The Nature of Genuine Courage

classic Stoics teach us what courage really involves and includes

(an earlier version of this piece was published in Practical Rationality)

Some time back, in a short invited presentation at the Stoicon-X Military conference, I set out several key points about what Stoicism has to say about the often-misunderstood virtue of courage. When I was asked to provide the talk, the opportunity to explain a bit what classic Stoic authors and texts contribute to a better, fuller understanding of courage jumped out at me as the topic I really wanted to discuss.

Here is the pre-recorded video of that 10-minute presentation, if you’d like to watch it. Below that you’ll find the full transcript of the talk. I hope you find it interesting and useful!

The Transcript Of The Talk

I’m very happy to be here to discuss this topic of courage with you at the inaugural Stoicon-X Military conference. My family — both biological and adoptive — includes generations of people who have served (mostly in the Army, but also in some other branches as well,) so this is an occasion of some some pride for me to actually be able to take part in this. And hopefully, it will be useful for you as well.

The topic that I’m going to talk about is the scope of genuine courage, the way that the Stoics understand it. And the reason that we’re going to be talking about this is that courage is something that’s easily, often, and to our detriment, misunderstood. I think there’s perhaps more of a danger of this in the military — and in other similar professions — where courage is genuinely needed. We’ll see that it covers a wide ground, more than just standing up to fears, but understanding this can be helpful for anybody in any walk of life

I think Stoicism can help us to recognize understand, develop, and deploy genuine courage, and also to avoid some problematic misunderstandings. Before we get started, I just want to talk very briefly about three things that often get called “Stoicism” because we only want to focus on one here.

The first is what we often call lower-case-s “stoicism”. It’s not really a philosophy. It’s more of a personality trait or disposition, the stiff upper lip, not showing emotion. All of that sort of stuff can be okay, and could be useful, but we’re going to put it aside here.

Another thing that I want to say is actually bad, is fake “Stoic” philosophy. There are a lot of people out there who are capitalizing on the current interest in Stoicism by putting stuff out there that are really just facsimiles and reductions of Stoicism. We want to try to avoid that as well.

What we want to draw upon instead is genuine Stoic philosophy and practice. Where do we get that? Well if you think about what modern Stoicism is, it’s an adaptation or interpretation of ancient Stoicism. And ancient Stoicism is found in texts and thinkers — in books that you need to study. Those are the hallmarks. Those are the criterion for anything that’s going to call itself “Stoicism” in the present. We don’t have to be slavishly devoted to it, but we do have to be faithful to it.

So what does Stoicism teach? Well, it tells us that courage is a virtue. You know, some of the Stoics actually point out that we don’t have to necessarily study philosophy in order to grasp what courage is. Seneca in his Letter 120 talks about examples or paradigms — he actually uses the word “analogy” as well — and these are when we see people doing things that are courageous. We’re like: “Well that’s pretty extraordinary — I want to be like that person.” We’re attracted to it.

Cicero in his works also brings up similar examples, and he cautions us: Don’t expect people to be totally virtuous! We want to have the kind of virtue that we can relate to — you know, the virtue that we see in in our workplaces, in our families, and in other places as well.

But we can go deeper. Stoic philosophy does give us a systematic approach to courage, and there are three things that I want to highlight here

• One of them is what courage is for — what’s the point of it, what is it good for.

• Another is what courage extends to, and this is what we call the “scope” of courage.

• The third is how courage fits in with the other virtues, which we also need.

So courage, according to the Stoics, is grounded not just in sort of animal responses and affectivity but also in our rational human nature. In Seneca’s Letter 120, he also tells us that fears need to be dealt with, but Cicero goes further (as does Seneca in other places), pointing out that it’s not just fear but also desire, also sadness, also anger (as we’re going to talk about later on) that need to be harnessed, roped in, and in some cases even put out of the picture. In On Duties, Cicero talks about courage (and the point of it) as an ability to achieve tasks, as involving “greatness of spirit rising above”, a way of dealing with dangers and toils. So that’s the function of courage.

Let’s talk about courage’s scope now. Cicero again is somebody very helpful. He talks about two aspects: having a brave and also a great spirit. One of those aspects is disdain for everything but what is honorable or right, not yielding to other people, our own agitation of spirit, or fortune. That’s one aspect The other aspect is — in that mentality — to “do deeds great and beneficial”, to undertake difficult and laborious tasks, even at the risk of life. So that’s one presentation.

Arius Didymus, in his Epitome of Stoic Ethics, breaks courage down into five sub-virtues. These are not necessarily all of it, but this is actually a great list. He tells us that courage consists in:

• Perseverance (karteria in Greek), which is a kind of enduring and persisting in the face of difficult things.

• Intrepidness (tharalotes), which also can be translated as “confidence,” facing up to what seems (but isn’t actually) terrible, to things that scare us.

• Great-heartedness (megalopsuchia), this is the rising above — again acting above — what occurs normally in worthwhile and also trivial things.

• Stout-heartedness (eupsukhia) not being able to be changed or shifted once you’ve actually decided what you’re going to do

• And then the fifth one is very interesting. It’s called Industriousness (philoponia), literally a love for taking on the tough stuff. And this involves accomplishing what is proposed without being prevented by the toils involved so these are some very important aspects of courage

Notice two things about this. One of these is that there’s much more emphasis placed on doing, on choosing, and on actions, than on feeling a certain way. The other is that a person might have some aspects or qualities of this but not have the whole package — and so having a breakdown like this helps us to figure out where we need to add in the parts that we’re missing

What governs courage? What should structure it? What should orient it? This is an absolutely central point for the Stoics. In Letter 85, Seneca stresses the rationality of courage. He says “courage is neither rash bravado, nor thrill-seeking, nor love of danger. Rather it is a knowledge of how to distinguish between what is good and bad”. Courage, he says “is careful of its own safety yet it is also very well able to endure things whose bad appearance is false.” So there’s a knowledge aspect to courage as well as an action aspect to it.

Marcus Aurelius at a number of points in the Meditations adds courage to a listing of the virtues that we ought to have implying that these are going to be integrated in a person of good character. What are the others he brings up?Justice, self-control, prudence, and honesty

In On Duties, Cicero really tells us a lot. There’s three key things I want to focus on here. One is that he engages in a classically Stoic disconnect between anger and courage. It’s too easy to think that anger is needed in order for us to be courageous, when actually they’re kind of apart from each other. A great work on this would be Seneca’s On Anger, where he talks about this at considerable length.

The second thing is that he talks about the danger of those who have and exhibit something like courage of falling into “willfulness,” wanting to have their own way, an excessive desire for preeminence — to run the show, to tell everybody else what to do — or for glory. And he says that this can drive people to injustice.

And now this is a really key point! Courage is governed by justice. He says “if courage is empty of justice, if it fights not for the common safety but for its own advantages it is a vice” — a “savagery”. And he tells us that “the Stoics define courage well when they call it the virtue that fights on behalf of fairness.” So when we’re being courageous, there should be an integration with, as well as challenges by, the other key Stoic virtues — and perhaps by other people who have to call us out on our own lack of virtue

Now, what I’ve presented to you here is not intended to provide a comprehensive and systematic study of the scope of courage, but hopefully it will spur you towards thinking more and more deeply about courage, and to turning to classic Stoic texts and thinkers as resources.