Conscience at War: The Israeli Soldier as a Moral Critic

1. Refusal as a Moral Position: From Separation to Connection

1 Refusal as a Moral Position From Separation to Connection In the name of science, developmental and moral psychologists traditionally detach themselves from two types of involvement. On the personal level, they most often refrain from taking a position as moral critics of real-life events. On the professional level, they refrain from studying moral critics in two ancient and very familiar social institutions: family and war. This is despite the fact that the family is considered the first school of moral development, and that war is an extreme yet frequent social phenomenon that can nevertheless reveal the noble as well as the most base examples of human behavior. This personal (and eventually professional) detachment seems to derive from the assumption that science and social criticism will not survive without isolation. As noted by Walzer (1988), researchers may think that "political leaders must be realistic and sober, while social critics must be idealists, fierce but distant, out of touch with the complexities of real life. . . . But these stereotypes are almost certainly wrong" (p. 75). No professional group can accept blame for the exigencies of history (May 1987). Yet, moral and developmental psychologists may serve as good examples for pOSition taking in the face of injustice . What pOSition, for example, did the renown Swiss child psychologist Jean Piaget assume in the face of the systematic and orderly gassing of 1.5 million children in his neighboring countries during World War II? The actual VOicing of one's own moral criticism (so it can be heard) illustrates (what I mean by) taking a position as a moral 17 18 Conscience at War critic. Obviously, prior to this brave move, one must be capable of seeing the nature of the king's new clothes. This observation depends in turn on the position chosen. As has been observed by Burke (1965) "A way of standing is also a way of seeing or not seeing " (p. l3). Lawrence Kohlberg, who built on Piaget's (1932/1965) pioneering work on moral development of children, embarked on his career after taking a position as a moral critic by smuggling HolocaustJewish refugees out of Europe to Palestine. His work on moral development (Kohlberg 1984) has been one of the most significant contributions to the study of moral and political psychology. Yet his theorizing on a "just community" is freed from position taking (Power, Higgins, and Kohlberg 1989). Morality has been conceptualized as developing among peers only. Though he developed his careerduring the Vietnam war, Kohlbergexamined the level ofmoral competence of only two soldiers: Eichmann's post hoc reasoning, at his Jerusalem trial for his compliance with his superiors, and Michael Bernhardt for not shootingin the My Lai massacre (see chapter 3). Not a single study has focused on the moral dilemmas, thinking , or actions of American combatants who objected that war. These examples of detachment of cognitive moral psychologists from real-life dilemmas of war are linked by a common view of the moral self as existing and developing in no man's land. As noted by Broughton (1987): The heart of genetic structuralism, unfortunately, is the negation of memory. Development conceived as progressive formalization is incompatible with the maintenance of biographical integrity. Piaget's (individual) subjects have no biography; they are not only genderless and generationless but also lacking personhood. His theory no more allows for life history than it does for history. (pp. 289-290) Assuming that the everyday world is a moral world, criticism is an inherent part of it, even if this path is chosen by few. What are the positions awaiting moral critics in general and refusing combatants in particular in times of war? What makes them choose these positions? How do they place themselves in these positions? To whom and under what premises do they proclaim and rehearse their critical arguments? These questions will be discussed in different forms throughout the book. This chapter starts the discussion with a focus on two Refusal as a Moral Position 19 philosophical views of selective refusal as a position of criticism: the "separate" position (Rawls 1971) and the "connected" position (Walzer 1988). This is followed by two psychological models that portray selective refusal as reflecting universalistic morality and a separate perspective (Kohlberg 1984) ora particularistic moralityand a connected perspective (Gilligan 1982). Finally, separate and connected methodologies are presented. The philosophical, psychological , and methodological views that are presented in this chapter are incorporated in...