PHILOSOPHICAL EGGS

Memorial Day is a day for honoring those members of the armed forces that died in battle. But, as you know, many people are more interested in barbecues and other forms of recreation these days. Faced with an increasing number of people who would rather bypass the rituals and opportunities for remembrance, we might take a moment to think about how we could argue in defense of a more thoughtful Memorial Day.

Ethics is not, in philosophy at least, synonymous with a set of customs, rules, commandments, or morals. It is essentially an activity of using reason to justify our beliefs about what is right and wrong (when it comes to actions) and good and bad (when it comes to the things or people we value). One branch of ethics, normative ethics, involves formulating theories and principles that we can use to construct arguments in defense of our positions on a range of moral dilemmas. Normative ethical theories seek to provide an objective understanding of right and wrong and good and bad by defining our moral terms on a very general and fundamental level. They also provide principles or rules of thumb which can be applied to help us make well-argued judgments about specific moral issues. This application is known as applied ethics.

So if our defense of Memorial Day exemplifies ethics in action then we will need to use some theory, define our terms, articulate some guiding principles, and use these principles to come up with some argument to defend our position. I think the following strategy can be employed.

1) We can use virtue ethics as our fundamental theory. This theory emphasizes being a good person and defines a good person as a person with excellent character traits or virtues such as courage, justice, wisdom, temperance, generosity, and so on. These virtues facilitate good judgments in the majority of situations by enabling us to feel and act correctly. And these good judgments can, in turn, help us lead fulfilling lives. For the virtue ethicist, an act is right if it develops and proceeds from virtues; it is wrong if it develops and proceeds from vices. Therefore practices and institutions that help develop virtues and discourage vices are to be supported and implemented wherever possible; those that support the development of vices should be eliminated. One central guiding principle of virtue ethics is the golden mean: actions (except adultery, theft, murder and a few other inherently vicious actions) should aim for the mean between excess and deficiency. So for example courage, which leads to appropriate action and feeling in the face of fear, lies between the deficiency of cowardice and the excess of recklessness. Action in the mean helps us develop virtues over time and these virtues make us better people. Another principle is the moral exemplar principle which prescribes that we look to moral exemplars – virtuous people – and use their actions as a guide. For example, if your father is a virtuous person you might ask yourself: what would my dad do in this situation?

2) Now that we have a normative ethical theory (virtue ethics), an understanding what a good person is (a virtuous one), and guiding principles of action (the mean and the moral exemplar principle), we can begin to apply these conceptual tools by observing that among the many actions for which we need to develop virtues there is one action, namely remembering and respecting those who die in battle, that can be done excessively, deficiently, or, in the mean: at the right time, in the right place, to the right extent, and toward the right people. We also observe that there are certain emotions that come along with this remembering that should be cultivated and directed towards the appropriate things: emotions such as gratitude, remorse, regret, piety, etc.

3) Memorial Day (as well as other events throughout the year like Veteran’s Day and the anniversary of 9/11), gives us a chance to remember the dead at the proper time. And those who died in service to our country are those we have good reason to remember: they are proper objects of our memory. We don’t have to remember excessively. But we would be deficient if we rarely remembered and therefore Memorial Day is one opportunity for us to develop remembering in the mean: remembrance as a virtue. Moreover, it offers us opportunities, through parades, presentations, speeches, symbols, recollections, dialogue, and so on, of moral exemplars: people who exemplified virtues and can serve as role models for us.

4) So Memorial Day can help cultivate, especially in the ungrateful, the disposition of remembering the dead and the associated virtues of gratitude, respect, and wisdom. To be sure, war is often unjustified and many ideals are ideologies that conceal greed, imperialism, and so on. But that doesn’t and shouldn’t take away from those who trust leaders to do the right thing and give their lives to serve others. With the ability to remember, pay respect, and feel certain emotions towards the dead, we can hope to be in a better position to make better judgments about, say, our liberties and the political process that protects them. Too many people are oblivious to the political process and to the liberties they are in a position to lose (and have lost already and are losing right now). Perhaps the ability to keep in mind the importance of the fundamental truths we hold to be self-evident is something a “holiday” like Memorial Day can help develop. If this is the case then Memorial Day is good and sincerely participating in its rituals is right. On the other hand, going to a parade to have fun and perhaps complaining about the rain and/or heat may not be acting toward the right object, at the right time, in the right way, and to the right extent. Our social order has rituals to help develop virtues but, as time goes by, their meaning often gets changed and we lose the direction they were supposed to give for good moral development. Memorial Day as the “first day of summer” often betrays a culture of extreme forgetfulness that flows from that shortsighted egoism which is the enemy of objective moral truth and its concern for a good that transcends our selfish pursuits of pleasure. It may also be one of the many enemies of a stable, fulfilling, and flourishing social order.

In any case, that is one defense, among others that could be made, for a more thoughtful Memorial Day. We employed a theory and then, based on the definitions and principles of the theory, argued that it should be taken seriously because it can help engender virtues. Such virtues would facilitate good judgments that have good consequences for us as individuals and as a country. Of course, this analysis may have its flaws and would require far more elaboration to be convincing. But for now we see that it provides a justified judgment that, rather than just describing facts objectively like a scientist might, tells us how we should act: it prescribes something. And this makes it an illustration of philosophical ethics in action.

Go here for the Wikipedia page on Memorial Day.

Go here for my overview of Aristotle’s interdisciplinary account of virtue and happiness.

Go here for my exploration of the virtue of political wisdom.

Go here for my overview of Plato’s vision of virtue and how it connects to the soul, beauty, and love.

Go here for my analysis of tragic conflict and the virtues of intelligence that can help ameliorate it.

Go here for my analysis of the widespread polarization, demonization, and lack of civility in the U.S. and what we can do about it.