Why Killing in War is Traumatic: Emmanuel Levinas and a model of moral injury from actions we have normative permission to perform

Abstract

This investigation will provide a model to make sense of why it is so inherently traumatic to kill another human – independent of normative circumstances. It will examine the construct of moral injury, a term that has entered the diagnostic and social lexicons under the guise of an explanation of why certain acts may be psychologically deleterious, and has rapidly become the ‘signature’ war-wound of contemporary engagements. Current research agendas identify existential dissonance caused by perpetrative agency, specifically killing, as the most potent causal factor. While research into why perpetration appears so etiologically significant is available under various guises, these accounts have been unable, or unwilling, to unravel the normative assignations that surround the suffering experienced. The paucity of such approaches in providing a basis for understanding why we would feel bad for certain actions which we have normative permission to perform, is the basis for an alternative, phenomenologically driven investigation, informed by the French philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas. Major topics such as death and suffering of ourselves and others, will be shown to play central roles in conceiving, and justifying, a compelling alternative to existing narratives. Through a disambiguation of the origins of one’s obligations, obligations that are inadvertently lain bare by agency, an ‘ethical model’ will be proposed that proffers a framework to accurately describe the previously unexplained distress pathway that arises from our agency (or lack there-of). In articulating a model which anchors both our ethical and moral sensibilities, a tool emerges with which to make philosophical and psychological sense of suffering that is buried deeper than normative determinations of moral expediency.