Description

In this dissertation I argue that the traditional Western understanding of virtue is both relevant and applicable to today's British Army officers and soldiers. In the first chapter I analyse the place of virtue in traditional Western moral philosophy, especially as it was articulated by Thomas Aquinas. In the second chapter I propose that in the contemporary West much of this traditional moral understanding has been undermined by what I call 'sophistry'; a misuse of language and consequent manipulation of others rooted in philosophical scepticism and subjectivism. Sophistry obscures the centrality of virtue in the practicable moral life and replaces it with emotivist, deontological, and consequentialist moral ideas, based on impoverished understandings of human nature and of moral agency. In the third chapter I show how sophistry has had a deleterious effect on the British Army through confusing our understanding of the centrality of virtue in the military vocation to bear arms. In the final chapter I suggest that the British Army can counter this sophistic confusion and improve its operational effectiveness by a return to the ancient conception of moral education as the formation of virtuous character