PHYSICAL AND MORAL

COURAGE
Physical courage is the enactment of
virtue through actual activity, such as a
police officer in pursuit of a criminal, a
lifeguard saving someone from drowning,
or a boxer taking on a foe twice his size.
At times, such an act can be driven by
abstractions, like pride and honor.
Though physical courage can be principle-
related, it is not exclusively principle-
driven (Kidder, 2006).
Conversely, moral courage is never always
demonstrated on a strictly physical level. Instead,
engaging in such acts serves mainly to further typify
the virtues one lives by. Unlike physical courage as
exhibited, for instance, by an athlete overcoming
impossible odds to win or a fireman rescuing an
elderly couple from a burning tenement, moral
courage has no adoring public to play to, for to
muster it means to take the road less travelled.
Champion boxer Muhammad Ali (born Cassius
Marcellus Clay Jr.), known for his physical
courage as an athlete, was stripped of his
heavyweight title in 1967 due to his refusal to
be drafted in Vietnam and subsequently fight
in what he believes to be an ideologically
detestable war. His activism, an offshoot of his
perceived moral courage, has cost him his
career during this period.
But moral courage is not only exclusive to larger-
than-life figures of history like Ali for ordinary
people can also demonstrate it in equally ordinary
scenarios across different settings. When the world
entered the 21st century, courage as manifest virtue
began to steadily depart from the trappings of war
(where true courage can be found, according to
Aristotle) and into the struggles of everyday life.
Suddenly, everyone can be actors in their own
moral dramas.