ABSTRACT
One of the stated objectives of this volume is ‘to consider the appropriate roles of military personnel, chaplains, philosophers and others within the structure of a military ethics training and development programme’. Martin Cook suggests that the role of philosophers is the inculcation of thinking skills: ‘the Core philosophy class [at the US Air Force Academy] accomplishes two central development purposes: 1) it is the one place where [the cadets] engage in sustained normative reflections and learn some skills for doing so; and 2) it is one of the few points in their Academy education where they engage in sustained critical thinking about complex problems’ (see Chapter 5). This seems right. Philosophers, by definition, think, and professional philosophers think for a living; they teach others to do so and get paid for it. This pedagogic function identified by Cook is an illuminating example of how history has a tendency to repeat itself. The picture of philosophers as practitioners in, and teachers of, practical philosophy (now more commonly called applied ethics) portrayed by him would have been entirely recognizable to Plato and Aristotle (particularly the latter). Indeed, I suspect that they would have been somewhat puzzled by the (relatively) modern view of philosophers which prevailed until at least the late 1960s, namely as academics detached from ‘real life’ who spend all their time theorizing (an image which still lingers in some circles; see for instance Chapter 4 of this volume). However, the truth is that the well-rounded philosopher-teacher has to be able to operate in both areas. And when circumstances bring about a situation in which those in a particular role can no longer function in that role simply by (unthinkingly) ‘doing their job’ and ‘playing it by the rules’, then the need to call in the philosophers in order to critically examine the foundational assumptions, theories, norms and principles (which at some deep level provide the justification for the role-defined actions) becomes acute. Such is now the situation with the military, where something like a paradigm shift is taking place in the area of ethics education. The time seems ripe for calling in the philosophers, possibly as part of team of advisers from various disciplines. Let us therefore now set the scene in a little more detail, to see how philosophers in particular might be of assistance in the present context.
