The Art of Manliness - The Code of the Warrior

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, it's Brett. I am sorry to be putting up another rerun episode of the podcast. We had hoped to come back from the holiday break with an entire slate of new episodes this month. Unfortunately, I got really laid up by COVID last week and I wasn't able to finish the new episode planned for today. The good news is I'm feeling better. We'll have a new episode going up on Wednesday. In the meantime, please enjoy this rebroadcast of episode number 625 Code of the Warrior. See you Wednesday.

00:00:30.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. War is a violent and bloody business, but it's rarely a no holds barred free for all. Instead, codes of conduct that determine what is and isn't honorable behavior on the battlefield have existed since ancient times. My guest today explored these various codes in a book she wrote during the decade she spent teaching at the United States Naval Academy. Her name is Shannon French. She's a professor of ethics and philosophy and her book is The Code of the Warrior, Exploring Warrior Values Past and Present.

00:00:58.180 Shannon and I begin our conversation with the pointed questions she used to pose to the cadet she taught as to how being a warrior was different from being a killer or murderer and when killing is and isn't ethical. She then explains how the warrior codes, which developed all around the world, arose organically from the warriors themselves for their own protection and how these codes are more about identity than rules. Shannon and I then take a tour of warrior codes across time and culture, starting with the code in Homer's Iliad and then moving into the strengths and weaknesses of the Stoic philosophy, which undergirded the code of the Romans.

00:01:27.480 From there, we unpacked the code of the medieval knights of Arthurian legend, what American Indians can teach soldiers about the need to make clear transitions between the home front and the war front, and how the Bushido Code of the Samurais sought to balance the influence of four different religions.

00:01:41.500 We enter a conversation in the role warrior codes play today in an age when artificial intelligence and drones are having a bigger role in combat.

00:01:48.720 After the show's over, check out the show notes at aom.is slash warrior code.

00:01:52.480 Shannon joins you now via clearcast.io.

00:01:57.480 All right, Shannon French, welcome to the show.

00:02:06.780 Thank you for having me.

00:02:07.820 So you are a professor of philosophy who specializes in ethics, particularly ethics and warfare. How did that happen?

00:02:16.380 I get that question a lot. Well, first of all, I'd always had a fascination for military history.

00:02:22.580 In fact, that goes so far back that I ran into someone I hadn't seen since I was eight years old a few years ago, and he said that he saw that I had written a book on Code of the Warrior, and he said, well, that makes sense.

00:02:37.120 So apparently, even as an eight-year-old child, I had shown an interest in this area.

00:02:42.920 But going forward, when I got into graduate school, my work was focused around the very difficult issues where self-interest and ethics seemed to conflict.

00:02:55.000 And in looking at that area, of course, the stakes are never higher than when it's life and death.

00:03:01.900 That led me into military ethics.

00:03:04.080 And what ultimately changed my life was getting the position to teach that at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis.

00:03:13.420 Well, let's talk about that.

00:03:14.160 So you taught ethics at the Naval Academy, and you had one class called Code of the Warrior, which you turned into a book that we're going to talk about today.

00:03:23.000 What was the response to that class to this idea of the Code of the Warrior?

00:03:25.960 Well, I have to say, I have so many wonderful memories of that time in my life and that experience of teaching Code of the Warrior to the midshipmen.

00:03:35.680 And essentially, this was an opportunity for them to really look at the issues that they would be facing very soon after their graduation and commissioning and to look at them from this background of not being the first people on Earth to face the kind of problems that were in their future, to feel part of something longer, a legacy that they were joining.

00:04:02.580 And so there was actually quite a lot of enthusiasm around that course.

00:04:06.960 And I will say, we also had a lot of fun with it.

00:04:09.560 And it sounds strange, perhaps, to talk about having fun with a military ethics course.

00:04:15.140 But what we were doing was trying to, as much as possible, let ourselves get into the mindset of these different warrior cultures and individual warriors.

00:04:25.580 And really try to put ourselves in their shoes and imagine what they faced and what we could learn from them going forward.

00:04:35.700 And that, of course, is something that could not have been more relevant.

00:04:41.960 And unfortunately, while I was at the Naval Academy, in the time that I was there, in the 11 years that I was there, we went from a force that was largely focused on things like humanitarian interventions to 9-11 happening.

00:04:55.620 And Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom and my students were going off to war.

00:05:05.880 So it went from being a course that they enjoyed to almost having an urgency to it.

00:05:14.840 It became extremely relevant very fast.

00:05:17.660 It did.

00:05:18.080 I mean, you talk about in your book, The Code of the Warrior, on the first day of this class, you'd often ask your students, give them a thought problem.

00:05:26.980 And it was this.

00:05:27.920 It was explaining the difference between words like warrior, killer, murderer, fighter, et cetera.

00:05:34.440 I mean, first off, how do they typically answer that question?

00:05:36.920 And then what were you hoping you would get your students to see going through this problem?

00:05:42.500 Yes, absolutely.

00:05:43.380 That exercise was critical to getting to the core of the point of the course and really also the point of the book.

00:05:51.520 What I wanted them to think about is that the act of killing is usually taboo.

00:05:58.300 In fact, it's one of the strongest taboos that we have as humans.

00:06:02.400 The idea that you would take another life is not taken lightly.

00:06:06.780 So what is the difference that could be found in killing in war?

00:06:13.620 And how do we identify where those lines are?

00:06:16.280 So when I asked them that question, it was interesting.

00:06:19.360 Sometimes the responses were almost angry.

00:06:22.180 Like, you know, how dare you even think to compare what people do as war fighters to murderers or even just killer, which sounded cold and purposeless to them, for example.

00:06:37.700 And murderer sounded definitely immoral, unethical.

00:06:40.840 And looking at the different choices, though, and analyzing them, they were able to identify why it mattered so much to them.

00:06:49.580 They did not want to be correctly labeled any of those other labels.

00:06:54.940 They wanted to know and they wanted to believe that what they were doing was distinct in an important way and not a way that would fall apart in the stress of actually having to make these decisions in real time.

00:07:12.980 And I think it also shows, even when you're engaging in warfare and you think, okay, my killing is legitimized, there's still a line there that you can cross eventually.

00:07:22.940 And some of these students kind of picked up on that as well.

00:07:25.720 They absolutely did.

00:07:27.180 And I think that's one of the most important things is that they recognize that you can commit murder during a war.

00:07:34.960 There is still an understanding that some types of killing in war fall under the heading of still being a warfighter, being a warrior, but others do cross that line and they become personal.

00:07:49.500 And they have to do with rage or vengeance or despair in some cases, and even hatred and certainly large helping of dehumanizing the people on the other side that you're fighting against.

00:08:06.600 And that if you do cross that line into those kinds of understandings of what the killing is that you're doing, it's really hard to get back out of that place that you go.

00:08:17.080 And that's something we talked a lot about, that if you cross the line and you kill out of one of these emotions that is not in any way linked to just doing your job, but is that deeply personal kind of killing, then it's really hard even to find your way back to the person you were before.

00:08:42.700 And what I think what I saw great about this book is, you know, you explore warrior codes from throughout history and throughout cultures.

00:08:50.360 And I think the big point is that this is a warrior codes are ubiquitous in humanity.

00:08:55.940 We often think that, you know, 21st century Westerners or whatever, that we had sort of moral superiority over people thousands of years ago.

00:09:04.920 But as you point out, like even the ancient Greeks grappled with this issue in their way.

00:09:10.120 I mean, it wasn't as maybe how we do it, but they were grappling this between this line between being a murderer and being a warrior.

00:09:18.000 I mean, why do you think that is?

00:09:18.820 Why do you think humanity has come up with codes of warrior throughout time and culture?

00:09:22.980 Well, I think, first of all, that it's good to point out, as you just did, that this isn't a new invention.

00:09:30.920 And occasionally I will get folks who think that even worrying about having limits or concepts of restraint for those who fight in wars is some kind of even like fuzzy, touchy-feely, new-agey kind of thing that came up recently.

00:09:49.760 And that's simply not the case.

00:09:51.740 And one of the main reasons that it's not the case is that all of these different codes throughout history were not imposed from the outside.

00:10:01.760 They came up organically within these warrior cultures primarily as a way to protect the warriors themselves.

00:10:10.480 That is the absolutely central point that I want people to grasp in the book and that I used to teach in the course.

00:10:17.940 Is that while, of course, we do need to care and all of us do care about restraining actions in war in order to protect innocence, that's how these laws of war are written in the first place.

00:10:31.100 But at the end of the day, the codes that the warriors embrace are there to protect them, to protect their humanity.

00:10:38.780 They're being asked to do something that puts them at great risk for moral injury.

00:10:46.880 And moral injury is connected to PTSD.

00:10:50.000 It's connected to suffering.

00:10:51.960 It's connected to a sense of losing your connection to the rest of your society, being isolated from them, being even driven out.

00:11:01.760 We don't want to do that to those that we've already asked so much of, that we're asking to fight and sacrifice on our behalf.

00:11:08.580 And the best protection we can give them is to give them these lines that they can rely on that help them see what they're doing has meaning, has limits, and is within that kind of structure.

00:11:24.280 And that is absolutely crucial to preserving really the well-being of warriors themselves.

00:11:31.840 And a lot of these codes, some of them do have very specific rules and regulations you're supposed to follow.

00:11:38.420 Today, there's laws that govern warfare.

00:11:41.180 There's rules of engagement.

00:11:42.660 But for the most part, the code, this is a little bit more amorphous.

00:11:47.760 It's sort of, I mean, it's almost Aristotelian in its ethics, where it's just like, just be a good person.

00:11:53.620 And it doesn't say exactly what you have to do to be a good soldier, be an ethical warrior.

00:11:58.320 But people, I think, inherently understand it.

00:12:01.840 Yeah, I think that's a really good insight, actually, because what you're looking at with most of these warrior codes is not so much a list of rules, but an identity that you're assuming.

00:12:13.200 You're taking on the mantle.

00:12:15.740 You're taking on an identity that actually requires you to, for example, be honorable, not act dishonorably.

00:12:23.280 And that is going to be vague, and it is going to depend in part on how it's defined through action within your own group.

00:12:32.280 But a lot of why it's vague is that rules by themselves are perhaps too vulnerable.

00:12:42.220 Once you create just a set of rules, there's always the chance that the situation that you find yourself in doesn't match the rules.

00:12:51.360 And then if you have nothing else to fall back on, you're lost with no guidance.

00:12:55.940 Assuming an identity that, and you mentioned Aristotle, which is a perfect connection here, an identity that requires you to embody certain virtues, gives you something still to rely on in those complicated situations.

00:13:11.580 You can still say, okay, there's nothing in the rule book about this, but if I still want to be a just person, if I want to be a honorable person, if I want to be a fair person, so on and so forth, then I need to figure out how to still embody those virtues in this situation through my actions.

00:13:33.640 I need to wrestle through it myself, but with those as my guideposts.

00:13:37.580 The other worry with just having a list is that people will also take that as just a minimum.

00:13:44.700 This happens a lot.

00:13:45.940 I so often have to clarify the difference between ethics and mere compliance.

00:13:53.020 And compliance with the law doesn't make you a good person.

00:13:56.860 Just think of it this way.

00:13:57.920 If at the end of your days, the only good thing someone could say about you is they weren't arrested, that wouldn't be great.

00:14:06.700 You know, just managing to stay out of trouble isn't the bar we're setting.

00:14:13.320 And so, these codes try with that intentional vagueness to set the bar higher and to say, I want you to be excellent.

00:14:23.160 I want you to try to embody all these virtues at once.

00:14:26.340 I want you to try to find that balance point, even though it's hard.

00:14:30.600 A modern example you gave of that in the book was the Marines.

00:14:34.440 You talk about there was this commander.

00:14:36.900 His whole thing was just Marines don't do that.

00:14:39.160 That was it.

00:14:40.520 It was very vague.

00:14:42.240 But as soon as someone came across something that seemed kind of like squidgy, it's like, yeah, Marines don't do that.

00:14:47.900 It's not what we do.

00:14:48.580 Yeah, there's a wonderful story about that in Mark O'Ciel's book on Obeying Orders, which I love because it's from the Vietnam War and it's a true story.

00:14:58.300 And it explains how those simple four words actually stopped someone from effectively committing a war crime.

00:15:04.600 But what it brings across for us is this point that the identity there is stronger also than the rules in the sense that you've chosen to be, for example, in that case, a Marine.

00:15:23.880 You chose that identity.

00:15:25.920 You've embraced it.

00:15:27.080 You've gone through all of the rites of passage and so forth to make you feel part of that community.

00:15:33.280 And so, betraying that is a big deal and it's a big enough deal that psychologically it can overcome the other pressures you're going to feel.

00:15:44.700 Because certainly, you can't have these conversations without talking about how incredibly hard it is to hold this kind of restraint in some of these circumstances.

00:15:54.760 That you are, in fact, going to be tempted to do the wrong thing.

00:15:59.500 That's something that I always tried to talk about in my class, that I didn't want them to give me pat answers.

00:16:07.500 If I said something like, would you ever shoot an unarmed POW?

00:16:11.980 If I just asked it like that, the students would, of course, say, why, no, ma'am.

00:16:17.060 That's wrong.

00:16:17.920 I would not do that.

00:16:19.400 But that's unhelpful.

00:16:21.320 That it's just a pat response to a straightforward question.

00:16:25.460 What you have to do instead is actually construct a scenario in your mind where you might really be tempted, where the person you've been dealing with has been picking off members of your platoon and you've had to see them die in your arms.

00:16:44.980 You finally confront, say, the sniper who's been picking off these folks that matter to you, who are like brothers and sisters to you, and they are smug and surrender in a way that says, what are you going to do now?

00:17:01.060 Wouldn't you, on some level, want to shoot them?

00:17:03.980 You have to admit that you would want to before you can talk about why you shouldn't. 0.81

00:17:11.980 And so getting them there is so important to have the conversation around why does that identity matter?

00:17:19.120 Why would you want it to be true that even when sorely tempted, there would be lines you would never cross?

00:17:26.960 So it seems like warrior codes are really about identity.

00:17:30.600 It's really trying to get the soldier to think about their identity as a warrior and warriors behave in a certain way, in an ethical way.

00:17:38.200 Yes, that's absolutely true.

00:17:39.600 And I feel like I should mention at this point, because there is a conversation that's happening even as we speak in the U.S. military, probably in others as well, around that word warrior.

00:17:51.900 For some, that word is uncomfortable.

00:17:54.020 They don't like that as the choice to define themselves, because, for example, they associate it with media portrayals of, or even potentially video game portrayals, of people fighting and killing who don't have restraint, who don't have limits.

00:18:14.300 And so they don't like that word warrior.

00:18:16.760 It sounds like a sort of Conan the Barbarian sort of thing to them.

00:18:22.000 And so I don't want to get completely, even though my book is called The Code of the Warrior, I don't want to make it all about that word exactly, but instead to make it about the word you use, that identity.

00:18:32.420 If your identity is as a soldier, a sailor, an airman, a marine, maybe warrior doesn't work for you, maybe your unit-specific identity works for you, but the key is it has to be something to which you have fully committed yourself.

00:18:48.420 And it has to be something that is linked to these ideas of different virtues and lines that you won't cross, because it isn't a meaningful identity if you can hold on to that identity regardless of how you behave.

00:19:04.000 It has to have those kind of limits.

00:19:06.100 It has to be that, but if you do X, you're not one of us anymore.

00:19:10.440 And that sounds harsh, but that's a really important part of all of this.

00:19:15.360 We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

00:19:17.060 And now back to the show.

00:19:21.320 Let's talk about some of these warrior codes that you highlight in the book.

00:19:24.480 And you go all the way back to the ancient Greeks, or even like pre-Greek.

00:19:28.100 I mean, this is like, we're talking about Homer's Iliad, Achilles, and Hector.

00:19:33.680 What was the code that governed them that you found looking at the texts that we have from there?

00:19:39.920 Well, I mean, first of all, that is a helpful example of where you can talk about these issues using fiction.

00:19:46.760 Because while we think that Homer was inspired by real events, we still classify his epics as some kind of fictional works.

00:19:55.600 It's embellished.

00:19:56.400 There's a lot of Greek gods that come in and have cameos and so forth.

00:20:00.280 But the point of them is very realistic, because what it does is it examines, again, the internal experience of being at war.

00:20:11.740 And those two figures that you mentioned, Achilles and Hector, in Homer's Iliad are particularly relevant today.

00:20:19.400 I mean, you might think that's odd, but it is true. 0.97

00:20:22.820 Because, for example, Achilles, from the very beginning, I mean, the first word of the Iliad is rage or wrath.

00:20:30.700 We sing about the rage of Achilles, sing goddess the rage of Achilles.

00:20:34.940 And the rage that he feels is, in large part, incredibly relatable to our modern troops.

00:20:45.040 Because it's the fact that he's been stuck in a seemingly unending conflict.

00:20:51.180 He feels so far away from home.

00:20:54.080 He's not sure if anyone back home cares anymore or if anything he does there really affects them at all or matters to them.

00:21:02.240 And he is doubtful of the leadership that he's under, and he's not confident that he's being led well.

00:21:11.660 And all of that plays into his growing despair about his experience.

00:21:18.640 And that's how we meet the great Achilles, is him really struggling with these psychological concepts that are very familiar to troops today in the forever wars.

00:21:29.300 And then later we meet Prince Hector, who has a clearer sense of what he's fighting for, because the Greeks are literally attacking his home, so he knows what's at stake. 0.90

00:21:40.800 But he is also close to despair, because he knows he's outmatched.

00:21:46.820 He knows that he can't ultimately defeat the godlike Achilles.

00:21:50.720 And he would, quite frankly, love to just run away and not have to deal with any of this, but he feels the pressure and responsibility to continue.

00:22:00.520 And then when these two men clash, one against another, you also see these issues of honor and dishonor.

00:22:08.460 Because for Hector, even in the midst of everything that, all the pressure he's under and everything that he's enduring, he does maintain his code and his internal sense of honor and even judged against an external sense of honor in his community.

00:22:23.960 Whereas Achilles, having lost Achilles, having lost his best friend, and in some ways the last person he really deeply cared about in that situation, having lost him, he cracks in a way.

00:22:39.820 He loses himself, he loses that identity.

00:22:42.540 And he ends up going into this one-on-one battle with Hector, having thrown off any of the restraint, having no longer embraced his warrior's code, but instead acting almost just on pure instinct, like an animal.

00:23:02.140 And he is prepared to destroy Hector, and it is very personal, and it is more like a murder than a killing in war.

00:23:11.500 Yeah, I mean, even then, the ancient Greeks had a, there was a line that you did not cross, and Achilles crossed that line.

00:23:19.440 He does, and he, in a sense, the point that is so poignant in the story is that while you understand his grief and his pain, because we've gotten to know Hector too,

00:23:34.820 there's a sense that Hector, you know, does not deserve what Achilles does to him.

00:23:41.560 And Achilles actually strips the body naked and drags it behind his chariot.

00:23:46.460 This is desecration of a corpse, and this is something that most cultures, even today, of course, consider to be a gross violation.

00:23:54.020 And when he does that, the horror of it strikes everyone on both sides of the conflict.

00:24:00.220 And again, I mentioned they had the, the story has the Greek gods in it, and the gods are horrified.

00:24:06.180 That's how far he's gone over the line.

00:24:08.600 And at that point, it no longer matters that Achilles is objectively the best fighter, because he still is.

00:24:15.660 There's, nobody doubts that, nobody questions that.

00:24:17.960 But he's lost this essential quality.

00:24:22.200 He's no longer honorable, having done that to the corpse.

00:24:26.820 And he even realizes he crossed the line when Hector's father, Priam, comes to Achilles to get his body, get Hector's body back.

00:24:34.360 Oh, yes.

00:24:34.920 And I love that scene.

00:24:36.180 It's an incredibly powerful scene in, in the epic, because what you end up seeing is an old warrior near the end of his life who knows that there's not much left for him.

00:24:47.340 So, this is, you know, the king who has seen so many of his sons die, and now his, his favorite son and heir, Hector, has died, and he knows his city's going to fall.

00:24:57.740 It's just, you know, there's, there's no good news on the horizon for him.

00:25:01.540 And he has to swallow his pride and go beg for his son's body back from the man who killed him and the man who desecrated that body.

00:25:09.880 But when they actually confront one another, Achilles looks at the older version of himself, in a sense, and he's incredibly moved.

00:25:19.480 And he, the two of them weep together.

00:25:22.340 And they talk about, in a sense, the horror of war, but they also talk specifically about basically the unfairness of life and how, from their perspective, the gods dole out good things and bad things, but they never give anyone just good.

00:25:41.480 They only give a mix at best, and for some people, nothing but sorrow.

00:25:46.300 And so, they see themselves as equal sufferers in this experience, and Achilles relents and essentially gets his soul back, gets some of his soul back from that experience.

00:25:59.900 And he does return the body because he has seen that what he did was wrong and that he wants to be worthy again, and he does make that ultimate decision.

00:26:11.940 Now, I will say, in the way that the Homeric cycle proceeds, it happens outside the bounds of the Iliad, but the gods still punish Achilles, and his punishment is significant, too, in that he's ultimately killed by someone who isn't worthy.

00:26:28.980 So, the gods actually help Prince Paris shoot that arrow that famously hits Achilles in his heel, his one weak spot.

00:26:38.580 And that is shameful under their culture to be killed by someone who is less than you are.

00:26:45.340 And so, there, too, the punishment does still come to Achilles.

00:26:49.100 All right. So, it sounds like from the Iliad, we can learn that the ancient Greeks did have a code of ethics in war that it could cross a line, and Achilles is a manifestation of that.

00:26:59.500 And I think Hector is also just a great example of an ideal soldier that you'd want to embody.

00:27:04.860 Like, he knew he was going to lose, but he still felt duty-bound to defend his home, defend his country.

00:27:11.780 Absolutely. And he's another example of someone who is very relatable, even in modern times, because he is honorable, but it's not in a kind of empty reflex way.

00:27:25.920 He thinks deeply about what he's facing, and he admits privately, you know, we get a glimpse inside his mind, and he admits that he wishes he could run away from it all.

00:27:37.180 And there even is a moment before he has his ultimate, you almost want to call it a duel with Achilles, where he actually does run away.

00:27:45.480 So, he has a moment of weakness that is so human that it kind of just makes him a little bit more lovable.

00:27:52.060 He sees Achilles with armor made by the gods and recognizes that he has no chance of surviving, and for a moment, his will cracks, and he runs away from him.

00:28:02.860 But then, what brings him back is also relatable.

00:28:06.040 He believes that he sees one of his brothers, so imagine that in kind of a band of brothers sense.

00:28:12.620 And that reminds him, again, of this identity.

00:28:16.140 He's reminded of who he is and what he owes others, and it's actually that love that he feels for Troy and for his fellow Trojans that makes him stop running and turn and face his inevitable death at the hands of Achilles.

00:28:30.260 And that is, again, I think a moment where people really recognize that this experience is timeless, that you can put yourself in this character's shoes from millennia ago and recognize things that we could see in any modern conflict.

00:28:50.900 All right, so let's fast forward to the ancient Romans.

00:28:54.940 And you say the Romans had sort of a jahnist-faced view towards military ethics.

00:29:00.740 What do you mean by that?

00:29:01.720 Well, on the one hand, the influences on the Romans were partly from the existing religion that was there at the time, which was a follow-on in many ways to the one that we saw in the Iliad, the Greek religion, the polytheistic with many gods.

00:29:20.200 And they had philosophies that were dominant at the time that the Roman legion was at its height, and they influenced the troops certainly at the time.

00:29:33.900 And probably the one that is most relevant for that is Stoicism, and that has absolutely survived until the present day and has helped many people in trying to reconcile themselves to their fates in war and other conflicts.

00:29:49.280 But there was also a thread of what we would today call sort of hedonism, but the idea that if there is no afterlife, which many of the Romans believed there was not, or there wasn't a meaningful one, there wasn't one where you would be sorted based on your behavior, that all there is is this life.

00:30:11.620 And so, you probably heard the old saying, you know, eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

00:30:15.480 So, there's a bit of a being torn between a almost devil-may-care attitude on the one hand, and the Stoic philosophy, which is incredibly demanding.

00:30:28.220 In fact, Stoicism is so demanding that it does not allow any wavering from honorable behavior, even if you are tortured, even if you are put under extreme duress.

00:30:41.740 There's just no excuses in that original tradition.

00:30:46.500 The idea is that you must always do the right thing, kind of, to use another expression, though the heavens fall.

00:30:52.360 And so, all of which is to say that Roman legions going off into far corners of the empire had to decide which of these inspired them and which of these got them through, all in the context of fighting in disciplined units where you had to be able to rely on the man next to you.

00:31:15.640 And you had to know that that man was going to keep his shield where it needed to be to protect your flank.

00:31:22.940 And if they weren't there, then you were dead.

00:31:26.360 So, it's an interesting, I think, tradition to study because you have to look at how all those things played together and how people found their way with all these different influences.

00:31:37.920 I mean, so, on that Stoicism side, for a soldier or a military leader, you know, Marcus Aurelius is the most famous military leader who was also a Stoic philosopher.

00:31:47.760 Like, what did it mean to be a virtuous warrior if you took that Stoic idea?

00:31:55.280 Well, it was the ultimate no complaints, no excuses philosophy.

00:32:00.160 So, for Marcus Aurelius, and you're quite right, you know, he was someone who led troops into combat and was himself right there with them in a lot of cases.

00:32:12.680 So, he wasn't leading from back at the capital.

00:32:16.160 He had the belief that everything was predetermined, that you had a role to play.

00:32:23.820 And whether we want to play that out as fate or however you want to think of that, but the important thing was you were assigned a role.

00:32:31.400 And if your role was a soldier in the Roman legions, then it was your entire purpose in life to do that role as well as you could.

00:32:41.740 So, whatever task you were given, every one of those tasks had that same point of pressure on it.

00:32:51.980 So, what I mean by that is that you couldn't slack off anywhere.

00:32:57.380 If you were told to clear a forest, then by God, you needed to clear that forest the best way a forest has ever been cleared.

00:33:05.680 You were meant to take everything as absolutely defining you.

00:33:10.300 So, maybe you think of it in this term, in these terms, it would be to imagine that if you were told to guard a particular point, then imagining that that would be the entire story that could ever be told of you, whether or not you guarded that point, was the way you needed to approach that.

00:33:32.520 And so, that actually carried on, and I mentioned this with the torture analogy, that you should not sacrifice those tasks and those assignments.

00:33:41.880 You shouldn't fail those roles, regardless of what happens to you.

00:33:45.780 So, Marcus Aurelius made the point that the one thing you have control over is your response to external events.

00:33:55.220 The external events are going to do whatever they're going to do, and the people around you are going to do whatever they're going to do.

00:34:00.900 But the one thing you have control over is your response, how you react.

00:34:06.940 And so, it was absolutely imperative for a Stoic warrior to always react honorably with literally no regard for the consequences to themselves.

00:34:19.540 So, it's a very, very high bar, and I don't think there's many that are much higher that you can find.

00:34:25.320 And as you said, the Stoic ideal still lives on today.

00:34:29.140 Many soldiers across the world go to Stoicism as a way to help them manage their role as a soldier.

00:34:36.800 It still speaks to a lot of people, in part because their lives they know are going to be filled with things they can't control.

00:34:48.020 And as I mentioned at the very outset, a lot of those things are going to be incredibly high stakes.

00:34:55.000 They are going to be life and death.

00:34:56.200 So, when you're faced with a lot of awful things, including the losses that you're going to experience and the harms that you yourself have to cause in your job,

00:35:08.820 then having this very strict philosophy to fall back on has its comforting elements.

00:35:17.160 Because you can tell yourself that I have to do these things, I have to lose these people, but the only thing I can control is whether or not I do the absolute best that I can.

00:35:30.480 And as long as I do that, I am fulfilling my role.

00:35:35.040 And that is all that I have charge of.

00:35:39.060 And so, it is something that makes you feel a bit more empowered in an otherwise helpless situation.

00:35:46.120 And unfortunately, troops find themselves in those kinds of situations a lot.

00:35:50.840 Right. Well, you know, James Stockdale, a famous prisoner of war in Vietnam, went on to become a professor, I think, at the War College.

00:35:57.800 He famously, he used stoicism to get through his years in Vietnam as a prisoner of war.

00:36:03.100 Absolutely. And he made it completely clear that he does not think he could have survived without that philosophy.

00:36:09.120 Because if you talk about feeling helpless, there is no more helplessness than being in that kind of prisoner situation where everything you experience is being controlled by others with the aim of breaking you down,

00:36:23.620 with the intentional aim of trying to make you give up those ideals, make you violate the trust that you've established, make you betray your friends.

00:36:33.100 And the only way he found to resist that was to say that these things are happening to my body, these things are happening externally to me, but the me that I control is untouchable.

00:36:46.940 And that's the part of me that responds to it.

00:36:49.600 And that's what got Stockdale through, was clinging on to that idea that he wasn't powerless.

00:36:55.460 As much as he appeared powerless, he wasn't, because he could control his reactions.

00:37:02.660 And his writings on that are wonderful to read.

00:37:06.080 And I will say his legacy lives on in many ways, including that there is a Stockdale chair in ethics that's currently held by my very good friend,

00:37:13.660 Pauline Shanks-Corin up at Navy War College.

00:37:16.560 And at the Naval Academy, where I used to work, there is a Stockdale Center for Ethics.

00:37:21.740 So we have not forgotten Admiral Stockdale.

00:37:24.900 Do you think there are any downsides to using Stoicism as an ethical framework for a soldier or a warrior?

00:37:31.900 The part that I struggle with, and I think I say this with the understanding that not everyone will struggle with it.

00:37:41.420 And so I don't want to discourage anyone from embracing Stoicism if it is helpful.

00:37:47.220 They need what they need.

00:37:49.520 But for myself, I think what I struggle with is that it does require you to have a certain kind of emotional detachment from suffering and loss,

00:37:59.620 not only in the moment, but permanently.

00:38:03.560 And that, I'm not sure, is sustainable for everyone.

00:38:06.920 I think that depends a lot on individual psychology.

00:38:10.200 And what I mean by that is, it's one thing to say that you can't, unfortunately, take time to mourn your losses in the middle of ongoing combat.

00:38:21.320 If you did, more people may die.

00:38:24.420 You have to, to some extent, embrace Stoicism to get through that moment with any hope of seeing future moments.

00:38:34.480 But I like better the idea that then when you are finally allowed out of that urgent moment and allowed a moment to breathe,

00:38:48.320 that you can also fully mourn and remember those you've lost and feel that pain and experience it,

00:38:58.320 maybe even weep the way that Achilles wept with King Prime.

00:39:02.620 And I think that to suggest that there's any weakness to that is a bad idea.

00:39:10.140 And I'm not sure Stoicism necessarily does accuse anyone of weakness, but it certainly does discourage taking those moments later.

00:39:18.460 And for myself, I believe that it's really important to give people the time and the space to mourn and fully feel what they've gone through.

00:39:30.140 And in fact, other warrior cultures that I studied have more about that and more about how that can help with the transitions.

00:39:37.180 All right, well, let's fast forward to medieval era and particularly the Round Table, the Knights of the Round Table,

00:39:45.140 which is probably the most famous code in the West because this is, you know, particularly in Mallory's Arthurian Tells,

00:39:52.120 you actually see a code sort of explicitly laid out because the knights had to take this oath.

00:39:57.900 So for those who aren't familiar, what was the oath or the general tenets of it?

00:40:02.040 Well, what's wonderful about this idea and the way that Mallory wrote it?

00:40:06.240 I mean, again, we have to note that this is someone writing a work of fiction and trying to create an ideal.

00:40:13.440 And that ideal has inspired many people.

00:40:15.640 And I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

00:40:17.260 I think that sometimes, in fact, these fictional works, because they allow us inside the minds of these different people experiencing war,

00:40:26.380 are more helpful than any other source in allowing us to work through what is needed for a good code.

00:40:34.040 So in Mallory's work, what we're looking at is an idealized code of chivalry, and it includes things like never to do outrageosity, I love that word, or murder.

00:40:45.500 It requires you to always do succor for those who are in need and particularly damsels in distress.

00:40:51.560 Basically, the broad strokes of it are to require the knights to be servant leaders.

00:41:01.640 And I like to talk about this, particularly now, because I think this is a concept that a lot of people who work in the space of leadership are familiar with,

00:41:10.780 but that doesn't always make it into the public conversation around what leaders should be.

00:41:17.440 And in Mallory's Le Morte d'Artour and in other works about King Arthur, one of the things that really does come through is the idea that knights,

00:41:28.120 while they had the power, while they were the best armed, they had the equipment, they had the skills to just be bullies,

00:41:36.200 to just be tyrants, they voluntarily took an oath to use that power to help those who were weaker than themselves and to not abuse that power.

00:41:48.120 So, the whole outrageosity point is that you are not to use this strength that you have as a way to take advantage of others,

00:41:58.780 but instead to advance what's right.

00:42:01.500 And that's really relatable, again, because it fits nicely with the idea that, and I saw this with my midshipmen,

00:42:08.980 and I still see this with the troops that I get to work with today,

00:42:12.180 the people who sign up for the military in this country, they don't want to be the bad guys.

00:42:19.820 They don't, you know, they're not joining for the most part to simply be able to take people out.

00:42:26.640 They actually have more of a guardian role in mind.

00:42:31.140 And that is this chivalry ideal in a lot of ways.

00:42:35.200 It's this concept that you take the strength, and you use it as a force for good in the world,

00:42:42.360 and you use it to protect the weak.

00:42:44.740 And I think a lot of that does come in the West from this concept of the Knights of the Round Table

00:42:50.360 and what that ideal represents for people.

00:42:54.700 So, you devote a section to Native American warrior codes,

00:42:57.780 and, you know, Native American culture, every tribe is different, has its own unique warrior culture.

00:43:01.960 For your book, what tribes did you focus on?

00:43:05.200 Well, I absolutely could not do justice to the incredible wide range of tribes of Native Americans.

00:43:12.780 And that's, again, only looking at Native Americans, 0.76

00:43:15.380 as there's so many other indigenous groups around the world.

00:43:18.860 So, what I ended up doing was to focus on the Plains tribes.

00:43:23.220 And I did that largely because I wanted to bring in particular points of wisdom

00:43:29.480 that I didn't think were necessarily captured in the other cultures that I'd looked at yet,

00:43:35.220 and that I think, again, have great relevance for modern troops.

00:43:40.700 And in particular, what I wanted to bring out that I thought the Plains tribes were really quite brilliant at

00:43:47.260 was the understanding of these transitions that people who fight need to make.

00:43:53.220 And what I mean by that is, when you have to cross that line of taking a human life,

00:44:02.540 even if you do it within the boundaries of a warrior's code, it still does something to you.

00:44:08.880 Even if you have no doubt in the moment that you had to do it, that it was you or him,

00:44:14.520 even if it falls even in a square place of self-defense in your mind,

00:44:20.320 or if you were defending someone else, you still took a human life, and that has a cost.

00:44:27.640 And you also simply participated in a level of violence that doesn't fit anywhere else,

00:44:35.120 that if you did the same behavior in another context in your society, it would horrify everyone.

00:44:42.020 So, you need some help transitioning from that experience, and even from the structure and

00:44:49.500 living with other warriors that you have been in, in order to do whatever mission you're on,

00:44:55.800 to transition from that back to being with your family, being with your tribe, in this case.

00:45:02.780 So, what they put in place, and it does differ for different tribes, but to give you the gist of it,

00:45:09.740 were different transition rituals that really acknowledged this need to feel that you were

00:45:18.240 setting aside that part of you that was the warrior and returning to the peaceful part of you

00:45:24.780 that could be with your family and that would not commit what we would call today acts of domestic

00:45:30.160 violence, for example. And so, they would do things that would mark the point where you have

00:45:36.340 stepped away from your combat role, and you were stepping back into your peaceful role within the

00:45:42.000 tribe. They would allow you to purge yourself, whether it's, for example, a sweat lodge ceremony,

00:45:48.580 where you're literally sort of sweating out, you know, that experience, but also talking about it.

00:45:53.560 And one of the things that isn't always understood is that there's an element of group therapy in a lot

00:45:59.360 of these rituals where you and others who have seen what you've seen and done what you've done

00:46:04.580 are in it together, and you're all letting it go, and you're all taking this moment to acknowledge it

00:46:11.560 and process it before you return to your families so you can change modes. And I just think that's

00:46:18.860 something that we have lost sight of. There's been tremendous work by folks who work in the space

00:46:25.560 of moral injury. I particularly admire the work of Jonathan Shea, who's done just marvelous things.

00:46:31.380 He wrote the book Achilles in Vietnam and also Odysseus in America, and others who have understood

00:46:38.580 this importance of transitions. But it hasn't made it all the way, again, through the culture,

00:46:45.020 and it hasn't made it into policy and practice to the degree I would like to see it.

00:46:50.800 That idea of rituals for transitioning into warrior mode and then transitioning out of warrior mode is

00:46:54.880 something that we could, an insight we can get from Native American culture.

00:46:59.240 Absolutely.

00:47:00.340 Okay, let's move on to an Eastern warrior culture, and probably the most famous that people know about

00:47:06.320 here in the West is the Bushido Code of the Samurai. First, can you give us a little bit of background

00:47:11.800 on the samurai? Because I think it'll help us understand why they developed this code that they did.

00:47:17.580 Oh, yes. I mean, it is absolutely fascinating. It's no surprise that people have heard of it,

00:47:23.020 because it draws you in. Once you start studying and learning about the samurai and Bushido,

00:47:28.620 it does definitely draw you in. The starting point is already incredibly complex, because they're

00:47:36.020 influenced by four different religions, and finding the balance point there amongst four different

00:47:41.820 influences is quite the trick. They're influenced by the indigenous religion of Japan, Shinto, but also

00:47:51.940 Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. And all of those are woven into this fabric of a warrior's code,

00:48:02.100 where you are to balance things that aren't necessarily, at least on the face of it, all that

00:48:08.480 compatible. And what I mean by that is, so on the one hand, Shinto requires you to honor your ancestors

00:48:14.940 and act in a way that reflects honor on them. And that is a kind of an attachment that you have

00:48:23.160 to the past and to a legacy and to a tradition. Now, you can understand that being very powerful

00:48:30.960 in warrior's code, but when you blend that with Buddhism, the core tenet of which is non-attachment,

00:48:37.860 it's hard to know how you find, again, the balance point for that. But Buddhism, amongst many other

00:48:46.200 things, teaches another point that you can imagine being very helpful to warriors, and that is this

00:48:53.720 idea that as you go through life, you are trying to find the middle path between extremes, and that if

00:49:01.380 you allow your experiences in war to drive you to one of these extremes, then you are pushing yourself

00:49:07.620 further from enlightenment. And you have to keep bringing yourself back and trying to find that

00:49:14.200 middle path, that middle way. It also has these defined limits around right action and trying to

00:49:20.400 find how you can behave correctly as a warrior in that role and still be moving towards a better

00:49:29.200 understanding of your place in the universe. And it helps deal with death as well, because ultimately

00:49:34.440 the goal for a Buddhist is not any kind of individual survival, but to really merge with

00:49:43.480 the infinite, to be one with the universe. And the peace that is meant to come from that is an end of

00:49:50.380 all suffering. So, you could see that as something held out as hope for warriors who are seeing a lot of

00:49:55.660 suffering and having to endure a lot of pain and discomfort. But then they're also balancing those

00:50:01.720 two influences with Taoism, which is something that what I emphasize in the book is that

00:50:09.360 really, when you have to go into a combat situation, the level of focus that you required

00:50:19.020 to maintain, we often talk about people having their head on a swivel, having to be on a level of

00:50:25.220 alert that is incredibly much of a strain to maintain for a long period of time, that that wears you out

00:50:32.600 in a unique way and throws you out of balance. And Taoism is all about balance. And it's about balancing

00:50:39.040 things like the yin and the yang and finding your other side to put yourself back at peace. So, it is

00:50:47.320 helpful for the warriors. And actually, the samurai played this out in a fascinating way, because they thought

00:50:53.160 well, if I'm going to be fighting and the combat side of me is going to be bringing out all of that

00:51:00.120 violence, then in my downtime, I need to intentionally choose to do things that are the opposite of that.

00:51:07.060 And so, they would do things like watercolor painting and origami and flower arranging and being out in

00:51:14.380 nature. And I find it fascinating that modern work in neurology and neuroscience, neuroethics,

00:51:21.480 even all of this area. It's an emerging fields that are fascinating. Bear this out that it is

00:51:28.620 really helpful for a healthy and stable brain to cycle in this way, that if you're experiencing too

00:51:36.800 much of one kind of stimulation, you need to intentionally balance it with these others. So,

00:51:41.580 they had an intuitive sense of that. And then last but not least, this Confucian influence

00:51:46.880 has a lot to do with your relationships with other people, in particular, power relationships.

00:51:54.680 And that's something that a lot of people think of when they think of the samurai,

00:51:58.840 because they had a tremendously strong sense of duty to those in leadership roles. And the idea that you

00:52:06.080 would always help those above you save face, and that you would do everything in your power to not

00:52:12.360 embarrass them, and to make them look good, even at your own expense. And so, all of these play into

00:52:19.740 how the samurai tried to shape their code.

00:52:23.520 And this code, I mean, it influenced Japanese soldiers all the way into World War II.

00:52:28.380 It absolutely did. And one could even argue that it still influences a lot of Japanese business

00:52:33.740 tactics today. There's still this idea that saving face is important, and that that can work both

00:52:41.700 ways. What I mean by that is, on the positive side, it is selfless. It is putting the interests of the

00:52:49.900 mission or the unit above yourself. But it can be bad if it's around simply covering up bad things,

00:52:59.080 covering up negativity or bad news from people who actually need to know it in order to make sure

00:53:06.040 that no one is embarrassed. And you can see those struggles even today in Japanese politics and other

00:53:12.520 elements of their culture, that on the one hand, tremendous loyalty and some selflessness that can

00:53:20.260 be astounding. But on the other hand, sometimes covering up bad things or bad news in a way that

00:53:28.120 delays proper responses.

00:53:30.020 So with all these codes, I mean, I think even today we can see the influence of these ancient

00:53:36.360 warrior codes that we've talked about even today, even with our rules of engagements, laws of warfare

00:53:40.860 that we have. I think most soldiers go in understanding that there's a higher code, a more amorphous,

00:53:45.860 vague code that they're called to fill. Do you think with the way that war is changing today,

00:53:51.720 let's say with asymmetric warfare, drones, cyber warfare, do codes need to change or are they going to stay the

00:53:58.420 same? The need for the code is not going to change. And in fact, arguably, it's more important than ever.

00:54:07.280 The details of any one code, and we've talked about them being vague to start with, but the identities

00:54:13.160 that are developed will have to match what jobs they have. But I think it's a huge mistake to imagine

00:54:21.120 that warrior codes will ever be a thing of the past as long as there is war and conflict, as long as people

00:54:28.100 are dying. An example I can give is when we first started using UAVs and so forth, drones, there was

00:54:36.920 a mistaken belief. And I even fell into this briefly at the beginning, just when I first heard about them

00:54:42.500 before I had a chance to reflect on it further or talk to folks about it. There was a sense that people

00:54:48.440 thought maybe those fighting from so far away with video screens in front of them would be immune from

00:54:59.280 things like moral injury, that they would be, it would feel to them like a video game. That was the

00:55:05.020 concern that people had. And also for some, even a positive that, oh, well, maybe we will have fewer

00:55:11.180 incidents of trauma amongst these folks. But as things played out, we realized that, sadly, that was not the

00:55:19.260 case. And in fact, there were high incidents of, for example, PTS and other trauma responses among drone

00:55:27.500 operators. And one of the reasons was that they were not detached. Although they were physically away from the

00:55:35.180 moment of the impact, for example, of what they're doing, they could see it. And they could see it in

00:55:41.440 high res. You know, they could see highly pixelated details of the people they were watching, the people

00:55:47.740 they were effectively stalking, and then ultimately killing, and then see the effects of those deaths on

00:55:54.460 the family members nearby and so forth. So, it actually was more important than ever that they

00:56:02.280 understand where their lines were and when those killings were justified and when they were not.

00:56:09.260 Because to the degree that they couldn't see a difference between what they were doing and

00:56:14.320 someone murdering someone with a sniper rifle, if they couldn't see that difference, then they felt

00:56:21.060 themselves that they had done something vile. And so, we have to, again, for the sake of the warriors

00:56:30.000 themselves, we have to make sure that these lines are clear and that they exist. And a lot of that

00:56:34.760 pressure is also on policymakers because it is a betrayal of our troops to ask them to do things

00:56:43.200 that cross too many lines. And that is, in fact, undermining them, not making life easier for them.

00:56:50.260 It always drives me nuts when people who have a distanced perspective to all of this will say,

00:56:57.700 why should you have any rules for our troops? Just let them take the gloves off and fight any

00:57:02.460 way they want. That's not doing our troops a favor. That's actually making life worse for them.

00:57:09.420 You don't help them by removing the code. The code is there for their protection. It's there to allow

00:57:16.360 them to hold on to their humanity and to know that what they're doing has honor to it. And if you strip

00:57:22.480 that away from them, you're harming them more than any bullet ever could.

00:57:27.140 Well, Shannon, this has been a great conversation. Is there some place people can go to learn more

00:57:30.080 about the book and your work?

00:57:31.480 Well, absolutely. I mean, we're quite proud of the fact that at my university,

00:57:37.080 at Case Western Reserve University, we've actually started the first military ethics master's degree

00:57:42.100 program in the country. And so, you can go to militaryethics at case.edu and learn about that

00:57:49.740 program there and my work. And we have some videos and things there that you can watch. And also,

00:57:55.700 of course, the book itself. But this work is ongoing. And we are always trying to recruit

00:58:02.080 more people into military ethics to help us wrestle with the problems of the past and the future.

00:58:08.520 Well, Shannon French, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:58:10.260 Thank you so much.

00:58:12.620 My guest there is Shannon French. She's the author of the book,

00:58:14.820 The Code of the Warrior, Exploring Warrior Values, Past and Present. It's available on amazon.com.

00:58:19.360 Also, check out our show notes at aom.is slash warrior code,

00:58:22.600 where you can find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic.

00:58:32.340 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website at

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00:59:06.620 Brett McKay, reminding you not only to listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - January 10, 2022

The Code of the Warrior

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