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| Material Type: | Internet resource |
|---|---|
| Document Type: | Book, Internet Resource |
| All Authors / Contributors: |
Jessica Wolfendale |
| ISBN: | 9780230001824 0230001823 |
| OCLC Number: | 123955038 |
| Description: | viii, 249 p. ; 23 cm. |
| Contents: | Professions and professional ethics. What is a profession? -- The moral importance of professional status -- Professional roles and professional morality -- Grounding moral permissions -- Professional morality as part of broad-based morality-- Virtue ethics and professional roles. Virtue ethics and dispositional rule-consequentialism -- Aristotelian virtue ethics -- The regulative ideal of professional roles -- Professional virtues -- Professional integrity and conscientious objection -- Professional ethics and the military. Is the military a profession? -- The criteria of a profession -- The military as agent of the civilian authority --Virtue ethics and the military profession -- Professional integrity in the military -- Obedience in the military. Crimes of obedience -- The virtue of obedience -- Obedience as a religious virtue -- Obedience in the nursing profession -- The limits of military obedience. Military torture. Psychological and physical torture -- Arguments for and against the use of torture -- The problem : real fighters versus ideal fighters -- Obedience versus integrity : Captain Rockwood in Haiti --Military training and moral agency. Military training and moral agency -- Creating obedient killers -- Rhetoric vs reality -- Human nature and military training -- Military training and the dispositions of destructive obedience -- Ordinary military personnel and torturers -- The moral psychology of torture. The torturer -- Dehumanization -- The profession of torture -- Moral responsibility and the professionalization of torture. |
| Responsibility: | Jessica Wolfendale. |
| More information: |
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Reviews
Publisher Synopsis
'A timely and thorough investigation of the gap between norm and behaviour in relation to torture: the way military training affects soldiers' deliberation and choice, and undermines the military's claim to be a profession. Wolfendale's conclusions are disturbing. Highly recommended reading for soldier and civilian, scholar and general reader alike.' - Igor Primoratz, Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, University of Melbourne, Australia 'Jessica Wolfendale's book is focused on the tension between the need to teach soldiers to obey orders both ordinarily and in extreme situations and the need to teach them the restraints of law and morality and the reflectiveness necessary to make hard decisions in frightening circumstances. She wants to resolve the tension in favor of the second need, though she acknowledges the importance of the first to the effectiveness of the army. Her argument that military training as it is now done leads to unreflective obedience, even to the use of torture, is carefully constructed and elegantly made. It deserves our close attention.' - Michael Walzer, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, USA 'Far from being one more vague condemnation of torture in the abstract, this deeply troubling book argues that military personnel who become torturers are not deviants or sadists, but are obedient, disciplined, and loyal combatants. Wolfendale maintains that modern military training aims at undermining combatants' moral agency and makes it virtually impossible for them truly to embody the military virtues. Confronted on their own favorite ground of the ethics of virtue, defenders of military morality owe Wolfendale a serious answer. This book pulls no punches and raises profound issues about the extent to which the 'war on terrorism' can avoid crimes of obedience like torture supposedly permitted by extreme circumstances.' - Henry Shue, author of 'Torture' [1978] and Professor of International Relations, University of Oxford, UK Read more...
