Controversies in Military Ethics & Security Policy
Resilience, Virtue Ethics, and Mental Health Care
Introduction
The article examines three concepts that help us to understand the resolve of those who habitually and professionally engage with danger and difficulty. These concepts are resilience, virtue ethics, and mental health care. The article seeks a fuller account of virtue than is commonly found in the field by a larger analysis of the dimensions of virtue. In this context, the concept of resilience has been employed as a metaphor for the capacity of an object to spring back to its original shape, retain its integrity, and become steeled in the process. Applied to humans, the concept of resilience is employed to understand how human capacities can enable a person to face dangers and difficulties while pursuing the goods expressed in full human flourishing, including in the context of moral injury (morally injurious experiences).
The paper addresses three themes. First, the article addresses the dimensions of virtue ethics that make it resistant to narrow views of ethics and philosophical anthropology. An overview of thirteen dimensions of an Aristotelian-Thomist-personalist approach provides the structure for the paper to consider how virtues contribute to human flourishing. We call this an integrated Meta-Model of the person (or Meta-Model), which serves as a framework to incorporate insights from diverse sources.[1]
Second, throughout the analysis of these dimensions, we address the use of a mental health–based virtue approach to understand the person who suffers from having faced difficulties, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, suicidal ideation, and moral injury.[2]
Third, the article also takes into consideration three aspects of resilience as an example of an integrated virtue approach. The intersection of the fields of virtue ethics, mental health care, and military service offers an opportunity to address the interactive dimensions of virtue ethics incorporating insights from resilience and other virtue-based research and mental health practice.
Resilience, Virtue Ethics, and Mental Health Framework
We have construed a virtue ethics meta-model as a framework to incorporate insights into resilience and mental health care. Although the thirteen dimensions of virtue ethics overlap (Table I), there are compelling reasons to consider what each contributes to a deeper understanding of the person in a largely Aristotelian-Thomist-personalist approach. Nonetheless, in the paper, we will focus more in-depth on only eight dimensions of virtue considering the mental health and military fields.
The narrative of virtue ethics involves the major schools of moral theory, which have been influenced by the ancients, in particular, by Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. In the Christian tradition, the Bible (Decalogue, wisdom literature, and apostolic moral counsel), Augustine of Hippo, and Thomas Aquinas have made enduring contributions. All these sources can be engaged in contemporary virtue ethics and mental health care that include attention to the ultimate meaning of life and flourishing through being open to spirituality and faith-based practices.
The renaissance of virtue approaches, though, has enlivened long-standing quarrels between competing visions of the place of perceptual, emotional, cognitive, volitional, and social development in ethics. Some contemporary writers reject virtue, which they see as a functional type of rigid action, duty, or rule-following without interpersonal commitments, social science without the person, psychology/mental health without normativity, philosophy without wisdom, and redemption without transcendence.
However, virtue theory raises positive opportunities for ethics (1) to accommodate virtue with law, duty, and normativity; (2) to integrate flourishing in a virtue approach; (3) to situate acts with relation to dispositions to act; (4) to integrate the input of the human sciences within a normative approach; and (5) to be open to transcendent meaning.
We have found that the capacity of virtue theory can be understood only when due attention is given to the multiple dimensions of virtue
We have found that the capacity of virtue theory can be understood only when due attention is given to the multiple dimensions of virtue.There are a growing number of attempts at grasping the completeness of virtues. From a psychological perspective, the VIA Inventory of Strength is the basis for Peterson and Seligman’s classification of Character Strengths and Virtues:[3] wisdom and knowledge, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. There are also a growing number of virtue research and scales that seek to test different definitions and descriptions of these virtues. In the military context, de Vries focuses on seven virtues for military praxis and character: responsibility, competence, comradeship, respect, courage, resilience, and discipline (as well as the practical wisdom that underlies them).[4]
We also are considering the virtue of resilience, which has historical precedent. Of special interest is the resilience that is found at the basis of a hope-filled, forward-leaning way of conceptualizing life in the face of everyday and uncommon stress and trauma. We use the notion of resilience to understand the person and interpersonal groups in difficulty. It has three biopsychosocial-spiritual components and involves the individual and interpersonal capacities to (1) cope with and overcome stress, difficulty, and trauma; (2) retain personal and communal wholeness and integrity in adversity; and (3) demonstrate post-traumatic growth in such situations. The article will provide samples of protective factors of resilience, risk, and vulnerability.[5]
Table: I. Thirteen Dimensions of a Framework for Virtue-Based Ethics and Anthropology[6]
Virtue is performative (action-based).
Virtue has a perfective and corrective dimension (agent-based).
Virtue is purposeful (reason-based, teleological).
Virtue is ethical (moral norm–based).
Virtue is influenced by personal uniqueness, equal innate dignity, sex difference and complementarity.
Virtue is connective, relational, and developmental.
Virtue is learned through role-models (exemplars and mentoring).
Virtue is moderating (measured, golden mean).
Virtue is strength-based (preventative).
Virtue is nonreductionist (contextual).
Virtue is applied (research and practice).
Virtue is contextual (vocational commitments).
Virtue is open to the spiritual and to God (transcendent).
1. Virtue is performative (action-based)
Dimension. We express virtues in action, behavior, practices, and performance. We can speak of virtues as being performances, since virtuous acts and practices communicate good intentions and desires that support a narrative of goals, values, and commitments. According to Alasdair MacIntyre, a coherent set of practices and virtues underlies particular fields of action, such as mental health practice and military practice (praxis).[7]
We cannot train people to do something good by imagination or memory alone. Practices give direction to the imagination, memory, and instinctual evaluations that are part of the act. Of course, a virtuous act is done by doing, choosing, behaving, practicing, and performing it. Such morally significant action is both internal and external to the person.
Implications for mental health and resilience. For instance, we may plan to accomplish something difficult, such as traveling far to visit an ailing mother or to participate in military deployment. However, our intention to face such hardships and their costs is significant but inadequate to complete the action. Therefore, the trainer must get the trainee to act bravely, that is, he must emphasize cognition, emotion, and behavior. We need to engage in performance for personal growth. This is more than merely psychological or internal behavior, however. It is moral action. It is the authentic moral performance of this child or that soldier. Although virtuous acts are at the heart of ethics, virtues must be practiced to strengthen brave acts and moral performance.[8] Resilience, in this context, is gained by virtuous practices that embody the goals of training and therapy, and other types of performance.
Shortcomings of the performative dimension. It is possible, however, to overly reduce the performative dimension of each virtue. We can overly focus on the type of performance that is being prepared. We can neglect the need to have contact with real people as exemplars of performance, to count the human cost of resilient action, and to be attentive to the multiple levels of human acts.
2. Virtue is perfective and corrective (agent-based)
Dimension. Virtues change us. Previous actions and choices continue to influence each active person (agent), our dispositions, and our character. As Aristotle affirms, virtues are about moral choices to act that inform the moral state of our character.[9] Virtues inform different operational dispositions and capacities that we can change, correct, and perfect. Because of the expansive nature of human neuroplasticity, our expression of virtue is perfective and corrective at different levels.[10] As Neb’s postulate suggests, “Neurons that fire together wire together.”[11] Furthermore, virtuous acts are complex, and the influence of our acts is not always visible to people or to instruments of observation. There are internal acts on which we do not follow through. For example, in the beginning, we may choose to do something (this choosing is an act of the will) that we might never actually accomplish, since we do not get the chance to do what we intended to do. Such internal acts bring about changes in our dispositions to act in an analogous way in the future. Nonetheless, although we have tendencies to act virtuously again in a similar way, these tendencies may fail to be consistent.
Genuine freedom is more than being free from what hinders us from doing what we seek to do
Virtue and habituation theories and practices demonstrate that there is perfective and corrective plasticity at neurophysiological, psychological, and moral levels.[12] Such plasticity contributes, in a non-reductionist way, to accounting for human freedom. Genuine freedom is more than being free from what hinders us from doing what we seek to do. It involves becoming free to develop and use the skills that enable us to do things with excellence and fidelity. It is a positive disposition that makes it possible to bring about the intended good action of this son expressed to that mother, and of one comrade in arms to another and to the group.
Such good potential habits are rooted in our operative capacities and dispositions that are capable of change, such as sensory perceptions, imagination, emotions, intellect, and will. Since there are different dispositions, there are diverse groupings of types of virtues such as cardinal (moral), intellectual, and theological (spiritual) virtues.
Implications for resilience and mental health. The consistent performance of certain acts changes the disposition to act in the future. This fact is the heart of training. For instance, since our emotional capacities express fear and daring, we need the virtue of bravery to have a virtuous and reasoned use of these emotions when we address the difficulty in attaining good or avoiding evil. Because of the different emotional experiences and the different potential patterns of emotion-based virtues (moral virtues), we need to develop the courage, for example, to travel in dangerous weather or in hostile surroundings. Furthermore, there are also moral virtues of self-control to manage and balance emotions in the face of attraction and repulsion. For example, the trainee will need to be put into situations that train, evaluate, and make true her disposition to control her own emotions. This is the steeling effect of human capacities that become resilient to stressors through being stressed. There are, of course, further skills, such as the need for the leader-in-training to practice how to influence the emotions of the team, including how to gain the capacity to motivate the team that is depressed, having lost a comrade in arms.
Shortcomings of the perfective and corrective dimensions. Can you get too much of a good thing? Can a virtue be too perfect and too much under control? There is not too much excellence in virtue. Rather, the contrary is sure. We can confuse excellence with rigid coping, short-sighted integrity, and small-minded post-stress growth, which do not constitute a compelling view of virtue.
3. Virtue is purposeful (reason-based, teleological)
Dimension. We associate virtues with reason, purposes, and goals. In the purposeful dimension, we implicitly and explicitly express our rational character, including the finality, callings, and direction of the virtues. First, we intuit or sense the purpose of life and the meaning of death. We implicitly participate in the reasons underlying the virtues. Second, we infer the particular purposes of the virtues through rational discourse and social narrative. We thus give reasons and deliberate about why and how to attain the desired end.
The purposeful nature of virtue draws on the end that is aimed at in the particular praxis or practices. Virtues are teleological inasmuch as they have the nature of being an end, a final cause that motivates us to act. We reason throughout virtuous action, for reason is directive even in performative and habitual ways. We often communicate the nature and context of reason through narratives of significant events concerning health, healing, life, and death, and the courage to face the risks of life and death.
Implications for resilience and mental health. Because there are evolving social, political, military, and commercial contexts, there are new needs for training in virtuously resilient military forces, stable mental health care services, as well as chaplains, police, and entrepreneurs. These agents of change must be deliberate, give reasons, and act purposefully.[13] This need comes especially from the new situations of different conflicts and instability across the continents, where we need to cope with new experiences of difficulty, foresee challenges to our integrity, and make something new come out of stress, trauma, and danger.
Shortcomings of the purposeful dimension. We may underestimate the significance of deep inclinations toward self-preservation, goodness, truth, relationships, and beauty. [RF1] For instance, the value of relationships (e.g., daughter to mother or between soldiers) may lead someone to intentionally enter danger’s way to protect the other. We can misunderstand that purposeful acts and dispositions to act are risky. They may lead to the loss of one’s life or that of a loved one. When we commit ourselves to the good of family and defending the nation, we make the gift of self a purposeful choice. For instance, virtue-based practices include putting one’s life at risk in caring for one’s contagious mother or in military service.
4. Virtue is ethical (moral norm-based)
Dimension. Virtue is ethical. The ethical basis for virtue is the natural moral law, rational moral standards, codes of conduct for professions, and principles that lead to a good and flourishing life. The moral good is relative to each one of us and our responsibilities, but it is also objectively rooted to the common good. Together, these virtue-norms are the standard for what we do and why we do it. Such virtue ethics is also called practical wisdom (or prudential personalism).[14] Aristotle understands the ethical notion of virtue to be “a state of character concerned with choice, lying in the mean, i.e. the mean relative to us, this being determined by a rational principle, and by that principle by which the person of practical wisdom would determine it.”[15]
Implications for resilience and mental health. We presuppose that virtue ethics can integrate the ethical dimension of pertinent rules, principles, duties, and consequences without reducing moral adjudication to rule-based, duty-based, or consequentialist approaches. In a synthetic approach that also employs spirituality (spiritual practices, principles, and commands), we recognize that there is an important place for the codes that are specific to particular praxis, for instance, the military codes of conduct and ethics, mental health care codes of ethics, medical codes of ethics, as well as the United Nation’s international conventions (conventions on human rights), and the World Health Organization’s code of ethics and professional conduct.
Shortcomings ofthe ethical dimension. The ethical nature of the virtues is found in the way that a person of practical reason, as an exemplar of ethics, argues about theory and application. Of vital importance, the virtue of practical wisdom is a matter of the practice of reason that concerns practically applied clinical, philosophical, and spiritual considerations.
Moral injury is the condition of psychological and moral suffering based on the perception of a moral violation, with or without any personal involvement, even when one merely sees an immoral act take place
For mental health praxis and military praxis to be effective, the medical and military personnel need (1) a full understanding of moral action and its related codes, principles, and duties; (2) the internalization of the virtues at the level of practical wisdom and conscience and (3) an appreciation of the differences between moral injury, ethical evil, and spiritual sin. Moral injury is the condition of psychological and moral suffering based on the perception of a moral violation, with or without any personal involvement, even when one merely sees an immoral act take place. Ethical praxis includes the agent’s and the group’s intentions, understanding of the moral action, and the pertinent circumstances that concern the act and the agent.[16]
5. Virtue is influenced by personal uniqueness, equal innate dignity, sex difference, and complementarity
Dimension. Virtues are unique since persons are unique. Of course, all persons are also equal in dignity, which serves as a common base for understanding human nature, human rights, and the spectrum of virtues. This equality applies to the sexes, as do the differences of the virtues that arise from the complementarity of the sexes, as found in the reproductive capacities, genetic expression (DNA and RNA), as well as personality tendencies. A person’s virtues can take on characteristics that are marked by the complementary tendencies of the different sexes. Even when the sexes are different, a person’s virtues can take on characteristics that are marked by complementary tendencies. According to Vitz,[17] women tend to be for others, while men tend to do for others. Women tend to aim at nurture and emotional intimacy, while men tend to aim at protection and physical pleasure. Women tend to seek to care for the other, while men tend to seek justice. It is possible to see each person uniquely and yet to see how studies give data and trends that apply in many but not all cases (bell curve phenomena), as is the case in sex differences apparent in aspects of alcohol use and abuse.[18] No woman or man is a statistic or a trend, but comparisons can help us be attentive to the real person in front of us.
Implications for resilience and mental health. Virtue ethics influence the tendencies of each unique person. Nonetheless, the resilience of a person or group of persons must rely on each person’s common capacities and basic characteristics in the face of difficulties, as for mental health professionals applying curative practices or the commander’s or soldier’s work on battle readiness. The expression of mental health–focused virtue or military praxis–based virtue changes according to people’s uniqueness as well as their common strengths.
The shortcomings of the equal and complementary dimension. There are frequent misunderstandings about the equality, difference, and complementarity of the sexes. For instance, it has been argued that the virtue of courage expresses both similarity and difference between men and woman. Female expressions of courage tend toward more empathic expressions of related emotions. Male expressions of courage tend toward more initiative-taking expressions of related emotions.[19] Of course, the formation of virtuous capacities in people through just and caring actions builds upon personal uniqueness and integrity, while also establishing, in ways specific for each sex, further coping skills, unique integrity, and potential for post-traumatic change.
6. Virtue is connective, relational, and developmental
Dimension. For a person’s particular virtues to grow, they need to interconnect with other virtues and to social and psychological contexts. The person must recognize that virtues develop over time and thus need practice. According to Aristotle and Aquinas, virtues tend toward an interconnection among themselves, through the virtues of practical wisdom and love.[20] We use practical wisdom to form ourselves, including our desires and motions that come to participate in reason. We employ intellectual means to realize the end of the other virtues, giving them rational coherency.
For a person’s particular virtues to grow, they need to interconnect with other virtues and to social and psychological contexts
In the Christian tradition, we also recognize the efficacy of charity and friendship love to give further commitment, self-giving, and motivation that orders the other virtues toward personal unity. We need the embodiment of diverse virtues to achieve their own proper ends. It is by knowledge and by love, that is, by applied practical reason and self-giving that we find interpersonal relations and connection. Could a soldier be courageous if he did not also control his desire for mind-altering substances or creature comforts, but was distracted from the need to plan, train, and deploy in a way that is attentive to the best rational practices of strategy?
We are social through the expression of virtues since they support the interpersonal dimension of human nature. This type of development of the virtues is based upon the capacities that underlie the cardinal (moral), intellectual, and theological (spiritual) virtues. For example, there are virtues that shape emotions (moral virtues of self-regulation and courage). There are also virtues that transform the will (justice and self-giving love) and other virtues that transform the intellect (the intellectual virtues of wisdom, knowledge, and understanding).
Implications for resilience and mental health. We connect the resilience resources among themselves through participating in practical reason and empathy-love. For instance, prosocial skills underlie the successful interaction of commanders and soldiers, supervisors and mental health caregivers. There is need for prosocial value-based leadership that involves a proper level of training to build up personal and group morale and competency. The development of such virtues is born of experience, even negative experience. For instance, post-traumatic stress and moral injury can, when successfully overcome, give to the group resilience and a basis of mutual trust.
Challenges of the connective, relational, and developmental dimensions. Those who are not intentionally involved in the interconnected and developmental efforts of the virtues often misunderstand the relational dimension of the virtues. This misunderstanding arises especially when we conceptualize the virtues as disengaged, solitary, and static. Moreover, the developmental and relational dimension requires that we affirm the need for both independence and dependence in the expression of the virtues.
7. Virtue is learned through role-models
Dimension. We acquire virtue through a combination of admiration and emulation, reason and principles, emotions and actions, and dispositions and character, as we have suggested. The most crucial aspect of learning virtue involves the admiration and emulation of role-models, which leads to the practice of the virtues. Role-models elicit mimetic desire. We acquire virtuous dispositions (habitus) through contact with exemplars who creatively and truthfully model virtues. The acquisition of these characteristics is based on the emotional admiration of the exemplars, who motivate people. It is also based on understanding the moral content of these models and their implicit and explicit principles and ends. For instance, we admire heroes, saints, and wise men and women, such as brave mental health caregivers and soldiers, who risk their lives for the common good, the nation, their families, and even strangers.
These exemplars can inspire others to at least consider acting in ways that are worthy of risking their lives as well. Moral exemplars of truth provide the cognitive source of admiration, while moral exemplars of goodness effectively attract us to admire the models. According to Linda Zagzebski, virtue might best be understood to be taught through theory and practice, including course work and everyday narratives, but it is first learned by the emulation of exemplars. She affirms in a semantically externalist or moral realism where the emulation of exemplars is at the basis of moral learning.[21]
Part of the challenge of teaching virtues is that individual models can differ so radically
Implications for resilience and mental health. Part of the challenge of teaching virtues is that individual models can differ so radically. There are vocations, relationships, dispositions, behaviors, and histories that differ in their capacity to promote resilience and influence mental health. Admittedly, in its performative, perfective, and ethical dimensions, virtue is not like mathematical calculations, which involve simply correct or incorrect answers, but we have the cognitive capacity to cope with such difficulties, and models can show the way toward integrity, even lost integrity that is recovered over time and that results in moral growth.
Challenges to the learning by role-model dimension. Although the acquisition of moral virtue can be expressed in the formative effect of both real life and narrative accounts of role models, there are realist (the truth of the matter existing outside of the mind) and non-realist (the denial of any real truth worth fighting for) approaches. A non-realist, relativist approach to the acquisition of moral virtue challenges personal and group formation of character. When the source of the moral character of language is not understood to exist outside of one’s mind, challenges arise in the account of the moral character of virtue acquisition through role-models. A disconnected socio-linguistic network is not realist, but rather relativist. It does not link together social and language references, moral motivation, and the moral object of the virtues, and thus it weakens the pedagogical power of role-models.
We find another challenge when people admire, emulate, and become attached to a model or hero who is grossly immoral. Nonetheless, there is inevitably the need to admit some level of ambiguity in any hero, which can be the basis of moral resilience in guarding our integrity in the face of our model’s mistaken actions.
13. Virtue is open to the spiritual/transcendent and to God
Dimension. The classical virtue-based approach correlates the practice of the virtues of faith, hope, and charity- and friendship-love with positive effects of spiritual and transcendent health and growth in the transformation of the other virtues, making them graced virtues (infused virtues). Such practices that are open to spirituality and to God include faith-based rituals, communal prayer, personal prayer with God, the ritual of forgiveness, and the practice of meditation and contemplation. The construct of virtue, from a Meta-Model perspective, is open to the integration of natural bases of mental health and graced or supernatural extensions of holiness. The human capacities for virtue (material cause) are perfected at natural and supernatural dimensions (formal, efficacious, and final causes). This ancient Christian principle holds that grace transforms nature, according to the manner of nature.[22] This approach to virtue is open to the spiritual/transcendent, as when spiritual practices strengthen people’s resolve regarding the ultimate purpose in life (as is the case in faith), or their finding meaning and support in difficulty (hope), or their unity and mutual self-gift through faith communities (charity).
A growing number of qualitative studies demonstrate that, with religious practice and spirituality, potential resilience and growth can arise in the face of struggles
Implications for resilience and mental health. A growing number of qualitative studies demonstrate that, with religious practice and spirituality, potential resilience and growth can arise in the face of struggles.[23] Other studies identify that some daily spiritual practices positively correlate as a protective factor for spiritual resilience in morally injurious experiences, increased coping with difficulty, and higher levels of forgiveness.Researchers have identified the experiences of military personnel who have drawn on religious and spiritual resources to overcome the effects of moral injury. Moreover, studies on soldiers and veterans have shown that their resilience finds its sources in spirituality (protective factor), meaning (finding and making meaning), and identity (including communities of faith).[24]
Challenges of being open to transcendence. There are also negative impacts and distortions of religion and spirituality in moral injuries when someone conceives of God as hateful or punitive. Other negative correlations are found when people obscure and distort the natural positive inclinations toward goodness, existence, truth, relationships, and beauty. There is lastly the negative impact of practicing rigid religious principles, self-condemnation, and disillusionment of belief.[25]
Implications of a multi-dimensional virtue- and resilience-based approach to mental health
What are the implications of the present study? One of the most radical findings of this article is that an account of philosophical anthropology, human character, and ethics will be inadequate without a multi-dimensional understanding of the nature of virtue. Identifying this complex approach to virtue brings the discussion of virtue ethics to a more compelling level.
What are the dimensions not explored in this article? (Table I names them all) They are virtue as moderating, preventive, non-reductionist, applied, and vocational: (8) Virtues are moderating. We aim at excellence through virtue by avoiding extremes of excess and deficiency. For instance, we seek to regulate the emotion of fear to better serve rational goals bolstered through courageous service. (9) Virtues are preventative. We develop character strength and refined emotions that protect the person and the community. For instance, the virtue of hope overcomes distorted thoughts and feelings about difficult-to-attain ends. (10) Virtues are nonreductionist. We live out virtues in contexts open to evidence about best practices. For instance, we desire sources that are evidence-based, value-based, and truth-seeking. (11) Virtues are applied in practice. We apply virtue in theory and through practice. For instance, we seek to enhance professional skills and long-term flourishing through the context-based practices of the virtues that underlie the particulars of military practice. (12) Virtues are vocational. We find flourishing through vocation-based virtues that are linked to fundamental commitments. For instance, we find meaning in responding positively to the call to form a family and defend one’s nation.
How can a more complete account of virtue be provided for the military, mental health care, and other service providers? Resilience is a complex phenomenon that is based on observation and experience of common and not-so-common encounters of danger and difficulties for mental health professionals, military, and first responders. When training leaders and soldiers, for example, there is a benefit in focusing on a robust understanding of resilience that includes coping with combat danger, retaining personal and communal integrity even after stress, and growing stronger in the wake of trauma. Leaders need to develop the habit of seeing what kind of positive result can come from negative experiences. Such habitual attentiveness seeks the underlying positive aspect of difficult and negative ventures. This kind of search leads to a greater disposition to identify more readily basic desires for existence, goodness, truth, relationality, and beauty.
What is the range of impact in a multi-dimensional approach to virtue? The virtue-based approach to ethics can accommodate profession-based and faith-based ethics. This presentation is meant to affirm that the rule, duty, and consequence-based approaches need to be complemented by reflections proper to professional ethics (e.g., the inclusion of a military code of ethics) and faith-based ethics (spirituality and tradition-based), for instance, such approaches must also respect the moral consciences of military personnel and make a compelling case for ethics. This integrated, profession-based, and faith-based approach can only be developed more fully in another work.
In conclusion, debates between act-based ethics and agent-based ethics can find resolution in virtue-based ethics, where the act and the disposition to act, the agent and the community, natural law and revelation and grace all find places fit to each. A renewed vision of virtue theory rooted in practical wisdom and open to spirituality and faith-based practices will need to demonstrate a capacity to account not only for the desire for flourishing and the trajectory of the development of character and virtue but also for the existence of persistent weaknesses, patent errors, and the possibility of the divided self and fractured communities. Such a Meta-Model approach to virtue will need to adjudicate the viability of a multi-dimensional virtue approach that integrates classical and modern ethical theories with input from contemporary human sciences, each at their own level of competency and normativity.
[1] The recently published work by Vitz, Paul C., Nordling, William J.and Titus, Craig Steven (eds.) (2020): A Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person: Integration with Psychology and Mental Health Practice, Sterling, VA, presents thirteen dimensions of virtue. To provide depth yet present the larger context, we address eight of the most salient dimensions in this paper.
[2] Jinkerson, Jeremy D. (2016): Defining and Assessing Moral Injury: A Syndrome Perspective. In: Traumatology, 22(2), pp. 122–130. https://doi.org/10.1037/trm0000069 (all internet sources accessed 1 June 2023).
[3] Peterson, Christopher and Seligman, Martin E. P. (2004): Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification. Oxford et al.
[4] de Vries, Peer (2020): Virtue Ethics in the Military: An Attempt at Completeness. In: Journal of Military Ethics 19, no. 3 (2020), pp. 170–185. Another catalog of virtues is by Erikson (1964): Care, Competence, Fidelity, Hope, Love, Purpose, Will, and Wisdom. Military catalogs tend to be more traditional, including the four cardinal virtues: practical reason, justice, temperance, and courage, and others: honor, discipline, and loyalty, as well as new virtues emerging because of changes in military tasks: protecting the vulnerable and handling media coverage. See also: Olsthoorn, Peter (2013): Virtue Ethics in the Military. In: van Hooft, Stan and Saunders, Nicole (eds): The Handbook of Virtue Ethics. Abingdon/New York, pp. 365–374.
[5] White, N. H. and Cook, C. C. (eds.) (2020): Biblical and Theological Visions of Resilience: Pastoral and Clinical Insights. Routledge.
[6] Titus, C. S. et al. (2020): Fulfilled in Virtue. In: Vitz, Paul C. et al. (eds.), see endnote 1.
[7] MacIntyre, Alasdair (1999): Dependent Rational Animals: Why Humans Need the Virtues. Chicago.
[9] Aristotle (1941): Nicomachean Ethics (trans. W. D. Ross). New York, Bk. II, ch. 6, 1106b25–1107a2.
[10] Doidge, N. (2007): The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science. New York.
[11] Siegel, D. J., & Bryson, T. P. (2011): The Whole-Brain Child.London.
[12] De Haan, Daniel D. (2012): Thomistic Hylomorphism, Self-Determinism, Self-Determination, Neuroplasticity, and Grace: The Case of Addiction. In: Proceedings of the ACPA 85, pp. 99–120.
[13] Cornum, R., Matthews, M. D. and Seligman, M. E. P. (2011): Comprehensive Soldier Fitness: Building Resilience in a Challenging Institutional Context. In: American Psychologist66(1), pp. 4–9. doi.org/10.1037/a0021420.
[14] Ashley, Benedict M. (2013): Healing for Freedom: A Christian Perspective on Personhood and Psychotherapy. Washington, DC.
[15] Aristotle (1941), see endnote 9, 1106b36–1107a3.
[16] John Paul II (1993): On the Splendor of Truth[Encyclical: Veritatis splendor]. Vatican City.
[17] Vitz, Paul C. (2022): The Complementarity of Women and Men. Washington, DC.
[18] Nolen-Hoeksema, S. (2004): Gender Differences in Risk Factors and Consequences for Alcohol Use and Problems.In:Clinical Psychology Review, 24(8), pp. 981–1010. doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2004.08.003.
[19] Gross, Christopher, et al. (2020): Man and Woman. In: Vitz, Paul C. et al. (eds.) (2020), see endnote 1, p. 187.
[20] Aristotle (1941), see endnote 9, vi, 13. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I–II, question 65.
[21] Zagzebski, Linda (2017): Exemplarist Moral Theory. New York.
[23] Currier, J. M. et al. (2016): Spirituality, Forgiveness, and Quality of Life: Testing a Mediational Model with Military Veterans with PTSD. In: The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 26(2), pp. 167–179.
Dr. Craig Steven Titus is a Professor of integration at Divine Mercy University (DMU, Virginia). He has a doctorate in theology (University of Fribourg, Switzerland) and a Master’s Degree in Philosophy. He has published over 60 journal articles, book chapters, and books, including “Virtue and Resilience: Aquinas’s Christian Approach to Virtue Applied to Resilience” (in Nathan H. White and Christopher C. Cook (eds.): “Biblical and Theological Visions of Resilience”, Routledge, 2022). He is a co-editor and contributor of “A Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person: Integration with Psychology and Mental Health Practice” (DMU Press, 2020).
