Moral Injury, Moral Breakdowns, and Our Moral Condition

Our group is working on a collection of projects that collectively aim to understand the nature of morality by examining ways in which it breaks down, specifically through the phenomenon called moral injury. Moral injury has been studied as clinically evident among war veterans. In recent years, psychologists and philosophers have expanded the concept by examining how moral injury occurs in healthcare contexts and other occupations.

The goal of the set of projects connected with the lab is to articulate what is the moral in moral injury and how it might be repaired or otherwise integrated in forms of moral transformation. In this work, we have benefited from collaborations with colleagues in medicine, psychiatry, psychology, religion, sociology, anthropology, theatre, literature, and journalism in order to give a fuller account of what this is and how to address it.