Virtue Ethics In Military Leadership

Senior Enlisted Leader, Gunnery Sergeant Abbot, talked about the nature of officer’s relationship with senior enlisted and about the compromises of honor and integrity in that case. She gave insight into the nature of those relationships, like the aspect senior enlisted being a mentor, yet having to let the officer make the ultimate decision. When she first heard the story of the Chief and the inspection she immediately criticized the Chief for his lack of integrity and ensued that he should not be a part of the United States Navy if he was making decisions with that kind of integrity. She described the loyalty to the mission to mean that everyone was well informed about how the actual state of the systems were. That the loyalty to oneself …show more content…
Virtue ethics focus on character traits used rather than the actions taken. Allowing the Chief to sign would demonstrate a deficiency in wisdom, judgement, perspective and integrity with an excess in loyalty. This action created a habit that creates a perspective singular to the officer and not a balance of themselves and the overarching mission. The lack of integrity and wisdom can create habits that cause trouble in the future when faced with similar decisions that result in more harmful consequences rather than a chewing out for not having the maintenances done on time. The failure to use the correct amount of the previously stated virtues make having the Chief sign off morally in the eyes of virtue …show more content…
This is because of basic reasoning, a combination of moral theories, and not to mention it is against Article 107 of the UCMJ to knowingly falsify an official document. The use of this case seems kind of mute in respect to the amount of evidence against letting the Chief sign. However, the purpose of this exercise was to explore in-depth a real situation that could happen to an officer that graduates from the United States Naval Academy in the fleet using moral theories learned in ethics. There is one clear answer to this question that the Chief is not allowed to sign off on the undone maintenances because that compromises the integrity of the officer. The major of moral theories that have been studied in ethics class support that decision from Aristotle’s virtues to the categorical imperative laid out by Kant. One of the reasons that this is a good case to look at is because of the reality of making the decision is much harder than hypothetically making the decision. Thus, in the process of writing this essay, habits and through reasoning are made so that making the actual decision in the fleet is easier and more