Alan Saunders: Hello, and welcome to The Philosopher's Zone. I'm Alan Saunders.

Over the last couple of weeks, we've been looking at moral dilemmas and last week it was a moral dilemma at sea, as illustrated in the novella Billy Budd.

Well having looked at the way a naval officer might or might not behave, this week it's the army on land.

Nancy Sherman is a university Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University and Adjunct Professor of Law at the Georgetown Law School. She has also been the inaugural holder of the distinguished Chair in Ethics at the United States Naval Academy, and this is very relevant to our conversation. So let's begin by looking at the philosophical direction she's coming from.

She's written that in the military ethics course she taught at the Naval Academy, she covered honesty, liberty, virtue, and just war, interspersed with the writings of philosophers such as Aristotle, and St Thomas Aquinas, John Stuart Mill and Kant. But it was when she arrived at the Roman philosopher Epictetus who was what is called a Stoic, that students and officers alike felt they had come home.

So first of all, what is, or was, Stoicism?

Nancy Sherman: Stoicism is a word that survived in the vernacular. So many of us will claim to be stoic in popular talk. So Stoicism though was an ancient philosophy started by the Greeks following Aristotle in the Hellenistic world and then went right through from 3rd, 4th century before the Common Era to the 2nd century of the Common Era. The idea was that you emphasised your control what you can be in charge of, and in particular your rational control, and so you let go - it sounds pretty Buddhist - but in fact it was a kind of rational, self-control notion detached from things that are outside your immediate ambit and control, and be in charge of and take responsibility for what's within. So it's virtue, defined narrowly, as up to myself in my control.

Alan Saunders: And why was coming to Epictetus, a Stoic, like coming home for you and your military students?

Nancy Sherman: The military resonates with the Stoic ethos of war, and of deprivation and of having to suck it up. I don't know if it's a term you use in Australia.

Alan Saunders: We know what it means we've seen enough American TV here.

Nancy Sherman: Right. Stiff upper lip if you're British. And pull up your socks, essentially. And that's what military men and women do. So being Stoic was their language and suck it up and truck on, and to find that Romans, some of them even warriors like not only Epictetus but Marcus Aurelius wrote about this, was very, very edifying to them.

Alan Saunders: And in fact you mentioned Jim Stockdale who was a senior prisoner-of-war in the Vietnam war, survived 7-1/2 years as a POW in the so-called 'Hanoi Hilton' and he was sustained in part, no doubt by many things, but he was sustained in part by some words of Epictetus that he'd actually memorised. So he had almost literally internalised stoicism.

Nancy Sherman: Absolutely. I interviewed him many times, he's now deceased, but once just after 9/11 I was in his home, and to listen to him was to listen to Epictetus, or I didn't know when he, Jim Stockdale ended and Epictetus began. It was part of his fabric, and he was an international relations student at Stanford, wandered into a philosophy course which he said he took to like a duck takes to water, and was handed upon leaving and upon going to Vietnam, this little tract of Epictetus and it was salvation. Interestingly, he never converted others, thought that that was not the way to proceed. Once did, and through tap language on the wall and got a dead silence and realised 'I've got my ducks lined up one way, others have theirs; don't try to preach'.

Alan Saunders: Well that does actually make me wonder whether obviously if there are philosophically minded soldiers or sailors indeed, you're likely to find them, but are there many around, philosophical and thoughtfully minded members of the military profession?

Nancy Sherman: Well that's a wonderful question and I know is struck and indeed my work in this book that you were talking about Stoic Warriors and a forthcoming book, The War Within, which continues the moral landscape of soldiering, with how many reflective soldiers there are, you know, not everyone who's in boot camp thinks about the cause of war or how to survive it with integrity, but many do. And here's a little anecdote that kind of captures it. One of my friends was heading to West Point, shared a taxi with a Colonel and asked my friend 'What do you do for a living?' and he very sheepishly said 'I teach legal ethics and military ethics'. And the Colonel said, 'Oh, I never read philosophy but I read Epictetus four times a year and Marcus Aurelius five times a year.' So there are more popular philosophers that are read by the philosophically minded soldiers and sailors and marines, airmen.

Alan Saunders: And does Stoicism, does this make the young soldiers or the young officers think about their actions in a different way?

Nancy Sherman: Well I think so. Part of the burden of my work, talking to the public but also to the military, is to emphasise the blessings and curses of Stoicism. There are obvious blessings, that it arms you with a mental barrier that sometimes kicks in instinctually when you're in the face of trauma, but also those of them that have studied Epic Stoicism, including Epictetus and Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, will know about it through the writings. But it can come with great cost. There is liability as well, and the liability is that you really think that things outside your control don't matter, that your family doesn't matter, or that if you lose a leg or you come home with traumatic brain injury which is the signature disease of the current war, concussive disorder, that somehow it won't matter. But it does matter and it's only kind of short-term survival, and if you make it long-term, and you narrow off all the things that matter, you get yourself into a kind of denial that can be very self-effacing.

Alan Saunders: There's a problem here isn't there, that it is in the nature of war that it releases, if it does not actually rely upon some very profound human passions and if I have just seen a lot of my comrades killed by an enemy who is now in my control because I've captured him, I might not be answerable for my actions. But the Stoics claim don't they, that the professional soldier must rely not on rage to whet his appetite for battle but he must be motivated by a desire for justice. That sounds a bit like a Council of Perfection in the extreme circumstances of war.

Nancy Sherman: Well put. I think that Stoics are answering Aristotle and Plato who say that anger is a battle motivator, and that the soldier has rage in his belly, Plato would say 'thumos' a kind of warrior spirit, and unless you can rely on that, you simply won't have the guts to get out there and the kind of fire that kindles courage, and you're right, and we know even in response to calls of war, rallies to war like 9/11 or once you're on the battlefield and see someone killed, that revenge, payback kick in.

And the Stoics counsel of perfection is reasonable in that revenge is fairly ugly. It can lead to the kind of behaviour that knows no bounds, that leaps before reason and that will lead to massacre, or atrocity. The absolute abolition of it, or the sense that some of my more moralistic commanders will have, that I don't want any revenge or payback on the battlefield, is unreasonable, I would argue. And that as ugly an emotion as anger is, compared to say grief, it still may have a place in the battlefield. Certainly indignation and resentment would have a place or of the kind of anger that spurs on righteous action. It's the boundedlessness of revenge is ugly and the fact that you can't have enough dead people to get the payback. We know Hector was killed after Achilles lost his Petrocolus..

Alan Saunders: This is The Iliad?

Nancy Sherman: Yes, and Achilles was so enraged that he dragged Hector round and round at the end, seven times round the ring. He couldn't get enough corpses to punish the deed. He wanted the corpse over and over again. So we know that payback is a generation of violence, reissued every generation, a sort of transmission through the generations. We don't want that but something that's at the basis of courage is a reasonable thing.

Alan Saunders: Stoicism is in many respects a philosophy of extremities. You describe one of the best-known of the Stoics, Seneca, as a 1st century Roman Stoic and resident philosopher, spin doctor and political adviser in the court of Nero. And obviously somebody in that position, or those positions, isn't going to find untroubled sleep that easy, not necessarily because you have a guilty conscience, but because you're worried about what's going to happen to you next, and a Stoic challenge is surely one that the soldier has to face in extreme circumstances when like Jim Stockdale whom you've mentioned, he becomes a prisoner-of-war. He has, as you put it, 'to find dignity when stripped of nearly all nourishments of the body and soul'. That is a most extreme set of circumstances to find yourself in, isn't it?

Nancy Sherman: Yes. And some would say Stoicism is the philosophy of deprivation, and it doesn't work for everyday usage. I would argue, Stocism appeals to many of us when we have less extreme stressors than being a POW or facing torture which is what Jim faced for 7-1/2 years, 2-1/2 years in solitary, and in leg irons, constraints. People that have losses of their children which to me is one of the most horrific thoughts, try to figure out Well how can I control my attitude and my own responses even in the face of horrific tragic luck? So the examples don't have to be that extreme, but they still can be palpable and ask you to take charge when you seem like you have so little in charge. I don't say in Nero's, in Seneca's case excuse me, he was constantly pleading mercy to Nero, so his tract on anger was just about those other responses to the servant whom you don't like, or to the politician whom you can't stand for them throwing them in with the vipers and the iguanas. Show a little patience, show a little mercy. So there was a tract on mercy as well.

Alan Saunders: Yes, he's cropped up on this program fairly recently and we do know what happened to him, what thanks he got.

MUSIC

Reader: There are things which are within our power and there are things which are beyond our power. Within our power are opinion, aim, desire, aversion and in one word, whatever affairs are our own. Beyond our power, are body, property, reputation, office and in one word, whatever are not properly our own affairs. Remember then that if you attribute freedom to things by nature dependent, and take what belongs to others or your own, you will be hindered, you will lament, you will be disturbed, you will find fault both with gods and men. If it concerns anything beyond our power, be prepared to say that it is nothing to you.

Alan Saunders: The words of the man whose name in Greek Epic Tatos means simply 'acquired'. Epictetus born around 55AD who spent his youth as a slave in Rome.

You talk about surviving torture and you talk about Jim Stockdale as surviving torture in Hanoi. Stoicism teaches us how to endure torture, perhaps, but it also teaches us you say, to avoid inflicting torture, and you've just mentioned Seneca's appeals for mercy. How does Stoicism do this?

Nancy Sherman: Well you know, we think of Stoicism as the enduring side, and facing a hardship. But I argue that it's limited because you risk your own humanity in giving up all vulnerability, the pain and distress, but what Stoicism does remind you, that your virtue and what you do as opposed to what's done to you, is in your control. So in the case of being a torturer rather than being the tortured, this really is a place where you are the actor, you're the full actor, you're the agent and you're trying to co-opt someone's co-operation, their rapport, build a liaison that's what it's all about. The opportunity to so abuse that person, degrade, is a mild word for what you could do, torture however politically charged the term is, captures it more, is there for you, you were the dominator and there's someone dominated who worries about what they need divulge in response. Stoicism is about holding on to your virtue when you have all the power. And so in a sense, I've argued that go to war if there's a chance that you're being the interrogator, the prison guard, military police, with the kind of high standards that Stoicism instils in you, which is essentially a Socratic thing, know yourself and be responsible for what you do and inflict on others.

Alan Saunders: So we are seeing a falling-off from those high standards in Guantánamo Bay or Bagram?

Nancy Sherman: Oh I would certainly argue. But it's not individual responsibility. Stoicism, any philosophy gets it wrong if you think you're all individual actors. This is institutional, torture is an institutional practice, and even if you're a doctor who is overseeing or if you're a psychologist, you're still dealing with the forensics of interrogation, how people break and the like, you're part of a pressure chain of command where there's an institution, and legalese that's trying to support practices that aren't always above board, far from above board.

Alan Saunders: Well this does lead me to wonder if you've got people like you teaching Stoicism at the Naval Academy, if you have as you said, officers reading Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius at West Point every year, it doesn't seem to be making any difference, and really if Stoic philosophy is entering the thoughts of the command, the command structure that high up in the command structure, it still doesn't seem to be making a difference.

Nancy Sherman: Well the sad point about something like Guantanomo where I had visited and advised the Defence Department on their health practices and psychological interrogations, and similarly Abu Ghraib we know this very well, is that a lot of what was done it was at the low level and there were a lot of reservists and National Guards that came in that were not well trained. Now the command structure did come from high on, and also they came from civilians and civilians in our Office of Legal Counsel that advises the Commander-in-Chief to rewrite or reconceive what counts as torture. But then it was transmitted by loyal soldiers, so there certainly was dereliction of duty at the civilian and of the command chain and the military end of the command chain, and then transported from Gitno, Guantanomo, to Abu Ghraib. Abu Ghraib was said to be Gitmo-ised with certain kinds of methods. So yes, I do think there was a breach. Does it make a difference? We're looking at a huge behemoth military with lots of individuals, a number of individuals including many, many military lawyers are objecting very loud to the current tribunals in Guantanomo and to the practices that have persisted in the detention system and the legal system that's interrogated the detainees.

Alan Saunders: If Stoicism encourages me to concentrate on the things I can control, and I see torture going on, I can't control it, I can't do anything about it because of my role, relatively, say, low role in the hierarchy, and I'm not taking part in it though, I'm just seeing it happen, am I justified in ignoring it, saying Well it's nothing to do with me, and I can't control it, I can't do anything, I will just attend to my own virtues?

Nancy Sherman: Well that resignation might be read as sort of resigning to fate, which we spoke about earlier, but in fact the whistle was blown by fairly low-level people in the case of Abu Ghraib, and often the low-level people that blew the whistle or the low-level folks who were following orders, got the punishment and some of the top brasses as often happens, don't do much. So what you can do is a fairly vague blank statement, and often the protest is itself something you do. I'm sure always in any philosophy, but Stoicism too, about how the world will take up your action. Will it welcome it? Will it squash it and scotch it? Or will someone listen somewhere down the line, even it's a Congressman in a very delayed response.

Alan Saunders: Let's look at the circumstances in which they find themselves now and recent philosophical debate on war has focused on the causes of war; the notion is that soldiers are accountable not only as is traditional, for their conduct in war, but for the cause of the war as well. So the idea is that you don't just have to fight by the rules, you have to be fighting in a just cause, is that the situation?

Nancy Sherman: That's right. So the conventional view is that those that are a higher pay grade decide when the cause is just, and you answer the rally. By signing up, or conscription if that's the case, enlistment or conscription, and then how you prosecute the war 'jus in bello', the justice in the conduct of war is what you're held responsible for. So whether you're fighting for the allies or you're fighting on the other side as a German, it's on the battle that you conduct yourself with justice or not.

Now a lot of philosophers have argued of late that let's hold soldiers also responsible for the cause. Because then you'd have fewer wars, more people protesting unjust wars, or at least that conscientiousness we were talking about earlier, the reflectiveness, and I would argue it's far too demanding to hold the individual soldier responsible for the cause because they often, poor guy, and many women often are under duress to enlist because of economic realities, opportunity, that's where the education, the training is, or because of a kind of misguided sense of the authority of their government. But what they are responsible still for is conduct. And then the question is so what happens when they're out there and they don't believe in the cause?

We may as outsiders not hold them responsible for cause, nor criminally I think should we hold them responsible for cause. I don't think any International Court should prosecute the soldier for fighting, he's been a foot soldier, for fighting the cause that ends up in hindsight being unjust. But they feel it and they carry and mix together what they fight for and how they fight, and I think what they hold on to throughout the whole thing is whatever cause I'm fighting for, I'm always fighting for each other, camaraderie, shoulder to aching shoulder, Siegfried Sassoon World War I poet put it, and he really protested the war, he started talking to Bertrand Russell who was pacifist, came home, thought he wasn't going to fight any more, goes back because his soldiers are whispering to him 'When are you coming back to me' in the trenches?

Alan Saunders: However, a central tenet of Stoicism is a belief in cosmopolitanism. We are global citizens, we're members of the universal ethical community. So we're not just members of a tribe, a religion, a nation, or for that matter a regiment or a squad.

Nancy Sherman: That's right, so we think more justly or we think more globally about justice, and I think one way to apply that claim of being citizens of the universe is that for soldiers now, when fighting an enemy that seems to not fight by just conduct rules, they don't make their weapons visible, they're hidden, they're often phones or other kinds of remote electronics, they don't wear uniforms, so again they don't advertise themselves as soldiers responsible for their conduct. The demand for our soldiers who do wear uniforms is to still fight the combatant with respect; a kind of respect to all citizens of the universe. Very challenging, very demanding, hard to not want revenge when you're buddies get blown up by a roadside bomb or other kind of mortar, when you can't even see the enemy, but still demanded. The civility of war is not there by any means but the civility of respect due those on the battlefield still have to be there, and it makes for taking the high road, it makes for feeling the kind of perfectionist standards of virtue that your enemy often doesn't feel towards you.

Alan Saunders: Nancy Sherman, thank you very much indeed for joining us.

Nancy Sherman: So, it's really been my pleasure, thanks so much.

Alan Saunders: And Nancy Sherman was in this country for Truth and Faith in Ethics, an international conference held recently at the Sydney campus of the University of Notre Dame.

The show is produced by Kyla Slaven with technical production this week by Charlie McCune and Stephen Crittenden was the voice of Epictetus. I'm Alan Saunders and I'll be back next week with another Philosopher's Zone.