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Reply to Thomas on Models of Courage*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Douglas N. Walton
Douglas N. Walton
Affiliation:
University of Winnipeg, and Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences
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Extract

Thomas' remarks raise some interesting questions about the courage and cowardice of soldiers who happen to be fighting on the wrong side. These are interesting and complex questions of moral philosophy in their own right, and I did not feel that it was appropriate in Courage to dwell on them in too much detail. However, Thomas should have read more closely before declaring that “Walton does not even consider” cases of whether actions “on the part of the Axis soldiers would count as courageous”. For there is a substantial discussion in Courage of the case of the actions of Field Marshal Erwin Rommell for which he was decorated in both World Wars. But Thomas is surely right that further discussion of other cases of this type will help to advance our understanding of problems in ethics of courage.

Type
Critical Notices/Etudes critiques
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , Winter 1988 , pp. 697 - 699
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1988

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References

1 Thomas, Laurence, “Two Models of Courage”, DialogueGoogle Scholar, this issue.

2 Walton, Douglas N., Courage: A Philosophical Investigation (Berkeley, CA and London: University of California Press, 1986).Google Scholar

3 See clause (i) in Thomas' manifest action model of courage.

4 A current research project of the author and Erik Krabbe at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study addresses these problems in a forthcoming monograph, Commitment in Dialogue.