Detached Desire for a Greater Calling

In the 1998 film Saving Private Ryan, we are told the war story of a group of men that fought their way through Europe in World War Two to find a paratrooper named Private Ryan. They are sent on the mission because all of Private Ryan’s brothers have been killed in battle and the U.S. Army has decided to send him home so his mother doesn’t have all of her sons killed in the world war. Of course there are men lost on this journey of finding a needle in a haystack and when they finally do find him, the rest of the men die in action, but Private Ryan lives on and tries to live his life to the fullest in honor of all the men that died for his safe return home.

The interesting thing about this is the cost of this objective that is paid to save the one life of a man with many. In the movie, one gets the sense that these men are doing it for the greater good, for Mrs. Ryan to have one son at least, that she shouldn’t have to pay such a price for the country. These men have the duty to follow orders and give a life of happiness and stability in America after the war for Private Ryan, they wanted it but they could do what they need to, to at least give a young soldier the chance to do that when, such as Captain Miller (Tom Hanks), has already lived that life before the war. Yes, he wants to return to that life, but it is duty that compels him and good will for Ryan to give everything in his power to completing the objective.

Immanuel Kant writes very much about good will and means of ends in Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. Kant writes on Dignity and Price, “Whatever is relative to universal human inclinations and needs has a market price. Whatever, even without a presupposing a need, accords with a certain taste--- that is, with satisfaction in the mere random play of our mental powers--- has an attachment price. But that which constitutes the sole condition under which anything can be an end in itself has not mere relative worth, i.e., a price, but an inner worth--- i.e., dignity”.  This kind of mission that the army gave Captain Miller has a price, but the final end is worth more than anything else because of the ethical implication they put on the families, why end a family name when it isn’t absolutely necessary even though that last brother is fighting at his own will. He has a greater attachment to country than family at first, but at the end has a great weight of responsibility to have lived up to what he was given by the men. Kant does also writes,”…The moral worth of an action done out of duty has its moral worth, not in the objective to be reached by that action, but in the maxim in accordance with which the action is decided upon; it depends, therefore, not on actualizing the object of the action, but solely on the principle of volition in accordance with which the action was done without any regard for objects of faculty of desire.” I found this interesting just in the fact that there is moral worth in just following through with an objective without desire effecting your completion of it.

This brings me to my modern day point. There are people who operate drones to eliminate targets out wherever it is needed. The soldiers are in combat, but at home, they have to follow these objectives given without question and have no idea if what they do is morally right or wrong to them. There is a sense of duty in what they do, but there is a weight of wondering guilt if they did something considered wrong or right in the grand scheme of ends. So has the military made a form of war where the soldier has no choice in the ultimate end unlike war in World War Two, sure they didn’t have a choice what they had to do, but there were instance of hand to hand combat that allowed them to keep a shred of what they were doing morally and could decide for themselves.