ABSTRACT
The word ‘courage’ is derived from the Latin word cor, meaning ‘heart’. For Camus’s Sisyphus, courage means accepting one’s condition in a world stripped of illusions, in the theatre of the absurd. Today, the most admired kind is the extroverted courage of works and technological performance. This is different from the courage of forgoing one-sidedness, accepting the moderation of doubt (Rilke). In the Iliad, Hector represents the ability to face not only battles, but also feelings and memories, with seriousness. He listens to the voices of affection and feeling, recognizes their motivations and the proposals of compromise from the feminine world, though he rejects them without moralism. He does not remove them but, struggling with his heart, enriches it with his conscious choice. He can remove the defensive crust from his heart (the ‘breastplate’), feeling the child within him, letting his son recognize him, before facing Achilles in battle. The gesture of lifting his child above him remains a lofty symbol of fatherhood in history (Zoja). By contrast, dissociation between action and emotion (the latter reduced to impulsiveness) is more characteristic of our age. We have moved from the heart as the sole seat of being to the dualism of Harvey’s anatomical heart (Hillman).
