65. Dr Jessica Wolfendale - On torture, war crimes and moral responsibility - Part 1

The Voices of War

This is Part 1 of my conversation with Dr Jessica Wolfendale, who is an author, ethics professor and expert on torture and war crimes. She joined me to try and tackle the dichotomy of how to reconcile one’s perception of oneself with one’s actions, within the context of atrocities carried out in war.

She does this by asking questions such as, ‘How do good people commit atrocities, like torture, and how are their views on killing impacted?’ and ‘Does the military training process make excessive violence acceptable and permissible in certain contexts, such as war?’.

Jessica is the author of ‘Torture and the Military Profession’, arguing that the prevalence of military torture is linked to military training methods that cultivate beliefs connected to crimes of obedience. She also co-authored ‘War Crimes: Causes, Excuses, and Blame’, with Matthew Talbert, where they unpack factors that can lead to war crimes as well as wrestle with the justness of responsibility and blame attributed to perpetrators.

Some of the topics we covered in Part 1 are:

• Capital punishment as detached, humane killing
• The normalisation of violence
• How do we live with what we’ve done?
• Forgiveness, self-forgiveness and atonement
• Obedience to authority
• The Milgram Experiments and the Good Samaritan Study
• Circumstances and the situational account
• The justification of torture in war

Part 2 will be released on 8th of September where we discuss topics such as:

• The dispositional account and cognitive-affective personality system
• Military culture and socialisation
• Freedom and resentment
• Moral ignorance is by no means an excuse
• Integrating the victim’s perspective into military training
• The power of reconciliation
• Jessica’s future work on depictions of war crimes

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