ABSTRACT
This chapter takes up the relation between empathy and moral injury. Empathy contributes to moral injury in that it reveals the human status of others. It provides soldiers a greater moral awareness and exposes them to grief that might otherwise not arise. However, to say that empathy contributes to moral injury is not to say that empathy is to blame for it. Furthermore, attempting to repress empathy can prompt moral injury: soldiers may harbor defective intentions (see Chapter 3) that prompt immoral actions and subsequent guilt, or soldiers may regret their intentions even in the absence of guilt-worthy actions.
Instead of trying to avoid empathy, soldiers should be helped in assimilating it into their moral frameworks. In this manner, current US military training and education are deficient.
War’s tragic realities ensure some moral injury will always occur. This injury involves soldiers doubting their own inherent goodness and their ability to do good. They are caught between the presumed rightness of their actions and the harmful effects. Empathy proves vital for healing since it improves soldiers’ self-understanding. In the presence of others, they can empathetically grasp others’ views of themselves, offsetting the self-condemning attitudes at the core of moral injury.
