BY ENDUR ANCE WE CONQUER

TA K I N G R I S K S

TOM CHATFIELD ANTONIA CASE CYNTHIA PURY

The courage to act Befriending fear Standing on the edge
3
Editor’s letter

Courage

4

“Everything you want is on the other side of fear.”
— Jack Canfield
Most people love to be praised as intelligent, generous,
funny, or kind, but to called ‘courageous’, ‘daring’, or ‘brave’
eclipses the rest.
When we reflect on the people we regard as courageous,
we tend to be very narrow in our thinking. We immediately
conjure up visions of soldiers in battle, fearlessly risking their
lives for a noble cause, or firefighters cradling children in their
arms as flames crackle and burn. We remember those who
have suffered to battle injustice, whistle-blowers who have
gone against authority for a moral or public concern. With a
tear in our eye, we always have a special place in our heart for
them: the courageous, the bold, and the brave.
But rarely do we think of adding such a fine virtue to
our own repertoire in everyday life. Few wake up in the
morning with the steadfast determination to become more
courageous. Self-help books, of course, implore you to take
more risks, to feel the fear and do it anyway, to do one thing
a day that scares you. But how might life be treated with a
measure of courage?
For philosophers in ancient times, courage was certainly
one of the highest virtues. For Aristotle, courage is related
to the spirited element of the soul. It’s the spirit that makes
us stand up and fight, to “go down with all guns blazing” as
the saying goes. For Plato, the human psyche is partitioned
between reason (our thoughts, questioning), desire (our ap-
petites), and spirit (or courage). Courage is the power or
spirit that makes things happen. You might have the desire
to become the head of government one day, but you’ll need
Editor’s letter
courage to put yourself up for the position, and even more
courage to remain there when others want to bring you down.
Without courage, your best laid plans will never be realised,
thereby remaining thoughts and ideas; mere dreams.
Like most traits, courage is exercised by doing, and
strengthened by repetition. “We become brave by doing brave
acts,” says Aristotle. We might see it like a muscle that’s built
up over time, as we learn to bear a heavier and heavier load.
To realise our purpose, or entelechy, we will be called at times
to sacrifice – be it pleasure, happiness, comfort, or security –
and to do so will require a dose of courage. As an example, in
this issue, we feature daredevil stuntman Robbie Maddison
who acknowledges that, with every performance on his mo-
torbike, death is but a mere breath away. As he battles against
fear, Maddison reminds himself of his calling, and this gives
him the strength – the courage and spirit – to attempt stunts
that teeter on the impossible.
While fear is our constant companion – few can com-
pletely shake it off – we can use our reason and the spirit of
courage to channel fear to our advantage. Rather than suc-
cumbing to fear’s gripping embrace, we can use its energy to
affirm our essential being.
Antonia Case, Editor
5
Contents

Contents

4 Editor’s letter 72 Resistance to fear ~ Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore

8 Contributors 76 The Mice and The Weasels

12 News from nowhere 78 The secret to freedom ~ Philippe Charles Jacquet

22 Befriending fear ~ Antonia Case 84 Standing at the edge ~ Jacqueline Winspear

26 Deadly leap ~ Patrick Stokes 90 Counting ourselves worthy ~ Mariana Alessandri

30 Thoughts on... courage 94 Against my fate ~ Ovid

32 Rare and wonderful ~ Nigel Warburton 96 The courage to be yourself ~ Erich Fromm

40 Doing the impossible ~ Antonia Case 100 By endurance we conquer ~ Antonia Case

44 Great minds 106 A political virtue ~ Linda Rabieh

46 Give us courage ~ John Caple 114 Online

54 The courage to act ~ Tom Chatfield 116 Nicomachean Ethics ~ Aristotle

58 Definition: courage 124 Our library

60 Turning inside out ~ Marina Benjamin 126 Documentaries

64 Worthwhile risks ~ Cynthia Pury 128 Subscribe

6
 Contents

- 46 - - 84 - - 90 -
ARTIST FEAR BELIEFS
Give us courage Standing at the edge Counting ourselves worthy
John Caple Jacqueline Winspear Mariana Alessandri

- 78 -
ART

Courage
THE SECRET
TO FREEDOM
Philippe Charles Jacquet
- 40 -
SPORT
Doing the impossible
Antonia Case

- 32 - - 54 - - 116 -
HISTORY MORALITY PHILOSOPHY
Rare and wonderful The courage to act Nicomachean Ethics
Nigel Warburton Tom Chatfield Aristotle

7
Contributors
Contributors
Linda Rabieh
Linda Rabieh, Professor of Philoso-
phy at MIT, previously taught at Col-
orado College and Tufts University.
She is the author of Plato and the Vir-
tue of Courage, which won the Delba
Winthrop Mansfield prize for excel-
lence in political science, and of nu-
merous articles that explore the politi-
cal thought of ancient and medieval
thinkers, including Thucydides, Plato,
Maimonides, and Averroes. She was
also the recipient of a National En-
dowment of Humanities Independent
Scholar Fellowship.
Zan Boag
Zan Boag is the former Editor and
current Publisher of New Philosopher,
Editorial Director of the international
magazine Womankind, and Director
of poet bookstore. In 2017 he won the
Australasian Association of Philoso-
phy Media Professionals’ Award and
was shortlisted for Editor of the Year
in the international Stack Awards.
Boag speaks regularly on philosophy,
technology, the media, and ethics, and
was the co-founder and host of the
monthly philosophical discussion se-
ries Bright Thinking.
Patrick Stokes
Patrick Stokes is a lecturer in philoso-
phy at Deakin University, Melbourne.
He specialises in 19th and 20th cen-
tury European philosophy, personal
identity, narrative selfhood, moral psy-
chology, and death and remembrance.
A particular focus is bringing Kierkeg-
aard into dialogue with contemporary
analytic philosophy of personal iden-
tity and moral psychology. Stokes was
awarded the 2014 AAP media prize.
8
Nigel Warburton
Nigel Warburton is a freelance phi-
losopher, podcaster, writer, and the
Editor-at-large of New Philosopher.
Described as “one of the most-read
popular philosophers of our time”, his
books include A Little History of Phi-
losophy, Thinking from A to Z, and Phi-
losophy: The Classics. The interviewer for
the Philosophy Bites podcast, War-
burton was previously Senior Lecturer
in Philosophy at the Open University
and Lecturer in Philosophy at Not-
tingham University.
Mariana Alessandri
Mariana Alessandri is Associate Pro-
fessor of Philosophy at the University
of Texas Rio Grande Valley. She has
written for The New York Times, Phi-
losophy Today, Womankind magazine,
Times Higher Education, Chronicle of
Higher Education, and many academic
journals. Alessandri is the author of
the forthcoming book, Night Vision:
Seeing Wisdom in our Darker Moods,
and her teaching interests include Ex-
istentialism and Mexican-American
Philosophy.
Jacqueline Winspear
Jacqueline Winspear has written 16
novels in the award-winning Maisie
Dobbs historical mystery series, in-
cluding the New York Times bestseller
The American Agent. Her standalone
novel, The Care and Management of Lies,
was also a New York Times and Nation-
al Bestseller, and a finalist for the Day-
ton Literary Peace Prize. Winspear has
published two non-fiction books: What
Would Maisie Do? based upon the se-
ries, and a memoir, This Time Next Year
We’ll Be Laughing.
Antonia Case
Antonia Case is Editor of New Phi-
losopher and Womankind, and is an
award-winning writer and journalist.
Her book Flourish, on personal iden-
tity and change, is forthcoming with
Bloomsbury. She was the winner of
the 2013 Australasian Association
of Philosophy Media Professionals’
Award and in 2016 was shortlisted
for Editor of the Year in the Stack
Awards. Case was selected as ‘philoso-
pher in residence’ for the 2016 Bris-
bane Writers’ Festival.
Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore
Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore lived in
China from 2009 to 2014 during which
time she worked as the associate editor
for Time Out Beijing, the art editor for
Time Out Shanghai, and as an oped col-
umnist for the International New York
Times, reporting from China for the
blog Latitude: Views From Around the
World. She writes for The Guardian, The
Economist, Financial Times, The New
York Times, Womankind, Wall Street
Journal, New Statesman, New Interna-
tionalist, The Huffington Post, and Time
magazine.
Marina Benjamin
Marina Benjamin is a writer and edi-
tor. As a memoirist, she is best known
for The Middlepause, which offered
a poetic and philosophical take on
midlife. Benjamin is also the author of
Insomnia and her new memoir A Little
Give will be published next year. She
is a Senior Editor at Aeon magazine, a
Consultant Fellow for the Royal Lit-
erary Fund, and a creative writing tu-
tor at Arvon.
 Contributors

Tom Chatfield Cynthia Pury Philippe Charles Jacquet

Tom Chatfield is a British writer,
broadcaster, and tech philosopher. He
is the author of six books, including
Netymology, Live This Book!, and How
to Thrive in the Digital Age, and speaks
around the world on technology, the
arts, and media. Chatfield was launch
columnist for the BBC’s worldwide
technology site, BBC Future, is a Vis-
iting Associate at the Oxford Internet
Institute, and is a senior expert at the
Global Governance Institute.
Cynthia Pury, Professor of Psychol-
ogy at Clemson, trained as a clinical
psychologist specialising in anxiety
disorders. Pury’s major research inter-
ests involve courage, virtue, and posi-
tive psychology; her research began in
the area of cognition and fear, specifi-
cally threat appraisals. She is Associ-
ate Editor of The Journal of Positive
Psychology, editor of The Psychology of
Courage, and Co-organiser of the 2007
Courage Summit.
Trained as an architect, Philippe
Charles Jacquet is a painter who works
in the north of Paris, France. He has
exhibited around the world, including
M Fine Arts in Boston, Hugo Gallery
in New York, Axelle Fine Arts in New
York, and Gallerie 26 in Paris. In 2006
he was awarded first prize at the Ex-
position des Arts Plastiques in France,
and in 2004 he was awarded first prize
at the Salon des Arts de Gouvieux in
l’Oise, France.

Russel Herneman John Caple Genís Carreras

Russel Herneman is an award-winning
cartoonist whose work has appeared
in The Times of London, Private Eye,
Prospect, The Spectator, and many oth-
ers. In 2018 he won Pocket Cartoon of
the Year 2018 in the Political Cartoon
Awards, European Newspaper Design
award for illustration, and Society of
News Design Award of excellence for
Illustration. He was an exhibitor at the
Society of Graphic Fine Art Draw 18
at Mennier Gallery, London.
John Caple’s art remains woven into
the landscape and history of Somerset
as well as the rich tradition of poetry,
folklore and magic that has held firm
in Mendip. Caple has exhibited with
the John Martin Gallery in London
for over 20 years. In 2011 he com-
pleted a cycle of three triptychs based
on A Midsummer’s Night Dream for
the Glyndebourne Festival. His works
is held in collections throughout the
world.
Genís Carreras is the cover designer
of New Philosopher magazine and the
creator of Philographics: Big Ideas in
Simple Shapes. Carreras’s work has been
recognised in the AOI World Illustra-
tion Awards, the Laus Awards, and the
Stocks Taylor Benson Awards, and his
work has been featured in the books
MIN: New Simplicity in Graphic Design,
Playing with Type, Geometry Makes Me
Happy, and Geo/Graphics.

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 News from nowhere

THE WILL TO
FREEDOM

Des ancrages solides, by Philippe Charles Jacquet

 News from nowhere

“Whereas moral courage is

the righting of wrongs, crea-
tive courage, in contrast,
is the discovering of new
forms, new symbols, new
patterns on which a new so-
ciety can be built.”

— Rollo May

“I know what is means to live a life that contradicts our inmost

nature, and if possible I wish… to save you that misery,” wrote Jo-
hanna to her son, Arthur Schopenhauer. The young Schopenhauer
was troubled by a nagging desire to study philosophy, which was
counter to the career path he was on, that of an apprentice mer-
chant in his father’s business. Johanna warned Schopenhauer that
while the career path of a merchant had the prospect of becoming
wealthy, living in a big city, and being respected, the life of a scholar
would be “quiet and without splendour”.
Schopenhauer today is known for his thoughts on the ‘will to
life’, or that blind craving, striving, desiring, that compels humans
so. We are forever seeking, wanting more, never at rest. As a young
man, born into a wealthy Dutch-German family, well-travelled
and fluent in German, English, and French, Schopenhauer’s ‘will’
was unremitting. It was the cause of much suffering for him. “That
you have been dissatisfied with your whole existence I have known
for a long time,” his mother wrote. “I know only too well how little
of youth’s cheerful spirit you enjoyed, how much of a disposition
towards melancholy brooding you have inherited.”
Johanna, however, was hopeful that Schopenhauer had the
courage to create a new plan for his life and follow it. But he first
had to summon the courage and will to free himself. Not rashness,
but the courage to be guided by the power of his natural instinct.
And so, upon receipt of his mother’s letter, Schopenhauer quit his
apprentice position, and set forth on the life of a scholar.

13
News from nowhere
The courage to be different
I
f Danish philosopher Søren Ki-
erkegaard were alive today, and
had his own social media account,
he probably wouldn’t get many likes.
The eccentric writer of books includ-
ing Fear and Trembling and The Sick-
ness Unto Death, was often insulted and
ridiculed by those who knew him, and
almost nobody read his books in his day.
Kierkegaard never got married or had
children, he hardly ever travelled, and
he had contempt for politics. Instead, he
explored the human condition of suf-
fering and despair, writing volumes of
manuscripts about it. He writes: “Just as
the physician might say that there lives
perhaps not one single man who is in
perfect health, so one might say perhaps
that there lives not one single man who
after all is not to some extent in despair,
in whose inmost parts there does not
“Well, that’s another diem we didn’t carpe.”
14
dwell a disquietude, a perturbation, a
discord, or dread of himself.”
Kierkegaard’s thoughts, although
unpopular in his day, have been rig-
orously examined by academics, phi-
losophers, and psychologists ever since.
His contribution to the philosophical
canon cannot be understated. But had
Kierkegaard posted his words on social
media and received the usual vitriol, or
silence, in response, his despair would
have no doubt deepened. A ‘follower’ of
Kierkegaard might have recommended
that he see a therapist. That’s because
social media is not the place for new
ideas or novel thinking.
In a report titled Social Media and
the Spiral of Silence, the Pew Research
Center found that people are more
willing to state their opinions on social
media if they feel that their opinions are
in line with what their followers think.
Possibly controversial or novel ideas
are best kept secret for fear of ridicule
or bullying, or worse being silenced by
those who once ‘loved’ or ‘liked’ them.
Furthermore, a person who feels that
their ideas may clash with the group’s
norms is also more likely to keep tight-
lipped out in public, say at a restaurant.
The result of this self-censorship and
silencing is that fewer novel ideas are
tested, and thought over time can be-
come caged and restrained.
The trouble with the popularity con-
test that is social media is that the sys-
tem praises conformity and suppresses
the courage to be different. It brings to
mind Kierkegaard’s quip: “People de-
mand freedom of speech as a compen-
sation for the freedom of thought which
they seldom use.”
Un Refuge, by Philippe Charles15Jacquet
News from nowhere
The goodness of
courage
W
hen Boston baseball team, the Red Sox, won
the 1912 World Series, millionaire bohemian
and baseball fan Isabella Stewart Gardner at-
tended the Boston Symphony Orchestra wearing a hat
with the words “Oh, you Red Sox” blazoned in red on the
front. New York magazine Town Topics, a scandal sheet on
high society, reported: “[it] looks as if the woman has gone
crazy”. Seated in her conspicuous hat, Isabella, the maga-
zine reported, caused a “panic among those in the audience
who discovered the ornamentation”. Even the musicians
themselves were so startled their “eyes wandered from their
music stands”.
Isabella, a wealthy collector who founded the Isabella
Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, and whose artistic
coterie of friends included painter John Singer Sargent and
writer Henry James, was aware her choice of hat would
expose her to ridicule. While many scoffed, others, like one
Boston reporter wrote: “Mrs Jack Gardner is one of the
seven wonders of Boston. There is nobody like her in any
city in this country… She is the leader of the smart set,
but she often leads where none dare follow… She imitates
nobody; everything she does is novel and original.” To go
against convention, Isabella had to summon up confidence,
but was it a courageous act?
Courage is often regarded a sign of human excellence,
a cardinal virtue. To get what we want in life, we need con-
fidence to overcome obstacles – exposing ourselves to po-
tentially humiliating, dangerous, or painful consequences.
Isabella did not let the fear of public opinion get in the way
of her supporting the baseball team. She pushed aside the
repercussions and did what she wished.
16
When ancient philosophers first wrote about the virtue
of courage, it was mostly in relation to courage in battle, in
war. Seemingly, only soldiers could be courageous. Not rich
women wearing silly hats. But in Plato’s Laches, Socrates
attempts to offer a broader definition. “I wanted to find
out not just what it is to be… brave during a war, but to be
brave in the face of danger at sea; and I wanted to find out
what it is to be brave in the face of an illness, in the face of
poverty, and in public life; and what’s more not just what it
is to be brave in resisting pain or fear, but also in putting up
stern opposition to temptation and indulgence.”
Plato’s broader account of courage does not mean eve-
ryone who suffers is courageous. Suffering poverty, finding
oneself adrift in a leaking boat, or receiving a dire health
prognosis does not make you courageous. Rather, courage
needs to be earned; you master your impulse to flee in fear
and drive ahead with your objectives, understanding that
things may not work out as planned.
On permanent display at Isabella’s art museum in Bos-
ton are European, Asian, and American artworks, including
paintings, sculptures, and tapestries. But in the early hours
of March 18, 1990, two men posing as police officers re-
sponding to a call, entered, handcuffed two security guards,
wrapped them up with duct tape, and then proceeded to
loot the museum, cutting out paintings by Vermeer, Rem-
brandt, Degas, and Manet, artworks valued in the hundreds
of millions of dollars. To pull off the heist, the thieves had to
overcome immense fear – the risk of being caught, going to
jail, even being shot. Are the thieves, therefore, courageous?
For Aristotle, courage is noble. “Therefore the end also
is noble; for each thing is defined by its end. Therefore it is
 News from nowhere

“Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft
might win, By fearing to attempt.”

— William Shakespeare

Dotonbori, by Konen Uehara, 1928

A samurai on a Japanese plate, 1850–75

for a noble end that the brave man endures

and acts as courage directs,” writes Aristotle
in Nicomachean Ethics.
When we call someone courageous, not
only do we praise them for resisting fear,
we also commend them for a character trait
that makes them good. While Isabella was
brash to wear the conspicuous hat, and the
thieves were daring to pull off the heist, few
would describe them as courageous. The ti-
tle of ‘courage’ is only granted to those peo-
ple who face risks valiantly in the pursuit
of something worthwhile, something noble.
Not only are courageous people brave, it
seems that they are also good. It’s perhaps
for this reason that Aristotle regards cour-
age as the first virtue, the one that makes all
other virtues possible.

17
News from nowhere
FEAR AND COURAGE
A
t the base of an underground prison, a circular pit
deep in the dark earth, we find Bruce Wayne, oth-
erwise known as Batman, in the superhero film The
Dark Knight Rises. Bruce Wayne, like other prisoners, yearns
for freedom. He can see the glimmer of sunlight above his
head and wants to climb to the top of the vertical wall. But
freedom eludes him. There are no guards, nor surveillance,
nor barriers to stop him, other than a treacherously steep
climb up a rocky face and a perilous final leap to safety.
Wayne works on his body to build strength, doing push-
ups, squats, and stretches. He shadow-boxes inside his cell.
“He says the leap to freedom is not about strength,” says a
prisoner, but Bruce Wayne disagrees. He starts to climb the
rocky wall vigorously, a rope tied to his waist to save him
should he fall. He summons his strength by channelling his
hatred of the villain Bane who has imprisoned him. He climbs
with confidence, but a loose piece of rock comes away from
the wall, and into his hand. He loses his grip, and falls. The
rope around his waist tugs tight, and Wayne swings – hanging
mid-air, notching up another failure.
A blind prisoner, noting his failed attempt, approach-
es him. “You do not fear death. You think this makes you
strong. It makes you weak.”
Wayne is confused. Superheroes defeat fear, that is their
strength. Superheroes must become fearless.
A little more persistence, courage, vim!
Success will dawn o’er fortune’s cloudy rim.
Then take this honey for the bitterest cup:
“There is no failure, save in giving up,—
No real fall as long as one still tries,—
For seeming setbacks make the strong man wise.
There’s no defeat, in truth, save from within;
Unless you’re beaten there, you’re bound to win.”
From Perseverance Conquers Al l, by Henry Austin
18
“How can you move faster than possible, fight longer
than possible, if not from the most powerful impulse of the
spirit?” continues the blind prisoner. “The fear of death. The
will to survive.”
Bruce Wayne disagrees. “I do fear death,” he says. “I fear
dying in here.”
“Then make the climb,” the blind prisoner says. “Without
the rope.”
To climb the wall without the rope means no second
chance. To fall, to fail, is to die. And so, the next morning,
at a more cautious pace – fuelled by fear, and terror, Bruce
Wayne climbs the rock face and approaches the fatal final
leap. Bats explode from the side of the cliff, screeching in
his face, symbolising his greatest fear, that of dying. Bruce
Wayne walks to the edge of the rocky crag and stares into
its paralysing depths. Overcome with fear, he jumps for his
life – and makes it.
The Dark Knight Rises is the final instalment in The Dark
Knight trilogy. While screenwriter and film director Chris-
topher Nolan was hesitant about releasing a third film in the
series, the film became Nolan’s highest-grossing film, and is
regarded as one of the greatest superhero films of all time.
The scene of Bruce Wayne’s escape from the underground
prison is notorious for its message: that it’s the courage to
fear, the courage to fail, that can ultimately bring us freedom.
Bronze helmet of Corinthian type, ca. 600–575 BCE, Met
 “Courage is
resistance to fear,
mastery of fear – not
absence of fear.”

— Mark Twain

Derived from WWII war poster, by Pat Keely, 1940

 Befriending fear

The Wilderness has a Mysterious Tongue, by John Caple


by Antonia Case
Befriending
fear
On a train trip through country
France one weekend, I got talking to
a London couple who were taking a
quick ‘weekender’ in Barcelona. “But
it’s so far,” I said to them, referring to
the 15-hour train ride from London to
Barcelona, sandwiched between pas-
sengers in an overheated cabin with no
air conditioning. “And then on Sunday,
you have to turn around and go all the
way back.”
“Oh,” says the woman, pointing
disparagingly at her husband. “He
won’t fly.”
I glance at her husband, up against
the window, adamantly shaking his
head. “Nup,” he says. “Never.”
“You’ve never flown on a plane be-
fore?” I enquire.
“No, never, and I never will,” he
replies.
Rather than pressing the issue fur-
ther, I ponder his decision not to fly.
My first thought is, “But if he’s never
flown, he doesn’t know what it’s like.
Maybe he’d love flying in a plane.”
But then, I compare it to scuba diving,
an activity that’s certainly not on my
‘bucket list’. I don’t relish the idea of
being 40 metres deep in the ocean with
a tiny container of oxygen on my back.
Life is short, there are plenty of things
to do, and scuba diving is not my prior-
ity. And so, the same goes for this man,
I suppose. Flying ten kilometres above
his house in an aluminium tube – he
just doesn’t see the sense in it.
Of course, psychologists often re-
fer to the decision ‘not’ to do some-
thing as a phobia. And the best way
to overcome phobias of all sorts is to
find the courage to conquer them. You
hate spiders, then go out and grab a
giant Huntsman and plop him onto
your arm. And then, suffer the conse-
quences. The idea is that, over time, and
with enough heart palpitations, you’ll
learn to deal with it. Something that
was once terrifying becomes normal-
ised, run of the mill. Adios fear.
Befriending fear
In Mastering Fear, Brandon Webb,
describes his friend, Neil Amon-
son, who was terrified of heights
but wanted to get into the US Air
Force combat control team. Neil was
put through scuba diving courses,
land navigation/survival training,
and HALO, which is an acronym
for ‘high altitude/low altitude’ jump
school. “Neil never went on roller-
coasters as a kid,” writes Webb, “be-
cause he knew it would feel totally
out of his control.”
In the typical HALO exercise, the
parachutist launches out of a plane at
around 10,000 metres – free falls at
200km/h before opening the parachute
just under a kilometre off the ground,
leaving little time to spare if the para-
chute doesn’t open. For someone who
is afraid of heights, this scenario would
have to be as bad as it gets. “So how the
hell did he get through HALO,” writes
Webb, “and what made him go into the
Air Force in the first place?”
The key is to crawl, then walk,
then run, argues Webb. It’s “thorough,
systematic, step-by-step training that
nobody does better than the military.”
23
Befriending fear
Before Neil was tossed out of a
plane, he had to spend a week in an
indoor wind tunnel in North Caro-
lina, hour after hour, “practising sky-
diving just a few feet off the floor,”
writes Webb, “until he knew, from a
physiological standpoint, exactly what
skydiving felt like in every part of his
body.” The next step was jumping out
of a plane in the conventional manner;
and then it was to jump in full combat
equipment; and then it was to do it at
night in high altitude while wearing an
oxygen mask. You are “not stepping out
of your comfort zone, but stretching it,
enlarging its boundaries,” he writes.
Once Neil found his wings, so to
speak, he quit all his other hobbies and
focused on flying – skydiving, paraglid-
ing, piloting planes, and even BASE
jumping. His fear of heights is still
with him, adds Webb, but he has the
expertise and confidence to channel it.
As Aristotle says, courage “is a mean
with regard to feelings of fear (phobos)
and confidence (tharsos)”. Complete
certainty, safety, and a life of no fear is
impossible. There’ll never be a point in
your life where you’ll think, “now’s the
right time, I’m totally prepared and at
ease”. Webb concludes: “If you wait for
the fear to go away first, you’ll never do
it. Because the fear is never going away.”
Clinical psychologist and consult-
ant, Robert Maurer, interviewed hun-
dreds of people in his quest to learn
more about the traits of highly success-
ful people. What do successful people
do differently? What stood out, when
Maurer replayed interviews for clues,
was the relationship successful people
had with fear.
“If you can take the time to un-
derstand fear, you can use it,” says
successful NFL player Lynn Swann.
24
“I was always a little afraid in each
game I played. Afraid of failure, of
letting my teammates down, and of
being hurt. I used that fear to make
me a better player.”
Successful people, Maurer discov-
ered, talk about fear a lot. They are
scared of this, frightened of that – it’s
Children seem to
have a different
relationship than
adults do with
emotional joy
and pain.
all fear, fear, fear. “When you are run-
ning an institution, you are always
scared at first,” noted Jack Welch, for-
mer CEO of General Electric. “You are
afraid you’ll break it. People don’t think
about leaders this way, but it is true.
Everyone who is running something
goes home at night and wrestles with
the same fear. Am I going to be the one
who blows this place up?”
While fear was repeatedly men-
tioned by the successful people inter-
viewed, words like stress, anxiety, or de-
pression were rarely, if ever, used. Suc-
cessful people, Maurer concluded, have
an awareness and acceptance of fear.
“They assume that whenever they are
doing something important, fear will
show,” he writes in Mastering Fear. He
compares them to children. “Children
know they live in a world that they
cannot control.” Children can’t control
what they’ll eat for dinner, or whether
their parents decide to move house, or
country, or if they’ll be allowed to go
to their friend’s house on the weekend.
It’s all out of their control – a life of
complete and utter uncertainty. “As a
result,” writes Maurer, “children seem
to have a different relationship than
adults do with emotional joy and pain.”
Adding, “Children accept that they live
in a world of fear, so they figure that
they might as well have some fun and
learn to deal with it in the process.”
Successful people, too, Maurer
contends, acknowledge fear as com-
monplace and expected, and certainly
don’t view it as a psychological sign
that something is wrong with them.
When fear arises, they see it as a sign
that something important demands
their attention. “As children do, they
assume that fear is a natural part of
life, and they know that whenever
they’re doing something important,
fear will show up,” Maurer writes.
Most people have some trepida-
tion when boarding a plane. Of course,
there are the types who fall asleep upon
take-off, but most passengers are oddly
quiet, submerged on gadgets, or nerv-
ously coughing. It’s unusual to hear
couples laughing outrageously 10,000
metres above the Earth’s surface. We
are fearful because our brains are alert-
ing us to the fact that if something goes
wrong up there, we will need to act.
My train companion, who re-
fuses to fly, has personalised this
fear as something unique to him. He
shouldn’t: we’re all fearful, and unu-
sual territory – such as the sky or the
seabed – will always elicit the fear re-
sponse. The task, therefore, becomes
one of not conquering fear but accept-
ing it, allowing it to be present. And
then, mastering the courage to take the
first baby step.
“One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose
sight, for a very long time, of the shore.”

André Gide

Artwork: To Visit the Soul, by John Caple 25

Deadly leap
by Patrick Stokes
A few years ago my family was
invited to a wedding in a medieval
winery in the French countryside. You
don’t get more than one invite like
that in a lifetime, so we jumped at the
chance – literally, as it turned out.
On arriving in Languedoc I
learned that the bachelor party
would involve a morning of can-
yoning, a sport that involves getting
from one end of a river canyon to the
other by any means necessary. In this
case, those means were climbing up
rocks and cliffs and then jumping off
them again into the river, then float-
ing downstream, then more climbing
and jumping.
Floating in cool, clear water down
a river gorge on a hot July day was
a delight. The jumping was… some-
thing else. But at least jumping off
progressively higher cliffs meant I
got to quantify my cowardice. My
courage, I now know, extends no
higher than six metres. It doesn’t
26
Deadly
leap
seem to matter how safe you know
something to be intellectually; mil-
lions of years of evolution wins out,
and the body simply rebels at the call
of gravity. That’s why even those ‘trust
falls’ you may have had to do at a cor-
porate retreat or school camp are so
difficult, no matter how reliable you
think your comrades.
It is unsurprising, then, that the
image of the diver’s leap into the
void has captivated philosophers. In
the salto mortale – a term that can
simply mean ‘somersault’ but literally
means ‘deadly leap’ – they have found
a perfect emblem for a sort of radical
courage, a literally full-bodied, abso-
lute commitment in the face of moral
risk. Indeed, it’s hard to think of a
better metaphor for total resolution.
You cannot throw half of yourself off
a cliff into a river or sea.
Two philosophers in particular
dwell on this image, in ways that are
very different yet ultimately, I think,
complimentary in what they teach us
about courage.
In 1895, W illiam James, the
American philosopher and psycholo-
gist (and brother of novelist Henry
James) gave an address to the Har-
vard branch of the YMCA with the
forthright title “Is Life Worth Liv-
ing?” The topic was suicide, yet James
also touched on questions of belief
and courage. Previously, James had
argued against the view – exempli-
fied by the English philosopher and
mathematician William Kingdon
Clifford – that it was always wrong
to believe something on insufficient
evidence. The trouble with that view,
said James, is that very often we have
to make a decision about what to
believe, even when the evidence is
less than fully persuasive either way.
Some decisions can’t wait for proof.
As the 17th century French writer
Blaise Pascal put it, choosing “is not
optional... you are embarked”.
Deadly leap
In “Is Life Worth Living?” James
argues that such leaps of faith are
essential to any success in life at all:
“Not a victory is gained, not a deed of
faithfulness or courage is done, except
upon a maybe […] It is only by risk-
ing our persons from one hour to an-
other that we live at all.” And some-
times, believing that we can succeed,
even in the face of objective uncer-
tainty, is itself a necessary condition
for doing so. This is where James finds
the image of the leap compelling.
Suppose, for instance, that you
are climbing a mountain, and have
worked yourself into a position from
which the only escape is by a ter-
rible leap. Have faith that you can
successfully make it, and your feet
are nerved to its accomplishment.
But mistrust yourself, and think of
“I’ve found the courage not to change.”
28
all the sweet things you have heard
the scientists say of maybes, and you
will hesitate so long that, at last, all
unstrung and trembling, and launch-
ing yourself in a moment of despair,
you roll into the abyss.
There are paradoxes threaded into
this vertiginous scene. The very idea
of willed belief, of choosing to believe
something (let alone of doing so be-
cause it would be advantageous to be-
lieve it) seems to violate basic assump-
tions about the relationship between
belief and will. To choose what to be-
lieve seems tantamount to choosing
what is true – something we presum-
ably cannot do if we are going to hold
onto the concept of ‘truth’ at all. The
courage of James’s climber consists
not just in willing themselves to do
something dangerous, but, in so doing,
embodying a faith that they will land
safely, a faith that goes beyond what
the available evidence would license.
In this, courage seems to resemble
nothing so much as trust. All courage,
like all trust, has something gratuitous
in it. It always goes at least a little fur-
ther than what we can reasonably ex-
pect – otherwise it wouldn’t be cour-
age, but simply prediction. It only takes
courage to attempt the leap you might
not make, and even more to attempt the
one you almost certainly won’t.
No philosopher is more closely as-
sociated with the concept of ‘the leap’
than Søren Kierkegaard, whose infa-
mous “leap of faith” (a misnomer; Ki-
erkegaard in fact never uses that exact
phrase) has become a household term.
Less well-known is that Kierkegaard,
in the discourse Against Cowardliness

from 1844, had also invoked the im-
Courage is not age of the leap not as an emblem of
nerving your- faith, but of courage.
The “undaunted swimmer” prepar-
self to jump off ing to take the plunge is, Kierkeg-
aard acknowledges, a fine metaphor
the cliff into the for resolution: he climbs to a high
swirling depths place, his eyes delight in the danger,
his body rejoices in a shudder of ter-
below. It’s fac- ror – then he dives boldly into the
ing up to the fact waves; he vanishes as if swallowed by
the sea but quickly emerges and has
you are already triumphed; triumphed in one single
moment.
out over deep But the diver is, in another sense,
water. quite different from James’s moun-
taineer. The diver’s leap is entirely vol-
untary. He puts himself into danger,
quite gleefully. The mountaineer, on
the other hand, finds herself already
in danger. Presumably, of course, there
was an earlier moment when she de-
cided to go mountaineering, but right
here and now, high above sea level,
she can either make the leap or stay
put and perish. There is no option
but to act in one of these ways. She
is embarked.
And this is why the diver is ulti-
mately misleading as a vision of cour-
age, on Kierkegaard’s telling. There’s
no question the diver is brave, but
the analogy invites us to “fancy that
life is like that, that danger is a cel-
ebration to which one is invited, a
proposal that is made”. That is not
Deadly leap
our condition. We instead find our-
selves already in peril, without ever
having to throw ourselves off any
high places at all.
The danger Kierkegaard is con-
cerned about, and the courage that
it requires, is thus more like that of
the mountaineer than the diver. For
Kierkegaard this is a religious danger
(a result of being born in sin), but the
point does, I think, apply in a more
existential sense too. We are stalked
at all moments by the ever-present
risk of sudden calamity or illness or
death, and the more prosaic risks of
failing to live up to our own ideals or
expectations. Every move we make, in
some sense, is a salto mortale.
Courage is not nerving yourself
to jump off the cliff into the swirling
depths below. It’s facing up to the fact
you are already out over deep water.
There is nothing of the diver’s self-
aggrandisement in such an admission:
“To have dived into danger oneself is
a proud thing,” writes Kierkegaard. “It
is somewhat more humble for a person
to admit that he is there, to confess to
himself that he is where circumstance
and providence have placed him, with-
out daring to leave this place either to
flee or to climb to a high place from
which he will dive down into danger.”
Or at least, that’s the excuse I will
use next time someone asks me to go
canyoning.
29
Thoughts on... courage

“Fear and courage

“I learned that courage was not the
absence of fear, but the triumph
over it.”
Nelson Mandela
are brothers.”
— Proverb

“Valour lies just halfway between

rashness and cowheartedness.”
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

“Courage, of all national qualities, is

the most precarious; because it is ex-
erted only at intervals, and by a few in
every nation.”
David Hume

“The effort to see things without dis-

tortion demands a kind of courage.”
Henri Matisse

“Either life entails courage, or it ceas-

“Complete courage and absolute cow- es to be life.”
ardice are extremes that very few peo-
E.M. Forster
ple fall into.”
François de La Rochefoucauld

“Sapere aude! ‘Have courage to use “We become just by doing just acts,
“Whistling to keep myself from being your own understanding!’ – that is the temperate by doing temperate acts,
afraid.” motto of enlightenment.” brave by doing brave acts.”
John Dryden Immanuel Kant Aristotle

30
 Thoughts on... courage

“The greatest test of courage on earth “This is no time for ease and comfort. “All doubt is cowardice – all trust is
is to bear defeat without losing heart.” It is the time to dare and endure.” brave.”
Robert Ingersoll Winston Churchill Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“Bravery has no place where it can “The true courage is in facing danger “Speak your mind, even if your voice
avail nothing.” when you are afraid.” shakes.”
Samuel Johnson The Wizard of Oz Maggie Kuhn

“A hero is no braver than an

ordinary man, but he is brav-
er five minutes longer.”
Anonymous

“There is no need to be
ashamed of tears, for tears
bear witness that a man has
the greatest of courage, the
courage to suffer.”
Viktor Frankl

“The onward march of the human

“Be steadfast as a tower that doth not race requires that the heights around
“Courage is of the heart by derivation, bend its stately summit to the tem- it constantly blaze with noble lessons
And great it is. But fear is of the soul.” pest’s shock.” of courage.”
Robert Frost Dante Alighieri Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

31
Rare and wonderful
by Nigel Warburton
There is a remarkable photograph
taken in Hamburg in 1936. It shows
a crowd of shipyard workers gathered
for the launch of a ship. All except one
are enthusiastically raising their arms
in the ‘Heil Hitler’ salute. Yet there is
one man with his arms firmly folded
across his chest. He is defiant. He re-
fuses to go along with the crowd, re-
fuses to do what is expected of him.
This is August Landmesser. He had
been engaged to a Jewish woman, Irma
Eckler, but the Nazi Nuremberg Laws
of 1935 prevented him from marrying
her; nonetheless they went on to have
two daughters. Tragically, Irma later
32
Rare and
wonderful
died in the Ravensbrück concentration
camp. Landmesser was also imprisoned,
charged with ‘dishonouring the race’,
sent to a concentration camp and, af-
ter his release and forced conscription,
died on the Eastern Front.
That photograph is a visual record
of an act of great courage. Landmesser
was well aware that there would be
serious consequences for refusing to
make the Nazi salute, and he also knew
there would be consequences for con-
tinuing his relationship with Irma, in
defiance of the Nuremberg Laws.
Sophia Scholl should be far better
known too. As a young student study-
ing biology and philosophy at Munich
University in the early 1940s, she be-
came a key member of the anti-Nazi
resistance, part of a group called the
White Rose, which wrote and distrib-
uted leaflets and was responsible for
anti-Nazi graffiti. By 1943, the group
was posting leaflets throughout Ger-
many, attacking the “dictatorship of
evil”, describing Nazi atrocities, and
urging sabotage of the system. When,
after dropping a pile of leaflets from a
balcony at a town hall event, she and
her brother Hans were finally arrested,
they nobly resisted betraying their
co-conspirators, pretending that they
were responsible for the whole White
Rose movement. Finally, they were ex-
ecuted for treason; guillotined, along
with some of their colleagues. Given
a chance to decry her ‘crimes’ in court,
Sophie said that she had done the best
she could for her nation and therefore
didn’t regret the consequences that she
knew would follow. She was just 21.
As I write this, there is news of the
disappearance of the Iranian climber
Elnaz Rekabi after competing in an
international tournament in Seoul
without wearing a hijab. In the face of
brutal persecution, many other women
have defied Iran’s strict laws that re-
quire women to wear a head covering.
Some have been beaten to death sim-
ply for exposing their hair. Despite this,
others continue their protest.
Close-up of August Landmesser refusing to give the Nazi salute, 1936 33
35
August Landmesser refusing to give the Nazi salute, 1936
Rare and wonderful
History is replete with similar ex-
amples of immensely courageous people
who have defied powerful authorities,
well-aware that grim consequences
are almost inevitable, taking risks with
their own lives because they think that
some things are more important than
personal safety. It’s possible to see both
Socrates and Jesus Christ in the same
light. Socrates, accused of corrupting
the youth of Athens and encouraging
them to worship false gods, stood trial,
and refused to kowtow to his persecu-
tors. On trial, rather than being con-
trite, he suggested that the city state
should give him a pension because of
the good that he was doing – a line of
defence that was never likely to endear
him to his accusers. He had opportu-
nities to escape, but chose the death
penalty, drinking hemlock rather than
compromising his integrity. Following
his conscience was more important
than continuing to live.
Four hundred years later, Pontius
Pilate had Jesus Christ crucified for
his dangerous preaching and declaring
himself King of the Jews. Again, he
Like all virtues, courage lies between
two vices: one of excess, and the other
of lack.
36
knew very well what was coming but
followed his conscience.
Yet not everyone who defies social
pressures to conform is praiseworthy.
Not all dissent is good. Far from it.
Anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists,
some cult leaders, and many others
go against the mainstream, and are
sometimes very brave in confronting
authorities. They take personal risks.
They’re sincere in their belief that
they are right. They are following their
consciences. Yet they are fundamen-
tally mistaken. Perhaps that is a kind
of courage in that it involves standing
up for what they take to be the truth.
But it’s not a virtuous kind of cour-
age, since they have fundamentally
false and potentially dangerous be-
liefs. What makes it easier to describe
Landmesser’s and the Scholls’ actions
as courageous is that they were com-
pletely right: the Nazis were evil and
had to be stopped. But does that mean
we should just use the word ‘courage’ to
describe actions we approve of ?
Aristotle gave a useful analysis of
courage. It, like all virtues, lies between
two vices: one of excess, and the other
of lack. Foolhardiness is when some-
one, far from being courageous, doesn’t
value his or her life very much and
takes reckless risks with it. Cowardice
is when someone is so fearful that they
can’t do what a brave person would do.
Courage, in contrast, involves recognis-
ing the dangers, real physical risks, ex-
periencing fear, but nevertheless having
the inner strength to act. The coward is
almost paralysed by fear, the foolhardy
person acts without any thought about
danger, but the courageous person feels
the fear and does it anyway.
Formally, the conspiracy theorist
who protests and is arrested, seems to
be courageous under this description.
But the difference is that Landmesser
and the Scholls died for a cause worth
dying for. Aristotle’s account implies
this point too, since for him, courage
isn’t just facing a fear – his discussion
takes place within a wider discussion of
the nature of virtue and the importance
of doing the right thing. Fairly obvi-
ously, following an inner voice of con-
science doesn’t guarantee that anyone

will do the right thing unless they have
Real courage, a reliable conscience. Many serial killers
like the kind have obeyed an inner voice, with ter-
rible consequences. The difficulty is be-
displayed by ing grounded in reality, having a clear
Landmesser, the sense of right and wrong, and knowing
that we aren’t deceiving ourselves. As
Scholls, and Re- Søren Kierkegaard pointed out in his
book Fear and Trembling, at times we
kabi, is rare and have to act on faith, since, like Abra-
wonderful. ham instructed to sacrifice his only
son Isaac, we can’t be certain that we
are doing the right thing, that things
will work out for the best, that the
voice we hear telling us to act is what
it seems to be. Sometimes our actions
are only retrospectively revealed to be
the right ones. At the time of making
that irreversible choice to stand up and
resist, outcomes are uncertain, and yet
“Who are you calling chicken?!”
Rare and wonderful
the cost may be very high. We have to
trust our hearts, but our hearts need to
be well-informed.
Real courage, like the kind displayed
by Landmesser, the Scholls, and Rekabi,
is rare and wonderful. These people all
valued their own lives, but took great
risks for their beliefs for the sake of
something more important than the ful-
filment of individual desires. Ultimately,
they all stood up for personal freedom
against a repressive authoritarian state.
For those of us who lack their immense
courage and are temperamentally disin-
clined to stand up and risk everything
in an act of moral defiance, they repre-
sent humanity at its best. We may not
be able to emulate them, but we should
celebrate them and perhaps find our
own ways to resist authoritarianism.
37
Le Grand Rocher, Philippe Charles Jacquet
Doing the impossible

Image: Superman over London Bridge

DOING THE
IMPOSSIBLE

by Antonia Case
On Monday morning on 13 July 2009, the Tower Bridge
in London is shut to traffic. At 2:55 am, the bridge deck par-
tially opens, creating two ramps 23 metres apart. On the north
side of the bridge, 27-year-old Australian daredevil, Robbie
Maddison, revs the engine on his Yamaha 250 motorbike.
“I am fighting the nerves back,” he says, as though in battle
against a tough opponent.
Maddison is thinking about the steel rails he could hit. He
is weighing up the impact of falling 60 metres into the River
Thames, a collision that would probably kill him. “The scariest
thing about this jump,” he adds, “is the fact that the roadway
is up and when I am mid-air, I am going to get a visual of the
Thames River and the steel structure of the roadway open. It’s
kind of a scary thing.”
Robbie Maddison applies the throttle. The only thing that
will save him this still Monday morning is courage. If he lacks
it, he will, as he puts it, “end up in the drink”. If he hesitates
at the start, if he doesn’t accelerate with enough conviction,
if he pauses at any moment in the run up, he won’t generate
enough velocity to complete the jump.
Maddison picks up pace to an approach speed of around
64 kilometres per hour. There’s no turning back; he launches
his motorbike off the north ramp, and directly into the void.
What is courage? One of Plato’s early dialogues, the
Laches, tries to arrive at some sort of definition. Plato, a
former student of Socrates, was inspired by the life of So-
crates and how courage plays a part in the story of human
excellence. To flourish, and to live a good life, thought So-
crates, we need an understanding of the virtues of courage,
temperance, justice, piety, and wisdom.
To many historians, Socrates lived a courageous life. Bare-
foot and dressed in a threadbare cloak, Socrates lived in poverty
for most of his life. But Socrates pursued that which was es-
sential to him, and that was knowledge, and learning. Seating
himself outside a cobbler’s shop in the shadow of the Acropolis,
Doing the impossible
Socrates committed his life to teaching students how to think,
how to argue, and how to seek the truth. He taught them to
question everything, even those aspects of Athenian society
which everyone took to be true and righteous, and even when
such insistent questioning brought him into conflict with the
masses. One could liken it today to be up against a Twitterstorm
and to hold steadfast to one’s beliefs rather than succumbing to
mob rule. As we all know, it’s not an easy thing to do.
Socrates’ ideas became so influential that he eventually got
on the wrong side of Athenian aristocracy, and later the law.
He was brought to trial and lost – and was sentenced to death.
In Laches, Plato describes a scene where Socrates is called
to offer advice on the best instruction for teenagers to become
men of note. Should they be trained in fighting in armour?
How do you create excellence in young men?
To begin, Socrates attempts to arrive at a definition of
courage that extends to all life situations, not solely on the
battlefield. But defining courage is more difficult than defin-
ing speed, for instance. While we can say with confidence
that Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt is fast, can we say with
equal conviction that motocross sensation Robbie Maddison
is courageous?
One could argue that Robbie Maddison is simply skilled
in a high-risk sport. Pulling off a no-handed backflip over the
Tower Bridge, Maddison had good reason to believe he’d land
safely on the other side. He had the skills do it. He knew the
revs per minute he needed off the face of the jump. He knew
how to lean back hard to get the rotation right. If you or I
decided to follow Maddison’s lead off the Tower Bridge on
a motorbike, we’d need a lot more courage than him. Should
we therefore surmise that a novice is more courageous than
an expert? Or merely foolish?
These were the types of questions Socrates asked in an
effort to come up with a definition of courage. Clearly, few
would argue that a mother who threw herself into a river to
41
Doing the impossible

rescue her child is acting courageously.
Even if the mother did not know how
to swim herself, we’d still call her brave
– not foolish. But a soldier who flees
his post in wartime, we may call him a
coward for running away and not per-
severing in the face of danger. But what
if this soldier ran from the enemy and
then repositioned himself for a success-
ful counterattack? Is he still a coward
for running in the first place?
Socrates and his interlocutors kept
hitting contradictions, and inconsist-
encies, in their quest to define the
nature of courage. Try as they might,
they failed to come up with a fool-
proof definition of courage that ac-
counts for every situation, thus leading
Socrates to conclude, “we have failed
to discover what courage really is”.
It seems that courage can only be
understood in practice. And if it can’t
be defined, courage is a difficult vir-
tue in which to instruct others, such
as teenagers. To become courageous,
one needs to keep gaining expertise,
but then push the boundaries of what
one is capable of – with confidence. In
essence, the only way to understand
courage is to put it into practice in
everyday life.
Tellingly, Robbie Maddison didn’t
stop at the Tower Bridge stunt. He later
went on to roar his Yamaha YZ 250 to
the top of the Arc de Triomphe replica
at Las Vegas, the equivalent in height to
a ten-storey building, to freefall back to
ground level; he soared his motorbike
over a canal in Greece, an 85-metre
distance over a deathly chasm; he rode
his bike through monster waves in Ta-
hiti, a stunt that took him two years to
prepare, and almost killed him. Then, in
pursuit of flight, he took off on a ramp
attached to the underbelly of a helicop-
ter, five kilometres off the ground, and
launched his motorbike into the sky –
backflipping over and over again, before
deploying his parachute to safety.
Crew members who set up stunts
for Maddison often comment on the
amount of preparation he puts into
them. Some stunts can take years to and daunting, I’ve always been able
develop. He doesn’t just stand on the to say, ‘well this is what I wanted’ and
edge of a cliff and vroom off. He learns so then I can shut it off… there’s no
what needs to be done and he practises point... in walking away. I need to find
until the risks are minimised. When out whether my dream... is meant to
interviewed, Maddison notes that his be or whether it will kill me.”
boyhood passion to be a motorcycle And that, perhaps, is the essence
daredevil, to follow in the footsteps of of courage. The courage to believe in
Evel Knievel, is what drives him. “All your dream; to believe the impossi-
through school I dreamt of being that ble is possible; and to work towards
person.” It’s Maddison’s calling, and he its attainment. “Something inside of
reminds himself of this dream when me wants to be great and to push the
he needs to muster the courage to do limits,” concludes Maddison. “When
what seems to most people to be ut- I am in that mindset, I am unstoppa-
terly insane. “When it comes to the ble.” Adding: “Nothing is impossible.
hard point where it seems so dangerous It’s just in your mind.”

And that, perhaps, is the essence of cour-

age. The courage to believe in your dream;
to believe the impossible is possible; and to
work towards its attainment.
 Don Quijote, by Luis Tasso, 1894

“No man can be brave who thinks pain the greatest evil; nor temperate,
who considers pleasure the highest good.”

Cicero
GREAT MINDS
like to think

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44
45
The Sacred Body

Wood Supper, by John Caple

GIVE US COURAGE

Artwork by John Caple courtesy of
John Martin Gallery, London
John Caple is a British painter
who was raised in a rural community
in the Mendip Hills in Somerset,
England. Caple’s paintings are in-
spired by family stories and folk nar-
ratives of the Mendip community
– generations of land workers who
shared a close connection to nature.
Caple gleans inspiration from poets
and writers who also shared his love
for rural England, including Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, and
Emily Dickinson.
Although your paintings are dark,
there is a sense of hope. Inspiration for
your paintings comes from the land-
scape and history of Somerset – how
important is courage to people in Som-
erset, now and in the past?
I am sure that courage is no more
or less important in Somerset than
anywhere else, but I am certainly
inspired by the courage of my ances-
tors from this area. The precarious
life of living upon the heath as the
old broom makers did, or the daily
slog of agricultural labour, with its
inherent uncertainty. These are per-
haps the smaller, everyday acts of
courage, surviving from day to day.
And then there are greater stories of
courage. My grandmother’s family,
the Biffins, are from a small corner
of the Quantock Hills, a landscape
that gave birth to an incredible per-
son by the name of Sarah Biffin.
Born in 1784 into a very poor fam-
ily and with a congenital condition
called phocomelia, Sarah grew to be-
come a respected painter of her day.
Commissioned by the Royal Family,
her work was accepted by the Royal
Academy. With a studio in Bond
Street, Sarah travelled a long and
difficult journey from her humble
beginnings, and her whole life was
an act of extraordinary courage.
You often seek inspiration from
writers who have some connection to
nature. What does nature teach us?
Give us courage
More than anything I think na-
ture teaches us mystery, however
much we know or think we know,
mystery always remains. I admire
poets and writers who approach na-
ture in this way, and it is this sense
of mystery that I hope to capture in
my paintings. When we spend qui-
et moments in nature, a mysterious
something, if we let it, seeps into our
being. An internal response to nature
that we can carry within us, to give
us courage, like a simple folk charm,
to protect us as we journey through
our everyday lives. When we nurture
this simple wilderness inside of us it
is as if the world is indeed enchanted.
You have mentioned that you like
to be alone. What do you like about the
solitary life?
I think it is quite natural for a
painter to seek periods of solitude. My
paintings in many ways describe an
internal world, a world which is best
approached in quiet and still moments.
47
The Sojourn, by John Caple
Give us courage
So, for me, periods of being alone are quite necessary. I
can spend many months seeking these quiet moments
before I even think about lifting a paintbrush.
Why are your landscapes bleak?
Autumn, winter, and darkness are for me times of
going within, a kind of hibernation for the mind, where
the natural world is ever more mysterious, and the in-
ternal world is even more alive. There is a beautiful qui-
etness that comes with dusk, and of course a beautiful
light. Dusk is often described as a liminal time, as it
sits between day and night, it is certainly a mysterious
time. When I am working, and my small studio is filled
with half-finished paintings, I like to spend time sitting
amongst them in the growing dark of dusk. It is the best
50
time for making decisions. It is this mysterious nature
that draws me to paint the time of dusk.
Courage requires an obstacle to overcome, f inding a way
forward. In your paintings we f ind paths, candles, boats
steering a way forward, a sense of overcoming something
diff icult. The folklore tales you read and reinterpret in your
artwork, are they often stories of bravery and courage?
I think that a lot of folklore is about overcoming adver-
sity, and a lot of folk magic is about how we mitigate our
fears, to find courage. Times of anxiety, perhaps a journey
through an unknown landscape, or the hope we have for
a good crop of apples often call for the appropriate folk
charm. Hope is such a fragile thing sometimes, like the
candle carried in many of my paintings.
The Lonely Shore, by John Caple
 Give us courage

Visitor at dusk, by John Caple

When we spend quiet moments in nature, a

mysterious something, if we let it, seeps into
our being. An internal response to nature that
we can carry within us, to give us courage, like
a simple folk charm, to protect us as we journey
through our everyday lives.

51
52
53
The Pathless Woods, by John Caple
The courage to act

British World War I propaganda poster


by Tom Chatfield
The courage to act
Kant’s philosophy is famously dif-
ficult, so it’s unfortunate that he chose
to illustrate one of its central tenets
with a scenario that seems, to many
people, straight-forwardly ridiculous
and immoral.
If a someone knocks on your front
door with the express intention of
murdering a guest, would it be ac-
ceptable for you to lie to protect this
person: to claim that they aren’t in
your house when, in fact, they are?
The answer is surely yes. Misleading
a would-be-murderer in order to save
an innocent life is self-evidently bet-
ter than sticking to the principle that
lying is wrong.
Or is it? For Kant, this thought
experiment prompted a profoundly
counter-intuitive conclusion: abso-
lute honesty is the only morally justi-
fiable policy. “To be truthful (honest)
in all declarations is,” he wrote in his
1797 essay On a Supposed Right to Lie
From Benevolent Motives, a “sacred un-
conditional command of reason, and
not to be limited by any expediency”.
Untruth is injurious to humanity as a
whole – and this makes truth-telling
a universal duty.
There are several ways of reading
Kant’s argument, among which is to
brand him fanatically indifferent to
real-world consequences. Historical
events since the 18th century have
lent weight to this perspective. Con-
sider a citizen of occupied Europe
in 1942 who has concealed a Jewish
family in their home, and who lies to
protect them when Nazi troops knock
on the front door. It’s hard to imagine
a more unambiguously courageous and
praiseworthy act; or a more misguided
moment to take Kant literally. Yet,
scholars like the Norwegian-American
philosopher Helga Varden have argued,
there is an interpretation of Kant’s
views that permits a more palatable
conclusion; and it’s closely connected
to the concept of courage.
For Varden in her 2010 article Kant
and Lying to the Murderer at the Door,
the crucial point is that a regime like
Nazi Germany created “conditions
The courage to act
where rightful interaction was impos-
sible” – and that this forced people
into situations with “no morally un-
problematic exits”. To illustrate this,
she considers the case of those who
took part in the resistance movement
during the occupation of Europe. Do-
ing so was dangerous and courageous
in equal measure. In the service of a
better future, resistance fighters went
far beyond what could reasonably have
been expected; and many were later
honoured as national heroes. Yet, Var-
den notes, a disproportionate number
of these heroes experienced a great deal
of psychological distress after the war.
Even though popular celebrations of
their actions assumed that “violent he-
roic responses to aggressors are morally
right and hence unproblematic”, they
struggled with both their deeds and
their own heroic status.
Was this distress simply the prod-
uct of trauma? For Varden, the power
of Kant’s perspective is that it asserts
that the violent acts resistance fighters
performed were indeed wrongful in a
55
The courage to act
It is the courage
to act in the ab-
sence of certi-
tude that defines
the gift of human
freedom.
general sense; and that, no matter how
noble their intentions, such actions still
bear a moral cost. The fighters’ courage
was as much about being willing to bear
this cost as it was about the rightful-
ness of their cause; and all the more
praiseworthy for it. Similarly, the act of
lying is always and inherently wrong,
and cannot be treated as unproblematic
even in light of the best motives. But
this doesn’t imply that we can always
unconditionally act in accordance with
this fact. Sometimes, we need to be cou-
rageous enough to pay a moral price on
others’ behalf.
I’m not sure whether this line of ar-
gument wholly redeems Kant’s position.
But I am struck by its relationship with
the arguments of someone who both
experienced the Nazi occupation first-
hand and who was closely connected
with the French resistance, although he
never took up arms himself: the exis-
tentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
56
Less than a year after the end of
World War II, in his 1946 lecture Ex-
istentialism Is a Humanism, Sartre told
the story of a former pupil who came
to him for advice during the occupa-
tion. The pupil’s mother relied upon
him for support, and he believed that
in his absence she would succumb to
despair. But he also burned with the
desire to fight for his country, and
wanted to attempt the dangerous
journey to join the Free French Forc-
es in England. He thus found himself
hesitating between, Sartre suggested,
“two kinds of morality; on the one
side the morality of sympathy, of per-
sonal devotion and, on the other side,
a morality of wider scope but of more
debatable validity”. What should he
do? Was it courageous to leave and
cowardly to stay – or vice versa?
In his lecture, Sartre explicitly
considers Kant’s ethics before de-
ciding that it offers no help: there is
simply too much uncertainty embed-
ded in the situation for any universal
framing of duty to resolve it. Simi-
larly, Christian principles like faith,
hope, and charity can’t offer sure
guidance. Yet this isn’t a cause for
despair. In the absence of certainty,
Sartre reports telling his former pupil:
“Nothing remains but to trust in our
instincts.” It is the courage to act in
the absence of certitude that defines
the gift of human freedom. We must
act, then try to live with the conse-
quences of our actions. Thus “the
coward makes himself cowardly, the
hero makes himself heroic; and…
there is always a possibility for the
coward to give up cowardice and for
the hero to stop being a hero.”
Where does this leave us? In cen-
sorious and uncertain times, words
themselves can have the character of
actions; while speaking out about what
you believe to be right (or wrong) can
bring a devastating cost. Yet it’s also
here, I would suggest, that there’s a
common ground between Kant’s com-
mandments and Sartre’s faith in con-
tingent commitments: an insistence
that each of us owes a duty to truth
which we must find a way to honour,
no matter what our circumstances.
For western philosophy’s first and
most famous martyr, Socrates, being
prepared to die for his beliefs was syn-
onymous with the integrity of those
beliefs; and foremost among them
was helping others to seek truth. For
Kant, exalting truth was the only way
to found values upon something other
than wishfulness – while to forget this
was to betray the very possibility of
mutual understanding. Sartre praised
a concrete rather than an abstract vi-
sion of honesty – authenticity, com-
mitment, action – but he too advocat-
ed an implacable opposition to self-
deception. In each case, courage and
truth were not so much entwined as
synonymous: twin aspects of a deter-
mination to anatomise and confront
the world’s contradictions.
No matter how strange or terrible
the demands our times may make, it
is the courage to bear their burdens
honestly that defines us.
 “Fortune favours the brave.”

Terence

Derived from Galahad’s Departure, by Edwin A. Abbey, 1902 57

Svanen, by Hilda of Klimt, 1915
 Definition: courage

COURAGE
/kur-ij/
noun:
1. The quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty,
danger, pain, etc., without fear; bravery;

2. [Obsolete] The heart as the source of emotion.

Origin:
1250–1300; Middle English corage; Old French, equivalent to cuer,
and Latin cor: ‘heart’ + -age.

Source: Oxford English Dictionary

59

by Marina Benjamin
Turning inside out
Some years back I found myself
happily mesmerised by a giant Pacific
octopus in Monterey, California. It
was the local aquarium’s star attraction,
commanding its own enormous tank
that was lit from below to glow-in-the-
dark effect. An old-fashioned contrap-
tion, of the kind Harry Houdini pre-
ferred, the tank was a walk-around
extravaganza built with industrial-
strength materials. All that steel and
glass to contain one soft invertebrate!
Standing close to the bottle-thick
tank, I felt an unspoken affinity with
the octopus, its skin a moving patch-
work of colourful highlights, shim-
mering red and brown, then green and
purple, the animal semaphoring its
feelings to the world beyond its glassy
pen, as if crying out to be heard.
Almost without thinking, I placed
my hand flat against the glass and the
octopus unfurled a tapering arm that
sought me out – its white sucker press-
ing against the other side of the glass,
its dark-tinged rim a rippling sensor.
In that moment of contact I felt seen.
As if I were the exotic creature on view,
inviting interest.
I remember the octopus’s huge,
slow-blinking eyes, its pupils nar-
rowed to letter-box dimensions, as if
expressing a rare intelligence, while its
coat of ever-changing colours spoke of
a shifting palate of emotions, articu-
lated cell by cell, using a grammar of
pigments and miniature arrays of re-
flecting platelets.
Here was a creature that was vul-
nerable not because it had no spine,
but because it could not disguise what
it felt.
There are many people like that
octopus – constitutionally unable to
hide what they feel. People who blush,
fidget, frown or smile without control.
Giving themselves away without wish-
ing to. Others more adept at shield-
ing themselves from scrutiny can don
masks and make themselves illegible:
show the world only a shiny veneer.
Most people who hide this way are
Turning inside out
not trying to deceive others so much
as guard against unwanted exposure.
However the risk of putting such barri-
ers in place is that you become a stran-
ger to yourself.
The Jim Carrey movie Liar, Liar
turns on just this premise. Carrey plays
a lawyer who gets through his days ly-
ing, cheating, and deceiving, until he
is magically forced to tell the truth.
The comedy plays on this compulsive
truth-telling; how it earns him unex-
pected points in his mercenary profes-
sion, while at the same time causing his
personal life to unravel.
At a pivotal point in the movie,
Carrey’s character discovers that lying
for his client may or may not win him
her case, but that a nugget of truth he
accidentally trips over clinches it une-
quivocally. Leaping from his seat in the
crowded courtroom to punch the air,
he yells: ‘The truth shall set you free’.
And it does set him free.
He learns that his lying deceived no
one more than himself, to the extent that
61
Turning inside out
Truth-telling re-
quires courage,
because it leaves
you exposed.
he no longer knows who he is, or re-
spects anyone else – because he suspects
them of equally base motives. He also
learns that while truth-telling requires
courage, because it leaves you exposed,
if you open yourself up you can reap
huge rewards. In the movie, a reformed
Carrey, reacquainted with what he truly
feels, wins back the lost affection of his
ex-wife and the love of his son.
In a wide-ranging study published
as A Secular Age, the Canadian philoso-
pher Charles Taylor charts the progres-
sive disenchantment of industrialised
societies as they emerged from the
bog of magic and superstition into an
upright world whose boundaries were
rationally delimited by science and
secularism, giving rise to what he calls
the ‘buffered self ’. Taylor argues that
Reason might have bolstered us against
the chaotic forces of the old, spirit-in-
fused world – a world that perpetually
threatened to overwhelm us. But at the
same time, Reason desensitised us to
entire realms of experience. In becom-
ing ‘buffered’, we disengaged from a vi-
tal force-field and grew alienated from
whatever we couldn’t control.
62
Taylor’s ‘buffered self ’ is as good
a description as any of our atomised
society, through which humans move
discretely and autonomously, our indi-
vidual integrity sovereign, the contents
of our heads more alive to us than ma-
terial reality.
The illusion of invulnerability for-
tifies us, but it comes at the expense
of our essential humanity. Taylor
wants to recover a lost appreciation
of ‘porousness’. For with the porous
self, there is no boundary between in-
ner state and outer world, nothing to
buffer us against the things that get
to us: neither the spirits and demons
that once stalked our landscape, nor –
critically – the way we’re gripped by
our fears.
If you’re wondering how this might
be a good thing, give a thought to just
one example of everyday dissociation
that Taylor offers. He notes that we go
to the cinema to see movies about the
uncanny in order to experience a fris-
son of terror. But, he says, you cannot
get a ‘frisson’ from what is in fact ter-
rifying you.
The difference is that what terri-
fies you demands a response. Whereas
frissons belong to a take-it-or-leave-
it world – a world that, paradoxically,
has to resort to simulation in order to
acquaint us with what is real.
What we lose when we’re ‘disen-
gaged’ from the world, when we’re
atomised and defended, is not just
an unmediated relationship to reality.
We risk losing connection, empathy,
fellowship, and solidarity. Also com-
munity, whose value, argues Taylor,
lies largely in its porousness, that sense
of being all in it together. Not least
because of the premium it places on
holding to the consensus: in commu-
nities we are morally accountable to
one another.
Worse still, perhaps, in shielding
ourselves from our own emotions and
feigning invulnerability, we risk los-
ing intimacy. In Tomorrow Sex Will be
Good Again, the historian of sexuality
Katherine Angel addresses this very
dilemma in highlighting the shortcom-
ings of ‘consent-based’ sex. Consent
for Angel acts much as reason does in
Charles Taylor’s universe: it’s a way of
bandaging up what we don’t want to
see, hiding the dangers and murkiness
inherent in the way we live.
A good arena in which to cham-
pion vulnerability, porousness, and
risk-taking is sex and intimacy. Be-
cause without being porous you can-
not receive – and sex is fundamentally
a mutual exchange between people
(rather than a ‘doing’ of something to
someone else, which sets up a hierarchy
of dominance).
Courage is required to make our-
selves vulnerable in intimate situations
above all because intimacy raises the
threat of violence or abuse, especially
for women for whom the vulner-
ability bar is necessarily higher. But
without taking that courageous step, a
disrobing of the soul, if you will, you
may never discover who you really are
or what you need from others, in the
realm of intimacy or anywhere else.
And then you may as well live behind
bottle-thick glass.
“Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to
live taking the form of a readiness to die.”

G.K. Chesterton

Snow crystals, Wilson Bentley

Worthwhile risks
Interviewee: Cynthia Pury
Interviewer: Zan Boag
Cynthia Pury, Professor of Psy-
chology at Clemson, trained as a clini-
cal psychologist specialising in anxiety
disorders. Pury’s major research inter-
ests involve courage, virtue, and posi-
tive psychology; her research began in
the area of cognition and fear, specifi-
cally threat appraisals. She is Associ-
ate Editor of The Journal of Positive
Psychology, editor of The Psychology of
Courage, and Co-organiser of the 2007
Courage Summit.
Zan Boag: There aren’t many people
who have delved into ‘courage’, at least
not recently.
Cynthia Pury: There’s really not.
There’s just a few of us. For a little while
there, I was joking that when I would
go to a psychology-type conference, if I
would be on a panel, we would have sort
of our pre-panel get together, but it re-
ally turned into the ‘courage researcher
support group’. Then we’d all complain
about how we weren’t getting funding –
which really hasn’t changed – and how
people would weirdly get offended if
64
Worthwhile
risks
you called something ‘courageous’ that
they disagreed with, which is sort of
how I got interested in courage in the
first place. And why is it that people are
offended by this?
But I think a big part of it, and this
may overlap with philosophy, is that in
order to call something courageous, you
have to agree with the goal that the per-
son’s pursuing, or at least agree that it
could be a worthwhile goal for someone.
You also have to understand what the
risk is. I think that where people have
gotten offended or feel weird about it,
it’s the case that it’s a mismatch for
them in some way: that they don’t see
the action as risky, or they don’t see the
goal it is taken for as valuable.
As with any term, there’s no one way
of defining courage – it depends on the
circumstances. In Human Strengths,
Courageous Actions, and General and
Personal Courage, you and Robin Kow-
alski wrote about Peterson and Seligman’s
concept of courage, which you sum up as
“to act courageously, one must ignore
danger. That’s bravery. And continue to
act: persistence; follow one’s convictions,
which is integrity; and act with energy
and enthusiasm, which is vitality.”
Early on in positive psychol-
ogy, Peterson and Seligman tried to
write what they considered to be the
anti-DSM, and they edited a volume
called Character Strengths and Virtues:
A Handbook and Classif ication. It’s
meant to be a compendium of all sorts
of ways in which people are excellent,
describing six virtues in terms of the
strengths that underlie them. Our re-
search actually found that their defini-
tion of the virtue of courage, made up
of bravery, persistence, integrity, and
zest, falls both a little bit short, and is
a little too inclusive. In our particular
study, we asked people to describe a
time they acted courageously, then to
rate how much it pertained to each
of the specific 24 strengths that are
mentioned in this book regardless of
the virtue they are listed under. So the
strengths of bravery, persistence, and
integrity, all listed by Peterson and
Seligman as strengths of courage, were
very descriptive of courageous actions
 Worthwhile risks

Apollo 17 spacecraft descending via parachute over the Pacific Ocean in 1972 65
Worthwhile risks

for our participants. The strength of
zest, however, was not particularly
descriptive of our participants’ cou-
rageous actions. So, zest really didn’t
pan out.
But what did describe a lot of cou-
rageous actions – most courageous ac-
tions, actually – was hope, which was
categorised by Peterson and Seligman
under the virtue of transcendence. So,
believing that you can make the future
better and thinking of several different
ways that you could get there was seen
by our participants as a big part of their
courageous actions. Kindness, which
Peterson and Seligman categorise un-
der the virtue of humanity, was also
something that our participants said
was a big part of those courageous ac-
tions taken to help someone else… So,
I would say our research supported the
idea that courage, at least, courageous
actions, are made up of actions in
which one keeps acting till it’s done,
follows through no matter what, and
follows one’s convictions. But they are
also taken to make the situation bet-
ter. Finally, they are sometimes taken
to help other people, but not always.
A lot of researchers who have looked
at courage have focused on fear, whereas
you have delved into the virtuous nature
of courage. Here, you have something in
common with Aristotle, who included
courage on the list of virtues which he
deemed essential to living a good life.
Now, what do you think of this view? Is
courage essential to living a good life?
Well, it’s not essential all the time,
but I think it’s going to be essential in
situations where you need to take a risk
to do something worthwhile. That’s the
definition of courage that I’ve settled
on: courage is taking a worthwhile risk.
To me, that definition has three key
components to it. One is that you’re
doing this voluntarily. You’re taking it.
It’s not being forced on you. It’s not
something that falls on you. It is some-
thing that you are choosing to do. It
is worthwhile, which is where I think
most of the research on courage – as
standing up to fear – falls short. And
I have more to say about that in a lit-
tle bit. It’s despite a risk, rather than
despite fear.
So, psychologists look at emotions
primarily as really targeted, evolution-
arily-driven kinds of things. When
you’re in a situation that’s risky, it’s
likely that you will feel fear, but it’s
not absolutely guaranteed. A lot of the
narratives that we have about times
when people behave courageously, ei-
ther they report not feeling fear at the
moment because they were so focused
on achieving whatever it is that they
wanted to achieve; or sometimes even
if they felt fear, from reading more
carefully, you’d see that the fear that
they had was not really like fear that
something bad would happen to them,
but fear that the bad thing they’re try-
ing to prevent would happen. So, if a
toddler runs out into the street, that
toddler’s parent is quite likely to run
out after them, even if there’s a car
coming. They’re likely to not feel fear
as much for themselves but to feel fear
for their child getting hurt.
In both of those examples, it seems to
be that the courage you’re describing has
a sense that this is the right thing to do
in that particular situation.
Exactly. So many times what shows
up in the narratives when people write
about courage is that it was the right
thing to do, or it was the only choice
they felt they had, even though real-
istically they could have not done the
thing. But, you get the feeling that
because of who they are, they couldn’t
possibly not have done the thing.
There’s no other option that a good
person would take at this point.
But back to the psychologist’s view
on this... I don’t want to necessarily

I think it’s going to be essential in situations

where you need to take a risk to do some-
thing worthwhile. That’s the definition of
courage that I’ve settled on: courage is tak-
ing a worthwhile risk.

66

criticise my discipline too much, but
my thought behind that is that most
of the psychologists who have looked
at courage as standing up to fear have
been clinical psychologists or other
therapists. In therapy, the person is
typically there for some unwarranted
fears, and in order to get better, they
have to face the fears and getting better
is the whole point. So of course, that’s
what you’re going to look at.
But if you define it this way, you
end up with these very weird situa-
tions in which firefighters, for example,
are not deemed particularly coura-
geous because they’re not feeling as
much fear when they run into a fire.
You’re also ending up with weird
situations where if you imagine two
people who’ve been equally burned
in a house fire, and they’re both in
the ICU, and one of them ran into
the house fire to save a baby, and the
other one ran into the house fire to
make a TikTok video... well, that sec-
ond person... we’re like, “That’s just
dumb.” I know there’s some philo-
sophical Latin phrasing for that, but
I’ll leave that to the philosophers.
Over the centuries there have been
different ways of describing a courageous
act. There was the conception of courage
that existed in ancient Greece that was
personif ied by Hector and Diomedes –
military courage; the idea of civic courage
where citizens fought for their freedom;
the Odyssean courage to endure; then for
the Stoics, courage meant maintaining a
sense of mastery over one’s inner domain.
Now, is courage a concept that is of its
time, and is it ever changing?
Absolutely. I would argue that it
changes from person to person as well.
It’s going to depend on what you value.
Worthwhile risks
It’s going to depend on what’s considered
a risk. And I think that I’ve got some
unpublished research looking at courage
in the US and in an English-speaking
sample from India. I think the broad
strokes of all those types of courage that
you talk about are very similar, but the
details are different.
So to me, the enduring part is ‘tak-
ing a worthwhile risk’. But what is con-
sidered worthwhile, what’s considered
appropriate, what’s considered valuable
is going to change across different situ-
ations and across the millennia.
Yes, and within societies and differ-
ent groups. So, you’re saying that there Cynthia Pury
are three basic elements to courage: that
it’s a noble goal, there’s personal risk, and
choice. Now, if people don’t approve of the
goals or values of others, that is, they don’t
So many times
believe they’re noble, then they’re not go- what shows up
ing to attribute courage to other people. Is
courage in the eye of the beholder? in the narratives
I would just straight up say ‘yes’.
I think the distinction that Charlie
when people
Starkey and I like to make is the dis- write about cour-
tinction between process courage - or
whatever it is psychologically that the
age is that it was
person goes through, or internally that the right thing to
the person themselves goes through to
take what they consider to be a worth- do, or it was the
while risk - and what an observer is
going to say about this risk.
only choice they
So, Caitlyn Jenner and Kim Davis felt they had.
were two wonderful examples in the
United States a few years ago. Cait-
lyn Jenner publicly transitioned from gets tiresome. I have this weird hobby or
male to female and got some awards habit or professional side-track when I
for courage for that. Kim Davis was read the news. If I see something that cites
a county clerk who was, for religious courage, I will just go ahead and save the
reasons, refusing to issue same-gender PDF of it in the news. A huge percentage
marriage licenses, and got some awards of them, I don’t have good numbers, but a
for courage for that from very different huge percentage of them are people either
people. [The subjectivity of it] almost saying that someone in politics or someone
67
Worthwhile risks

doing something political is courageous
or isn’t courageous or is cowardly or is
super brave. And it almost always aligns
pretty perfectly with the speaker’s goals.
So, our conception of what is coura-
geous is likely based on our socioeconomic
background, our religious beliefs, our
political persuasion, which, in a way,
makes it very diff icult for us to def ine
what it is and what it means.
Potentially. But that particular
situation of, “Hey, that attractive
wood sculpture behind you is about
to fall on you. I’m going to push it
out of the way.” Well, I risk the wood
sculpture hitting me on the head also
by doing that. I think what’s different
about it is that that is something that
everyone can appreciate. There’s noth-
ing political about it. There’s nothing
even really at the extreme ends. There
are not too many individual differences
about it. I mean, everybody’s in dan-
ger from a fire. Everybody’s in danger
from a flood. Everybody in our culture
pretty much agrees that saving babies
is a good thing.
That’s a very interesting point you
make there. So physical courage is some-
thing that is perhaps more universal. It’s
something that we can all appreciate.
Maybe that’s because it is nonverbal, it
has nothing to do with people’s social or
political beliefs. Whereas when we get to
moral or intellectual courage, we get into
murkier territory.
Absolutely.
Now, given their difference between
physical courage, personal courage, moral
and intellectual courage, what is it that
links them together under the umbrella of
‘courage’?
I think it’s ‘taking a worthwhile
risk’. I think it’s from the standpoint
of the person doing the action, they
think they’re taking a worthwhile risk.
They know that there’s a risk. They’re
choosing to take the risk for this thing
that they want to accomplish.
Now, would an outside observer
say this thing that they want to ac-
complish is good? It depends on the
observer. Would an outside observer
say that they’re taking a risk? I think it
depends. So, I think there’s a lot of in-
dividual differences that happen there.
You can tell you’re talking to a psy-
chologist here because we’re all about
the individual differences.
But that reminds me of another
thing I often get asked about coura-
geous people. My take on that, after
looking at all the data that we’ve col-
lected and all the data other people have
collected, is that it’s really likely that we
have people who are courageous within
specific domains or for specific things.
So, I have a very low fear of public
speaking as one would hope one does
as a professor. My happy place is the
large lecture hall where I routinely talk
to 350 people at a time and it’s super
fun. But oh, my god, if you ask me to get
up on the ladder and change that light
bulb that’s like two stories up, I’d say,
“Are you out of your mind?” So for me,
it would take a lot of courage to get up
and change that light bulb, but none at
all to give a speech. But if you flip that,
and I’m a socially-fearful electrician, I’m
not going to care at all about getting up
on the ladder because that’s what I do.
I have chosen this profession.
In your research on personal courage,
which you are saying is unique to each
person, you have found that it’s more
likely to emerge when a person sees a
meaningful goal and believes that they
have the ability to achieve that goal. But
can courage be cultivated? In the exam-
ples that you’ve given, you’ve cultivated
the skill of public speaking, just as the
socially-fearful electrician has cultivated
the skill of climbing a ladder. Can cour-
age be cultivated through increasing one’s
knowledge and skills?
Absolutely. For a very well-re-
searched example, that ’s in a way

From the standpoint of the person

doing the action, they think they’re
taking a worthwhile risk. They know
that there’s a risk. They’re choosing
to take the risk for this thing that
they want to accomplish.

68

what exposure therapy is. At the early
There’s just a few stages in behavioural treatments for
research stud- anxiety disorders, you get the person
to do the thing that they’re afraid of
ies out there now until they become less and less afraid
of it. You’re reducing the risk. You’re
about how peo- reducing their subjective sense of
ple can increase risk of this situation. Acceptance and
commitment therapy is a new kind of
their courage, psychotherapy where you also har-
but they seem ness the things that the person wants
to accomplish and they’re taking the
really, really risks to accomplish the things that
they care about to do meaningful
promising. things in their life. So that sort of
harnesses that other end of it. There’s
just a few research studies out there
now about how people can increase
their courage, but they seem really,
really promising. They often harness
those two things, and that really does
seem to make a difference.
You believe that courage is important,
obviously, because you wouldn’t have
spent so much time researching the con-
cept. Is this because you’ve led a courageous
life yourself, or because you wanted to be
more courageous?
No, not really! I started out do-
ing research in anxiety and cognition.
There’s a ton of research in anxiety
and cognition. When I realised there
was almost no research in courage, I
thought this was a nice positive spin
to put on that. It’s really more of me
trying to look for something that...
I’ve always been interested in, I guess,
new breakthroughs or new ground.
So I was really interested in the sense
that there wasn’t really much research
out there, and I thought it would be
very useful.
I don’t think I’m necessarily very
courageous in a lot of ways. I’m afraid
of heights, for example, as I mentioned
before. I have been told I’m courageous
in a lot of other ways. I am not afraid
Worthwhile risks
of public speaking or some things like
that. I’ve become less afraid to speak my
mind about what I think the right thing
is after doing this research. But that was
a happy side-effect. That was not neces-
sarily my intent when I started.
Over the years you’ve been studying
courage, are there any stories that have
stood out that typify what you believe to
be courageous? That is, is there something
that exemplifies courage for you?
Honestly, it was a patient who I
had during my clinical training way
back before I started studying cour-
age in the mid 1990s. This is someone
who had really severe post-traumatic
stress disorder from having served in
Vietnam. He had spent about 25 years
being really triggered by Christmas.
He had always loved Christmas be-
fore, and he was an inpatient in our
unit over Christmas time. One of his
treatment goals was to wrap a Christ-
mas present for his adult daughter be-
cause he had never done that. Every
present she ever got from him was
really from his wife with his name on
it. So he wanted to do all of it in treat-
ment. And by gosh, he did.
While he was wrapping the pre-
sent, he was clearly having a flashback.
It was a flashback to one of the most
distressing things that had ever hap-
pened to him. But he persevered and it
was important to him to finish. And he
did. He told me at the end, he apolo-
gised at the end for being such a wuss,
for being such a coward. I told him I
thought that was one of the bravest
things I’d seen someone do. And that
has really stuck.
Interesting, his take on it was that he
was cowardly. Yet you saw him as being
brave.
Exactly. His take on being cow-
ardly was, “I’m a coward because I’m
69
Worthwhile risks

still having these flashbacks.” And I
saw it as, “You’re super courageous
because you’re doing the thing that’s
important to you despite the flash-
backs.” Honestly, that experience pre-
dates my interest in courage. But as
soon as I discovered personal courage,
I thought, “Oh, my god, that’s exactly
what that was.”
You’ve conducted several studies on cour-
age, including looking at people’s perceived
courageousness of past actions. Is there any
study in particular that produced the most
interesting results?
I would say really that first one
where there was the big difference be-
tween personal courage and general
courage stood out to me, that, “Hey,
these aren’t the same thing.” This is cou-
rageous for me versus this courageous
for anyone is really different.
Then the other thing that’s really
stood out to me is something that’s
just sort of evolved over time, which is
that reading the actual narratives that
people write, you see a couple of things.
You see that they’re very clearly proud
of what they did. You see that they de-
scribe overwhelmingly situations where
their actions made the situation better
and not worse. In a later study, we found
that if you straight up just tell people
that this action succeeded, they’ll say
it’s more courageous than if you tell
them this action ended up failing, even
though the person took as much of a
risk as the person in a successful sce-
nario. Participants will say it’s less cou-
rageous. This is true even for the subset
of people who, at the end, you ask them
to define courage and they’ll say, “Oh,
and it has nothing to do if you succeed
or fail.” And I say, “Yes, but your data
looks like it really does.”
Even when we look at our own ac-
tions, I think that’s part of the evaluat-
ing Was it worthwhile?. Because if you
move to another country to have the
perfect job, and then you get fired; you
lose the perfect job for whatever reason,
or the perfect job turns out to really not
be very good, you’re not going to think
that was a very courageous thing to do
because it wasn’t really worth it because,
oh, my gosh, now you’re stuck in this
place with people you don’t know in a
culture you don’t know, and you don’t
have the thing you came there for. I
think that’s really relevant for thinking
about our own actions.
In an interview a few years ago, you
referred to courage as an intermediary
virtue that helps you do other worthwhile
things. Is courage, in a way, a gateway or
a pathway to other virtues?
Oh, absolutely. Well, I don’t know
about a pathway. To me, a pathway
makes it sound like you act courageous
and then you suddenly develop these
other virtues. I think it’s more likely
to be the way that you can implement
those virtues in some situations. So if
you value something particularly high-
ly, everything I’ve seen in the research
suggests that you’re going to be more
likely to act courageously in pursuit of
that value. Just to give another exam-
ple, we talked earlier about physical
courage, and everybody sees physical
courage as being a fairly universal kind
of thing. It would depend on what the
physical courage is for. If you run into
a burning building to save art, is that
courageous or not?
It certainly was a thing that was
talked about when Notre Dame was on
fire. I think, I have no direct evidence on
this, but I would not be at all surprised
if devout Catholics would see that as
more courageous than devout atheists,
for example. Atheists who are artists
may see it as more courageous than
atheists who have a low value on visual
arts, for example.
There’s a lot of awards that are
given to people posthumously who
died while they were trying to do
the courageous thing. There’s not as
many awards given, or there’s really no
awards given to people who were try-
ing to do something and they survived,
but the person they were trying to save
didn’t, for example.

If you tell people that this action succeeded,

they’ll say it’s more courageous than if you
tell them this action ended up failing, even
though the person took as much of a risk as
the person in a successful scenario.

70
Courage, by Edward Burne-Jones, Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire

71
72 Image: Socrates in the Tunnel

by Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore
Resistance to fear
On July 6, 1942, Anne Frank gave
up life as she knew it and walked into
hiding, entering a secret annex in a
building in Amsterdam. The door was
concealed by a bookcase.
What followed was two years of
living in a confined space, jowl to jowl
with her father Otto, mother Edith, and
sister Margot, as well as several other
families. Anne was just 13 and – with
her concerns over boys, her frustration
of being dismissed as the youngest, and
clashes with her mother – she was in
many ways a normal teenager. Yet she
displayed remarkable courage.
This was not only physical courage
– “we just had a third air raid. I decided
to grit my teeth and practise being cou-
rageous,” she writes in her diary – but
spiritual, too. “In spite of everything,”
she wrote, “I still believe that people
are really good at heart.”
Few would dispute that Anne
Frank was courageous. Likewise, we
believe we know courage when we
see it today: from the women burn-
ing their hijabs in the current protests
in Iran, risking punishment from the
so-called “morality police”, to the or-
dinary people of Ukraine fighting for
their homeland in the face of a brutal
invasion by Vladimir Putin.
Yet defining what exactly makes
up ‘courage’ is tricky. It is similar to
yet different from tenacity (the quality
of persistence and determination) and
from fortitude (mental strength dur-
ing hardship). Indeed, the definition
of courage has been debated since the
ancient world.
In Plato’s dialogue the Laches, fea-
turing a conversation between Socrates
and the respected Athenian general
Laches, the two go back and forth on
the question of courage. They talk in
circles – dismissing those who are un-
virtuous in their motivations and fool-
ish in their decisions as unable to be
courageous – until Laches admits he is
thoroughly confused. “So am I, Lach-
es,” Socrates replies. “Still, we should
persevere in our enquiry so that cour-
age itself won’t make fun of us for not
searching for it courageously.”
Eventually, as Neel Burton, author
of Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the
Emotions, tells me, the Laches finds a
definition of sorts.
Courage, they discover, is “not bra-
vado, it is not rashness, but the ability
Resistance to fear
to do the right thing when we know
what the right thing is,” says Burton.
“Knowing what the right thing is, is
called wisdom; but the ability to act
upon it – to persevere with our con-
viction through pleasures, desires, and,
above all, fears – requires a kind of So-
cratic strength.”
It’s a common view that courage
cannot be present without virtue. (I
may overcome my fears and apprehen-
sions to kidnap someone for a ransom,
but, because my intentions are bad, I
am not displaying courage.) Roman
statesman Cicero believed that cour-
age was virtue itself. Virtue, he pro-
claimed, has four parts: wisdom, jus-
tice, courage, and temperance.
Greek philosopher Aristotle “called
courage the first of human qualities,
because it is the quality which guar-
antees all the others. Courage, he said,
is the crown of the virtues, because it
is not found without them, and makes
them greater,” says Burton. “Courage
is critical, because there is no point in
being good and wise if we are unable
to act upon it.”
As philosopher Matthew Beard,
a former fellow at The Ethics Centre
73
Resistance to fear
“Some philoso-
phers argue that
if you want to
grow in courage,
you should sim-
ply do some cou-
rageous actions.”
in Sydney, explained in a speech titled
The Ethics of Courage in 2019, Aristotle
believed that courage was “the virtue
that moderated our instincts toward
recklessness on one hand and coward-
ice on the other”.
“He believed the courageous per-
son feared only things that are worthy
of fear. Courage means knowing what
to fear and responding appropriately to
that fear. For Aristotle, what mattered
isn’t just whether you face your fears,
but why you face them and what it is
that you fear,” said Beard. “Your rea-
sons for overcoming fear matter. They
can be the difference between courage,
cowardice, and recklessness.”
In the ancient world, courage was
largely wrapped up with physical
74
bravery, typically on the battlefield.
Today, courage is just as likely to be
spiritual, moral, or emotional.
“Courage is a virtue that has to do
with how we face adversity and danger.
We tend to think of physical courage
most often here... But courage comes
in other forms, too,” says Michael W.
Austin, a philosopher at Eastern Ken-
tucky University. “Think of the courage
of standing up for one’s beliefs and fac-
ing rejection or ridicule because of it. Or
the courage of facing a long and perhaps
terminal illness or caring for someone
who does. Courage is about how we face
and handle fear in our lives, in these and
other kinds of situations.”
Austin himself has witnessed cour-
age as loved ones face a terminal dis-
ease. “To accept this reality, do what you
can to prolong your life, but do so with
grace and love and not a trace of bit-
terness shows real courage,” he insists.
Many philosophers have argued that
fear is central to courage: someone who
is fearless in a situation does not need
to summon courage. As Mark Twain
observed: “Courage is resistance to fear,
mastery of fear, not absence of fear.”
In his book Psychological Courage,
Daniel Putman defines psychological
courage as our ability to face our inner-
most fears: in particular, our addictions,
our phobias, and our self-deception.
Courage, he argues, is central to human
happiness: “A flourishing life with our-
selves and with one another depends on
the virtues and courage… Psychologi-
cal fears blind us and diminish us. For
millions of human beings, psychological
courage is critical in gaining or regain-
ing control of their lives.”
Psychologists now believe that
courage is a skill that can be practised.
“Like other virtues, we can cultivate it,”
says Austin. “Some philosophers argue
that if you want to grow in courage,
you should simply do some courageous
actions. Perhaps start small at first,
by saying what you really think about
something when it might not be well-
received, and go from there,” he writes.
“F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that ‘Ac-
tion is character.’ Modern neuroscience
and social research find that action also
becomes character,” agrees psychology
columnist Amy Alkon. “In other words,
the more you make yourself engage in
these small acts of everyday heroism,
the more natural – the more automatic
– behaving that way becomes.”
In one study published in The
Journal of Positive Psychology in 2019,
Northwestern University professors
Amanda Kramer and Richard Zinbarg
discovered that asking participants to
write about a time that they had over-
come their fears could activate a “cou-
rageous mindset” and could potentially
promote more courageous actions.
Even in the direst of circumstances,
courage can be practised – and chosen as
a path. Holocaust survivor and psychia-
trist Viktor Frankl stated that “the last
of the human freedoms” was to “choose
one’s attitude in any given set of circum-
stances, to choose one’s own way”.
Anne Frank, who died in the Ber-
gen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945
at the age of 15, understood this well.
“Parents can only give good advice or
put them on the right path,” she wrote.
“But the final forming of a person’s
character lies in their own hands.”
“Desperate courage makes one a majority.”

James Parton

Artwork: Torso of Valor, Leo Friedlander, 1933 75

 Artwork: Weasel Leaping For Joy, New Philosopher
The The Weasels and the Mice waged a perpetual war
with each other, in which much blood was shed. The
Mice Weasels were always the victors. The Mice thought
that the cause of their frequent defeats was that they
had no leaders set apart from the general army to
command them, and that they were exposed to dan-
and the gers from lack of discipline. They therefore chose
as leaders Mice that were most renowned for their
family descent, strength, and counsel, as well as
those most noted for their courage in the fight, so
Weasels that they might be better marshalled in battle array
From Aesop’s Fables
and formed into troops, regiments, and battalions.
When all this was done, and the army disciplined,
and the herald Mouse had duly proclaimed war by
challenging the Weasels, the newly chosen generals
bound their heads with straws, that they might be
more conspicuous to all their troops. Scarcely had
the battle begun, when a great rout overwhelmed
the Mice, who scampered off as fast as they could
to their holes. The generals, not being able to get in
on account of the ornaments on their heads, were all
captured and eaten by the Weasels.
The secret to freedom

Artwork: Philippe Charles Jacquet

THE SECRET
78

Artwork by Philippe Charles Jacquet
courtesy of M Fine Arts Galerie in
Boston, United States
“Courage is found in unlikely
places,” once wrote English writer
J.R.R. Tolkien. And the same could
be said of fear.
As a child, French painter Philippe
Charles Jacquet lived in a tiny apart-
ment in Paris. But for a month each
year, he vacationed with his parents to
Brittany, living on a farm by the sea.
He learnt to sail, and by 14, he was
sailing alone. “This attraction to com-
plete freedom never ceased,” he says.
Athenian historian Thucydides
once wrote that the secret to happiness
is freedom. In a sailboat on the water,
we are free to steer our course, choosing
the direction, bending the wind and the
tides to our will. Figuratively, we are free
TO FREEDOM
when we take control, choosing between
competing life paths.
Jacquet worked as an architect,
having studied at the École Nation-
ale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs. At
44, however, he moored his career as
an architect, and steered his life in a
new direction. “I used to paint even
as a child and have always considered
it a hobby. Architecture had its many
difficulties and when I stopped in
2001 this hobby became my passion.”
Today, Jacquet paints from his at-
elier in Pantin, a suburb of Paris. He
works on wood using half-transparent
layers of paint that he works up, layer
by layer, sometimes even after many
years have passed.
The secret to freedom
Jacquet depicts isolated landscapes,
a sense of limitless freedom. Something
darker is overlaid, an uneasiness, or fear,
that’s hard to describe. The fear of loss,
the fear of rejection, loneliness, hu-
miliation, death, even the fear of one’s
own thoughts; fear is found in unlikely
places. The juxtaposition of this sense
of limitless freedom with the unknown
and less savoury prospect of fear gives
his paintings a strained power. We seek
freedom, but we are forever bound and
constrained by the prevalence of fear in
our lives. Unless, of course, we develop
ways to combat it. While freedom, ac-
cording to Thucydides, may be the se-
cret to happiness, he added: “The secret
to freedom is courage.”
79
80
Artwork: Philippe Charles Jacquet

Le campeur, Philippe Charles Jacquet

Standing at the edge
By Jacqueline Winspear
When I was a child, my mother
told me the story of her uncle who,
during a WWII bombing raid, rushed
into a burning house to rescue children
trapped inside. He saved their lives by
throwing them from a window down
into the arms of others, however the
house collapsed, killing him. I remem-
ber asking my mother if she thought he
was scared. “I’m sure he was,” she said,
“but sometimes people see what needs
to be done, and they do it.” It was my
84
Standing at
the edge
Photo: Empire State Building, by Lewis Hine, 1932
first brush with the notion of courage,
which Aristotle named as a Virtue. Yet
what is courage to one person, might be
all in a day’s work to another.
In 2017, Rebecca Cushman, an
equestrian trainer in Sonoma County,
California, received an urgent call
from a friend – a fast-moving wild-
fire was only half-a-mile away and
she needed help to evacuate horses.
Cushman immediately set off into the
fire zone with her four-horse trailer.
Having saved the horses, soon her
phone was ringing non-stop – there
were more horses to be evacuated. “It
snowballed from there,” said Cush-
man, who recounted driving her “rig”
time and again into the fire to save
all manner of livestock, while huge
embers were falling onto her truck.
Describing the experience, Cushman
said, “There were times I wondered,
‘What the heck am I doing?’ but the
thought of animals dying in wildfire is
terrible to me.” Wildfire is a terrifying
phenomenon, yet over a five-day pe-
riod Cushman had little sleep, pressing
on time and again into the fire – often
under police escort – to rescue animals.
While driving, she was calling everyone
she knew, raising over $10,000 for ani-
mal feed for the evacuation shelters. Yet
when asked if her undertaking was an
act of courage, Cushman said, “I know
how to handle my rig in small spaces,
and I can deal with stressed animals be-
having badly. It was an obligation.” In
the midst of the fire, Cushman learned
that her home had burned down.
In her book, Standing at the Edge:
Finding Freedom where Fear and
Courage Meet, Joan Halifax describes
courageous acts as ‘altruism’ noting
that, “To act altruistically is to take
Standing at the edge

unselfish actions that enhance the
welfare of others, usually at some cost
to our own wellbeing.”
The wellbeing of others has been
a hallmark of Dr Frederica Lofquist’s
life. Even as a medical student, she
was part of a surgical team volunteer-
ing in Peru during the civil war. “Eve-
ryone seemed to have a machine gun
slung over their shoulder. Every day
the hospital was a sea of people say-
ing, ‘Help me… help me…’. I realised
it wasn’t business as usual, and that I
wasn’t safe, but I never once thought
of going home – instead it made me
much more determined, because I
could help.” Volunteering has been
a hallmark of Lofquist’s career, yet
her biggest leap came in recent years,
when she shocked contemporaries
by leaving a successful San Francisco
practice – where she was judged one
of the best obstetrician-gynaecologists
in the city – to work at a women’s
clinic in a deprived area of Califor-
nia’s Central Valley. “What I do now is
scary,” said Lofquist, describing an en-
vironment with inadequate resources:
no maternal or neonatal intensive care
units, and without the robust blood
supplies needed in obstetrics. She
also faces the threat of violence from
a depressed, volatile community where
English is not the first language. Yet
when asked if she considered her call-
ing to be courageous, she said, “Every
day when I go to work, I’m anxious.
I’m always playing against time, but
angels live on the hospital roof, and I
have an amazing team.”
In his book, What It’s Like To Go
To War, author Karl Marlantes wrote,
“Warriors deal with death. They take
life away from others. This is normally
the role of God.” No inquiry into the
nature of courage would be complete
without a military perspective. “John”
(name withheld for security reasons)
is a senior non-commissioned officer
(NCO) in the British army who has
served in conflict zones including Ko-
sovo and Iraq, and who has led sol-
diers during four tours of duty in Af-
ghanistan’s Helmand province. “From
a combat perspective,” said John, “the
idea that courage is acting without fear
isn’t true. The fact is, you are scared –
you’re in a horrific situation. People
are trying to kill each other – it’s really
frightening. So courage isn’t being fear-
less – it’s the ability to have fear and
overcome it.”
John recounted instances of cour-
age among his men – soldiers who
would run into incoming fire or a
burning building to rescue a comrade,
but he described what he believes to
have been the most courageous role –
and which again brought ‘altruism’ to
mind: “In Afghanistan, we were in a
high IED (Improvised Explosive De-
vice) environment. The First Man is
the one who went ahead of the patrol
with the mine detector. If he detected
a possible mine, there was only one way
to check that it was a live IED – to
crawl forward on his stomach, then
confirm with a finger search of the de-
vice. Day after day he did this, risking
his life. But here’s the interesting thing
– when it was time for him to rotate
out of that role, he would invariably
refuse, because he knew he’d become
really good at his job, and he wanted to
look after his mates.” John added that
the IED-detecting soldier was under
close cover by another soldier whose

“People are trying to kill each other –

it’s really frightening. So courage isn’t
being fearless – it’s the ability to have
fear and overcome it.”

86

job it was to protect him. John said,
despite his seniority, “I always made
sure I was that soldier.”
John was quick to give credit to the
families who wait at home. “They are
equally courageous – it’s a moral cour-
age. We [soldiers] have the camarade-
rie and we’re breathing that existence
together. The families have no idea
what is happening to us, and they have
to live with that.”
Monica Holloway is an instructor
specialising in memoir on the Creative
Writing program at the University of
California, Los Angeles. In her mem-
oir, Driving With Dead People, she told
the searing story of sexual abuse at the
hands of her father. Publication of the
book resulted in severance from her
family, yet of her work, Holloway said,
“There’s a creative courage involved
when you tell your own story, to go
forward terrified.” The courage to tell
“ You’ll never take me alive!”
Standing at the edge
a story is something she sees in her stu-
dents. “My students shock themselves
with their courage to be vulnerable. A
person’s courage to tell the truth makes
us all brave, gives us all courage. You
can change someone else’s life with
your truth.”
Given the many facets of courage –
whether intellectual, moral, emotional,
or physical – I asked John how he felt
when the word ‘courage’ was used in
situations that would never involve the
physical, emotional, or psychological
pressures that his men face every day.
He smiled. “We all know what we’ve
done. We can live with that, and we
don’t need to be congratulated with a
pat on the back. At the end of the day,
courage is just a word.”
Perhaps. But Aristotle’s first virtue
is the powerful name we give to acts of
altruism that overcome the cold, dark
shadow of fear upon us.
87
Artwork: Le Chemin de Crete, Philippe Charles Jacquet
Counting ourselves worthy

COUNTING
OURSELVES WORTHY

By Mariana Alessandri

Artwork: Don’t Tal k To The Man On The Job, Tom Eckersley & Eric Lombers, 1940

90

“There’s an Olympian athlete inside
of you,” I tell my students early in the
semester. They admit that holding this
belief would change the way they ap-
proached the gym. They would sweat
more than they ever had, determined
to reshape the body they dragged in
to fit their new self-perception. “I can’t
make you an Olympian athlete, but hold
on to how it would feel to believe it.”
I can’t make them philosophers either,
but I admit to believing there really is a
philosopher inside each of them. What’s
more, I tell them, Socrates believed that
they already know everything they need
to know to live well.
On the day of his death, Socrates
called it noble – even glorious – to risk
the belief that our souls are immor-
tal. Now, you could call him a coward
for not facing his death head-on. It is
convenient, when one is about to drink
Hemlock, to believe that death isn’t the
end. But I don’t think Socrates declared
his soul immortal to blunt the edge of
death. I think he wanted to leave his
friends with a reason to trust themselves.
Socrates’s myth of Recollection is
premised on immortality: at birth our
everlasting souls enter the body and at
death they fly away. More bottomless
well than blank slate, every soul knows
infinitely more than we give it credit for.
Socrates tried out his theory on Meno,
a man who consistently looked outward
instead of inward for answers. Together
they had agreed to come up with a good
definition of virtue, but the conversation
stalled when Meno’s first three defini-
tions of virtue – all nonsense easily re-
futed by Socrates – failed. At this point
in the dialogue, Meno throws up his
hands and declares that they are nev-
er going to define virtue because they
don’t already know what it means. Hu-
miliated, Meno decides to quit thinking
and looks to the exit. To keep him from
walking, Socrates launches into some
Counting ourselves worthy
story about how our souls have always
been around and already know every-
thing. He tells Meno not to worry, that
they’ll recognise virtue when they see
it. Recollection was Socrates’s pep talk.
My most vocal students, remem-
bering their terror in high school cal-
culus, aren’t buying it. They deny that
knowledge comes from within. They
still believe that teachers, parents, and
strangers deposit knowledge into their
mostly empty heads. They are unwilling
to accept something so obviously fabri-
cated as “I know.” It’s too risky.
The Skeptics understood the dan-
gerous nature of beliefs: they often lead
to sadness, heartbreak, and disappoint-
ment. It’s safer to withhold assent than
to believe the person cupping your face
promising to love you forever. But here
was Socrates promising Meno that he
would be “better, braver, and less idle” if
he could only bring himself to believe in
himself. I ask my students what would
91
Counting ourselves worthy

change if they believed their souls were Believing they are already philoso- for it. I see this attitude in my students,
philosophical Olympians itching to phers would do a lot for my students. 90 per cent of them Hispanic, who come
break through their skin. It would bring philosophy out of the to my class with fifteen years’ experience
Most students worry that believ- clouds and down to earth. It would make of being empty cups. My PhD makes me
ing in Recollection would make them them less scared of it, and perhaps more a full cup, so to receive my ‘overflowing
closed-minded. If you believe you al- interested in self-discovery. Believing in wisdom’, they need only prostrate them-
ready know everything, they reason, Recollection would do even more for my selves before me. But what if they came
you won’t seek it. You would become students – them and every one of us who in believing they were full? What kind
arrogant and closed off from other lives with imposter syndrome. Recollec- of revolution could women and mar-
people. But others are with Socrates, tion is for people who just can’t be con- ginalised peoples start by believing that
claiming that if you believed you had vinced that they belong here. wisdom resides in us?
the answer inside of you, it would Women have historically been taught If we took this one glorious risk, if we
make you more “energetic and keen on not to trust themselves. Minorities, too. believed the story that Socrates made up,
the search”. They’d work their Olym- Instead, we have uncritically swallowed a we would be indomitable. If we believed
pian souls as hard as they’d work their different story: someone smarter knows against all odds that we already know
Olympian bodies. the answer, and our job is to pay them what we currently don’t know we know,
A question of courage, by Gordon Grant, Library of Congress

92

we wouldn’t have to hustle for worthiness
or speak only of our potential. If we be-
lieved that knowledge comes from inside
instead of outside, we would spend more
time there, getting to know ourselves, in-
specting and evaluating our judgments.
We would consult ourselves more, trust
ourselves more, think that we had some-
thing to contribute. We would be willing
– eager even – to offer our inner thoughts
for debate instead of keeping them hid-
den for fear of looking dumb. We would
go deep within, be more truthful, maybe
even love ourselves more. And we would
see others not as teachers with some con-
tent to push nor as adversaries threatening
to make fools of us, but as companions,
sometimes coaches, on the road to recov-
ering our deep knowing.
Socrates’ idea of Recollection, the one
where the soul enters the body full, is a
story. He never meant to prove it, and he
even said that no sensible man would be-
lieve every piece of it. But later philoso-
phers like William James and Miguel de
Unamuno defended the right to believe
in what cannot be proven, including im-
mortality. The question for these philoso-
phers is less “Is it true or false?” and more
“Where will this belief take me? Which
door will believing open and which door
will not believing close?”
Counting ourselves worthy
From reading student journals, I
can tell that the Olympian athlete story
sticks to them for days. They don’t be-
lieve that one either, in part because it’s
safer to believe oneself incapable than
capable. It’s safer to believe that we
don’t have the answers, and that if life
goes wrong, it’s because no one told us
how to do it right. It’s safer to consider
ourselves untrustworthy than to inten-
tionally unlearn the decades of mes-
saging telling us to look anywhere but
in. But if more of us risked this belief
called Recollection, the one that sounds
so implausible, maybe we could finally
count ourselves worthy.
93
 Against my fate

a i n s t
A g e
y f a t
m
All this weighs on my mind too, dear woman.
But I would die of shame to face the men of Troy
and the Trojan women trailing their long robes
if I would shrink from battle now, a coward

...

Andromache,
dear one, why so desperate? Why so much grief for me?
No man will hurl me down to Death, against my fate.
And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it,
neither brave man nor coward, I tell you—
it’s born with us the day that we are born

By Homer, from The Iliad,

Book VI

95

“Until philosophers are Kings, or the kings and
The princes of this world have the spirit and power of
philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet
in one, and those commoner natures who pursue ei-
ther to the exclusion of the other are compelled to
courage stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils,
no, nor the human race, as I believe – and then only
will this our State have a possibility of life and be-
to be hold the light of day.”
— Plato, The Republic
yourself Is there a special moral problem of today? Is not
the moral problem one and the same for all times and
for all men? Indeed it is, and yet every culture has
specific moral problems which grow out of its par-
ticular structure, although these specific problems are
by Erich Fromm, The Moral only various facets of the moral problems of man. Any
Problem of Today such particular facet can be understood only in rela-
Children’s Book Council, 1977, by Anita Lobel
tion to the basic and general problem of man. In this
concluding chapter I want to emphasise one specific
aspect of the general moral problem, partly because
it is a crucial one from the psychological viewpoint
and partly because we are tempted to evade it, being
under the illusion of having solved this very problem:
man’s attitude toward force and power.
Man’s attitude toward force is rooted in the very
conditions of his existence. As physical beings we are
subject to power – to the power of nature and to the
power of man. Physical force can deprive us of our
freedom and kill us. Whether we can resist or over-
come it depends on the accidental factors of our own
physical strength and the strength of our weapons.
Our mind, on the other hand, is not directly subject
to power. The truth which we have recognised, the
ideas in which we have faith, do not become invali-
dated by force. Might and reason exist on different
planes, and force never disproves truth.
The courage to be yourself
Man’s submission
to this combi-
nation of threat
and promise is
his real “fall”.
Does this mean that man is free
even if he is born in chains? Does it
mean that the spirit of a slave can be
as free as that of his master, as St. Paul
and Luther have maintained? It would
indeed simplify the problem of human
existence tremendously if this were
true. But this position ignores the fact
that ideas and the truth do not exist
outside and independently of man,
and that man’s mind is influenced by
his body, his mental state by his physi-
cal and social existence. Man is capa-
ble of knowing the truth and he is ca-
pable of loving, but if he – not just his
body, but he in his totality – is threat-
ened by superior force, if he is made
helpless and afraid, his mind is af-
fected, its operations become distorted
and paralysed. The paralysing effect of
power does not rest only upon the fear
it arouses, but equally on an implicit
promise – the promise that those in
possession of power can protect and
take care of the “weak” who submit
to it, that they can free man from the
burden of uncertainty and of respon-
98
sibility for himself by guaranteeing
order and by assigning the individual
a place in this order which makes him
feel secure.
Man’s submission to this combi-
nation of threat and promise is his
real “fall”. By submitting to power =
domination he loses his power = po-
tency. He loses his power to make use
of all those capacities which make
him truly human; his reason ceases to
operate; he may be intelligent, he may
be capable of manipulating things
and himself, but he accepts as truth
that which those who have power
over him call the truth. He loses his
power of love, for his emotions are
tied to those upon whom he depends.
He loses his moral sense, for his in-
ability to question and criticise those
in power stultifies his moral judgment
with regard to anybody and anything.
He is prey to prejudice and supersti-
tion for he is incapable of inquiring
into the validity of the premises upon
which rest such false beliefs. His own
voice cannot call him back to himself
since he is not able to listen to it, being
so intent on listening to the voices of
those who have power over him. In-
deed, freedom is the necessary condi-
tion of happiness as well as of virtue;
freedom, not in the sense of the abil-
ity to make arbitrary choices and not
freedom from necessity, but freedom
to realise that which one potentially is,
to fulfil the true nature of man accord-
ing to the laws of his existence.
If freedom, the ability to preserve
one’s integrity against power, is the
basic condition for morality, has man
in the Western world not solved his
moral problem? Is it not only a prob-
lem of people living under authoritar-
ian dictator ships which deprive them
of their personal and political free-
dom? Indeed, the freedom attained in
modern democracy implies a promise
for the development of man which
is absent in any kind of dictatorship,
regardless of their proclamations that
they act in man’s interest. But it is a
promise only, and not yet a fulfilment.
We mask our own moral problem
from ourselves if we focus our atten-
tion on comparing our culture with
modes of life which are the negation
of the best achievements of humanity,
and thus we ignore the fact that we
too bow down to power, not to that of
a dictator and a political bureaucracy
allied with him, but to the anonymous
power of the market, of success, of
public opinion, of “common sense” –
or rather, of common nonsense – and
of the machine whose servants we
have become.
Our moral problem is man’s in-
difference to himself. It lies in the
fact that we have lost the sense of the
significance and uniqueness of the
individual, that we have made our-
selves into instruments for purposes
outside ourselves, that we experience
and treat ourselves as commodities,
and that our own powers have be-
come alienated from ourselves. We
have become things and our neigh-
bours have become things. The result
is that we feel powerless and despise
ourselves for our impotence. Since
we do not trust our own power, we
have no faith in man, no faith in our-
selves or in what our own powers can
create. We have no conscience in the
humanistic sense, since we do not
dare to trust our judgement. We are
a herd believing that the road we fol-
 The courage to be yourself

low must lead to a goal since we see
everybody else on the same road. We
are in the dark and keep up our cour-
age because we hear everybody else
whistle as we do.
Dostoyevsky once said, “If God
is dead, everything is allowed.” This
is, indeed, what most people believe;
they differ only in that some draw the
conclusion that God and the church
must remain alive in order to uphold
the moral order, while others accept
the idea that everything is allowed,
that there is no valid moral principle,
that expediency is the only regulative
principle in life.
In contrast, humanistic ethics
takes the position that if man is alive
he knows what is allowed; and to be
alive means to be productive, to use
one’s powers not for any purpose tran-
scending man, but for oneself, to make
sense of one’s existence, to be human.
As long as anyone believes that his
ideal and purpose is outside him, that
it is above the clouds, in the past or in
the future, he will go outside himself
and seek fulfilment where it cannot be
found. He will look for solutions and
answers at every point except the one
where they can be found – in himself.
The “realists” assure us that the
Sojourner Truth
problem of ethics is a relic of the
past. They tell us that psychological
or sociological analysis shows that all
values are only relative to a given cul-
ture. They propose that our personal
and social future is guaranteed by our
material effectiveness alone. But these
“realists” are ignorant of some hard
facts. They do not see that the emp-
tiness and planlessness of individual
life, that the lack of productiveness
and the consequent lack of faith in
oneself and in mankind, if prolonged,
results in emotional and mental dis-
turbances which would incapacitate
man even for the achievement of his
material aims.
Prophecies of doom are heard today
with increasing frequency. While they
have the important function of draw-
ing attention to the dangerous pos-
sibilities in our present situation they
fail to take into account the promise
which is implied in man’s achievement
in the natural sciences, in psychology,
in medicine and in art. Indeed, these
achievements portray the presence of
strong productive forces which are not
compatible with the picture of a de-
caying culture. Our period is a period
of transition. The Middle Ages did
not end in the fifteenth century, and
the modern era did not begin imme-
diately afterward. End and beginning
imply a process which has lasted over
four hundred years – a very short time
indeed if we measure it in historical
terms and not in terms of our life span.
Our period is an end and a beginning,
pregnant with possibilities.
If I repeat now the question raised
in the beginning of this book, whether
we have reason to be proud and to be
hopeful, the answer is again in the
affirmative, but with the one quali-
fication which follows from what we
have discussed throughout: neither
the good nor the evil outcome is au-
tomatic or preordained. The decision
rests with man. It rests upon his ability
to take himself, his life and happiness
seriously; on his willingness to face
his and his society’s moral problem. It
rests upon his courage to be himself
and to be for himself.

As long as anyone believes that his

ideal and purpose is outside him... he
will look for solutions and answers at
every point except the one where they
can be found – in himself.
By endurance we conquer
by Antonia Case
Stranded on a sheet of floating
ice deep in the Antarctic seas, Frank
Worsley was in what you’d call a bad
spot. Civilisation was more than 1200
miles away, and the ship Worsley had
been travelling on was submerged in
ice. To make matters worse, Worsley
had no radio transmitter to broadcast
an SOS. And as the doomed 144-foot
ship groaned from the force of ten
million tonnes of ice driving through
her starboard, Worsley felt as though
his fate, too, was equally assured. As
he looked across the vast sheet of ice,
he needed to find something a little
stronger than courage.
If Worsley thought about it, this
whole fated journey began one night
in a hotel room in London. That
night, he dreamt he was navigat-
ing a ship through huge blocks of ice
down London’s fashionable Burling-
ton Street. Early the next morning,
Worsley rushed to Burlington Street
where, walking at pace, he noticed a
nameplate on a door. It read: ‘Imperial
100
By endurance
we conquer
Trans-Antarctic Expedition’. Inside,
he met the Antarctic explorer Ernest
Shackleton who was organising plans
to make the first land crossing of the
Antarctic continent. As fate would have
it, Worsley was to be the ship’s captain.
From a young age living in New
Zealand, Worsley aspired to be at sea.
After leaving school, at age 15, he
signed up to the New Zealand Ship-
ping Company, transporting wool from
New Zealand to London. From there,
Worsley commanded ships across the
Pacific Islands, including the Cook Is-
lands; he moved on to Australia, and
then to England, sailing with the Brit-
ish Merchant navy from ports in Eng-
land to Canada and South America.
Austrian psychologist Alfred Alder
believes that from early childhood we
develop what he coined a ‘self-ideal’,
or a sense of the person we wish to be-
come. He puts the age at around ten
years old. This ‘self-ideal’ determines
our long-range goals, our hopes, and
dreams. It pulls us towards the future,
and, like a rudder on a ship, it navigates
our way forward in life.
For Worsley, his ‘self-ideal’ was to
establish a career at sea. And so, over
the course of the next decade, he grad-
ually made his way up the ranks in the
shipping world, reaching the position
of lieutenant for the Royal Navy. Wors-
ley’s older brother, too, worked at sea,
perhaps creating a role model for him
from an early age.
We are driven, argues Adler, to im-
prove our perceived lot in life, to arrive
at a more superior position to where we
stand today. Or, as he puts it, “the ma-
terial of life has been constantly bent
on reaching a plus from a minus situ-
ation”. A fundamental driver behind
human behaviour is to strive for supe-
riority. We wish to progress, to move
forward, to conquer dreams, and this
often requires us to take risks.
“The goal of superiority, of power,
of the conquest of others, is the goal
that directs the activity of many human
beings,” Adler writes in Understanding
Endurance final sinking in Antarctica,
Royal Geographic Society, 1915

101101
By endurance we conquer
Human Nature. “This goal modifies an
individual’s view of the world. It shapes
their behaviour pattern and directs
their various thoughts and feelings into
specific channels.”
And so, when eccentric explorer
Ernest Shackleton floated the idea of
the Antarctic land-crossing from his
London office at 4 Burlington Street,
Worsley was compelled to accept the
offer. Of course, he needed a dose of
bravery to board the ship from Plym-
outh on August 8, 1914. But Worsley,
in a sense, was coaxed by something
other than courage, and that was to re-
alise his ‘self-ideal’. And the Imperial
Trans-Antarctic Expedition was, as it
was later referred to, the last major ex-
pedition of the Heroic Age of Antarctic
Exploration. Worsley set out to better
himself, to land, as it were, at a desti-
nation of superiority to his former self.
“The chief danger in life,” writes
Adler, “is that you take too many pre-
cautions.” To become your ‘self-ideal’,
one needs to be courageous. “Courage
is not an ability one either possesses
or lacks. Courage is the willingness to
engage in a risk-taking behaviour re-
gardless of whether the consequences
are unknown or possibly adverse. We
are capable of courageous behaviour
provided we are willing to engage in
it,” he wrote.
In essence, courage is a virtue that
must be practised. We become more
capable of courageous feats by doing,
by gaining expertise, and testing our
strengths – like a sailor who learns to
steer a ship in treacherous waters. But
sometimes in life, like Worsley, we can
In essence, courage is a virtue that
must be practised.
102
find ourselves, figuratively speaking,
shipwrecked at sea, with little hope
of reaching safe ground. We may face
ill health, or loss, or a disaster of some
kind, and this, indeed, merits some-
thing beyond simple courage. We need
to draw on a strength within us.
The meticulously built ship that
sank on that fateful day in October
1915, was handcrafted, plank by plank,
with exceptional care. “By the time she
was launched… she was the strongest
ship ever built,” writes Alfred Lansing
in his book Endurance, which docu-
mented in rigorous detail the journey
of Shackleton and his crew. The ship
was named Polaris, also known as the
North Star, the guiding star that an-
cient seafarers used to navigate.
Adler would suggest that, symboli-
cally, Polaris is our ‘self-ideal’, or that
which we used to navigate our path in
life. We form an idea of who we wish
to become, and we use this as a quasi-
map, or as a guiding light, determin-
ing the goals we set, and the decisions
we make, whether we decide to take
up sailing lessons or buy a road bike
to follow our dream of cycling country
France. This process of self-realisation,
or self-actualisation, requires not just
courage to set out to become who we
most wish to be, but perseverance in
the face of ill winds.
And indeed, from the south, a gale
began to blow on Worsley and the crew
on board the languishing ship. And
the pressure of the winds put mount-
ing pressure on the ice floes. The ice
sheets piled higher and higher against
the ship’s bows, gradually mounting
her bulwarks, and crashing across her
deck. “The ice was inundating her,”
Lansing writes, “overwhelming her
with a crushing load that pushed her
head down even deeper.”
Shipwrecked in the icy wasteland
of the Antarctic seas, Worsley, Shack-
leton, and 26 crew members, faced
the prospect of what could only be a
death-defying journey ahead. Within
two hours, the crew had transferred all
essential gear – tents, sledges, dogs –
and established a camp on the solid ice.
“Their plight was naked and terrifying
in its simplicity,” writes Lansing. “If
they were to get out – they had to get
themselves out.”
The ship that sank in the Weddell
Sea that day cost Shackleton $67,000
to buy at the time, a significant amount
of money in today’s currency, but still
less than it cost to build her back then.
Interestingly, in March this year, 107
years after she sank, the ship was dis-
covered by a search team, three kilo-
metres deep on the seabed, and still in
remarkable condition.
Interestingly, not long after sale,
Shackleton rechristened the ship,
changing her name from Polaris to En-
durance. He chose a name in memory
of his family’s motto, Fortitudine vin-
cimus, or “By endurance we conquer.”
Although Shackleton failed to accom-
plish his mission to cross the Antarctic
continent on foot, he become recog-
nised for his epic feat of endurance, to
return home without a single loss of
life. The ship’s name, Endurance, is an
apt reference to what’s required when
courage just isn’t enough.
“Nothing happens to any person that they are not
formed by nature to bear.”

Marcus Aurelius

Ancient Greek vase, Diosphos Painter, c. 500 BCE, Met

103
Courage, Anxiety and Despair: Watching the Battle, by James Sant, 1850

105
A political virtue
Interviewee: Linda Rabieh
Interviewer: Zan Boag
Artwork: Sectional view of
New York Public Library, by
Carrère & Hastings, 1897
Linda Rabieh, Professor of Phi-
losophy at MIT, previously taught
at Colorado College and Tufts Uni-
versity. She is the author of Plato and
the Virtue of Courage, which won the
Delba Winthrop Mansfield prize for
excellence in political science, and of
numerous articles that explore the po-
litical thought of ancient and medieval
thinkers, including Thucydides, Plato,
Maimonides, and Averroes. She was
the recipient of a National Endow-
ment of Humanities Independent
Scholar Fellowship.
Zan Boag: You started your book
Plato and the Virtue of Courage with
the line, “Courage is an essential politi-
cal virtue and should be of serious inter-
est to anyone interested in politics.” This
is followed by, “Courage is arguably the
virtue that nations celebrate more than
any other, including justice.” What makes
courage political and why is it held in such
high regard by a nation’s citizens?
106
A political
virtue
Linda Rabieh: I think that courage
does pose a bit of an awkward problem
for modern politics and modern life
generally, because the characteristics
associated with it are not simply in
harmony with modern ethics and a
modern disposition.
One of the interesting things is that
we still see today just how important
courage is for all regimes, including
liberal regimes. Courage is like this
annoying thing that in liberal regimes
especially has been confined to a closet
but can’t simply remain there. It’s put
in a closet precisely because we want it
there when we need it, but the rest of
the time, we don’t want to have to think
about it. We need it, and this goes to
your question about why it’s political,
because the first requirement of every
regime, of every country, is that it be
able to defend itself, and its citizens will
need courage to be up to the task. At
some point, we’re going to have to call
upon citizens’ courage. The most obvi-
ous way in which we see courage as a
necessary political virtue is in war. But
I think we see it in politics too.
Yes, of course, because the defence of a
nation doesn’t just come through taking
up arms. It is also to defend the beliefs of
that country, whether it’s the political or
intellectual or social beliefs of the country.
Now, intellectual and moral courage, such
as the courage to speak one’s mind or stand
up for a certain belief, these tend to align
with people’s existing political and social
views. But is there a certain type of phys-
ical courage that can transcend all this,
that can transcend political leanings, such
as saving a child from a burning house,
standing up for someone who is being
mugged or bullied? Can a certain type of
physical courage transcend the political?
I think there’s a political version of
both moral and intellectual courage.
When someone defends one’s political
position or party, or takes risks in its
defence, I would call that political cour-
age. But the courage involved in saving
a drowning child, rescuing someone
from a burning building, I don’t know
if I would simply reduce that to physi-
cal courage. There’s a component that’s
physical. It requires a sort of physical
capacity, although we’re often surprised
A political virtue

107107
A political virtue
at what people are able to do even when
they don’t seem to have the requisite
physical capacity. But I don’t think we
would call it merely physical because in
each of the instances that you’ve identi-
fied, we think that it’s a worthy exercise
of courage. We praise it, and we think
the act was driven by an opinion that
is justified and decent and can be de-
fended. So I wouldn’t quite divide cour-
age in that way.
What I was getting at in labelling it
‘physical courage’ was to see whether there
are types of courage that can transcend
political lines or social beliefs. Whether
something can just be ‘courageous’, no
matter your political leanings or your
views on how society should be run. One
interesting point that you raise in your
book was what happened on September
11 – how courage can be recognised by
different people in different forms. One
person’s courage can be another person’s
cowardice. September 11 became a hot
topic for this because Bill Maher, on the
program Politically Incorrect, which got
axed after he said this; he said, “Staying
in the airplane when it hits the build-
ing, say what you want about it. It’s not
cowardly.” He was reiterating something
that Susan Sontag had written, and
Stanley Fish came to Sontag’s defence
in this as well – they all suggested that
courage was morally neutral. Is it mor-
ally neutral, or can it be good or bad? Is
courage ultimately determined by one’s
point of view?
And that’s where I think the interesting ques-
tion arises. What is it in us that is attracted
to that exercise of bravery in and of itself?
108
This is what makes courage such an
extremely interesting and vexing ques-
tion. It’s also why I think that Plato
and Aristotle have explored and delved
into these questions in a more com-
plete way than subsequent thinkers.
Courage is an odd virtue – we seem
to recognise it even in bad guys. Per-
haps prudence is odd in this way too.
Of course, there are endless examples
of this in movies and television series.
The Godfather, or other great crime
dramas like Breaking Bad – the char-
acter Gus in Breaking Bad seems to be
a paradigm of a certain kind of amoral
courage that can be exhibited by any-
one. It’s a funny thing because it’s one
of the virtues that even bad guys ad-
mire. They respect it in each other and
even in good guys. Courage, you could
say, is the last virtue of scoundrels, in
the sense that it’s the last virtue that
even bad guys are attached to. I’d say on
one side we experience courage, even
in such bad guys, as something really
impressive in and of itself. And yet I
think on the other hand, there is some-
thing in us that resists attributing to
such individuals the virtue of courage.
And that’s where I think the in-
teresting question arises. What is it
in us that is attracted to that exercise
of bravery in and of itself ? And at the
same time, why do we not want always
to call it a virtue? Why do we not want
to equate the 9/11 terrorist with the
noble soldier who sacrifices him or
herself in battle? We don’t want to say
they’re the same, and yet it’s hard not
to. I think that’s the essential puzzle at
the heart of courage.
I suppose it’s difficult because when the
type of courage that you see doesn’t fit in
with the narrative that you have for what
‘being courageous’ is, well that poses a prob-
lem. As you’re saying, if we don’t deem to
be virtuous the courageous act that we see,
then we don’t want to assign that to the
category of courage. Perhaps we will say it
was brave or it was something else. We’ll
try and steer it away from ‘courage’ because
it doesn’t align with our worldview.
Yes, right. But it’s interesting be-
cause it’s a worldview that I think is
consistent. There’s a consistency in the
unwillingness to call someone coura-
geous who exhibits something im-
pressive that looks like courage. In a
way the question becomes, what do
we mean by virtue? And if courage is
a virtue, what would that courage look
like? What kinds of actions would you
include or exclude on that basis?
In your book you do call into question
to what degree courage can be called a
virtue – because it often involves sacrifice,
sometimes of one’s own life. To consider
courage as a virtue, do we need to alter our
idea of what constitutes a virtue?
The way I would put it is that be-
fore we should alter our idea of vir-
tue, we first have to clarify what we
mean by virtue and then think about
to what degree courage is a virtue. At

least this is the way I think the ancients
approach it – in trying to understand
courage, they are also trying to under-
stand virtue and thereby clarify what is
the virtue of courage.
You have in the Laches, for example,
this claim that courage is steadfastness
of soul. Then you see Socrates exam-
ine that claim and show that the per-
son who makes that claim, Laches, an
Athenian general, can’t consistently or
doesn’t want consistently to maintain
that steadfastness of soul is itself cour-
age because steadfastness of soul can
be employed in any kind of action. It
could be diving into a well without
having any expertise in the task. There’s
something impressive about that – it
requires a certain kind of boldness
and toughness, but Laches is unwill-
ing to attribute to it the full status of
virtue. His hesitation would then re-
quire delving into the bigger question
of what is ‘virtue’. And that is how the
ancients try to think of it: what do we
mean by courage, what do we mean by
virtue, and how do we put these two
things together?
Laches did describe it as “steadfastness
of soul”, but his counterpart – the other
general in the dialogue, Nicias – describes
it as “knowledge of the terrible and em-
boldening things”. This sounds much more
dramatic and romantic than “steadfast-
ness of soul”. How do these conceptions
of courage compare with how you would
define the term?
Well, how I think of courage is
very largely influenced by what I’ve
learned from studying Plato and Aris-
totle. Working through both accounts of
courage are important steps in discov-
ering what really is courage. While we
see Laches offer “steadfastness of soul,”
as an account of courage, Nicias offers
an account that is almost the complete
A political virtue
opposite, because it has nothing to do
with steadfastness – it’s some kind of
knowledge.
I think Nicias’ claim should seem a
lot stranger than Laches’, that courage
would be a kind of knowledge. Because
I think when any of us experiences
courage to the extent that we do, we
don’t obviously think of it as a knowl-
edge. Isn’t the courageous act more an
experience of white knuckling, of forc-
ing ourselves to do something rather
than knowing what we should do? We
think something like, “I’ve got to get
through this, and I have to steel myself
and push myself to do so, because it’s
difficult and part of me knows I don’t
want to do it.”
So, it’s not at all obvious that knowl-
edge is what’s relevant. But yet, as the
conversation with Laches reveals, some
kind of knowledge or understanding is and the circumstances you’re in, and then with
needed. Thus, there’s something to both that knowledge you then perform a courageous
their accounts, and my understanding act. Part of having that extra bit of knowl-
of the Socratic examination is that it edge enables you to be courageous rather than
shows us both what we think courage just simply being stupid.
is and also what’s deficient in what we Right. I think that’s a really impor-
think. It then prods us to consider why tant point, and I think that’s why you
each character wants courage to be the have to put these definitions together.
thing that he claims it is despite the You mentioned knowledge being neces-
fact that he can’t maintain his position. sary to know whether you are capable of
In seeing and reflecting on the gap be- accomplishing something, whether you
tween what the particular interlocutor have the requisite expertise. But I wonder
wants courage to be and what he can whether the knowledge required isn’t also
consistently maintain under Socratic the understanding of why you’re engaged
questioning, we begin to understand in the particular courageous act. This is
what a defensible or a coherent account another important issue about courage:
of courage might be. part of what’s impressive about someone
who demonstrates steadfastness of soul is
I don’t mind the idea of knowledge be- that it’s often risky and there’s something
ing part of it. You were mentioning before, about this that’s so impressive to us as hu-
if somebody throws themselves down a man beings, maybe a little bit less in this
well without knowing what’s down there, day and age, but certainly for me as I was
is that courageous or is it, you didn’t say growing up. I think it’s one of the reasons
this, but is it simply stupid? And perhaps I was attracted to this topic. There’s just
knowledge has a part to play here, in that something so compelling about human
if you understand what you are capable of beings facing down difficult situations,
109
A political virtue

coming to terms with some evil and
being able to accomplish what they set
out to do. Part of what is impressive
and what moves us about courage is
that it involves the willingness to en-
dure risk to and sacrifice of oneself.
Especially if what we mean by vir-
tue, though, is something that’s good
for us – in the sense that it contributes
to our fulfilment and makes us thrive
as a human being, then we would have
to think in what case and under what
circumstances would such a risk or sac-
rifice be worthwhile? It’s not simply ex-
pertise that is required, I think it would
also have to be some wisdom about the
ends of courage, about why you’re exer-
cising this steadfastness of soul.
It seems that with some other virtues,
possessing these virtues may help you in-
crease the level of happiness in your life,
whereas courage tends to work in the op-
posite direction. You have noted this, that
Aristotle’s conception of courage poses a
problem when it comes to seeking hap-
piness because the virtue of courage can
at times conflict with seeking happiness.
I think courage is one of those things that
we appreciate when we see it. It is some-
thing I think that’s quite universal among
human beings, and we appreciate it when
we see it in ourselves. A lot of people want
to cultivate courage in themselves; they
want to feel proud of the way they be-
have in certain situations, they would like
to be courageous, perhaps more courageous
than they are. For me, it seems that cour-
age may conflict with happiness, but at the
same time, perhaps something that is inte-
gral to happiness is to be proud of who we
are and the moments we are courageous in
our lives. Can it work both ways? Can it
make you less happy and at the same time
be something that’s integral to happiness?
Right. I think that that is the chal-
lenge that Aristotle poses to himself
in the Nicomachean Ethics, which is to
show how courage is a virtue. Aristot-
le’s argument in the Ethics is that virtue
is the core of happiness. If courage is a
virtue, it must, according to Aristotle’s
account there, be consistent with hap-
piness. I think you’re right that he has
the most trouble with courage. It’s a
tough virtue: there are some ways in
which courage is obviously essential to
our happiness. It would not be good
to go through life afraid of everything
around us. I think we see that in the
COVID and post-COVID era. Get-
ting back out there in the world has
been challenging for some people.
Assuming risk, again, remember-
ing that we were exposed to risk be-
fore, and now that the threat from
COVID is more manageable, at least
in many countries, we’re going to have
to go back to enduring some risk again.
So, that would be an obvious way in
which courage is consistent with and
even necessary for our happiness. But
it becomes much more complicated, I
think, when courage requires risking
your life. The argument that I think the
ancients make is that a serious human
life will think carefully and rigorously
about what’s truly best for oneself.
And if we take virtue seriously, we’ll
understand that even if we’re thinking
about our happiness, happiness doesn’t
simply mean our narrow material con-
cerns. We understand that the capac-
ity to be willing to face difficult things
that we know are necessary, to be able
to face those well, is a crucial part of
what it means to be a fully realised
human being, and such actions would
thus be constitutive of our happiness.
The ancients prompt us, I think, to a
deeper and richer, if more complex, un-
derstanding of human happiness.
Which is precisely why it’s more val-
uable. Now, Winston Churchill didn’t
quite call courage a virtue. He referred
to it as a ‘quality’. He wrote that “cour-
age is rightly esteemed the first of human
qualities because, as has been said, it is the
quality which guarantees all others”. I’m
interested in what you think about how
courage is linked to other virtues. Is it the
first of human qualities? Do you think it
guarantees all others or is it just loosely
linked to other virtues?
I think that’s a helpful statement.
If we are speaking of the substratum
of courage, steadfastness of soul, then

It’s a tough virtue: there are some

ways in which courage is obviously
essential to our happiness. It would
not be good to go through life afraid
of everything around us.

110

one could say that it guarantees all
Much of human the others, though I would add that
life is difficult. it’s only really courage, as opposed to
steadfastness of soul, when it is well
Of course we used. This understanding of courage
does seem important for the other
don’t always feel virtues because it can be harnessed
it that way, but for everything that’s difficult. Much
of human life is difficult. Of course
I think this be- we don’t always feel it that way, but
comes clear any I think this becomes clear any time
we’re pursuing something that’s chal-
time we’re pur- lenging but worthwhile. I teach at
MIT where students work very hard.
suing something All our incoming freshmen must take
that’s challeng- differential equations, physics, chem-
istry, and biology – all at very high
ing but worth- levels, and we don’t have grade infla-
tion here; it’s hard. They need a kind
while. of courage to get through that first
year. Freshmen year at MIT is a sort
of boot camp.
With respect to the other virtues,
courage can be useful to the extent
any virtue is hard. Moderation or self-
control can be difficult when there’s a
surfeit of wonderful food, drink, not
to mention other pleasures, available
to us. Justice can sometimes be hard.
Wisdom can be hard. I think that’s
an important aspect of what we learn
from Socrates, as we see in his meta-
phor of the Cave. To do anything that’s
difficult, I think, requires courage.
Steeling oneself to face something that
you don’t necessarily want to do but
that you understand is better to do is
a crucial part of courage, which seems
relevant to so much human life.
As soon as you started talking about
life being diff icult, the f irst person who
sprang to mind for me was Schopen-
hauer – he went a little bit further than
you did, he was the ultimate pessimist. I
don’t mean to put you in the same basket,
but I do tend to agree that a lot of human
existence is suffering to a certain extent.
A political virtue
Some of it is self-imposed, a lot of it is. But
yes, we need to find a way to get through
the problems that we inevitably face. And
courage enables us to do this.
Socrates, I think, approaches the
question of the challenges of human life
in a very different spirit from Schopen-
hauer, but of course Socrates’s famous
statement in the Phaedo is that philoso-
phy is learning how to die – it’s a kind
of preparation for death. If that’s part of
what we mean by wisdom, well then I
think it’s not so hard to see why courage
would even be critical for wisdom.
I imagine you’ve read Benjamin
Jowett’s translation of Laches and in
the introduction to this, he writes that
Socrates believes that courage is not all
virtue, but only one of the virtues. He
writes that for Socrates, courage “is the
knowledge of good and evil generally. But
he who has knowledge of good and evil
generally must not only have courage, but
also temperance, justice, and every other
virtue”. How possible is it for us to exhibit
these virtues from time to time, let alone
to possess them all at once?
I’m not 100% sure that I would
agree with Jowett’s account of So-
crates, but I will say that there’s the
courage or the wisdom that we as-
pire to and the courage or wisdom
that’s within our grasp. I think that
if what he means by Socratic courage
as knowledge about good and evil is
that it is knowledge of what is truly
best for a human being to do in the
circumstances, this is compatible with
the famous Socratic dictum that vir-
tue is knowledge and thus that virtue
does constitute a knowing of certain
things. And if you understand what
is best and worst to do in the circum-
stances, in a way you have all the vir-
tues. This, I think, is the model that
Plato presents of Socrates and the
philosophic way of life.
111
A political virtue
But if we’re thinking about the rest
of us, that is, anyone who hasn’t attained
philosophic wisdom, it seems to me that
the Socratic model of the tripartite soul
in the Republic is extremely useful. This
model identifies three parts to the soul:
reason, spiritedness – or thumos – and
desire. In the context of this model So-
crates gives this interesting definition of
courage as the power of preserving what
reason says is best for our whole soul in
the face of anything fearful. So, perhaps
if we don’t simply know what’s best to
do, we ought to try as hard as we can to
use our reason to figure it out. Some-
times we’ll look to the law, sometimes
to someone we admire and whose au-
thority we respect. In this case, courage
is the capacity to preserve the opinion,
the truth of which we’ve done our ab-
solute best to determine, about what is
truly terrible and should or should not
be feared.
In what way you think courage is im-
portant for us as individuals and for the
society in which we live? Is it fundamental
to the proper functioning of society?
Yes. I think on both counts, both
for society but also for individuals. For
society it’s absolutely crucial because
we face huge problems in the world. If
citizens don’t have courage, by which
I mean if we don’t have a willingness
sometimes to bear difficult things, we
won’t be able to address our gravest
threats. Look at Ukraine right now.
Perhaps the most useful courage that we can
have as individuals is the courage to be able
to scrutinise our own opinions.
112
I think the Ukrainians are a wonder-
ful example of both the need for and
beauty of courage. The question remains
for the rest of Europe, though, which
faces potentially terrible energy short-
ages: are they going to be able to sustain
themselves through this? That’s just one
example. I don’t think we’ve come to
the end of history. We’re not finished
with these challenges. And I don’t think
they’re only from tyrants like Putin.
There’s climate change – that’s going to
require real sacrifices in terms of what
we are used to, especially in the very
rich west where we don’t think twice
about the energy we use. So, just on a
global scale, courage is crucial for de-
cent society to survive. Domestically, we
regularly see the need for courage and
the problems when it’s lacking.
We need to celebrate more – and
especially at this time of very great par-
tisanship – the courage of some politi-
cians to put the good of the country
ahead of their own leadership: Liz
Cheney is a good example. She lost her
congressional seat because she refused
to endorse a position she thought was
false. We don’t see this kind of cour-
age often in politics. On an individual
level, I don’t know the status these days
about free speech and civil discourse in
the academy in Australia. But it’s a very
live question and debate here right now,
and courage is something that is needed
in this case too. I think one under-ap-
preciated problem of the critique of free
speech and the proliferation of cancel
culture is that it undermines our will-
ingness to learn to deal with listening
to opinions that we don’t like. When we
talk about what causes harm these days,
the tendency is to equate offence with
real, physical harm. But this develop-
ment is a big problem for the principle
of free discourse that is the hallmark of
a tolerant, liberal society.
If there’s a way of trying to toughen
up our students and our fellow citizens
in terms of listening to and addressing
arguments that we don’t like without
trying to shut them down, that would
be a significant contribution to our
civic and intellectual health. I think
that maybe the one way that we can
address this question and encourage
students at least to be tougher in the
classroom is to make them understand
that education takes courage. Learning
takes courage. Perhaps the most useful
courage that we can have as individuals
is the courage to be able to scrutinise
our own opinions.
That’s, I think, what Socrates would
say is in a way the most challenging kind
of courage. It’s also the kind of cour-
age that is most useful for philosophy:
the courage to be open to hearing and
wrestling with the fact that our opinions
are wrong because, at least according to
Socrates, who claims that it’s a greater
good to be refuted than to refute, it’s
the only path to clarity or what we call
human wisdom.
 Artwork: Join NSA , by Herbert Bayer.

“What a new face courage puts on everything!”

Ralph Waldo Emerson
113
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115
Nicomachean Ethics

NICOMACHEAN
116

By Aristotle
We must, however, not only de-
scribe virtue as a state of character,
but also say what sort of state it is. We
may remark, then, that every virtue
or excellence both brings into good
condition the thing of which it is the
excellence and makes the work of that
thing be done well; e.g. the excellence
of the eye makes both the eye and its
work good; for it is by the excellence
of the eye that we see well. Similarly
the excellence of the horse makes a
horse both good in itself and good at
running and at carrying its rider and
at awaiting the attack of the enemy.
Therefore, if this is true in every case,
the virtue of man also will be the state
of character which makes a man good
and which makes him do his own
work well.
How this is to happen we have
stated already, but it will be made
plain also by the following considera-
tion of the specific nature of virtue. In
ETHICS
everything that is continuous and di-
visible it is possible to take more, less,
or an equal amount, and that either in
terms of the thing itself or relatively
to us; and the equal is an intermedi-
ate between excess and defect. By the
intermediate in the object I mean that
which is equidistant from each of the
extremes, which is one and the same
for all men; by the intermediate rela-
tively to us that which is neither too
much nor too little – and this is not
one, nor the same for all. For instance,
if ten is many and two is few, six is the
intermediate, taken in terms of the ob-
ject; for it exceeds and is exceeded by
an equal amount; this is intermediate
according to arithmetical proportion.
But the intermediate relatively to us
is not to be taken so; if ten pounds are
too much for a particular person to eat
and two too little, it does not follow
that the trainer will order six pounds;
for this also is perhaps too much for
Nicomachean Ethics
the person who is to take it, or too lit-
tle – too little for Milo, too much for
the beginner in athletic exercises. The
same is true of running and wrestling.
Thus a master of any art avoids excess
and defect, but seeks the intermediate
and chooses this – the intermediate
not in the object but relatively to us.
If it is thus, then, that every art
does its work well – by looking to the
intermediate and judging its works by
this standard (so that we often say of
good works of art that it is not possible
either to take away or to add anything,
implying that excess and defect destroy
the goodness of works of art, while the
mean preserves it; and good artists, as
we say, look to this in their work), and
if, further, virtue is more exact and bet-
ter than any art, as nature also is, then
virtue must have the quality of aiming
at the intermediate. I mean moral vir-
tue; for it is this that is concerned with
passions and actions, and in these there
117
Nicomachean Ethics
Virtue, then, is
a state of char-
acter concerned
with choice, ly-
ing in a mean, i.e.
the mean relative
to us.
is excess, defect, and the intermediate.
For instance, both fear and confidence
and appetite and anger and pity and in
general pleasure and pain may be felt
both too much and too little, and in
both cases not well; but to feel them
at the right times, with reference to the
right objects, towards the right people,
with the right motive, and in the right
way, is what is both intermediate and
best, and this is characteristic of virtue.
Similarly with regard to actions also
there is excess, defect, and the inter-
mediate. Now virtue is concerned with
passions and actions, in which excess
is a form of failure, and so is defect,
while the intermediate is praised and
is a form of success; and being praised
and being successful are both charac-
teristics of virtue. Therefore virtue is a
kind of mean, since, as we have seen, it
aims at what is intermediate.
Again, it is possible to fail in many
ways (for evil belongs to the class of
the unlimited, as the Pythagoreans
conjectured, and good to that of the
limited), while to succeed is possible
only in one way (for which reason also
one is easy and the other difficult – to
miss the mark easy, to hit it difficult);
for these reasons also, then, excess and
defect are characteristic of vice, and
the mean of virtue;
118
For men are good in but one way,
but bad in many.
Virtue, then, is a state of charac-
ter concerned with choice, lying in a
mean, i.e. the mean relative to us, this
being determined by a rational prin-
ciple, and by that principle by which
the man of practical wisdom would
determine it. Now it is a mean be-
tween two vices, that which depends
on excess and that which depends on
defect; and again it is a mean because
the vices respectively fall short of or
exceed what is right in both passions
and actions, while virtue both finds
and chooses that which is intermedi-
ate. Hence in respect of its substance
and the definition which states its es-
sence virtue is a mean, with regard to
what is best and right an extreme.
But not every action nor every pas-
sion admits of a mean; for some have
names that already imply badness, e.g.
spite, shamelessness, envy, and in the
case of actions adultery, theft, murder;
for all of these and suchlike things
imply by their names that they are
themselves bad, and not the excesses or
deficiencies of them. It is not possible,
then, ever to be right with regard to
them; one must always be wrong. Nor
does goodness or badness with regard
to such things depend on commit-
ting adultery with the right woman,
at the right time, and in the right way,
but simply to do any of them is to go
wrong. It would be equally absurd,
then, to expect that in unjust, cowardly,
and voluptuous action there should be
a mean, an excess, and a deficiency; for
at that rate there would be a mean of
excess and of deficiency, an excess of
excess, and a deficiency of deficiency.
But as there is no excess and deficiency
of temperance and courage because
what is intermediate is in a sense an
extreme, so too of the actions we have
mentioned there is no mean nor any
excess and deficiency, but however
they are done they are wrong; for in
general there is neither a mean of
excess and deficiency, nor excess and
deficiency of a mean.
We must, however, not only make
this general statement, but also apply
it to the individual facts. For among
statements about conduct those which
are general apply more widely, but
those which are particular are more
genuine, since conduct has to do with
individual cases, and our statements
must harmonise with the facts in
these cases. We may take these cases
from our table. With regard to feel-
ings of fear and confidence, courage is
the mean; of the people who exceed,
he who exceeds in fearlessness has
no name (many of the states have no
name), while the man who exceeds in
confidence is rash, and he who exceeds
in fear and falls short in confidence is
a coward. With regard to pleasures
and pains – not all of them, and not
so much with regard to the pains – the
mean is temperance, the excess self-
indulgence. Persons deficient with
regard to the pleasures are not often
found; hence such persons also have
received no name. But let us call them
‘insensible’.
With regard to giving and taking
of money the mean is liberality, the
excess and the defect prodigality and
meanness. In these actions people ex-
ceed and fall short in contrary ways;
the prodigal exceeds in spending and
falls short in taking, while the mean
man exceeds in taking and falls short
in spending. (At present we are giving
a mere outline or summary, and are
satisfied with this; later these states
will be more exactly determined.)
With regard to money there are also
other dispositions – a mean, magnifi-
cence (for the magnificent man differs
from the liberal man; the former deals
with large sums, the latter with small
ones), an excess, tastelessness and

vulgarity, and a deficiency, niggardli-
ness; these differ from the states op-
posed to liberality, and the mode of
their difference will be stated later.
With regard to honour and dishonour
the mean is proper pride, the excess
is known as a sort of ‘empty vanity’,
and the deficiency is undue humility;
and as we said liberality was related
to magnificence, differing from it by
dealing with small sums, so there is a
state similarly related to proper pride,
being concerned with small honours
while that is concerned with great. For
it is possible to desire honour as one
ought, and more than one ought, and
less, and the man who exceeds in his
desires is called ambitious, the man
who falls short unambitious, while the
intermediate person has no name. The
dispositions also are nameless, except
that that of the ambitious man is called
ambition. Hence the people who are at
the extremes lay claim to the middle
place; and we ourselves sometimes call
the intermediate person ambitious and
sometimes unambitious, and some-
times praise the ambitious man and
sometimes the unambitious. The reason
of our doing this will be stated in what
follows; but now let us speak of the re-
maining states according to the method
which has been indicated.
With regard to anger also there
is an excess, a deficiency, and a mean.
Although they can scarcely be said
to have names, yet since we call the
The man who exceeds in his desires is
called ambitious, the man who falls
short unambitious, while the interme-
diate person has no name.
intermediate person good-tempered
let us call the mean good temper; of
the persons at the extremes let the one
Sojourner Truth
who exceeds be called irascible, and
his vice irascibility, and the man who
falls short an inirascible sort of person,
and the deficiency inirascibility.
There are also three other means,
which have a certain likeness to one
another, but differ from one another:
for they are all concerned with inter-
course in words and actions, but dif-
fer in that one is concerned with truth
in this sphere, the other two with
pleasantness; and of this one kind is
exhibited in giving amusement, the
other in all the circumstances of life.
We must therefore speak of these too,
that we may the better see that in all
things the mean is praiseworthy, and
the extremes neither praiseworthy nor
right, but worthy of blame. Now most
of these states also have no names, but
we must try, as in the other cases, to
invent names ourselves so that we may
be clear and easy to follow. With re-
gard to truth, then, the intermediate is
a truthful sort of person and the mean
may be called truthfulness, while the
pretence which exaggerates is boastful-
ness and the person characterised by it
a boaster, and that which understates
is mock modesty and the person char-
acterised by it mock-modest. With
regard to pleasantness in the giving of
amusement the intermediate person is
ready-witted and the disposition ready
Nicomachean Ethics
wit, the excess is buffoonery and the
person characterised by it a buffoon,
while the man who falls short is a sort
of boor and his state is boorishness.
With regard to the remaining kind of
pleasantness, that which is exhibited in
life in general, the man who is pleas-
ant in the right way is friendly and the
mean is friendliness, while the man
who exceeds is an obsequious person if
he has no end in view, a flatterer if he
is aiming at his own advantage, and the
man who falls short and is unpleasant
in all circumstances is a quarrelsome
and surly sort of person.
There are also means in the passions
and concerned with the passions; since
shame is not a virtue, and yet praise is
extended to the modest man. For even
in these matters one man is said to be
intermediate, and another to exceed,
as for instance the bashful man who is
ashamed of everything; while he who
falls short or is not ashamed of any-
thing at all is shameless, and the inter-
mediate person is modest. Righteous
indignation is a mean between envy
and spite, and these states are con-
cerned with the pain and pleasure that
are felt at the fortunes of our neigh-
bours; the man who is characterised
by righteous indignation is pained at
undeserved good fortune, the envious
man, going beyond him, is pained at
all good fortune, and the spiteful man
falls so far short of being pained that he
even rejoices. But these states there will
Nicomachean Ethics
be an opportunity of describing elsewhere; with regard to
justice, since it has not one simple meaning, we shall, after
describing the other states, distinguish its two kinds and
say how each of them is a mean; and similarly we shall treat
also of the rational virtues.
To the mean in some cases the deficiency, in some the
excess is more opposed; e.g. it is not rashness, which is an
excess, but cowardice, which is a deficiency, that is more
opposed to courage, and not insensibility, which is a defi-
ciency, but self-indulgence, which is an excess, that is more
opposed to temperance. This happens from two reasons, one
being drawn from the thing itself; for because one extreme
is nearer and liker to the intermediate, we oppose not this
but rather its contrary to the intermediate. E.g. since rash-
ness is thought liker and nearer to courage, and cowardice
more unlike, we oppose rather the latter to courage; for
things that are further from the intermediate are thought
more contrary to it. This, then, is one cause, drawn from the
thing itself; another is drawn from ourselves; for the things
to which we ourselves more naturally tend seem more con-
trary to the intermediate. For instance, we ourselves tend
more naturally to pleasures, and hence are more easily car-
ried away towards self-indulgence than towards propriety.
We describe as contrary to the mean, then, rather the di-
rections in which we more often go to great lengths; and
therefore self-indulgence, which is an excess, is the more
contrary to temperance.
That moral virtue is a mean, then, and in what sense it is
so, and that it is a mean between two vices, the one involv-
ing excess, the other deficiency, and that it is such because
its character is to aim at what is intermediate in passions
and in actions, has been sufficiently stated. Hence also it is
no easy task to be good. For in everything it is no easy task
to find the middle, e.g. to find the middle of a circle is not
for every one but for him who knows; so, too, any one can
get angry – that is easy – or give or spend money; but to
do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right
time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not
for every one, nor is it easy; wherefore goodness is both rare
and laudable and noble.
120
Hence he who aims at the intermediate must first depart
from what is the more contrary to it, as Calypso advises:
Hold the ship out beyond that surf and spray.
For of the extremes one is more erroneous, one less so;
therefore, since to hit the mean is hard in the extreme, we
must as a second best, as people say, take the least of the
evils; and this will be done best in the way we describe. But
we must consider the things towards which we ourselves
also are easily carried away; for some of us tend to one
thing, some to another; and this will be recognisable from
the pleasure and the pain we feel. We must drag ourselves
away to the contrary extreme; for we shall get into the in-
termediate state by drawing well away from error, as people
do in straightening sticks that are bent.
Now in everything the pleasant or pleasure is most to
be guarded against; for we do not judge it impartially. We
ought, then, to feel towards pleasure as the elders of the
people felt towards Helen, and in all circumstances repeat
their saying; for if we dismiss pleasure thus we are less likely
to go astray. It is by doing this, then, (to sum the matter up)
that we shall best be able to hit the mean.
But this is no doubt difficult, and especially in indi-
vidual cases; for or is not easy to determine both how and
with whom and on what provocation and how long one
should be angry; for we too sometimes praise those who
fall short and call them good-tempered, but sometimes
we praise those who get angry and call them manly. The
man, however, who deviates little from goodness is not
blamed, whether he do so in the direction of the more or
of the less, but only the man who deviates more widely;
for he does not fail to be noticed. But up to what point
and to what extent a man must deviate before he becomes
blameworthy it is not easy to determine by reasoning, any
more than anything else that is perceived by the senses;
such things depend on particular facts, and the decision
rests with perception. So much, then, is plain, that the
intermediate state is in all things to be praised, but that
we must incline sometimes towards the excess, sometimes
towards the deficiency; for so shall we most easily hit the
mean and what is right.
“With regard to feelings of fear and confidence, courage is the
mean... the man who exceeds in confidence is rash, and he who
exceeds in fear and falls short in confidence is a coward.”
Aristotle

Artwork: Novgorod school, Russian 15th century icon of St George killing the dragon 121
Our library
Our library
Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle
A mean
As we have said, then, courage is
a mean with respect to things that
inspire confidence or fear, in the cir-
cumstances that have been stated; and
it chooses or endures things because it
is noble to do so, or because it is base
not to do so. But to die to escape from
poverty or love or anything painful
is not the mark of a brave man, but
rather of a coward; for it is softness to
fly from what is troublesome, and such
a man endures death not because it is
noble but to fly from evil.
Courage, then, is something of
this sort, but the name is also applied
to five other kinds.
124
Plato and the Virtue of
Courage
Linda Rabieh
The brave
Courage is an essential political
virtue and should be of serious inter-
est to anyone interested in politics.
Indeed, if only because the courage
of its citizenry is crucial to the sur-
vival of any nation, courage is argu-
ably the virtue that nations celebrate
more than any other, including justice.
Consider the lyrics of the national
anthems even of liberal democracies,
whose peaceable inclinations, from a
historical perspective, are remarkable.
Bravery is the one virtue extolled by
the American anthem; the Stars and
Stripes wave over the home of “the
brave” rather than of the just.
Cowardice: A Brief
History
Chris Walsh
Reckless mistakes
A brief survey of how the idea of
cowardice has figured throughout US
history, uniting and dividing Ameri-
cans, spurring brave feats and reckless
mistakes, might begin in 1758, during
what was for the British side one of
the darkest hours of the French and
Indian War. In North America the
conflict had begun in May 1754, when
a 23-year-old major named George
Washington bungled an attempt to
stop the French from building Fort
Duquesne at the strategic fork of the
Monongahela and Ohio Rivers.
 Our library

Food for thought from the New

Philosopher & Womankind library.
We discover books that can change
the way you view the world.

To Kill a Mockingbird The Fellowship of the The Wonderful Wizard

Ring of Oz

Harper Lee J.R.R. Tolkein L. Frank Baum

Real courage Horribly afraid King of the beasts

I wanted you to see what real
courage is, instead of getting the idea
that courage is a man with a gun in
his hand. It’s when you know you’re
licked before you begin, but you begin
anyway and see it through no matter
what... You rarely win, but sometimes
you do. Mrs Dubose won, all ninety-
eight pounds of her. According to her
views, she died beholden to nothing
and nobody. She was the bravest per-
son I ever knew.
“It all depends on what you
want. You can trust us to stick to you
through thick and thin – to the bit-
ter end. And you can trust us to keep
any secret of yours – closer than you
keep it yourself. But you cannot trust
us to let you face trouble alone, and
go off without a word. We are your
friends, Frodo. Anyway: there it is. We
know most of what Gandalf has told
you. We know a good deal about the
Ring. We are horribly afraid – but we
are coming with you; or following you
like hounds.”
“But that isn’t right. The King of
Beasts shouldn’t be a coward,” said the
Scarecrow.
“I know it,” returned the Lion,
wiping a tear from his eye with the
tip of his tail. “It is my great sorrow,
and makes my life very unhappy. But
whenever there is danger, my heart
begins to beat fast.”
“Perhaps you have heart disease,”
said the Tin Woodman.
“It may be,” said the Lion.
“If you have,” continued the Tin
Woodman, “you ought to be glad, for
it proves you have a heart. For my part,
I have no heart; so I cannot have heart
disease.”
“Perhaps,” said the Lion thought-
fully, “if I had no heart I should not be
a coward.”

125
Documentaries
Documentaries
To view the documentaries below and many others, visit
Courage in corsets
A November election
in 1910 brought hope to
thousands of Washington
women, and millions across
America. After decades of
struggle, humiliation and
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the right to vote. The 5th
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ment 10 years later.
126
www.newphilosopher.com/videos/ and
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With personal courage,
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Rethinking everything
In his book Death: Phil-
osophical Soundings, Herbert
Fingarette argued that fear-
ing one’s own demise was
irrational. When you die,
he wrote, “there is nothing.”
Why should we fear the
absence of being when we
won’t be there ourselves to
suffer it?
Twenty years later, fac-
ing his own mortality, the
philosopher realised that
he’d been wrong. Death be-
gan to frighten him, and he
couldn’t think himself out
of it. Fingarette, who for 40
years taught philosophy at
the University of Califor-
nia at Santa Barbara, had
also written extensively on
self-deception. Now, at 97,
he wondered whether he’d
been deceiving himself
about the meaning of life
and death.
 “Give us the fortitude to endure the things which cannot be
changed, and the courage to change the things that should be
changed, and the wisdom to know one from the other.”
Reinhold Niebuhr

The Storm on the Sea of Gal ilee, by Rembrandt, 1633 127

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