Philosophers such as Homer and Sophocles have studied the effects of war on soldiers, their moral injury and their psychological response to the aftermath and threat of battle throughout time.

Nancy Sherman, a philosophy professor at Georgetown University, said about 2.7 million service members have returned from the current war, and after-war survival behavioral responses like detachment and flashbacks are not the only part of the psychology of after-war.

“It’s the moral flavor of all that and the moral anguish,” Sherman said.

Sherman discussed her book “Afterwar,” the third in her trilogy, through a live stream with Oswego State. Her discussion is part of a four-part series of interactive events called, “The Experience of War: Moral Transformation, Injury and Repair,” through the National Endowment for the Humanities in collaboration with Hunter College.

The series’ goal is to create a conversation between veterans, their families and communities.

Sherman’s book contains interviews with service members and shows the moral and psychological aspects of after war including how those affected by battle can heal and learn to trust again through moral understanding.

How people hold themselves and others accountable with certain reactive attitudes, like guilt, shame, trust and hope, is an aspect of moral accountability and a critical understanding of moral injury, Sherman said.

This is the real healing space and these attitudes either help individuals heal or beat themselves up, she said.

“I think moral injury is about the attitudes you hold toward yourself and others that register, ‘I’m counting on you,’ or ‘You harmed me. Now how are you going to make it better,’” Sherman said.

To get her point across, Sherman used real life examples from those she has interviewed over the years and ancient philosophical stories, like Sophocles’ tragic play, “Ajax.”

“Ajax” tells the tale of the struggle between Ajax and Odysseus, who both want the armor of Greek warrior hero Achilles. Ajax believes he is owed the armor.

His mentality leads to a dissociative break and eventually his suicide, because of his shame that he will not make his father proud.

Sherman saw the play with an audience full of officers. Once the play was over, a hush fell over the crowd because of the amount of service members that commit suicide every day, she said.

“There’s no answer yet, but there’s no biological marker for who’s vulnerable yet,” Sherman said. “It’s on-going and we are still at risk.”

Sherman was accompanied to the play by Maj. Jeff Hall, who told her his post-traumatic stress disorder was not from collateral damage or killings, but instead from moral betrayal.

In 2005, Hall went to Iraq, where he was assigned to help a family that was killed in the crossfires of a targeted incident and had to get the bodies home for a proper funeral. The process to get them home took around four months and was a “bureaucratic nightmare,” Sherman said.

Once the death certificates arrived, they were stamped, indicating they were enemies of battle, but Hall believed they were civilians caught in the crossfires. Hall felt betrayed at every level of the process and his armor of goodness was broken, Sherman said.

Mark Zelcer, an Oswego State assistant professor in the philosophy department, said it is important for a community to understand the plight of soldiers and how their lives are different when they come back. Zelcer himself is a veteran.

Ancient philosophers, such as Sophocles, shed light on how soldiers feel coming home, whether the tales they told were real or fiction, Zelcer said.

“[The soldiers’] experience has been explored throughout history in our text and in our literature and our philosophy is very eye-opening,” Zelcer said.

Sherman’s live stream was the second in the series of four. The last two will be viewed by Oswego State.