Courage

Introduction Although the word courage is no longer synonymous with virtue as it was in pre-Socratic times (see also Plutarch Coriolanus 1), in the existing literature on military virtues, still habitually focusing on the more traditional ones, courage will typically be in the foreground. Not surprisingly, it is this virtue of courage that figures, together with loyalty and honor, prominently on the lists of virtues and values of most armed forces. Yet, although most of us will feel they have a fairly accurate idea of what courage amounts to, one of the oldest attempts to grasp its essence, Plato’s Laches, ends in disappointment, for “we have not discovered what courage is” (199e). One of the more recent texts on courage actually begins with a similar statement: Ian Miller writes at the start of his The Mystery of Courage that he has “no single theory, for none I have seen, nor none I can come up with, will work” (2000: 14). Problematic questions are, for example: is courage the absence or the overcoming of fear? Is courage a stable character trait or can the same person show courage in one instance and behave cowardly in another? Has courage to serve a noble cause to deserve that predicate? Does courage come in different varieties? And can one sensibly speak of courageous and not so courageous nations and cultures, as some do, or is that pointless? Amidst this uncertainty, it is not surprising that most literature on the topic pays tribute to Aristotle, who in his Nicomachean Ethics coolly defined courage as the middle position between rashness and cowardice, and having the right attitude concerning feelings of confidence and fear, to be developed by practicing courageous acts, motivated by the love of virtue itself (and thus not out of a concern for one’s reputation), and serving an honorable, that is morally just, cause. This virtue is, Aristotle thought, especially needed in battle, and a brave man is someone who does not fear a noble death in war (1107b, 1115a, 1115b).