ABSTRACTThis paper considers the moral justifiability of military conscription. Philosopher James Pattison has developed a theoretical framework for this purpose that he calls the Moderate Instrumentalist Approach, which assesses forms of military recruitment in light of a weighted comparison of three main factors: military effectiveness, democratic control and proper treatment of military personnel. According to Pattison, all-volunteer force systems are morally preferable by comparing better when it comes to these factors than other systems of military recruitment, notably conscription. (...) However, I argue that Pattison fails to evaluate certain hybrid systems, in particular what I call the Nordic Model of Conscription. I show that there are good reasons to think that such a hybrid system compares just as well or even better than an all-volunteer force, making the Nordic Model of Conscription at least as morally justifiable and arguably also morally preferable. (shrink)

Informal political representation—the phenomenon of speaking or acting on behalf of others although one has not been elected or selected to do so by means of a systematized election or selection procedure—plays a crucial role in advancing the interests of groups. Sometimes, those who emerge as informal political representatives (IPRs) do so willingly (voluntary representatives). But, often, people end up being IPRs, either in their private lives or in more public political forums, over their own protests (unwilling representatives) or even (...) without their knowledge (unwitting representatives)—that is, they are conscripted. None of the few theories of informal political representation extant accommodate conscripted IPRs. The account detailed here introduces the phenomenon of conscripted informal political representation and explains its place in a complete theory of informal political representation. Conscripted IPRs can, like their voluntary counterparts, come to have significant power to influence how various audiences regard those for whom the conscripted IPRs speak or act. Upon attaining such power to influence, conscripted IPRs, like their voluntary counterparts, come to have pro tanto duties to those they represent—duties that arise despite IPRs’ unwittingness or unwillingness. Understanding the phenomenon of conscripted informal political representation allows us to surface essential normative questions about informal political representation that are otherwise occluded. (shrink)

: The March 2003 issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal was devoted to cadaveric organ procurement. All the discussed proposals for solving the severe organ shortage place a higher value on respecting individual and/or family autonomy than on maximizing recovery of organs. Because of this emphasis on autonomy and historically high refusal rates, I believe that none of the proposals is likely to achieve the goal of ensuring an adequate supply of transplantable organs. An alternative approach, conscription (...) of cadaveric organs for transplantation, reverses the rank order of these priorities by placing greater value on maximizing recovery of organs than on respect for autonomy. Although conscription of organs initially may appear to be a radical and even ridiculous proposal, careful consideration reveals that it might well solve the organ shortage in an ethically acceptable way. (shrink)

In an earlier study by Nair,1 undergraduate national servicemen were interviewed regarding their perceptions on their conscript experience and nation-building. The present study examines the congruent perceptions of military commanders in the context of social psychological theory and research. Twenty senior military commanders were selected to represent a cross-section of formations and appointments in the army. They were individually interviewed with particular reference to their recall of policies, procedures and practices in conscript service that might have a bearing on nation- (...) building. Verbatim transcriptions of each interview were scrutinized and responses coded and tallied. There was clear identification of the unifying effect of common barracks and training regimes across economic, ethnic and religious differences. The findings provide converging evidence for the presence of the psychological effects of superordinate goals,2 the minimal group paradigm, 3 and the contact hypothesis,4 serving to build a cohesive nation. There were also recurrent and converging attributions of the military experience resulting in national servicemen with the qualities of discipline, responsibility, team spiritedness and physical fitness. It was perceived that these acquired positive qualities were carried over to civilian life and characterized the Singapore workforce. (shrink)

DIVUses C.L.R. James’sThe Black Jacobins as a jumping-off point for a reconsideration of colonial and postcolonial concepts of history, politics, and agency./div.

Since its inception, the institution of postmortem organ transplantation has faced the problem of organ shortage: Every year, the demand for donor organs vastly exceeds supply, resulting in the deaths of approximately 8,000 individuals in the United States alone.1 This is in large part due to the fact that the United States, for the most part, operates under an “opt-in” policy in which people are given the opportunity to voluntarily opt-in to organ donation by registering as organ donors.2 In the (...) United States, a person’s organs will not be removed for transplantation purposes unless she has registered as a donor or her family gives their consent for organ removal.3 Jointly, these policies generate a situation where we do not retrieve as many organs as we could. (shrink)

In a recent set of papers, Aaron Spital has proposed conscription or routine recovery of cadaveric organs without consent as a way of ameliorating the severe shortage of organs for transplantation. Under the existing consent requirement, organs can be taken from the bodies of the deceased if they expressed a wish and intention to donate while alive. Organs may also be taken when families or other substitute decisionmakers decide on behalf of the deceased to allow organ procurement for the (...) purpose of transplantation. When patients or families do not consent to organ procurement, many transplantable organs are lost. This is a tragic yet avoidable situation. The dead are beyond any benefit or harm, and their organs could be used to prevent harm by saving and improving the lives of many people suffering and dying from end-stage organ failure. (shrink)

Transplantation is now the best therapy for eligible patients with end-stage organ disease. For patients with failed kidneys, successful renal transplantation improves the quality and increases the quantity of their lives. For people with other types of organ failure, transplantation offers the only hope for long-term survival. a.

The question, what measures to address the shortage of transplantable organs are ethically permissible? requires careful attention because, apart from its impact on medical practice, the stance we espouse here reflects our interpretations of human freedom and mortality. To raise the number of available organs, on utilitarian grounds, bioethicists and medical professionals increasingly support mandatory procurement. This view is at odds with the Catechism of the Catholic Church, according to which ‘[o]rgan donation after death is a noble and meritorious act’ (...) but ethically impermissible absent consent. Those who concur with this position, but would oppose conscription on independent philosophical grounds, have not yet found a voice in the Western tradition comparable in strength to the utilitarian basis of the policy’s support, for Kantian and Aristotelian ethics, too, lend themselves to a requirement that we make our organs available to others when they can no longer serve ourselves. One finds an ethical wedge against conscription in an unexpected philosophical locale: the ‘fundamental ontology’ of Heidegger’s Being and Time, where pertinent individual choices arc protectively over what happens post mortem. Heidegger’s perspective on this issue thus meshes, not with other philosophical voices, but with Catholic doctrine—a surprising convergence of atheistic and theistic approaches to our flourishing whose ground I address in the article’s conclusion. (shrink)

This article examines the implications of mandatory conscription for women by studying the experience of women soldiers who serve as secretaries in the Israeli military. The author argues that the military service of the secretaries is shaped by three organizing principles: an employment principle of cheap labor, a matrimonial principle of the office wife, and a hierarchy principle that shapes the secretaries as status symbols. Employing the theory of gendered organizations, the author maintains that each one of these organizing (...) principles operates as a gendering and a power mechanism. The convergence of these three gender/power principles results in overgendering of these women and their military experience. This overgendering reflects gender discrimination and creates feelings of alienation and frustration. For them, military service is not an experience that articulates their citizenship or enhances feelings of national belonging but rather stands in opposition to the values and goals of the mandatory people's army by estranging them from the state and its major institution. (shrink)

According to 2021 data, the United States’ opt-in system of posthumous organ donation results in seventeen Americans dying each day waiting for vital organs, while many good undonated organs go to the grave with the corpse. One of the most aggressive, and compelling, proposals to resolve this tragedy is postmortem organ conscription, also called routine salvaging or organ draft. This proposal entails postmortem retrieval of needed organs, regardless of the prior authorization or refusal of the deceased or his family. (...) The argument of most proponents of conscription relies heavily upon a denial of the possibility of posthumous harms. While I also deny the possibility of posthumous harms, I argue this denial fails to acknowledge other serious wrongs that could be done to the deceased person and his corpse. While the person can no longer be harmed, his _life_, in a roughly biographical sense, can be damaged. Humans highly value life in this sense, often more than biological life. Respect for this sense of life also informs appropriate treatment of particular human corpses, which already have special value beyond mere resource. I will argue that conscription proponents fail to appropriately value lives and human corpses. This failure can lead to multiple wrongs, among them a wrongful exploitation of the vulnerability of a person’s life and corpse and a disrespect of persons. While it is possible that some biographical lives could be made better, or at least less bad, by conscription, the judgments such decisions would require make conscription bad policy. (shrink)

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 purportedly assures almost all Americans of the right to health insurance coverage. The long-term success of this legislation in improving the public’s health in the United States will likely hinge in no small part on the degree to which statutorily establishing a right to health insurance coverage translates into actual timely, meaningful access to health services, particularly physician services, for specific individuals.

The State may require an autopsy when foul play is suspected in the death of one of its citizens.[1] This is so regardless of any objections to such invasive procedures expressed by the deceased before their deaths or afterward by their families. There is not even a religious exemption. The most obvious explanation for why consent is not needed is that apprehending a murderer with information obtained from the autopsy can save lives. However, taking organs without consent from the deceased (...) for transplantation into those suffering vital organ failures can also save lives. But doing so is considered beyond the pale. The question then becomes why are mandatory autopsies permitted but organ conscription prohibited? Our aim is to explore whether such divergent attitudes can be justified. (shrink)

The overall aim of this paper is to argue that the permissibility of a policy of cadaveric organ conscription is compatible with a desire-satisfaction principle according to which all desire frustration is harmful. David Boonin suggests that the contrary may be true in his book Dead Wrong: The Ethics of Posthumous Harm. Put simply, the cases offered by Boonin to support that suggestion are not morally parallel with a policy of cadaveric organ conscription such that one may concede (...) that he has offered cases of wrongful desire frustration without conceding that desires frustrated by a policy of cadaveric organ conscription would constitute wrongful harms. Finally, I will offer a tentative defense of the permissibility of cadaveric organ conscription that is compatible with the desire-satisfaction principle. (shrink)

Laws requiring autopsies have generated little controversy. Yet it is considered unconscionable to take organs without consent for transplantation. We think an organ draft is justified if mandatory autopsies are. We reject the following five attempts to show why a mandatory autopsy policy is legitimate, but organ conscription is not: (1) The social contract gives the state a greater duty to protect its citizens from each other than from disease. (2) There is a greater moral obligation to prevent murders (...) than disease-caused deaths because killing people is morally worse than allowing people to die. (3) Autopsies do not confiscate body parts, but organ transplants do. (4) The citizenry's knowledge that their organs are very likely to be taken will generate more anxiety than the remote possibility of a mandatory autopsy. (5) A religious conviction that one's organs will be needed in order to be resurrected is threatened by organ transplantation but not by autopsies that "return" body parts. (shrink)

Philippa Foot, like others of her philosophical generation, was much concerned with the status and authority of morality. How universal are its demands, and how dependent on the idiosyncrasies of individuals? In the early years of her career, she was persuaded that Kant and his twentieth-century followers had been wrong to insist on the centrality to morality of absolute and unconditionally binding moral imperatives. To that extent, she wrote, there was indeed ‘an element of deception in the official line about (...) morality’. In this paper, I shall explore her early alternative: a system of merely ‘hypothetical’ imperatives, imperatives that depend on the motivations of particular individuals. Could so contingent a system deserve to be termed a morality? How revisionary a proposal was this, and how serious its costs? And how might we reconcile ourselves to a morality stripped of what she called the ‘fictions’ that surrounded it? Foot's early answer, tentative and exploratory, remains of interest, long after she herself abandoned it. (shrink)

SummaryThis study evaluated the prevalence of overweight and obesity in the male Sardinian population, and verifies that it has increased over the last 30 years. Data were collected during 2003–2004 from military registers in the Archive of the Military District of Cagliari for the years 1969 and 1998. A total of 22,345 forms were analysed from all Sardinia. The conscripts were classified on the basis of their place of residence and socioeconomic status. The overall prevalence of overweight and obesity in (...) Sardinia were 4.33% and 0.55%, respectively, for the conscripts of 1969 and 9.8% and 3% for 1998. Olbia-Tempio was the province with the highest incidence of overweight and obesity in 1969, and Nuoro had the highest incidence in 1998. Distribution of body mass index, overweight and obesity across the island showed a statistically significant heterogeneity that strongly decreased from 1969 to 1998. Among the conscripts of 1969, the incidence of overweight and obesity were higher in rural than in urban regions. An opposite trend was observed for the 1998 prevalence, it being more frequent in urban than rural regions. Comparison with other Italian regions was made. The percentages of overweight and obese individuals in Sardinia have markedly increased during the last 30 years, but their low incidence with respect to other Italian populations could be explained by the genetic peculiarity of the island. The change in the internal distribution of obesity clearly reflects socioeconomic changes. (shrink)

A large share of countries is struggling to provide adequate care to their older populations. To deal with this challenge, philosopher Ingrid Robeyns has advocated legislation that requires (most) citizens to spend 1 year of their life providing dependency care. My aim of this contribution is to strengthen the case for this proposal, which I will refer to as a ‘universal care conscription’. I do so by defending this type of conscription against various alternative ways of addressing care-deficits (...) that have been proposed. As I show, not only is it doubtful whether pursuing these alternatives will always, or even generally, suffice to prevent and/or alleviate care-deficits at reasonable financial and moral cost, a universal care conscription has significant civic benefits in an age of polarization that count strongly in its favour. (shrink)

Engineering sketches and drawings are the building blocks of technological design and production. These visual representations act as the means for organizing the design to production process, hence serving as a "social glue" both between individuals and between groups. The author discusses two main capacities such visual representations serve in facilitating distributed cognition in team design work As conscription devices, they enlist and organize group participation. As boundary objects, they facilitate the reading of alternative meanings by various groups involved (...) in the design process. The introduction of computer-aided design into this visual culture of engineering restructures relationships between workers in ways that can hamper the flexibility necessary for these crucial capacities to take place. The data are drawn from a study of the daily practices of engineers engaged in redesigning a turbine engine package. The method is participant observation. (shrink)

Is Carl Schmitt the Thomas Hobbes of the twentieth century? Or is he the man who turned Hobbes's theory on its head? From Leo Strauss to Tracy Strong, a vast array of distinguished interpreters have addressed the above questions but have failed to reach any sort of consensus as to how they ought to be answered. The aim of this essay is to contribute to the debate by drawing attention to a single concept—conscription—that is addressed in the writings of (...) both thinkers. I propose that by examining Hobbes's and Schmitt's differing stands on conscription one comes to see that the…. (shrink)

How did the state protect and then subvert men’s household authority when the state was exclusively staffed by men? I answer the above question by critically fusing neo-Weberian scholarship on modern state development with feminist political sociology on gender and the state, and by examining establishment of the French conscription system. When first creating a mass army in the nineteenth century, the French state offered family-based exemptions, balancing between expanding state power and maintenance of men’s household authority. However, intensification (...) of twentieth-century total war led to a decrease in family-based exemptions, and the state’s diminished support of men’s household authority. I thereby identify how the fiscal-military state first supported then diminished men’s household authority through one of the state’s most masculine arms. (shrink)

Abstract The article addresses three aspects of the humanitarian intervention doctrine. It argues, first, that the value of sovereignty rests on the justified social processes of the target state ? the horizontal contract. Foreign interventions, even when otherwise justified, must respect the horizontal contract. In contrast, morally objectionable social processes (such as the subjection of women) are not protected by sovereignty (intervention, of course, may be banned for other reasons). In addition, tyrants have no moral protection against interventions directed at (...) them. Second, the article addresses the internal legitimacy of humanitarian intervention. It concludes that the liberal state may only use voluntary soldiers (either the voluntary army or mercenaries) to conduct humanitarian intervention. Conscription for that purpose is not permissible. The article shows that the long-standing criticism of mercenaries stems from a romantic prejudice and is thus unfair. Third, the article makes a distinction between intention (the determination to perform an action) and motive (a further goal that the agent seeks with that action) and shows that only intention is relevant for humanitarian intervention. A justified humanitarian intervention requires the intention to liberate the victims, but not necessarily a good further motive. It shows how mainstream doctrine has impermissibly confused the two concepts. (shrink)

In his widely influential statement of just war theory, Michael Walzer exempts conscripted soldiers from all responsibility for taking part in war, whether just or unjust (the thesis of the moral equality of soldiers). He endows the overwhelming majority of civilians with almost absolute immunity from military attack on the ground that they aren't responsible for the war their country is waging, whether just or unjust. I argue that Walzer is much too lenient on both soldiers and civilians. Soldiers fighting (...) for a just cause and soldiers fighting for an unjust one are not morally equal. A substantial proportion of civilians in a democracy are responsible, to a significant degree, for their country's unjust war. Moreover, under certain (admittedly rare) circumstances, some of them are legitimate targets of military attack. This has bearing on settling moral accounts in the wake of war and the issue of forgiving the wrongs done in its course: possible candidates for such forgiveness are much more numerous than is usually assumed. (shrink)

This essay is my contribution to a celebratory volume for Mr Peter Ho, former head of Singapore's Civil Service, from whom I learned the phrase ‘black elephant’. I reflect on four elephants among my own interests: in other words, big things (in my estimation), in clear sight but invisible to many eyes. They are: (i) retrocausality in quantum theory; (ii) child conscription and the monarchy; (iii) AI risk; and (iv) cold fusion. As I say in the piece, my little (...) herd is big enough to make some comparisons – though this may be the only occasion on which they congregate in the same room. (shrink)

Le général André Bach dans une réflexion sur l’« horizon de mort dans la violence de guerre » part d’une approche anthropologique du phénomène de violence et de la peur (quasiment biologique) qu’il engendre en soulignant les difficultés des sociétés occidentales à penser la mort. C’est l’État qui donne à la guerre un sens politique et sacré et qui crée les catégories fonctionnelles de la guerre (les concepts de paix et de guerre ne sont pas en eux-mêmes opérationnels). Dans le (...) cadre d’une réflexion clausewitzienne sur la montée aux extrêmes, l’« extrême » pour le soldat est toujours sa propre mort (plus que celle de l’ennemi). Les notions de barbarisation et humanisation ne peuvent en ce sens rendre compte de la violence et de la peur radicales présentes dans toute guerre où le rôle du commandement est toujours de mettre en œuvre un degré de violence supérieur à celui de l’adversaire, sans aucune considération de « proportionnalité » de cette violence. La mise à distance technique ne diminue pas la violence mais l’augmente à proportion de l’éloignement de la peur. Seul le politique peut et doit mettre des limites à cette violence militaire par nature illimitée. La modernisation des armes ne relève jamais d’une humanisation du combat mais d’une recherche d’une violence plus efficace. L’entraînement du soldat en temps de paix n’est jamais entraînement à la violence mais apprentissage de savoir-faire et effort de constitution d’un groupe soudé, doté d’un bon moral. L’ordre et la formation tentent de limiter la sauvagerie mais il existe une constitution endogène de comportements propres au soldat, que la hiérarchie tente de canaliser dans une symbolique guerrière fondée sur le sentiment de l’honneur (destiné à compenser la peur d’être une proie vouée à mourir et à faire préférer la lutte au coude à coude sur l’instinct de conservation). Le couple violence/honneur fait que l’armée dépourvue de contrat social n’est pas soluble dans le politique (aujourd’hui dans les écoles militaires on ne parle plus d’« honneur » mais d’« éthique »…, mais pour dire la même chose). La conscription fut une rupture de la logique endogène de l’armée et introduisit une brèche dans ce système archaïque. Mais religion (au Moyen Âge) ou logique démocratique (de nos jours) s’avèrent surtout des « béquilles idéologiques » qui, en définitive, sont souvent plus efficaces pour accroître la barbarisation que pour l’éviter (exemple de la colonisation algérienne où une armée de paix, fonctionnarisée et rigoureusement canalisée, appartenant à une génération n’ayant jamais connu de violence de guerre, développe des massacres de masse). (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Conscription and Combat Violence Corporal Punishment Sexual Assault Circumcision Education Family and Other Relationships Bodily Privacy Life Expectancy Imprisonment and Capital Punishment Conclusion.

National conscripts and their quest for closure:A Pastoral challenge. During the apartheid era, young white men were conscripted for military service in the South African Defence Force. After the demise of apartheid, these military veterans became part of the transformation process in the country. They were often not prepared for the emotional and psychological impact of the political, economic and social changes. Many of them found and still find it difficult to take their place among the citizenry of the country. (...) The post-apartheid government provided no support for them to reintegrate into the community or to process the often long-lasting effects of war related trauma and moral injury. For many, this resulted in a lack of healing and closure on a psychological, moral and spiritual level. This article aims to contribute from a pastoral care perspective to the process of healing, closure and reintegration of this specific group. A holistic narrative approach integrates the contextual approach of Charles Gerkin, the philosophical counselling of Daniel Louw and the insights of Neil Anderson with regard to the connection between spirituality and identity. A contextual approach promotes a deeper understanding of the veterans and their needs in the context of their local communities, including faith communities. In these local communities, resources are available and should be utilised. Such a constructive engagement between veterans, local communities and faith communities can contribute to healthier individuals, families and communities as well as to a healthier society. Guidelines for pastoral support of these veterans that can contribute to their social and personal transformation and process of psychological closure are proposed. (shrink)

To facilitate recruitment of conscript cyber soldiers in Sweden, the Cyber Test for Future Soldiers was developed as a complement to the existing generic enrolment test. Consisting of several parts, CTFS measures different aspects of computer-related knowledge and cognitive abilities that we believe are of particular relevance to cyber security. This article describes the evaluation regarding CTFS’s validity and reliability based on data from 62 conscripts that took the test and the 27 selected conscripts finishing the training 1 year later. (...) Reliability was predicted through internal consistency and test–retest measures. Cronbach’s alpha for CTFS ranges from 0.79 to 0.86 whereas the test–retest reliability is 0.60. Evidence regarding validity was collected based on test content and internal structure. Convergent, discriminant, and predictive evidence are also presented. Perhaps most importantly, CTFS could predict the cyber soldiers’ performance during their training and added incremental validity to I-prov 2000. When adjusted for range restriction, I-prov 2000 predicted 20% of the variation in course score, while 34% of the variance was explained when CTFS was used in conjunction with I-prov 2000. The results show that CTFS already in its first version is adding value for the Swedish Armed Forces. (shrink)

Cet article étudie l’évolution des relations entre civils et militaires dans l’Allemagne contemporaine, en centrant l’attention sur le service militaire. Introduit en 1814 et maintenu depuis (après de courtes périodes d’interruption en 1919-1935 et en 1945-1956), il est considéré comme l’un des principaux éléments qui structure l’organisation du pouvoir militaire et la société civile. Tout en orientant la représentation de la citoyenneté qu’il légitime, il a un impact sur les relations de genre. Jouant un rôle d’intégration au même titre que (...) d’exclusion, son sens a évolué selon les valeurs que la société a accordé à la force militaire. (shrink)

Digital hyperconnectivity is a defining fact of our time. In addition to recasting social interaction, culture, economics, and politics, it has profoundly transformed the self. It has created new ways of being and constructing a self, but also new ways of being constructed as a self from the outside, new ways of being configured, represented, and governed as a self by sociotechnical systems. Rather than analyze theories of the self, I focus on practices of the self, using this expression in (...) a looser, more general sense than that used by Foucault. I begin by considering and reformulating two early lines of argument about the web as a medium for exploring and emancipating the self. Subsequent sections show how digital hyperconnectivity has engendered new ways of objectifying, quantifying, producing, and regulating the self—considered both as active, reflexive practices and as systemic, data- and algorithm-driven processes. I conclude by reflecting on the broader implications of contemporary modes of governing the self and by underscoring the ways in which hyperconnectivity has colonized the territories of the self, conscripting the self into the service of techno-social systems. (shrink)