In this engaging and thoughtful book, Nancy
Sherman combines her knowledge of ancient philosophy with her recent
experiences as a visiting professor of ethics at the U.S. Naval
Academy. Currently serving as University Professor at Georgetown
University, Sherman analyzes the military through the lens of the
ancient philosophy of Stoicism, as expressed in the works of Seneca,
Epictetus, and others. While the book makes no attempt to trace
Stoicism from the ancients to modern times, it argues that the
central tenets of Stoicism provide a means to understand military
culture and the responses of military personnel to stresses and
trauma. The consequences of the Stoicism inherent in military
culture are deeper and in many ways more disturbing than they appear
on the surface. They are, in Sherman's eyes, both blessings and
curses.
To the modern eye, Stoicism calls to mind the
challenge to "suck it up" in the face of adversity and to absorb
unusual physical and emotional stress. As a philosophy, of course,
Stoicism was much more complex. Sherman draws on those elements that
best express her central thesis of the appeal of Stoicism to "the
military mind," beginning with the fundamental notion that happiness
depends exclusively on one's own virtue. Those "indifferents" that
rest beyond one's control must be treated with proper decorum and
outward comportment. The key is to recognize which elements lie
outside human control and adjust one's external responses
accordingly.
The appeal of Stoicism to the military, those
members of society tasked with killing and perhaps being killed in
the defense of the state, is evident. Military personnel must
occasionally deal with imprisonment, dismemberment, the act of
killing another human being, and the process of grieving for a lost
comrade. Emotional responses to such events, the Stoics argued, form
false opinions of the nature of good and evil; one should react to
such stresses with reason and logic. Discipline, self-control, and
decorum are the correct Stoic reactions to external indifferents,
and virtue comes less from avoiding the horrors of life that lie
outside our control than from crafting appropriate responses to
them.
The appeal of Stoicism to the military has led
its legacies to be deeply ingrained in the military mindset. Indeed,
Stoicism offers so much to the modern soldier or marine that it
becomes internalized as part of military training. Thus even
soldiers who have never heard of the philosophy nevertheless adopt
important components of it into their own psychological defense
mechanisms. Sherman's core argument is that this internalization of
Stoicism gives military personnel a set of tools for processing
trauma, but also sets up expectations of physical and psychic
invulnerability that are in the end impossible to maintain.
The ways that the military distinguishes itself
from civil society complicate the Stoic reactions of military men
and women to the horrors they may one day face. Military personnel,
on the whole young and in excellent physical condition, are the
members of society most at risk of death or physical dismemberment.
The Stoics recognized this problem, identifying the body itself as
an indifferent that cannot contribute to happiness on its own
because it can be destroyed by elements outside one's own control.
The military's emphasis on the perfection of the body and the
importance of its looking good in a uniform underscores a key theme
of Sherman's book. Stoic philosophy requires wounded and disabled
soldiers to display a "can do" spirit about their injuries that
makes the most out of a situation one cannot control. Yet it also
creates an unrealistic expectation for young men and women who must
deal with traumatic loss.
To cite another example: although the military
occasionally encourages its members to think as individuals (to be
an "Army of One"), it relies heavily on the close interpersonal and
social networks formed by small-unit dynamics and comradeship.
Indeed, it is hard to envision a military functioning without them.
These paradoxes compromise the ability of military members to form
the proper psychological responses to the trials they must endure.
On the one hand, their individualism compels them to act in ways
that maximize their chances of survival; on the other, their social
relations can compel even those who hate war the most to return to
combat to endure trauma alongside their comrades.
These themes come together most effectively in
the chapter on grief. The Stoics saw grief as an emotional response
to be avoided, as it is directed at circumstances beyond individual
control. Because the individual cannot prevent the death of a loved
one resulting from accident or disease, he or she must accept loss
as an indifferent; thus the response of one Stoic to the death of
his daughter was that he should not grieve because he knew all along
that his child was a mortal. Grieving, moreover, demonstrates that
one has developed an attachment to another person, thus increasing
one's own emotional vulnerability.
Such responses seem to us outdated if not cruel.
In modern societies we are encouraged to grieve and feel emotion as
a part of recovery from a sense of loss. The Stoics would have
looked aghast at the greeting cards one can send to express grief
over the loss of a family pet. They argued that because grief dwells
on what can never be recovered, it is a misplaced emotion and should
be discarded.
Grief and loss, however, are part and parcel of
military culture, especially during wartime. It would be
unreasonable of even the hardest of modern Stoics to expect military
personnel not to grieve the loss of a comrade. Death in war is
especially tragic, as it cuts down young people, often in horrific
ways. In some cases, the power of military weaponry or the location
of a soldier's death prevents even the recovery of the body and the
conducting of a normal funeral. In a clearly non-Stoic attitude,
military members often risk their own lives to recover the bodies of
fallen comrades so they might have proper burial ceremonies.
But if the recovery of bodies on a battlefield is
not Stoic, the nature of military grief nevertheless has Stoic
elements. Sherman argues that military personnel are more
constrained in their grief owing to the Stoic stress on proper
decorum. Too much grieving (especially too much crying by males and
commanding officers) suggests personal weakness—an inappropriate
response to loss. Thus, while soldiers cannot control the fact that
a comrade has been killed, they can control their own response to
loss. The Stoic mourner must change the outward response to a felt
emotion. The notion of decorum (or "posing") changes the nature of
mourning, often deferring its full psychological impacts. Thus
military culture rejects the classic Stoic position, yet requires
individuals to adapt their responses to emotions in ways many Stoics
would have approved.
The sources for the book rely heavily on the
Stoics themselves, but they cover much more than just the ancients.
Examples ranging from the classical period to the current war in
Iraq argue the prevalence of Stoicism in at least the western
military mind. The book includes interviews conducted with both
British and American combat veterans, including former Vietnam POW
and vice-presidential candidate James Stockdale, who shared his
reliance on the words of Epictetus during his long period of
captivity. It also draws on memoirs and other writings of combat
veterans like Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, and Anthony
Swofford.[1]
The inclusion of a number of fictional works from non-veterans[2]
weakens the source base in this otherwise strong book; there is no
need to turn to popular fiction when the wonderful writings of so
many combat veterans are readily available.
This book is much more timely than its subject
matter's base in ancient philosophy might imply. At its core, it
shows how military personnel react to the grief and trauma that we,
as a society, ask them to endure on our behalf. Understanding the
Stoic legacies that underpin their reactions thus offers more than
an enlightening link between ancient philosophy and modern military
psychology. It gives us a fuller appreciation of what America's
young men and women are enduring and how they are responding. The
recent failures of the military medical system to deal with the
psychological traumas of returning veterans[3]
make this subject much more than an academic exercise. Stoic
Warriors should therefore be of keen interest both to those in
the military and to those seeking insight into the experience of
military men and women.
University of Southern Mississippi
michael.neiberg@usm.edu
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[1] Siegfried Sassoon, Sherston's Progress
(London: Faber & Faber, 1936); Robert Graves, Good-Bye to All
That (London: Cape, 1929); and Anthony Swofford, Jarhead:
A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles (NY:
Scribners, 2003).
[2] E.g., Pat Barker's three novels of World War
I: Regeneration, The Eye in the Door, and The
Ghost Road (NY: Dutton, 1992/1994/1995).
[3] Dan Frosch, "Fighting the Terror of Battles
That Rage in Soldiers' Heads," NY Times (13 May 2007) <link>;
see also Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma
and the Undoing of Character (NY: Scribners, 1995).
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