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ABSTRACT
This article, originally presented as a keynote address at the 2019 McCain conference, proposes that we must take seriously the “moral” component of moral injury. In addition to psychological treatment, wounded warriors suffering moral injury require atonement for genuine transgressions, and insight when the conduct they regard as transgression actually is not. The article defines the dimensions of moral injury as parallel to those of physical injury: pain, loss of functionality, and (in some cases) disfigurement. It then asks how atonement can be achieved, turning to an unusual source for inspiration: the laws of atonement set out by the medieval Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides. Maimonides proposes four requirements: verbal confession, repentance, reparation, and apology. The article explains their meaning in the context of contemporary wounded warriors. Finally, it argues that Judaism’s unique tradition of collective atonement offers an important model for the armed services.
KEYWORDS:
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Notes
1 Shay discusses the importance of loss of functionality in Shay (Citation1995, 32–35).
2 Keefe (Citation2019, 286–287) describes moral injury as “a notion, distinct from the idea of trauma, that relates to the ways that ex-soldiers make sense of the socially transgressive things they have done during wartime.”
3 See the discussion of Hughes and his fellow IRA gunman Ricky O’Rawe in Keefe (Citation2019; 264–274).
4 Maimonides (Citation1993, chs. 1 and 2) (“The Laws of Repentance”). The Mishneh Torah is Maimonides’s codification of Jewish law, written between 1170 and 1180. Despite the similar-sounding titles, this book should not be confused with the Mishnah, written almost a thousand years earlier.
5 Maimonides lived from 1135 to 1204. There is an excellent full-length biography: Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization’s Greatest Minds (Kraemer Citation2008), and a brilliant introduction to Maimonides’s life and thought: Maimonides: Life and Thought (Halbertal Citation2015).
6 On this point of influence, see Franck (Citation1985), 598–600; reprinted in Gerber (Citation1988).
7 For useful introductions to the labyrinthine structure of Jewish law, see Saiman (Citation2018); Fishbane (Citation2000).
8 Here and subsequently, I slightly modernize the language of the translation by Eliyahu Touger.
9 Proverbs 26:11, quoted in Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 86b.
10 For recent discussion of this US policy, see Shiel (Citation2020).
11 Shira Maguen, oral presentation, McCain Conference, March 29, 2019.
12 Only in part, however, because the public confession names the sin without going into its particularities, which we have seen is one of Maimonides’ requirements for adequate confession.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
David Luban
David Luban is Distinguished University Professor at Georgetown University Law Center, Washington DC, USA, and holds the Class of 1965 Distinguished Chair in Ethics at the Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership, United States Naval Academy. Recent work includes “Military Necessity: A Defense of the Marginal Interpretation,” in Eric Patterson & Marc LiVecche, eds. Returning Military Necessity to Just War Statecraft (Routledge 2024); International and Transnational Criminal Law (4th ed., Aspen 2023) (with Julie O'Sullivan, David P. Stewart, and Neha Jain); and “The Crime of Aggression: Its Nature, the Leadership Clause, and the Paradox of Immunity,” forthcoming in Tom Dannenbaum & Eliav Lieblich, eds., Elgar’s Research Handbook on International Legal Theory and War. He is currently completing a book on the moral and legal thought of Hannah Arendt.