of this, however, it is critical to explore unimaginable violence in times of uncertainty. It is important that

[Un]feeling: Embodied Violence and Dismemberment in the Development of Ethical Relations

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events, acts and processes of violence and their contribution to shaping how we collectively imagine our relationships with others are understood. Indeed, as Santoni (2004, x) suggests, ‘violence is the issue of our time’ and so not only the question of violence, but how to develop ethical responses, has become an area of concern across disciplines and fields of study.

Yet, as Popke illustrates violence is an issue of this time, but also of our past time. Our moral imaginary -- whom we care about, why we care about them and how we relate with them and imagine a future -- has been shaped by memories distant and close of the Holocaust, world wars, people’s displacement from their lands in Africa, Latin America and across the globe. These events have resulted in increased forced migration globally, histories holding memories fraught with dispossession and genocide of Indigenous Australians, atrocities in Rwanda, the blood shed in Iraq and other national tragedies add to a mounting list. Popke (2004, 301-2) suggests ‘these events remind us that we have yet to develop an international law and mediation that can prevent violence and blood shed’. The central issue is whether creating laws and means of mediation are enough to resolve, in the first instance, those conditions which give rise to violence and bloodshed. To this point they have proven of limited success.

The development of an ethical theory against violence can only go so far, perhaps a good starting point is to acknowledge that a range of responses both theoretical and practical will be required. The transformation of our moral imaginary which has come to be characterised by a lack of ethical commitments and responsibility to each other’s humanity is critical to the task of moving beyond and halting violence. Put simply, some of the crucial moral questions of our time relate to what makes us care enough about each other to transform escalating violences. This paper suggests that the development of ethical relations is central to this task. There is a need to ‘care’ for each other before ethical theories against violence will be taken up, embraced, applied and embodied. Using a human rights framework as an ethical response to violence, for example, poses a similar problem to the application of a singular theoretical response. If I do not care about you, if I do not see you as worthy of those rights, then, how will I apply or adhere to respecting those rights in the first place? If you are not perceived by me to be worthy of those rights, then, will I care enough to uphold them, respect you, and imagine you into an ethical relation with me? The case of torture and trauma demonstrates this point. The alternatives, such as abstracted normative ethical theories like utilitarianism, where wars like those in Iraq can be justified through

Victoria J Palmer 19

the mantra of the greatest good for the greatest number, do not resolve the problematic of violence and developing an ethical response either.

Critics of modernity, its modern institutions and political systems, such as Popke (2004) and Bauman (2001) suggest that laws, too, are not enough. Laws have been known to be unethical, laws and rules have existed historically and still extreme acts of physical violence and institutional violence have continued. The creation of codes, norms and rules to merely follow and adhere to does not compel an individual to act ethically on all accounts. Again, I must care about those codes and norms to embody and practice them, although there are plentiful counter examples to this claim where people adopt behaviours and practices in an unthinking way and maintain traditions because of the very reason that this is how it was always done. Our more important challenge is to tell the story of how such rule-driven and duty-based ethics imposed from above do not foster ethical feeling. Indeed, they serve to do the opposite and create unfeeling, a response caused by imposed violence where a person can no longer feel or even imagine their relations with others.

So it is that developing critical perspectives in applied ethics and political philosophy that explore the ethical in relation to violence is warranted. This is about the development of perspectives beyond cognition, beyond simple accounts of the human experience as a thinking one, to one in which we are flesh, blood and bone rendered always vulnerable, always in and with relations of others. Dealing with the problematic of violence thus requires an acceptance of the embodied and relational nature of our being, and to establish and account for what sort of feelings are necessarily to be and act ethically. To me, questions of violence are not possible to consider without an account of the important role of embodiment: body is present always in infliction of violence and suffering from it.

Ethical relations as embodied relatedness

Butler (2004, 19) contests that our ability to imagine ourselves in relation with others rests on the possibility of seeing ourselves as ‘constituted politically by virtue of the social vulnerability of our bodies’. According to Butler, seeing ourselves as socially vulnerable is integral to beginning to share loss and grief as communities. It is possible to add to this, feeling shared intercorporeality through vulnerability is critical to this challenge. The body is a political constitution for Butler because being vulnerable positions us in relation with others where we must question how we feel about others, how we ought to act and how we will respond.


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Butler (2005) suggests that “I” cannot be separated from “you” and is constantly told into being through a set of relations to other norms. Transformation of our moral imaginary where violence figures so centrally begins from the basis of recognising our vulnerability as humans and the fragility of life. Further to this recognition of vulnerability is an understanding that our corporeality, our bodily selves, begins in vulnerability and ends in it.

The continuation of violence through wars, physical harm and oppressive institutions indicates that collectively our moral imaginary is still in a developmental phase. Much like an individual’s identity, however, the imaginary is not fixed and located solely in one place, it changes and moves with social and political conditions which enables us to ask which sort of ethics will be required to transform violence? As a preliminary starting point on which to base the discussions that follow, it seems those ethics which are relationally based will be central to the challenge. Care and responsibility will be important concepts in this relational ethics, but it still remains to account for where and how to develop these.

Butler (2005, 40) contends this kind of ethics would be, ‘perhaps, an ethics based on our shared, invariable, and partial blindness about ourselves’. Her point is that we do not know ourselves individually, in isolation to others, but instead we are interrelated. It is not possible, according to her, to tell a story of ourselves as a whole, or as fully as we might think, and thus starting from the basis of the unknown and uncertain is more appropriate to the kind of times we live within and the sort of beings that we are (Butler 2005). Talking on global memory and the transmission of barbarism, Bhabha (2008) explains this unknown and uncertain as ‘then and now [being] on the other side of the door’. He expands on this with the concept of cultural continuity and how this notion needs to be understood as one of complexity, ambiguity and discontinuity. There is not a whole story necessarily to be told and in the case of violence. The fragmentation, the fracturation and splintering need to figure centrally within the kind of ethics developed in response. Indeed, every time someone speaks their story it calls into being others who are a part of that story, memories are actions of re-membering, the reconfiguration of our selves into a set of relations already been. I cannot escape you no matter what the nature of our relationship is. Our future is in desperate need of foregrounding our feelings about matters of violence to create an affect of shared intercorporeal vulnerability. These are not clinical situations and they are not abstracted case studies for consideration from afar.

Victoria J Palmer 21

Currently the wider socio-political affects of violence have created a pervasive mood of insecurity, decreased tolerance and fear. The sorts of violences we are most confronted with through media representations are justified by those in political power as a means to attain freedom for others. But freedom wrought with blood shed seems an ironical paradox that one might that think in an age that has advanced itself so technologically and in other ways would not be acceptable. Somehow though, media representations of violence, people lying in streets, blown to pieces, rendered dismembered from themselves and others has become all too much a part of the norm than the exception. Margalit (2002, 127) has talked of the kind of philosophical analysis that separates emotions from moods to say that, ‘the missing element is the feeling of the bodily changes that go with the reaction to the state of affairs described’. Violence causes an affect of unfeeling, where we become disconnected from others and see violence as a disembodied action. We forget that by ‘reliving old fear[s]…I regain now the old feelings of butterflies in my stomach or a dry mouth’ (Margalit 2002, 127). Overt and covert forms and images of violence have served only to secure terror and fear in the public mind, making us afraid of unknown strangers, disconnected from each other and our bodily feelings.

Bauman (1995, 49) suggests that when cast aside each other in these ways our co-presence has the modality of being-aside where encounters become those of inconsequentiality, and there is no legacy of mutual rights and obligations left in their wake. When those aside of us start to take on an entity-like appearance, the relation of being-with evolves. For Bauman (1995) being-with is still a mis-meeting of incomplete beings and deficient selves where ‘no more of the self tends to be deployed in the encounter than the topic at hand demands; and more of the other is highlighted than the topic-at-hand permits’. In contrast to these relations the ideal form of togetherness is manifest in being-for. For Bauman (1995) the point of departure for being-for rests in a Levinasian conception of transcending the relation of being-with so that people can be treated as though they are an ‘alloy whose precious qualities depend fully on the preservation of its ingredients alterity and identity’ (Bauman 1995, 51). In spite of Bauman’s (1995) proposition that the act of transcendence is itself coincidental, I would like to argue that being-for embodies an ideal feeling of relatedness that is necessary for ethical relations to form. This paper takes this ideal form of togetherness as a core foundation of an ethical relation required to transcend violence.

Extreme forms of violence are occurring in tandem with our exposure to subtle and covert forms of violences. Covertness of violence is achieved


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through government policies which allow and give legal permission for unethical treatment of vulnerable others, subtleties are expressed through other significant memories and sites of remembrance of disdainful acts. For onlookers who question covert policies that create institutional violence, it is confounding how punitive these measures are and how they are applied most often to vulnerable others. Merely because of their circumstances asylum seekers in Australia, for example, have been subjected to lengthy periods of detention within abhorrent conditions. Following escape from violent circumstances they are surrounded by barbed wired fences, separated from others, dismembered from the rest of Australian communities in remote locations and subjected to waiting for indefinite periods. Subtle violences become common practices, unquestioned because of their seeming normalcy and in their subtleties they become overt.

The ethical relation unfelt

Balibar (2001) calls this treatment the undemocratic conditions of democracy itself where borders are used as security controls to segregate and maintain unequal access, forming the very basis of institutional violence itself. Democracy with its expression of values of equality and freedom can only be said to be undemocratic in this instance of detention and continued injustice. How we feel about violence and how it affects us is complicated, our collective psyche is being shaped and affected by the increase of violence in our day to day world. This is particularly so when those who seek asylum are represented by those in power and through the media as threats; threats to security, threats to economic prosperity, threats of a future coming into being before our very eyes. Where is my bodily memory in this? The larger problem that these practices pose relates to how people (both those who suffer such institutional violence and those who watch it play out) come to embody these violences as normative, everyday phenomenon. The result is one of [un]feeling, an arguably characteristic response to violence, whereby it is not possible to feel one’s ethical relation with others and simultaneously where treatment is the result of seeing vulnerable others in an unfeeling light. This relation being cut-off means that dialogical and interrelated selves cannot evolve which places limits on the possibility of forming ethical relations, in turn, halting the opportunity to transform violence.

With these propositions in mind, some aspects of the kind of violence that serve to disembody ourselves from each other so that violence and its affects are silenced and our feelings obscured are presented and discussed.

Documents

Torture, Terrorism, and the Use of Violence Review Journal