Empathy’s Role in Military Meaning

Must “empathetic soldier” be counterintuitive?

There is an instinctive resistance to considering empathy as compatible with, and even essential for, the military profession. There are many reasonable concerns behind this resistance, which are generally addressed with clear definitions of two things: what we mean by “empathy” and what we mean by “soldiering.” Recently, however, the resistance has been amplified by a troubling disdain in popular discourse. I listened to a podcast episode entitled “Is Empathy Toxic?”^[1] By the end, I found the more recent concerns about empathy simplistic and unconvincing. Honesty is also a virtue that can be toxic, as well as any other virtue that is taken to an extreme or applied foolishly. One of the critiques cited in the podcast suggests that empathy entails jumping into quicksand with someone who is trapped by it. Empathetically putting oneself into the circumstances of another supposedly means literally doing so. Yet plenty of formal examinations of empathy (and, I suspect, plenty of the critic’s personal moments of it) distinguish it from “emotional contagion,” the automatic and unhelpful mirroring of another person’s experience.

Similar to emotional contagion, many have also distinguished “emotional empathy” (feeling others’ feelings) from “cognitive empathy” (understanding others’ thoughts and feelings).^[2] A popular and far more reasonable critique of empathy than what I cited above focuses on emotional empathy.[3] I agree with all of the author’s concerns; they are, however, limited to emotional empathy, which is defined along the lines of emotional contagion. His ideal of “rational compassion” resembles the exercise of empathy balanced with other virtues and skills that one finds across empathy scholarship and that I have employed in the past; I hesitate to use his phrase, though, because “rational compassion” seems just as susceptible to various interpretations that shroud “empathy” – except without the clarifications available in the literature.

When I employ the term empathy, I mean cognitive empathy; the only clarification I would add is that I still mean for emotions to be accounted for, even if not mirrored. Empathy is an understanding of another’s thoughts and feelings in the thick of their personal, circumstantial, and cultural context. Importantly, this understanding involves a sense of how another’s experience feels; empathy is not merely a theoretical claim about what another is experiencing. However, this felt characteristic need not overwhelm a differentiation between oneself and the other. 

Ultimately, if “empathy” comes to mean merely emotional contagion, then I am willing to drop the term and use “perspective-taking,” or “experientially understanding” a person, or even “rational compassion.” My use of the term “empathy” – which may, in fact, be subject to semantic shifts – hinges on its operational definition. What remains steadfast is the obligation (and the benefit) of soldiers grasping the nature of another person’s experience to some relevant degree. This grasp helps soldiers think more realistically and more accurately. Soldiers are better set to avoid assumptions fueled by shallow stereotypes of others. Empathy also grants them a view of themselves from the perspectives of others. In these ways, empathy improves the objectivity of their thinking by helping them avoid confirmation bias, naively assuming their perspective is exclusively and exhaustively true, or presuming silence from others means agreement.

Empathy also improves the morality of soldiers’ decisions. This contribution is probably more obvious than the superior thinking noted above. By reinforcing the humanity of fellow soldiers, especially subordinates, empathy counters the dismissiveness that may accompany rank and privilege. Empathy also fosters a better appreciation for local populations by unveiling their perspectives, priorities, and motivations. Thirdly, by illuminating the humanity of enemies, empathy counters the dehumanizing tendencies that are so often the root of immorality and gratuitous violence in war. Taken together, this humanizing impact of empathy spurs individuals away from self-absorption and toward a respect for others that grounds genuine justice. It motivates soldiers to act in light of two vital moral realities: war is a moral tragedy, and the only proper intention that warrants it is an aim for a just and lasting peace.  

If unchecked by other important virtues, empathy can certainly lead soldiers astray in terms of their thinking and their moral decision-making. An excess of empathy may promote over-rapport, identifying so much with another’s experience that it erodes one’s own independent judgment. Similarly, excessive empathy may lead individuals to constant and unwarranted second-guessing of their decisions and actions. In this manner, it may cause dangerous hesitation in high-stakes situations that demand quick action. Such hesitation might also stem from empathy enveloping individuals in the tragic nature of war (yes – like quicksand). Finally, soldiers may also apply empathy too selectively, amplifying social connection with an in-group to the point of eclipsing the humanity of an out-group.  

These positive and negative aspects of empathy reinforce the fact that the military profession requires a mature approach to morality. Like any other virtue, employing empathy in isolation will be error-prone and morally fraught. It requires the balance of other virtues. The fundamental point that I want to make is simply that abandoning empathy altogether also makes soldiers’ judgments error-prone and morally fraught. Empathy matters to soldiering well.

There should be no lingering insistence that empathy is only a feminine virtue, just as stoic toughness is not merely a masculine one

A second point deserves brief attention: the military profession requires a mature sense of masculinity as much as morality. There should be no lingering insistence that empathy is only a feminine virtue, just as stoic toughness is not merely a masculine one. All soldiers must be empathetic to properly fulfill their duties. Traditional martial virtues remain important; they simply need to be balanced by other virtues such as empathy. It is precisely when they are not that moral injury becomes a greater risk.

Is empathy a route to moral injury?

I maintain that empathy matters to soldiering well. I offer moral injury as evidence. Lack of empathy is apparent in many instances of moral injury, either in the injured individual or his superiors. The instances often revolve around the two moral realities mentioned above. Some cases highlight a neglect of the tragic nature of war – soldiers are shocked by its tragedy when they were expecting glory. Other cases highlight a neglect of a proper intention toward a just and lasting peace – soldiers feel guilty for harboring a worse intention, even if it is never manifested in immoral actions.^[4] Fostering empathy in soldiers can preempt these instances of moral injury by having soldiers grapple with war’s moral realities before colliding with them on the battlefield.

While moral injury reinforces empathy’s benefit to military personnel, I must also admit that empathy can contribute to moral injury. The improved moral awareness via empathy can place soldiers at greater risk for it. Military training underscores this risk every time it attempts to diminish soldiers’ moral awareness and numb them to the moral complexities of war. The same training can suppress soldiers’ critical thinking and attempt to turn them into automatons. Cultural and nationalist propaganda can reduce moral awareness in its denigration of adversaries and veneration of the country. Such training and propaganda are sometimes defended as a way to care for soldiers, sparing them from moral turmoil and doubt. Better to tamp down empathetic impulses, it is argued, and allow soldiers a reprieve from these troubling questions.

But this attempt to care for them backfires, and I again turn to cases of moral injury as evidence. The literature has numerous examples of soldiers who stoically endure combat and then crumble in the process of “reflective suffering” later.^[5] The solution cannot be to avoid such reflection permanently (either by the soldier’s own volition, or training, or medical interventions); that would curse the soldier to subconscious and confusing upheavals or, perhaps worst, a complete deadening of social and emotional impulses and abilities. The only true solution is twofold: ensure soldiers participate in wars and battles that can withstand moral scrutiny, and ensure they are equipped to process their empathetic understanding of others.^[6]

Empathy should not be perceived as the cause of moral injury but merely its conduit

Therefore, empathy’s contribution to moral injury is not enough to dispense with it. It should not be perceived as the cause of moral injury but merely its conduit. We do not blind a soldier to ensure they do not suffer the glare of the sun; neither should we extinguish empathy to prevent moral injury. Like the eye, the empathetic sense is overwhelmingly useful and essential to the soldier’s well-being.

Meaning and moral injury: equipping soldiers philosophically

I have become convinced that soldiers are better prepared to avoid or overcome moral injury when they deepen their philosophical framework regarding life’s meaning. This topic is obviously too broad to address fully; I will merely illustrate one example by considering Susan Wolf’s examination of meaning and tie some of her insights to one instance of moral injury.

Wolf defines meaning as “active engagement in projects or activities of worth.”^[7] There is both a subjective and objective component, and a lack of either one, Wolf claims, will hinder the meaningfulness of one’s life. Cases of moral injury support Wolf’s overall argument that meaning is a component of a person’s well‑being. They also support her claim that success in pursuing projects of worth matters to meaning, though I think it is less straightforward than she implies: the more that success in a project depends on factors outside of one’s control, the more that some meaning resides in one’s purposes and means, not solely outcomes.

One occasion of meaninglessness that Wolf examines is what she calls the Bankrupt case, a situation where a person is actively engaged in a project that is worthwhile, but it fails.^[8] Consider a scientist whose life’s work is rendered obsolete by another’s technological breakthrough, or a wife who devotes all her energies to a marriage that collapses due to the husband’s infidelity.  

As another sobering instance of the Bankrupt case, consider the moral injury of U.S. Army officer Jeff Hall, who became suicidal after proving unable to shake the guilt from a deployment to Iraq. He claims it is “not from killing, or seeing bodies severed, or blown up. It was from betrayal, from moral betrayal.”^[9] He describes one specific instance in Iraq where he witnessed a local family traveling in their car and accidentally killed during an attack. The gruesome deaths disturbed Hall, but not as much as the shamefully bungled responses by his chain of command and the bureaucracy that replaced the regime of Saddam Hussein. Hall proved unable to honor the surviving relatives’ request to bury the bodies quickly; it took over a month to finally give the family the remains, which were “unembalmed and rotted beyond recognition.” He was ordered to deliver solace money to the family but was aghast when he counted merely $750. The uncle receiving the paltry amount tossed the bills on the ground. Finally, the family requested death certificates to coordinate the burial. Hall retrieved them from the Ministry of Health but could not convince the official to remove “enemy” stamped in “bold, red letters.” It is one thing to endure the unintended deaths that war is bound to entail; it is another to endure the humiliation and powerlessness stemming from the casual incompetence and carelessness of one’s own authorities. 

In the account of Hall’s experience, he does not seem troubled by the worthiness of the overarching war he was involved in. He was anguished by the impossibility of engaging well in the subordinate projects entailed by it. In Wolf’s terms, he was actively engaged in “doing right” by this innocent Iraqi family, a project that maintained its worth over his whole deployment. He never became convinced that his specific project was not worthwhile (nor, objectively, is the worth of assisting the Iraqi family in doubt). It is precisely this worth that caused him to continue suffering following his redeployment. Hall’s extreme remorse is an example of how important success can be for the meaningfulness of one’s efforts (perhaps even more so if one questions the larger context of those efforts). As Wolf highlights, “in order to avoid Bankruptcy, it seems necessary that one’s activities be at least to some degree successful (though it may not be easy to determine what counts as the right kind or degree of success).” She then summarizes her overall thesis on meaning with a similar qualification: “A meaningful life is one that is actively and at least somewhat successfully engaged in a project (or projects) of positive value.”^[10]

Wolf is quick to point out that the Bankrupt case is her most controversial category of meaninglessness. It hinges on how much success in accomplishing the project really matters. What is behind the phrases “to some degree,” “right kind,” and “at least somewhat” regarding success? Wolf discusses success as it refers to achievement, which is the most natural sense, but one might also discuss success in two other ways: in terms of purpose and of means. Both of these senses of success offer some measure of meaning independent of achievement itself. Success in purpose simply refers to deliberating on aims that are good and choosing a goal that is worthy of one’s effort. Consider it being successful in the first step of agency, a person’s “capacity to act.”^[11]

Similarly, one can be successful in action, the second step of agency, even if one fails to achieve the intended outcome. This idea might be clearest when considering a farmer who is quite competent at tilling the fields and planting seeds, yet still fails to harvest much because of a drought. Would one describe him as a “successful farmer”? One may hesitate because of the lack of a crop, but one would seem to hesitate just as much at labeling him a “failed farmer.” This tension between what the farmer controls and what he does not helps explain Wolf’s qualification that success matters only “somewhat” for meaning. Achievement of actual outcomes seems less constitutive of meaning the less that it is in one’s control. To approach the same tension from a different angle, one might hesitate to declare the farmer a success if he responds to the drought by stealing water from the local community. Even with an abundant crop, his means to achieve it affects the judgment concerning success. Thus, there seem to be three distinct ways of being successful: choosing a worthwhile end, pursuing the worthwhile end in a certain way, and actually achieving a pursued end.

For those suffering moral injury, recommended therapies include deriving meaning from what one does control

In light of the meaning that is possible through an agent’s purposes, means, and actual outcomes, Wolf’s Bankrupt archetype needs some refinement. The Bankrupt person might fail to achieve goals, but choosing worthwhile goals at all secures at least a modicum of meaning. Secondly, his methods of pursuing them can add to this meaning (or detract, as with the farmer stealing water). These refinements are especially true if the agent does not control the selection of his goals, as in the case of military personnel.^[12] For those suffering moral injury, recommended therapies include deriving meaning from what one does control. Psychologists focus on soldiers recrafting their personal narrative, tracing a line through their traumatic circumstances to divide that which they controlled from that which they did not.^[13] The Bankrupt person, in this sense, may be able to derive meaning from chosen purposes or methods even if the project itself is not successful.

Hall’s case might be more poignant because of the greater control he ostensibly had over his specific project of assisting the Iraqi family. The chances for moral injury to incapacitate him increased because of his proximity to those who exercised such uncaring control over his attempts to assist; it was all the easier to blame his own inability to influence them. His agency was more limited than expected (arguably, it was reasonable to expect more). He did not exercise control even over the subordinate project that was his focus. Hall points to a betrayal on the part of those who did control those outcomes; he is left with the (admittedly meager) consolation of good intentions and actions fueled by an empathetic consideration of the Iraqi family.

Hall’s case also demonstrates the damage made possible by defining success only in terms of results. When one does not control all the factors involved, but clings to the achievement of the intended outcome as the only source of meaning, one becomes highly susceptible to moral injury.

Meaning from projects, chosen or received

Hall’s struggles highlight the point that “humans are both agents and patients.”^[14] They actively choose ends and initiate plans for those ends, and, at the same time, passively receive events and consequences in their lives that they do not choose. They are never exclusively an agent with utter control over everything; nor are they ever merely a patient in control of nothing. They are always simultaneously both agent and patient, even though specific circumstances will vary the amount of each at any given time.

People often choose their own projects; this ability seems to be a highly valued part of the freedom they cherish. But this ability is not always present. People commonly receive projects handed down “from on high.” In corporate settings, political movements, legal mandates – and yes, military service – an individual may be compelled to pursue some project. If a project received fails to seem meaningful, or is sufficiently questionable, there remains the possibility of finding derivative projects that are worthy (or eventually revising the judgment about the project received). Most of the time, a person’s agency is not exhausted by the received project but can still find expression in these derivative projects.

Admittedly, this search for a worthwhile derivative project may be problematic. To the extent that a derivative project contributes to some overall project that is meaningless, this “coping mechanism” for meaning (finding a goal considered worthy) will fall short. However, it is also important to acknowledge that a derivative project could bolster the meaningfulness of the overarching project, granting it greater legitimacy due to the worthiness secured in its granular details.^[15] In either case, the reality is that sweeping, large-scale projects commonly have “empty spaces” within which agents can exercise a substantial amount of autonomy. Such is often the situation for military personnel.

What makes military service members unique is not their patiency regarding the projects they pursue. As noted, many civilians across all walks of life passively receive projects outside of their control that they then actively undertake. Military personnel are unique in that the projects may fall outside normal moral limits, involving destruction or seizure of persons or property in an environment often lacking any substantial rule of law. In the military context, overall projects are generally considered worthwhile if they conform to the moral principles of just war theory, specifically jus ad bellum. Soldiers abdicate a significant portion of their autonomy regarding these principles to senior political and military leaders. They always retain some moral responsibility regarding the worth of overarching projects. Should a proposed military campaign violate jus ad bellum principles flagrantly enough, then it would be the responsibility of service members to disobey deployment orders. Short of such a clear mandate, however, soldiers are generally excused of such responsibility and allowed to defer to the judgment of senior leaders.

Regardless of the moral status of invading Iraq, Hall found a subordinate project of meaning. He was actively engaged in assisting the family of the Iraqi noncombatants killed in battle. The calamity here is that even the subordinate project that he invested himself in proved futile. While Hall may have reasonably set aside judgments about how worthwhile the overarching project was, he could not avoid the clear bankruptcy of his project to help the Iraqi family. His example illustrates the risk that is still present when attempting this “coping mechanism,” as I have been calling it (namely, focusing on subordinate projects that are worthwhile).

It is an invitation to moral injury when an individual defines success solely in terms of the project’s results

As long as a project is of worth, it seems wrong to declare its entire pursuit meaningless if it is unsuccessful. If the outcomes are even partially out of one’s control, there seems to be at least some meaning derived from what remains within one’s control – the purpose that corresponds to the worthy project and the means employed to bring it about. I’ve been treating these as two aspects of a person’s agency. The third aspect would be the actual outcomes when exercising one’s agency. It is an invitation to moral injury when an individual defines success solely in terms of the project’s results.

Note the key role that empathy plays in each of these three aspects. As stated earlier, empathy helps ensure one’s purpose is a just and lasting peace between humans, which is the only justification that makes war worthwhile. (Hall actively pursued this new peace in his portion of the war.) Secondly, empathy helps ensure one’s methods are morally respectable, in that dehumanizing tactics are avoided; just as important, empathy grants an understanding of enemies and other human actors that makes one’s methods more competent. (Hall understood the need to quickly return the deceased’s body to the family with accurate death certificates.) Thirdly, empathy helps ensure the results of the project are accurately assessed: it is harder to be fooled by dubious metrics if one is empathetically considering all the actors involved. (Hall accurately anticipated the insult of the $750 condolence payment.)

Empathy, meaning, and moral injury

Because soldiers’ duties are so consequential and increase their vulnerability to moral injury, they deserve sufficient preparation with a mature mental framework. They should be directly presented with moral injury as one of the many risks within the military profession. While empathy enables moral wounds to occur, it should also be defended as a foundational reference in the profession for competent and ethical action. The meaningfulness soldiers hope to secure, and the moral injury they hope to avoid, hinges on integrating empathy with other relevant virtues. Hall deserved leaders who understood this truth and built a unit culture to help him succeed in projects of genuine worth, as well as cope with the difficulties of one’s best efforts falling short.

DOI: 10.48701/opus4-829