Just over a century ago, a philosopher named Josiah Royce was engaged in important work that may provide us with an answer. Royce was a member of the storied Harvard philosophy department of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. One principle that Royce explored was loyalty — the commitment to a community and a cause that will (ideally) give rise to a rich and moral life. He claimed that moral actions should be understood in terms of their relation to an ideal, like friendship or patriotism, that is also always shared with others in a community.

Soldiers provide a good example. They are loyal patriots, serving their country in wartime, but also committed to protecting their fellow soldiers. But this is only one loyalty among many that a soldier may have — to family, God, the Yankees, or to ideals like freedom and justice. How can a soldier be loyal to the cause of family — and by extension, to the nearly universal community of those who share this loyalty — as he fires his weapon at an Afghan family’s hut? How can he be loyal to the ideals of integrity and honor in war while acting in ways that defy those ideals?

Soldiers often describe the traumatic events connected with moral injury in terms of split loyalties — of having to make the impossible decision of betraying one ideal for another. The reality of these choices, according to Royce, is that in these decisions, we still answer for this betrayal with the penalty of moral injury. Royce appreciated this tragic aspect of the moral life: Betrayals aren’t easily fixed or forgiven. “The fact that I am the one who then did thus and so, not ignorantly, but knowingly,” he wrote, “that fact will outlast the ages. That fact is as endless as time.” Royce called this the “hell of the irrevocable” — the tragic inability of humans to have a “do-over” in life.

Royce’s philosophy of loyalty offers a different way for clinicians and concerned citizens to think about what is really at stake for veterans. Moral injury, seen through Royce’s lens, is less a matter of violating some deeply held moral norm and more a matter of choosing one profoundly important loyalty over another. This is the root cause of the tragic quality of a rich and fully loyal life: “We never completely win the union; we never realize to the full the one loyal life; but insofar as we are loyal, we win enough of this unity of life to be able to understand the ideal, and to make it our own guide.”

Why can’t these disloyalties be forgiven? At best, forgiveness serves only as a kind of amnesia. Even if the action could be forgiven by the offended party, what would this forgiveness mean? That the act had not been committed? Seeking forgiveness is like tossing a snowball into the hell of the irrevocable. Royce thinks that there is, however, another way. Instead of forgiveness, Royce proposes that atonement — proving one’s loyalty to the cause and community that have been betrayed — is the only way to regain one’s moral self and restore the moral integrity of the community.

What is atonement? A creative act of compensation or recompense that attempts to unify something that has been torn apart. Deeds of atonement, according to Royce, are meant not to win forgiveness but to enrich the life of the betrayed community — and by extension, to bring something good out of disloyalty. “The deed of atonement,” Royce admonishes, “shall be so wise and rich in its efficacy that the spiritual world, after the atoning deed, shall be better, richer, more triumphant amidst all its irrevocable tragedies than it was before.”

So let’s get concrete: The focus for those who suffer from moral injury (and those who care for them) should shift from forgiveness to creative deeds of atonement. Some veterans’ organizations provide such opportunities, even if they don’t adopt this language explicitly. Team Rubicon, for example, gives veterans and civilians a new mission by helping communities in distress overcome disasters and disadvantages. But volunteer opportunities are not the only or even the best sites for deeds of atonement. After all, moral injury often extends to children and families.

Recovery from moral injury begins with identifying the causes and communities that were sacrificed in the heat of battle and finding creative new ways to re-establish loyalty to those causes. This can mean renewing one’s commitment to being a good parent, serving the needy in one’s community or taking political action to stem the flow of American lives into war zones that lead to moral injury. Focusing on atonement rather than forgiveness may help clinicians, community members, families and friends of veterans who suffer from moral injury begin to chart a path forward from the irrevocable deeds that haunt them.