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Courage and Thumos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Robert Gay
Robert Gay
Affiliation:
Lehigh University
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Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy , Volume 63 , Issue 244 , April 1988 , pp. 255 - 265
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1988

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References

1 Philosophy 61, No. 236 (04 1986), 151–171Google Scholar. References in the form ‘p. 151’ are to this article.

2 In Aristotle's account of courage, there are two pathē [‘feelings’], fear and tharros, and tharros is opposed to fear in this way (Aristotle, , Rhetoric 11.5, 1383a13ff.).Google Scholar

3 Aristotle, , Nicomachean Ethics (EN), III.7.7–9, 1115b28–33.Google Scholar

4 See in particular Rorty's treatments of Plato, of medieval Christianity, and of ‘entrepreneurial capacities’ (pp. 162, 164).Google Scholar

5 Aristotle holds this in Nicomachean Ethics (III.7.2, 1115b10–12).In his earlier treatment of courage, in Eudemian Ethics (EE), his view is the different one outlined in this passage:

Probably, however, Aristotle wants to maintain his view that the brave person acts fearlessly when he acts bravely. The brave person regards death, poverty and earthquakes as evil and dangerous, and normally fears them; he will be careful crossing the street, will not waste his money, and will not thoughtlessly build a skyscraper where there are frequent earthquakes. But when he sees that fine and virtuous actions can expose him to these evils, he will not be afraid of them; he sees that it is reasonable to face them, and his feelings follow reason (1229a7–9). When nothing fine is at stake, he regards external disasters as evils, and fears them enough to take reasonable precautions; when fine action is at stake, he regards them as evils, but no longer fears them.

(Irwin, T. H., ‘Stoic and Aristotelian Conceptions of Happiness’, The Norms of Nature: Studies in Hellenistic Ethics, Schofield, M. and Striker, G. (eds) (Cambridge University Press, 1986), 219.)Google Scholar

6 At this point I am indebted to the ideas of Pears, D. F., ‘Aristotle's Analysis of Courage’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 3 (1978), 273–285, at 283.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 This point will refute the precise analysis offered by Pears, , op. cit. note 6.Google Scholar

8 We speak of a virtue only when there is a characteristic weakness in human nature, and a need for a disposition which will overcome it. (Cf. Foot, P. R., ‘Virtues and Vices’, in Virtues and Vices (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978), 8–10.)Google Scholar

9 He speaks in EN III.8 of five states which are not courage but come close to it—they produce what looks like the right conduct, but the motivation is not quite the right one (compare EE III.1.15, 1229a12–13: ‘They withstand the same things, but not for the same reasons’). The third of these five is thumos (III.8.10–12, 1116b23–1117a9). And he says interesting things about the relation between this ‘anger’ and courage proper. For one thing, there is not only a resemblance in the conduct produced, but a similarity in the motivations which lead to it. It is a similarity, not an identity, as there is a difference; but there is a similarity: ‘For [the angry] do not [act] on account of to kalon [the fine or noble] nor as reason [indicates], but on account of a pathos; but they have something similar’ (1117a8–9). Further, we may note what the difference is said to be: it is the difference between the pathos alone and what is required for full virtue, which calls for both the right pathos and prohairesis, a choice based on deliberation beginning from a conception of the life to lead. If that is what is said to be the difference, it sounds as if thumos is the right pathos, and all we need to do to attain courage proper is to add the choice. This seems to be confirmed by ‘The [apparent courage] which results from thumos seems to be most natural [? most close to the nature of courage], and when it has prohairesis and the goal added to it [it seems] to be [genuine] courage’ (1117a4–5). And again we read that the brave are thumoeideis (1116b26); and that the brave act on account of to kalon, but thumos co-operates with them (1116b30–1). The last text, in particular, would seem to be saying that thumos is the pathos which is inclining the fully courageous person in the direction in which reason directs her to go.

10 Aristotle, , EN III.8.10, 1116b26–27.Google Scholar

11 Cf. what Rorty says about Hobbes on the ‘passion’ of courage (p. 166).Google Scholar

12 Hume would tell us that when a quality of character is, by its general tendency, useful to its possessors or to other people in general, it will be viewed as a part of ‘Personal Merit’. Mill says that when we desire a disposition of character as a means to further ends, we will naturally pass from that to desiring it for its own sake—‘virtue’ becomes a ‘constituent’ of one's happiness. We should perhaps not think in terms of a general association of ideas, but of specific dispositions to specific types of admiration. But we should accept the testimony of Hume and Mill to what happens; and we should not imagine that we can opt out of this general tendency to find dispositions admirable because in a particular case we are worried about the consequences of our admiration.

13 I am told that in fact the effects of adrenalin are uncomfortable, and it is another item in our biochemistry, noradrenalin, which is addictively pleasant.

14 Cf. at the top of p. 153:

the courageous person often acts directly from habit, without considering whether she serves the balance of her ends in doing so.

15 We will need to consider the situations which may happen to us, and try to be automatically disposed to a course of action only when, taking all the situations together, it is better on balance that we actually go through with this course of action in every one.

16 I owe this picture of two levels to Pears, D. F., ‘Russell's Theory of Desire’, in Questions in the Philosophy of Mind (London: Duckworth, 1975), 251–271, at 262–264.Google Scholar

17 See also the way in which Mackie, J. L. says the disposition of courage could be justified to a ‘rational egoist’: Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Harmondsworth, Middx.: Penguin, 1977), 189.Google Scholar

18 Anscombe, G. E. M., ‘Mr Truman's Degree’, in Collected Philosophical Papers III (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981), 64.Google Scholar

19 Cf. the passage from Irwin, , ‘Stoic and Aristotelian Conceptions of Happiness’Google Scholar quoted at note 5 above.

20 Here I am indebted to Kolnai, Aurel's typescript ‘The Standard Modes of Aversion: Fear, Disgust, and Hatred’.Google Scholar

21 I wrote this paper while I was a Junior Research Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. I am also grateful to John Campbell, who read a draft.