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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2010
Central to our conception of courage is the idea of bearing up under formidable circumstances or acting in the face of a grave risk to oneself. Let us call this feature the condition of formidable obstacles. Everyone agrees that this much is characteristic of courageous behaviour. After that, however, there is considerable disagreement regarding two other issues in particular. Is courage a virtue, by which Walton means (52–55): Is a courageous act always one which the agent justifiably believes serves a moral or noble end? Is a courageous act necessarily one where the agent has to overcome fear in order to act? The correct approach to answering these two questions and, more generally, to constructing an account of courage is to canvass a wide range of real-life cases which are (widely) regarded as courageous. This is the approach which Douglas Walton takes in his fascinating book Courage: A Philosophical Investigation. His very nuanced discussion of courage is rich with examples.
1 Wallace, James D., Virtues and Vices (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978)Google Scholar. Walton reviews the writings of Plato, Aquinas, G. H. von Wright, and Phillipa Foot on courage.
2 Wallace's conditions for courage read: (a) A believes that it is dangerous for him to do Y, (b) A believes that his doing Y is worth the risks it involves, (c) A believes that it is possible for him not to do Y, (d) The danger A sees in doing Y must be sufficiently formidable that most people would find it difficult in the circumstances to do Y, (e) A is not coerced into doing Y by threats of punishment which he fears more than he fears the dangers of doing Y (ibid., 78–81 [or stated in Walton with adjustments in variables used, Walton, Courage, 67–68]). Respectively, Wallace's (a) and (b) are parallel to Walton's (E2) and (E1), the order of the “E” propositions being deliberately reversed. Perhaps Wallace was being careless in not formulating his criteria in terms of justified belief, but Walton does not give him the benefit of the doubt. Why not? The answer, I suspect, is that Walton believes that were Wallace to have so formulated his criteria, then he (Wallace) could not hold as he does that a courageous act need not always be in the service of a moral or noble ideal. But Walton is mistaken, as we shall see. Interestingly, Wallace's account of courage has an important condition, condition (e), which Walton's lacks. It is curious that Walton does not speak to this. For Wallace obviously did not think that (e) was unnecessary given condition (c), which mirrors Walton's condition (P3). So one wonders why Walton did not think that his account needed a condition which mirrors Wallace's (e).
3 Wallace, , Virtues, 78.Google Scholar
4 I am well aware that I am expressing a somewhat visionary view of the Civil War. The fight over the slaves was part of a larger issue, namely states' rights. What is more, the history of America after the Civil War would suggest that true equality for blacks is hardly what most people had in mind.
5 Thomas, Laurence, “Moral Motivation: Kantians versus Humeans (and Evolution)”, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 13 (1988), 367–383CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Abortion, Slavery, and the Law: A Study in Moral Character”, in Hennessey, Patricia and Garfield, Jay, eds., Abortion: Moral and Legal Perspectives (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984).Google Scholar
6 I am much indebted here to the excellent collection of articles on the My Lai massacre in French, Peter, ed., Individual and Collective Responsibility (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing Company, 1972)Google Scholar. See, in particular, Haskell Pain's very sensible contribution “Some Moral Infirmities of Justice”. Automatic obedience to one's superior's is part and parcel of what it means to be a good soldier. See 24–26.
7 Quoted from Sanborn, Margaret, Robert E. Lee: The Complete Man, 1861–1870 (New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1967), 230Google Scholar (emphasis added; bracketed remark in original).
8 For this view of virtue, see MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 16–17, 177–178.Google Scholar
9 On the possibility of preferential wickedness, see Milo, Ronald D., Immorality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10 My work on this review was supported by a Research Status appointment from Oberlin College for 1987–1988. I am also most grateful to Amelie Rorty's writings on courage: a draft of her review of Walton's book and her essay “Two Faces of Courage”, Philosophy 61 (1986)Google Scholar. The latter convinced me that I was on the right track, though I do not claim that she would endorse what I have said. I am also grateful to David Blumenfeld for a very lovely discussion about courage which crystallized my thinking on the subject. Finally, I owe a debt of gratitude to Edward Greenblatt, Andrew Manitsky, Ira Yankwitt, and (especially) Elmer Almachar—Oberlin College students who were a sounding board for the views presented here.