ABSTRACT
Introduction: conventional ethics In the introductory chapter virtue ethics and deontological, duty-based ethics were presented as two competing schools. It should be emphasized at this point, however, that the differences between both schools are not to be exaggerated. To name one important common characteristic: as we have seen, both of these dominant strands of thought in military ethics, virtue ethics and duty-based ethics alike, stress the importance of military personnel acting from the right intention, implying that good conduct should not be a result of, for instance, peer pressure, the fear of punishment, or the concern for reputation, nor by the wish for praise, esteem, and approbation. The question whether or not this demand is realistic has been a recurring theme from Plato’s tale of Gyges’ ring to Paul Verhoeven’s movie Hollow Man (2000), though molded into the question what someone would do if he or she were invisible, and the correcting gaze of bystanders no longer fulfills its function. Both Gyges and the main character of the movie, scientist Sebastian Caine, do a convincing job proving the truth of John Locke’s words from the seventeenth century:
View but an army at the sacking of a town, and see what observation or sense of moral principles, or what touch of conscience for all the outrages they do. Robberies, murders, rapes, are the sports of men set at liberty from punishment and censure.
