Sherman, Nancy, Stoic Warriors: The Ancient Philosophy behind the Military Mind, Oxford University Press, 2005. 242pp.

A recent article in the New Yorker discussed the repeated use of torture on the TV program “24.” Portraying torture as an effective, speedy means of extracting critical information from prisoners is flawed, it claimed. The program’s producer, Joel Surnow, continues to make torture a key dramatic element in 24’s “ticking clock” format, despite informal requests from the US military to avoid doing so. The military is concerned that young soldiers will decide that Jack Bauer’s repeated brutalities are indeed a useful emergency tool on the modern battlefield. A contrary point of view about whether “24″ is innately conservative is outlined in this article in TCS Daily.

Two questions lingered after reading the New Yorker article. (1) Is torture ever useful for gathering information on an urgent basis? (2) Does the American public’s apparent comfort with the fictional torture in “24″ indicate some unrequited desire for retribution and intimidation, and/or reflect an unacknowledged (and untapped) group resolve?

On (1) I think we won’t hear from those who use interrogation (successfully or not) in urgent situations. That’s unfortunate but inevitable.

On (2), my guess is that 24’s popularity (with both sexes!) does reflect a deep sense of vulnerability, a need for catharsis, and is fully compatible with the tradition of popular American entertainment which stylizes vengeance, action, and “immediate problem resolution.” It may also be a “crabgrass Jacksonian” indictment of an American leadership which gives the appearance (perhaps inaccurately) of wanting to fight kinder, gentler wars. A parallel obsession with organized crime and serial murderers in American popular culture also has quite a history. The vicarious thrill of setting all restraint aside to deal with the frustrations and unfairness of American life is addictive. If there’s an appetite for these portrayals of American civilian life, it’s no surprise that we’d also see them extrapolated to national defense. We’re certainly not at the point, however, where public discussion of “just how far we’ll go” will be addressed honestly outside fiction.

For a variety of reasons, I don’t “get” this particular TV show. So its inherent contradictions and fictional simplifications don’t bother me greatly. Nonetheless, reading the New Yorker article on the controversy did remind me that I’ve been struggling unsuccessfully with some similar moral conundrums for the last 18 months. The ambivalence over 24’s violence, and its simultaneous popularity, is a reasonable starting point for a discussion of the world of military necessity and its repercussions for soldiers and society.

For many months, I’ve been grabbing “Stoic Warriors” filled with resolve to finish it and write up a summary. Ethics professor Nancy Sherman reviews the principles of Greco-Roman Stoicism and discusses whether this ancient philosophical tradition can offer something to the modern American military. I’ve had a long-standing interest in military matters and Roman culture. I’ve read a recent academic attempt to resurrect Stoicism as a serious modern philosophy. So I ordered Stoic Warriors with great anticipation, moments after seeing its publication announcement on Amazon. This should be a compelling read, I thought. Yet within minutes of first picking up “Stoic Warriors,” my mind would wander and I inevitably found something more urgent to do. Such as write reviews of forty other books. The cycle of try-and-fail repeated many times, despite the book’s solid writing and apt anecdotes.

It’s not the topic nor the subject matter of the book that has delayed this review. And it’s not the writing style nor any lack of author sincerity. It was instead the underlying set of cultural values that the author brings to the area of military affairs. Since Vietnam, it seems, soldiers are subject to standards above and beyond that of civil society. At least one portion of Americans wants its military victories without guilt and without mess. It wants perfection.

Trauma, error, and mismanagement that is ignored or mocked in prisons, ERs, animal shelters, slaughterhouses, slums, X-Games competitions, football fields, and obstetrics wards is now treated very differently when it involves the military. So does capital “S” stoicism have something to offer American soldiers placed under this unique and hypocritical spotlight by postmodern American culture?

No. I think it’s fair to say that the author, in the final assessment, believes nothing can console soldiers … except ceasing to be soldiers. Soldiering turned into some sort of physically-fit bureaucracy that does nothing useful militarily has a much better prospect of fulfilling its moral mandate.

My opinion, thoroughly amateur, is that ignoring (or underplaying) the mental and physical suffering of warriors (and their enemies) is an essential talent for any successful nation. That the Western world appears to be the first culture unilaterally abandoning that talent is rather amazing. So I see problems ahead.

How she reached her conclusion and how I reached mine, is the subject of a very long blog post (>14K words).

Introduction

For the average person, stoicism comes wrapped in a Christian context. American Heritage defines “stoic” as “one who is seemingly indifferent to or unaffected by joy, grief, pleasure, or pain.” So in common parlance stoicism is about emotional reserve, endurance of pain and suffering, and commitment in the face of constant sacrifice. Indeed, much of the public’s admiration for the military centers around the deportment of its individuals. The personality changes associated with military training are the highlight of almost every TV ad recruiting young men and women. These are changes that command respect in friends, parents, and in members of society, generally. After years of adhering to a military standard of deportment, officers and NCOs are clearly different from the ordinary citizen, and new recruits find those exemplars deeply compelling. The practical role of such deportment in times of emergency or stress is still respected in the US, even as it is misunderstood.

Dr. Sherman’s goals for evaluating Greco-Roman Stoicism in military life are more ambitious. As the inaugural occupant of a Distinguished Chair in Ethics at the US Naval Academy from 1997 to 1999, she had a number of opportunities to work with cadets and military folk, and to reflect on the ethical challenges facing the American military more generally. Beyond simply the practical appeal of small “s” stoicism, can capital “S” stoicism provide the moral and ethical tools necessary to make virtuous decisions in America’s military? Can it provide sufficient solace for those damaged physically and mentally by the modern battlefield? If one circumnavigates the military’s ethical lapses over the last forty years, would Stoicism have a positive role to play? Are there case studies which illustrate ethical failures which Stoicism could forestall?

For a number of reasons, such questions have interested me for many years. In the course of this review, I’d like to summarize the book, identify its limited scope and applicability, explain why I found it so challenging to read, and broach some broader concerns about sustained human conflict in the future. Perhaps we can identify the price Anglosphere soldiers will be asked to pay. My viewpoint is that of amateur historian and anthropologist, so my opinion must obviously be discounted heavily. But I’m reasonably confident that I’ve identified some issues that the professionals (of many stripes) will need to address. My overall argument will be structured as follows:

1. Is an ancient philosophy worth resurrecting in modern times? An outline Dr. Sherman’s argument, and her primary concerns.
2. Was an ancient philosophy useful in the past?Evaluate Stoicism in its original historical and military context.
3. Are the conditions for soldiers changed from the past? Review the childhood experiences of our modern military recruits that might affect their adult expectations and endurance under stress.
4. Do Americans share the same premises about warfare? Inspect the “civilianization” of war and warfare in America, and the West. How does the political divide reflect a cultural divide?
5. What will be the conditions of warfare in the next century? Review the scale of the peace-prosperity differential across the world, its likely durability, and the resulting implications for the nature and length of future war.
6. What is the future of moral philosophy? Will the cognitive sciences overtake philosophy in better explaining human experience and human emotion?
7. Can we fight any future war successfully under current constraints? Some Conclusions. Ask whether the traditional blind spots supporting military sacrifice (and military victory) in the past are permanently gone, and conclude with some personal thoughts on the restructuring that I think will be needed to fight wars in the future.

Stoic Warriors raises many disturbing questions, yet skirts over the most important, in my opinion. Within the framework of Anglosphere history, I’m going to try to sketch out what I think a fuller set of ethical and practical issues might be.

Please note: For purposes of this review, Stoicism will be used to describe the formal Greco-Roman philosophy and attitude, while stoicism will represent the common usage of the term in our time, with its implicit Christian flavour.

1. Is an ancient philosophy worth resurrecting in modern times?

Stoic Warriors - A Synopsis

In Dr. Sherman’s own words:

Popularized notions of being stoic resonated with young and older officers alike, but so too did the readings of actual Stoic philosophers such as Epictetus. The idea that one’s happiness could depend solely on one’s own virtue and that one’s agency and control might be bulletproof appealed to them. But few had thought seriously about the costs of being stoic. Personal psychological costs may the most obvious. Critical, but little noticed, are diminished capacity for moral reasoning and reduced ability to lead others in difficult and deadly circumstances. (p. ix)

In the pages ahead, I look at the idea of “toughing it out” or being stoic as both a blessing and a curse for military men and women — a blessing in that it girds them for facing the horrors of war, a curse in that it promises a kind of invulnerability that it cannot deliver and that leads to the undoing of the mind. Surprisingly, some ancient Stoics voiced similar worries about the costs of being too stoic. In the end, I argue for a gentle Stoicism that can still, in Seneca’s terms, “cultivate humanity.” (p. x)

The book is hybrid in content, taking seriously both military matters and Stoic theory. But it is also hybrid in methodology. It adopts the standard method of philosophers — namely, analysis of text and argument — but also the method of ethnographers who collect stories and anecdotes. … [but] since so much of my understanding of the military has come from the storytelling of military men and women, it seemed only fitting to share those stories in the context of trying to understand stoic aspirations and themes.” (p.x)

Chapter 1 (A Brave New Stoicism) opens with the role of Stoic philosophy in the life experiences of Admiral James Stockdale, perhaps the most famous exponent of Epictetus’ Stoicism in American military history. Shot down over North Vietnam in 1965, he was subjected to repeated, brutal torture while a prisoner of war. As a ranking officer, he was also responsible for providing guidance for other prisoners. Stockdale drew on his familiarity with Epictetus to provide an ethos for his men, and himself. Released in 1973, in a very crippled state, he went on to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, write about his experiences, and finally serve as the President of the Naval War College.

Sherman then turns to the fictional considerations of Stoicism in the writings of retired Navy Commander Ward Carroll … the insight that one cannot control life’s circumstances but one can control one’s responses to them.

A central Stoic view that we have just encountered and to which we shall return repeatedly in this book is that emotions are, by and large, “things within our control.” We go seriously wrong when we think that emotions just happen to us and that the attachments and losses they represent are beyond our control. (p.9)

In a nutshell then, Greco-Roman Stoicism is about attitude and practice. The attitude about knowing exactly what is within our capacity to control (including the ability to take our own lives), and the practice (in the face of pain and fear) to return to that attitude, and eventually never leave it.

Sherman then gives us excellent capsule summaries of the leading lights of Greco-Roman Stoicism … the original “Stoa” of Greek Stoics, available to us only in second- or third-hand writing … and the latter, more famous, Roman Stoics: Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, and the emperor Marcus Aurelius. These final four authors, ranging from the first century BCE through to the end of the second century CE, are the core of her resources. All but Cicero were self-declared Stoics.

The subsequent chapters in “Stoic Warriors” address the Stoic attitude toward bodily health and vigor (in contrast to the body-obsessed American ideal), the role of manners and demeanor in the cultivation of virtue, and the possibility of emotional regulation and transformation. Separate chapters deal with anger and its control, fear of death and dealing death, grief and mourning, and finally the role of camaraderie, empathy, and respect among comrades. She concludes with a chapter on the role of Stoicism’s ideal of kosmopolites or “citizen of the world” as the basis of a sense of global community that would forestall events such as Abu Ghraib and My Lai.

Chapter 2 opens with the author’s commentary about the desire for physical control and competence reflected in the exercise “boot camps” now on offer to civilians. The discipline and effort required by the military in handling exertion and pain, and maintaining physical strength and endurance, have a broad social appeal.

But training and discipline, whether physical or mental, are one thing; attachment to the body is another. And Epictetus himself will argue, in Stoic fashion, that while we have a duty to care for the body, ultimately our bodies should be regarded as “indifferents,” not as intrinsic elements of our good. (p.21)

Sherman notes that this Stoic caveat is hard for wounded and permanently disabled soldiers to accept, since by nature and personality, many have identified themselves as their bodies, and as their physical competence. For Americans especially, the hardened muscular physique has become a model for both men and women. Sherman reviews this American obsession in a brief section, and turns to a consideration of Stoic writings on the subject of the body, its care, and its importance. The mental shock, and ongoing mental pain, experienced by modern soldiers when they are physically disabled is illustrated in a series of anecdotes and personal vignettes. For individuals whose sense of self-worth has been tied to their body … injury is particularly haunting.

Chapter 3 turns to manners and decorum … and the military regimentation which is meant to instill certain behaviours. The constraint of the “outer” to refine the “inner” is very much a part of military life. “The right way, the wrong way, and the Army way.” The ancient Cynics (and many philosophers since) have doubted the value of insisting on “appearances.” Sherman cites a number of incidents where common sense on appearance and uniforms seemed to be sacrificed on the altar of tradition and absolute equality. Her report of the tragedy besetting women cadets, unable to select their own style of underpants, seems a moral quandary very suited to the Clinton era, and Dr. Sherman’s tenure at the Naval Academy. Both Seneca, and the nominal Roman Stoic Cicero, offered considered rejoinders to those philosophers who disdained the cultivation of outer appearances. For those two Romans, the social implications of maintaining a neat and dignified appearance are important. Evidently sharing values, and projecting respect for, and kindness toward, one’s fellows is all part of decorum. Identity is therefore only partially individual and internal. It is also shared or communal, and external. Respecting the rank or uniform, irrespective of feelings toward the occupant, are part of the discipline of military life that make it possible to reduce otherwise insurmountable tension between individuals.

…the aesthetic of the outer — what one projects to others — matters, whether it be the crispness of a salute, mission readiness spoken in body language, or a steely look of determination and reassurance. It matters to those who share in the ritual and to those who depend on those signs for instruction and confidence. And it may be important for oneself, as a way of coaxing inner change. (p.63)

Chapter 4 is a consideration of anger, and opens with a number of anecdotes of inappropriate anger which bursts out of men suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and which can continue for many years. Sherman contrasts Stoic and Buddhist views of anger, and how it can be set aside:

[In] the Stoic view, it is not that we wrongly invest in the self; rather, we wrongly invest in external goods — property, wealth, fame, honor, and so on. In so doing, we fail to appreciate what is of true value in our lives: our reason, in its perfected form as wisdom or virtue, shared with others (and with God). (p.67)

Sherman turns to other ancient authors such as Plato, Aristotle and Plutarch on the potential role of anger, and the specific cases where it is appropriate or inappropriate. Kant, who was deeply steeped in the writings of Seneca, also makes an appearance. And she’s able to integrate commentary by modern soldiers on the effectiveness of stereotypic “drill sergeant” behaviour that engages bullying and seething anger as motivational tools. Mock bullying and mock anger, however, seem another matter. The ancients believed such emotion in the service of rhetoric was useful. And certainly Thomas Ricks’ excellent Making the Corps offers many examples where Marine drill sergeants apply their emotions in very carefully planned and focused increments. Sherman documents the ongoing debate amongst military officers of the appropriateness of anger … and point the finger at My Lai as a case of warrior rage at its worst. The author then leads us through some of the Stoic literature on anger as irrationality, and the ongoing price that is paid by those filled with anger.

She then continues with anecdotes from the first Gulf War, on the individual soldier’s anger on the battlefield, and where that anger may be focused. From Canadian General Romeo Dallaire’s experiences in Rwanda, to Hugh Thompson’s efforts to halt the massacre at My Lai, it’s clear that much of the anger generated in war has no specific focus. It does, however, separate the returning soldier from colleagues, friends, and family.

In a concluding section on “Therapeutic Strategies,” Sherman summarizes the different authors, ancient and modern, on whether anger should be restrained, eliminated, aired out, or fenced off. The quandary for modern soldiers is that there seems to be no clear medical indication whether the traumatic events of warfare can ever be reconciled with the rhythms of ordinary life.

Chapter 5 turns to the subject of fear, and holding up under it. This is a very rich and detailed chapter with anecdotes drawn from a number of military veterans. For Sherman, the subtle distinctions between the various definitions of stoicism, of the expectations for those who are “sages” and those who are attempting to follow its tenets, are matched by sections on the different kinds of fear which are presented to the soldier … fear of the unknown, cumulative fear of the new, fear which paralyses temporarily, fear of dying, and fear of killing. As with earlier chapters, the Stoic absolute of letting go of fear has severe costs. The milder variant, proposed by Seneca, acknowledges fear that a Stoic aspirant might appropriately and honorably experience. As with anger, fear is an integral part of PTSD, and transition from military to civilian life makes the fear more difficult to deal with. With fear, however, the bonds of “community with comrades” can provide comfort and protection.

Chapter 6 focuses on grieving, and while the issues are less dramatic than fear or anger, the ancients had plenty of experience with the matter, hard won. Seneca and Cicero were concerned with decorum, with tears that burst into weeping, and with the clear distinctions over gender and weeping which all societies note. Men crying, and the conditions under which they can cry, are different from culture to culture. Indeed, our own era has seen a shift to greater acceptance of open male grief, though without making much headway in respect for it, nor for a socially sanctioned decorum associated with it. Matching the ancient commentaries with modern anecdotes about the therapeutic role of grief, Sherman questions whether the cost of denying or deferring grief’s “natural expression” is still underestimated.

In the final chapter of the book, the author summarizes the balance that must be found between dissociation of the horrors of war and maintaining the ties of friendship and humanity that make for a healthy human being. The Stoic authors waffle (whether from conviction or uncertainty) on the extent to which the emotions can be restrained, suppressed or avoided. Dr. Sherman turns to literary examples from World War One (Siegfried Sassoon, Septimus Warren Smith) for descriptions of the struggle to come to terms with the welter of emotions stirred up by wartime experience.

In concluding her book, Sherman cautions the reader that the hard Stoicism of the ancients seems an impossible goal for most people, and quite possibly a dangerous approach to dealing with emotional responses that cannot always be suppressed due to PTSD. Yet, the thin gruel she offers of “soft Stoicism” seems barely more than cherry-picked quotes from distraught Romans … none of whom faced combat directly. Thus Stoic Warriors offers the reader an erudite review of Stoic literature on the key emotions experienced by warriors, a somewhat more casual and idiosyncratic review of literary and personal recollections of war in the 20th century (mainly), and not much in the way of solution for the average American soldier in “cultivating humanity.”

I’ll hold my own conclusions about Dr. Sherman’s effort to the concluding section of this post, but let me take a somewhat more philistine approach to assessing the value of Greco-Roman Stoicism for the American military. One based on the history of both the philosophy and armed conflict.

“Stoic Warriors” Table of Contents

1 A Brave New Stoicism 1
2 Sound Bodies and Sound Minds 18
3 Manners and Morals 42
4 A Warrior’s Anger 64
5 Fear and Resilience 100
6 Permission to Grieve 130
7 The Downsized Self 150

2. Was an ancient philosophy useful in the past?

Roman Maybe, but Not Stoic

Having summarized Dr. Sherman’s cross-referencing of Greco-Roman philosophy with the emotional and moral challenges facing the 21st century American military, let’s turn to an obvious first question.

If Stoicism is to be useful for the American military, was it ever useful to the Roman military? If ever there was a rigourous laboratory for Stoicism, one would think it would be the 800+ years of Roman military history. How did the Roman army actually work, down through the centuries? The Romans managed a significant prosperity-peace differential across their frontiers for centuries, against both peer civilizations and barbarians. Perhaps their experience offers ideas for the West.

The officer rank of the Roman legions were staffed with Roman nobility, by and large, and it was through a combination of military and civilian responsibility that an ambitious Roman nobleman climbed the ranks of Republican, and then Imperial, service. Literate, indeed exceptionally literary, this group of individuals was fighting for career purposes and did not depend on the military for livelihood or pension — though the booty of conquest was a welcome addition to personal and familial wealth.

Ordinary soldiers were a different matter entirely. After a period of basic training they would join an auxiliary or legionary force and serve for 20 to 25 years, retiring with a pension and often a grant of land. The history of the Roman military is complex but for the sake of simplicity we can say that the life of the soldier for a great part of the history of Rome was one of distinction, that is, they were distinct from civilians. The boundary areas around military installations and frontier zones were “no go” for civilians. As Peter Heather points out in his recent book on the end of the Roman Empire, the Romans managed to keep their imperial legions rock-steady for centuries by pulling young men out of the civilian world and brutalizing them for 20-25 years … under rules that were completely different than those of their unarmed civilian counterparts. The Roman period of history had few rules governing warfare. Legions occasionally slaughtered and dispersed entire peoples. In turn, they were themselves slaughtered to the point of extinction at famous battles such as Cannae, Carrhae, and Teutoberg Forest.

For an ordinary soldier to leave the bounds of a fort without permission was punished with death. To fall asleep on sentry duty was punished by death. And to fall into the hands of an enemy usually meant a very, very bad death. To become a raw recruit was to suffer continual blows from the vitis (vine-branch staff) of the centurion. Civilian commentators of the time referred to the permanently-addled brains of the resulting soldiery. And contemporaneous accounts described the Roman military training practice as bloodless war, and Roman war as bloody practice. The Roman short sword was the gladius, and soldiers were trained to stab and twist with its tip while protecting themselves and their neighbours with the classic rectangular shield. Roman combat effectiveness, if we believe Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, came from placing centurions (vetted for their combat skills) behind the greener troops to ensure that they killed exactly according to their endless practice. An enemy’s reward for successfully hacking their way through the first few ranks of less-experienced Roman legionaries was to meet the most-experienced veterans of edged-weapon warfare at their daisy-fresh best. Evenly matched, few armies withstood the Roman legions. Roman civil war between competing legionary forces also records appalling casualties. The stakes in such domestic battles were often as large as those with an enemy of Rome. Casualties were treated on the field by experienced medical personnel (physicians and orderlies). The severely wounded, even on a victorious battlefield, were dispatched quickly, as best I can tell, by their own colleagues.

To survive one’s twenty-plus year enlistment, be granted citizenship and land, and established in a colonia of other veterans, one required more than ordinary toughness and good luck. Yet military life was not only attractive, it was followed (as we know by tombstones scattered across the empire) by father and son in many circumstances. Soldiers received preferential access to food, medical care, lodging, salaries, and social status. Their life expectancy was actually pretty good by comparison with civilians. The large-scale wars which form the highlights of Roman history could be widely spaced, so some soldiers would have only experienced one or perhaps two major campaigns in the early imperial period. The military, and its infrastructure, represented the vast majority of the Roman state’s annual budgetary expenditure. As the imperial era set in, the army was both protector and assessor of the Emperor, and was treated accordingly. That Rome sustained between 300,000 and 500,000 men at arms during its imperial heyday would suggest that Romans were good at getting military morale, effectiveness and motivation right. The NCO corp of centurions was a meritocracy: literate, professional, and honed by war. Promotion could lead to tremendous prestige. The tombstones and occasional written scraps of history describe individual common soldiers by name and detail their extraordinary careers in warfare, serving in many locations across the Empire. In a formal sense, then, these were professional soldiers, not part-time warriors.

And unlike the Republican era, these were not citizen-soldiers … they were soldiers destined to become citizens.

Needless to say, the sensibility of the Roman soldier was vastly different than the 21st century recruit. Life expectancy was a fraction of the modern era, for civilian and soldier alike. Most Romans would have been personally familiar with epidemic disease and its frightening random appearance. The vast majority of the Roman populace would have been involved in food production, and in the daily ritual of killing and butchering animals. As most of us are vaguely aware from years of sword-and-sandals epics, Roman sensibilities over animal and human suffering were dramatically different from our own. Whether through the circus, gladiatorial entertainment, or the justice system, the brutality of war never caught any new Roman soldier by surprise. Even Roman culinary tastes suggest a very “visceral” worldview, literally. Triumphal Roman public art glorified the physical destruction of its individual enemies. The dispersal of enemy men, women, and children to perpetual slavery was an ongoing part of imperial trade, and part of daily civilian experience.

Roman history was also replete with the enslavement, maiming and torture of captured Roman soldiers who had lost a battle. There was no gracious losing in the ancient world. In a period where human power was paramount for building and agriculture, the institution of slavery was pervasive and had a strong influence on warfare and the causes of war. Losers in a war became the acquired industrial might of the victor. Even the most humble of societies therefore had something valuable to contribute to Roman society — their own flesh and that of their offspring.

History records the Roman legions taking great delight in recovering comrades who’d been enslaved by Germanic tribes for 40 years. There’s some suggestion that the Parthians transferred captured Romans so far east after the battle of Carrhae (53 BCE) that they subsequently fought Chinese troops in Sogdia (near modern Samarkand). Roman war was, therefore, existential for the troops who fought … as was much of Roman civilian life, certainly. Geopolitics, let alone war, was a blood sport. While small colonies of allies did cause trouble in later eras of the Empire, there was no such thing as a conquered Roman enemy, within imperial boundaries, reconstituting its cultural values. Roman conquest could be final.

Paired in war with the legions were more lightly-armed auxiliaries. Often they were “just in time” soldiers recruited from barbarian or captive peoples for a fixed period at a fixed rate and given access to the spoils of war as opportunity allowed. In other cases, they would be used for lighter policing and frontier duties. During Imperial times, it was forbidden for civilians to carry weapons — so the interior of the empire was essentially defenseless in the face of trained soldiers. This pattern further distinguished military culture from its civilian counterpart. It wasn’t uncommon for auxiliaries to eventually join a legion and make their way up the ranks and through the service to retire on a pension. Rome was to face former barbarian auxiliaries in battle many times through its history.

What role did philosophy, especially Stoicism, play in the maintenance of Roman combat effectiveness?

Stoicism in the philosophical, capital “S” sense, seems to have played little role in the life of the ordinary Roman soldier. Despite the fact that Roman military history is replete with centuries of dramatic slaughter and enslavement, there are no temples or altars to Stoic principles. Nor could there be. Of brutality, pain, horror, and death, the average Roman soldier had plenty of experience. Of Stoic philosophical musing, apparently little. Our primary sources for Stoicism come from the Roman literary elite, as reviewed by Dr. Sherman, including the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. We might assume then, that the solaces of Stoicism were more thoroughly appreciated by political practitioners than by the military.

Archaeology of the period has uncovered temples, military votive altars, and religious objects that suggest that the worship of Fortuna, Mithras, Jupiter Optimus Maximus, or Roma itself, were more to the troops liking. The emperor assumed god-like properties during much of the imperial period and the legions were effectively under his control (or his life was at risk). Each recruit swore his oath to a special life-like metal mask (imago) which would allow the recruit to recognize the emperor. It was Christian reluctance to include the Roman emperor in religious observance that distinguished them from a multitude of other religious fads and traditions in the Roman world. Across the centuries of Roman civilization, religious appetites certainly varied. As Gibbon once noted, with plentiful sarcasm, “The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful.” Stoicism, as opposed to stoicism, seems unlikely to have played much of a role amongst the ranks of Roman soldiers.

After briefly looking at Roman military structure and success, and at the absence of any indication that Greco-Roman Stoicism formally played a part in it, we might profitably ask whether translating Greco-Roman Stoicism into an American military setting makes any sense.

Why even bother?

If the Roman troops left Stoicism to the emperor and sought more immediate and traditional religious support for their lives, why should we expect American troops to alter or abandon their religious beliefs (largely, though not entirely, Christian) for an updated Stoicism?

Here we must hypothesize briefly about Dr. Sherman’s motivations. Declaring such an exercise self-evidently fruitless and historically naïve (ab initio) would have made for a very short book. Really short books by academics aren’t considered a “good thing,” and Stoic Warriors is not particularly short. As wags have put it, “academia is about converting B.S. into plane tickets.” We therefore have “Stoic Warriors” for some reason, despite the lack of Roman military interest in the subject.

Perhaps Dr. Sherman was attempting to disabuse amateurs in the US officer corps about the modern value of Stoicism in a secular US military? Her preamble, quoted earlier, seems to suggest as much. Was this attempt an academic or publishing retrofit based on her available academic tools and her short tenure at Annapolis? “Stoic Warriors” does not elaborate on this point. We don’t have to doubt Dr. Sherman’s sincerity. The insights into personal psychology by ancient Stoics surely have their own intrinsic value and importance. But it seems to me we can expect some exploration of the stakes involved in American warfare, even if events such as My Lai and Abu Ghraib seem to loom large in the author’s imagination. Nor does the book make any attempt to set Stoicism, or the psychological and physical prices of war, in any broader historical context — Roman or American.

How might we evaluate the seriousness and sensibility of Dr. Sherman’s efforts to bridge the reality of eight centuries of Roman legionary fighting — heck even the two centuries of American warfare — with the modern sensibilities derived from Stoic philosophy?

Roman wars, to a degree unimaginable in modern America, were actively led by the politically ambitious nobles of their era. The sons of nobility entered military service as adjutants to senior commanders and worked their way up the political, economic, and prestige ladder by a combination of civil and military service. For these ambitious, hyper-literate, physically-fit youngsters, Stoicism might offer occasional solace for their time out of the civic spotlight and away from the comforts of villa and basilica. They would be expected to read the manuals suitable for military education of their class — and certainly the endurance of pain, fear, and discomfort would be part of their family upbringing as well as the expectation for their military service. Physical courage was as prized by the Roman elite as by the hard-pressed legionaries.

So we might imagine a tiny minority of individuals finding solace with, and inspiration from, Stoicism in a Roman Army. By I don’t think we can claim ancient validation for any modern application. Stoicism in the modern world must stand on its own, both practically and culturally.

My amateur conclusions are therefore as follows:

1. To the extent that Stoicism is Greco-Roman, it is hardly military.
2. To whatever minor extent it may be military, it is superficially so — and we can point to Emperor Marcus Aurelius and Admiral James Stockdale for evidence of its appeal to elite, rather than line, soldiers. This suggests that it is adequate perhaps only for certain rare personalities.
3. To the extent that it was absent from regular soldiering in a slave-based, agrarian empire that faced existential threats for centuries, it is untested now as a basis for sustained military success in the modern world. It has had no earlier “practical test” of value, worth speaking of.
4. I think it’s compelling testimony that the Romans found little military use for Stoicism, yet for reasons which I’ll outline later, every successful army (or male group, for that matter) has integrated some aspect of “stoicism” in its training and undertakings. The Stoics may therefore offer tangential inspirational reading for educated officers. As indeed they have for several centuries.

3. Are the conditions for soldiers changed from the past?

Killology and the “Hothouse” Society — A Personal Reflection

Dr. Sherman’s has advocated a “soft Stoicism” melded with an individual ethical compass derived from a variant of modern liberal transnational progressivism. Her citation of the Stoic phrase “citizen of the world” has perhaps lost some of its lustre since the era of her service as professor at the Naval Academy. In the last section, I reviewed the potential historical case study for Stoicism — an imperial military, staffed by professionals, facing centuries of peer and barbarian warfare. In this section, I’d like to look at the raw material from which our own society creates soldiers. If the Romans ignored Stoicism as a philosophy for soldiers, perhaps there are some new conditions under which it might still be applicable in the modern American military.

First we might ask, are American recruits (or any nation’s recruits, for that matter) psychologically ill-suited to the nature of modern warfare? If so, are we better off using proxy or auxiliary military forces to enforce state power … ultimately a more humane way to fight America’s wars? Again, how well suited are our adolescents for a life of modern war, with or without Dr. Sherman’s suggestions for dealing with emotional trauma? Are we asking the impossible of them? Do we need to create a separate culture for them and dispense with the citizen-soldier, taking the Roman model and offering citizenship as reward for service (as indeed the US military now quietly does)?

Under the rubric of Killology, former soldier David Grossman has written convincingly about modern military training, and how it is designed to directly overcome the instinctive limits on human aggression. (Actually, I was a little surprised that his ideas do not make an appearance in “Stoic Warriors”). Grossman also notes that videogame and entertainment culture of Western youngsters has immunized and numbed a generation to violence against other humans. He’s convinced that the results of both influences (training and entertainment) are deeply damaging to the individuals involved. While he does acknowledge, as noted above, the Roman breakthrough in the rationalization of edged weapon warfare, he doesn’t spend much time reflecting on the nature of those troops as they came to Roman military life.

I think this is a mistake.

A primarily rural culture, exposed to repeated epidemic disease, and the work- and childbirth-related injuries of such a community (let alone its abbreviated justice process), has a profoundly different relationship with death and killing. The political, social, and cultural turmoil of European and American history over the last few centuries was also filled with personal violence. Were Americans really dissociated from it before World War 2? I have my reservations about Grossman’s assumptions about the degree of discomfort with interpersonal violence for people coming from hunting/gathering cultures, or agricultural communities on the frontiers. Indeed, the American military still draws a disproportionate number of troops from rural areas.

From Strategypage.com:

While only 21 percent of Americans live in rural areas, 44 percent of the qualified recruits come from these areas.

For different reasons, the army is getting more of its officers from rural areas. About two thirds of officers come from ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) programs at colleges. Because of growing anti-military attitudes in many urban colleges, ROTC programs are disappearing from colleges in large cities. New York City colleges produce less than ten percent as many ROTC officers today than they did fifty years ago. The big drop came during the Vietnam war period, when anti-war fervor at urban colleges led to ROTC programs being dropped. Most of these were never restored. Thus, not only are a disproportionate number of troops coming from rural areas, but so are a disproportionate number of the officers, even though some of the best colleges are found in the cities.

Let’s turn briefly then to the childhood of soldiers (primarily men) in the periods up to the mid-20th century in America. Like the Roman recruits of old, much of America came from rural or agricultural origins.

Permit me a small tangent. My only practical reference for rural life experience is my own parents who were born on small mixed-agriculture farms in the 1930s. As children, most of the meat and vegetables they ate were raised and grown by their families. Eggs were collected daily. Chickens were slaughtered weekly. Animals were born in the spring (often in a night-and-day midwifery setting) and then neutered or butchered in the fall. Pigs, sheep, cattle, and horses came into the world and left it rather regularly through disease, injury, old age, or the cook pot. Elderly work animals were euthanized when injured or ill. Dogs and cats were part of the farm’s ecosystem and if they didn’t perform as required, they too were killed. Rats, mice, and various bird species were under constant attack from the farmer and his kids because they literally ate the family’s food. The smell of manure in the air was constant background hum. Guns and knives were daily tools.

By the time a child was ten years old, human nature (omnivorous and death-dealing) was pretty self-evident. Adulthood (for men and women), meant dispensing death regularly — usually to prepare the family’s food but occasionally to forestall animal suffering or simply to bring the farm’s economics back in balance. To be human was to kill. And children can be encouraged to hunt and kill with little apparent trauma.

This upbringing, not so distant from our own time, must contrast dramatically with the modern military recruit … sent forth to basic training perhaps with Grossman’s superficial videogame programming to kill humans yet without the life experience of having killed and butchered any of the food they’ve eaten since childhood. The average American eats roughly 200 pounds of animal flesh each year. Yet I suspect only a tiny percentage of our military does much more than cook and consume that flesh. I’d suggest that this distinguishes our modern military from the armies of even the recent past, and it creates a “hothouse” upbringing that perhaps increases the shock of dealing with the trauma of war, and its emotional consequences.

I do think childhood background might make a big difference in how an adult responds to the stresses of war. But that’s only my personal opinion. As recently as WW2, a significant number of soldiers in the Anglosphere armies of the US, Canada, and Australia would have been from farms or fisheries. As noted above, even now the American army gets over 40% of its military recruits from rural areas … way out of whack with national demographics.

Even in my own limited background as a child on a grandparent’s farm in the 1960s, execution, death, and consumption of animals was a constant reality. Whether chicks killed by ferret or fox, rat caught by dog, mouse by cat, piglet crushed by mother pig … any child from the point of self-awareness onward was surrounded by the harder realities of life. The events of human reproduction, birth, suffering, and death are mirrored daily in farm life. The world as it is. My own experience and response to that world referred always to my parents’ attitude. And because they were farm kids, my initial shock at animal death and tragedy was treated calmly and reassuringly by them.

That calmness was to influence my later life. As a graduate student, I took a summer job with a provincial museum, preparing animal skeletons for reference collections. In “Kali’s Basement,” I spent a few very stinky months flensing and “biodegrading” everything from baby field mice to adult buffalo. I pretty much butchered my way through the entire four-footed fauna of the Rocky Mountains, with detours for the occasional bird. The job definitely took some getting used to … but psychologically it was mostly a matter of coping with unusual sights and smells the first time, and then getting on with it. Did my childhood experiences on a farm make the difference in how I responded to that rather awful working environment? I assume so but it’s impossible to say. Perhaps it was predisposition of personality.

So with that brief tangent complete, let’s return to the issue of how children and young adults are raised to deal with battle, and with the tragedies of warfare and conquest.

I’m reminded of military historian John Keegan’s vivid comment to a rather horrified scholar that the greatest threat of injury to Napoleonic soldiers was the wounds caused by the shattered bone and teeth of their comrades which cannon fire would splatter around the battlefield (resulting in blood poisoning). Now Keegan has a real reputation for bringing battlefields to life, but that same imagination seems largely absent in the modern scholarship on warfare. That particular anecdote fully dramatizes the gunpowder era of military experience … and it certainly couldn’t have been much happier an experience when projectiles and edged weapons were how men met death and disability.

Dr. Sherman would have made a real contribution to the subject of Stoicism and the military if she had spent some time focusing on the stakes involved in warfare. How one can study war without understanding its implications, both social and political? How can one know the implications without a more fundamental experience of human vulnerability and its relation to the natural world? It’s something to ponder as heavily industrialized societies wage perpetual soft war in underdeveloped countries.

Irrespective of any conclusions one might draw about the increased susceptibility of modern troops to shock and trauma of the battlefield, America is now fighting with the military it has … not some pre-industrial Roman killing machine camped on its frontiers waiting for a one-in-a-generation opportunity for booty and mayhem across the border. Sustained military activity has a price. Dr. Sherman does a fine job outlining one slice of the price that must be paid. There are others.

PTSD is a serious logistical problem, and one which seems to be inherent to human physiology. This recent post on Strategypage.com gives a very good overview of the group statistics on American military incidence of PTSD … the “magic” number for an average soldier now appears to be 300 days of combat, stretched across the entire span of their military career. Some troopers handle less. Some seem to have a limitless capacity (it’d be interesting to know why!). No doubt better selection at the front end of the military recruiting and training process will incrementally increase that average number. Perhaps a new generation of pharmaceuticals associated with long-term memory formation will further expand that number as suggested recently here. A careful review of gender information may also suggest the more effective, but un-PC, redeployment of women in the military who appear to be suffering from higher relative rates of PTSD. Increasing combat availability of American troops may turn out to require better deployment rather than less.

Nonetheless, I think it would be instructive to look more carefully at the childhood of recruits to see if they provide suitable background for warfare. When we look at the cross-fertilization of police, fire, and emergency personnel with military service, it’s clear that some personalities (supplemented through their experience) thrive in conditions that most of us would find appalling and traumatic. An America which is inadvertently taking on the role of nation-builder for those who don’t want it, needs to be as creative as possible in fielding its armies.