ETHICS EDUCATION IN THE SELECTED ARMED AND DEFENCE FORCES - COMPARATIVE STUDY

The study of successful and charismatic military leaders has resulted in the recognition that successful leadership needs a value foundation. For the Czech military educational practice, this requirement means to answer the following question: How to approach the education of military leaders in the field of professional ethics. Generally, in the Czech educational environment, the topic of ethics education is addressed in conjunction with the primary and secondary level of education. In the system of Czech tertiary military education, the creation of a model of ethics education and its practical implementation is still an open and discussed issue. This article proposes to enrich the discussion on military professionals' ethics education by comparing the approaches in the field of professional ethics education in the armed and defence forces of selected democratic states. The basic method for acquiring the information has been the content analysis, which has aimed at identifying common signs and accents. The results ascertained show the risk of one-sidedness in focusing ethics education on merely the functional or merely the aspirational approach and provide the arguments for the choice of a mixed approach for creating a model of ethics education. This allows, according to the results ascertained, to more accurately reflect the genesis of the moral development of a military professional during his/her military career, and to respect the moral autonomy of the individual. The mixed approach has also been proposed by the authors of the paper in conclusion of the article to create a model of ethics education for the needs of Czech Armed Forces.