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Editor's note: It may seem a bit long after the release to be "reviewing" Steven Spielberg's award-winning movie Saving Private Ryan. The essay that follows, however, is not so much a review of the film as it is an exploration of lasting issues of morality in warfare, using the movie as a springboard for discussion. - RHT
Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan has been justly praised as the most realistic portrait of combat on film. Less often appreciated is the film's sustained discussion of the morality of war. This aspect of the film is even more important, in my view, than the film's realism. In this essay I examine Spielberg's film, focusing on the relations among the several moral perspectives presented in it.
Four Perspectives
There are four distinct perspectives at work in the film. First, there is the perspective of the soldier as an individual, concerned with his own survival and with the well-being of his relatives at home. Second, there is the perspective of the soldier as member of a small unit in combat, dependent for his survival on cooperation with his fellow soldiers. Third, there is the perspective of the soldier as member of a nation-state. Fourth and finally, there is the universal perspective of the soldier as one moral agent among many, including the soldiers on the other side.
The fourth perspective is the one we normally associate in the contemporary world with the word "morality." It is important to note, however, that each of the perspectives above is, or can be seen as, a moral or ethical framework. Each is concerned with the well-being of people: the first, with the agent himself and his family; the second, with the members of the small combat unit; the third, with the citizens of the agent's nation; and the fourth, with human beings in general. Moreover, each perspective presents the agent with practical obligations that have, or claim to have, an absolute hold on him. These frameworks are related to each other in complex ways. They support each other, but they also conflict with each other, as I hope to show.
The Individual Perspective
The perspective of the soldier as an individual might well be called the perspective of the soldier as...