As Russias dictator Vladimir Putin annexes the Crimea in Ukraine and now plans troop movements to eastern Ukraine not a shot has been fired. America and all of Europe stands mute or its petty bureaucrats like Secretary John Kerry pontificate empty rhetoric for fear of angering a renewed Soviet empire ascending before the eyes of the world yet why wont world powers act against Russias naked hegemony and aggression? Europe NATO and the U.N. are appeasing Putin because their member states are enslaved to Russias oil and gas monopoly which is pumped from Ukraine throughout Europepush against Putins fascism and the lights go out all over Europe. Like America Europe is adverse to self-sustaining energy production in their own countries through fracking the Keystone pipeline nuclear power oil refineries and other means of domestic energy exploration due to propaganda and lobbying efforts from the radical global environmental movement.
Where are all the real men of courage today? Have they all been compromised by implicit or explicit threats from fascist powers? Who will pay the price to stand for truth despite the costs? Who will who can look at overwhelming odds and the relentless pressures of society and say to himself Here I am Lord send me."
From antiquity to modern times the heroes of history philosophy poetry are often cruel brutal self-seeking pitiless extreme and unjust but cowards they are not. They do not weaken or surrender. They do not despair even in the midst of desperate odds. They have the power and determinism to triumph over whatever they set their minds and wills to achieve. Their very acts of courage define them and place these men in the Pantheon of heroes.
This is where we get the Greek term demigod for the very connotation of heroism exalts these legendary heroes nearly to the standing of the gods. In the Homeric age this is indeed the condition where men like Odysseus Theseus Perseus and Hercules as demigods struggled with the gods as they struggled with men. The two Homeric epics Odyssey but particularly the Iliad are filled with men who cannot be cowered or intimidated. For example in Tennysons poem Ulysses the now restless King of Ithaca reminisces over the years he spent in battle at Troy and his long torturous expedition home says to his companions
Some work of noble note may yet be done
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods …and though
We are now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are we are:
One equal temper of heroic hearts
Made weak by time and fate but strong in will
To strive to seek to find and not to yield.
Courage is the quality above all others in the Iliad which personifies the heroic figures of Achilles and Hector Ajax Patroclus and Diomedes Agamemnon and Menelaus. Cunningthe expertise of Odysseus that man of many schemes and the subtleness in discourse of Nestor is the only other value which seems to be similarly prized as courage and made the subject of competition honor and duty. Yet the most elegant rhetoric is only the prologue to great actions and but for the night mission of Odysseus and Diomedes into the Trojan camp (e.g. breaching the impregnable walls of Troy with the famed Trojan Horse") the legendary feats of the Iliad are improvisational deeds of skilldirect aggressive bold not surreptitious.
Of the unlimited passions possessed by heroes fear is among the primary. When they are called fearless it is only in an ironic sense for little frightens them or causes their countenance to become dispirited. Like with all men fear robs them of courage likewise anger with all its physical dynamism nonetheless the courageous are fearless only in the sense that they refuse to allow their fear to impede their will to action. Their courage is commensurate to the danger sensed or identified in order to achieve that duty to be done as though the fear of failure pain or death never existed.
Yet valiant men regularly speak of courage as the equal of fearlessness and identify the coward like one who is transfixed by fear. An ambush Indomeneus claims in the Iliad will show who is cowardly and who is brave; the coward will change color at every touch and turn; he is full of fears and keeps shifting his weight first on one knee and then on the other; his heart beats fast as he thinks of death and one can hear the chattering of his teeth." The courageous man conquering fear will seem to be fearless.
From antiquity to modern times courage defines men of action men in war established not merely in the heroes of the siege Troy but in the proponents of numerous other battlesLeonidas at Thermopylae Aeneas and Turnus enjoined in singular combat the victors in Plutarch the warrior-nobility in Shakespeare the enlightened Prince Andrew and young Rostov in War and Peace. The manner of courage that combines physical power with feats of strength; and as indicated by the Latin-root of fortitude" meaning courage it is a reservoir of civic ethical or religious strength to endure exploits even when the spirit is willing but the flesh is too weak to endure to the end. Courage of this manner is a virtue in the chief sense of the Latin word virtusmeaning manliness the spirit or fortitude of spirit the prerequisites to be a Man.
Courage appears in many other forms also. The courage of the tragic hero of Oedipus and Antigone is accompanied with vigor of mind not body. Strength of mind perhaps above being lion-hearted is a particular human power. Fight vs. FlightCourage is not only conquering ones fears and in preventing the body from flight regardless the pain or danger. It involves at minimum as much will to action strengthening its resolutions and constantly disciplining the mind to determine and confronting the truth.
Regarding the sublime narrative of Antigone as recounted by Sophocles I quoted Bard College president Edward Rothstein in my 2002 book The Inseparability of Law and Morality:
The Greek tragedy Antigone tells of the ruler Creon forbidding the burial of a traitor and of Antigones defiance of his order as she proclaims a higher law… Antigone showed the issues of faith and allegiance … struggle between public law and religious tradition between accommodation and absolution.
The heroine Antigone chose to disobey the tyrannical rule of King Creon for the divine faith of natural lawthe transcendent ideas which have descended to humanity down through the agesthat law is not merely a set of principles and standards created by humans but rather part of an objective moral order existing in the universe and accessible to human reason. Indeed this is the Higher law" or Natural law" of the Bible of the ancient Hebrews Greeks Romans Americas Founding Fathers the European States up to the French Revolution (1789-99) where secular humanism led directly to the anti-church anti-clergy and anti-Christian genocide throughout France. Seventy years later the evolution atheism of Darwin began to be universally embraced by leftist intellectuals humanists socialists liberals progressives and radicals of every ilk and taught as the successor ideals of the Age of Enlightenment which would systematically replace the dead religion" of Christianity. Beginning in France then all over Europe and in modern times throughout the world State worship and evolution atheism would be the twin demons the Left used to deconstruct the formerly Judeo-Christian worldview thus breaching the previously unshakable moral foundations of Western civilization which were extant for over 3000 years
For Hegel taking an opposing view civic courage involves embracing dangers even to the level of sacrifice for the State. Likewise for him pure courage is entirely a civic virtue. The intrinsic worth of courage as a disposition of the mind" he writes is to be found in the genuine absolute final end the sovereignty of the state. The work of courage is to actualize this final end and the means to this end is the sacrifice of personal actuality." However Hegel concedes that courage is multiform" he argues that the mettle of an animal or a brigand courage for the sake of honor the courage of a knight for the sake of honor these are not true forms of courage. The true courage of civilized nations is readiness for sacrifice in the service of the state so that the individual counts as only one amongst many." Hegels State-centric view of courage sounds like Marx sounds like the progressives sounds like the Democrat Socialist Party of today.
In the writings of Plato and Aristotle we find that they often condemn the constitutions of Crete and Sparta for their incessant warmongering; for deifying war as the noble end and highest aspiration of the state while praising courage is only a measure above the whole of virtue." Courage must be united with the other virtues to make a man good not only as a citizen but as a man. Justice temperance and wisdom" says the Athenian Stranger in Platos Laws when united with courage are better than courage only."
Moreover courage in battle is not the be all and end all of courage. Although Plato recognizes the necessity for it Plato believes that a wise statesman or what he calls in his Republic a philosopher-king" would place it in its correct place if men are to be educated to be good citizens not purely good auxiliaries" or soldiers. Plato argues that it would be foolish for a senator or a wise legislator to order peace for the sake of war and not war for the sake of peace." Therefore the Athenian Stranger advocates that a wider understanding of courage than the form the Cretans and Spartans seem to favor not merely in overt warfare but in the undertakings of peacein the struggle to follow the good life and construct a good society.
Nonetheless through the ages the form of courage which the philosophers poets and historians exalt has been the heroism of men who fight off fear and willingly jeopardize their lives for their fellow men for their countrythe courage of the citizen doing his duty or what is still more remarkable of the soldier opposing the enemy despite the odds against him. This circumstance among others is one cause why numerous writers from the Greeks to Hegel have established a moral incentive in war: or like William James have looked for its moral equivalent. On this point they are connected not only by those who see only deprivation in war but also by the numerous expressions of the understanding that peace can have its heroes also.
Christian apologist and scholar C.S. Lewis in his Screwtape Letters wrote that Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point." Indeed this is reminiscent of the biblical story of Gideon in Judges 7 who was charged by God to fight 135000 Midianites yet despite the overwhelming odds (God who wanted no uncertainty in Israel as to who gave them the victory) cut down Gideons army from 32000 to 10000 to just 300 men. The difference between the 300 who went into battle vs. the 32000 who were too afraid to fight was that the 300 were just as afraid as the 32000 yet as C.S. Lewis wrote The form of every virtue at the testing point" compelled Gideon and the 300 into battle... into the triumph of the ages.
Gideons legendary valor brings to remembrance Tennysons immortal words on courage
Made weak by time and fate but strong in will
To strive to seek to find and not to yield.
*N.B.: This article is based in part on an excerpt from Great Books of the Western World Vol. 2: The Great IdeasA Syntopicon Vol. 1 Chp. 13: Courage Mortimer J. Adler Editor in Chief
As Russias dictator Vladimir Putin annexes the Crimea in Ukraine and now plans troop movements to eastern Ukraine not a shot has been fired. America and all of Europe stands mute or its petty bureaucrats like Secretary John Kerry pontificate empty rhetoric for fear of angering a renewed Soviet empire ascending before the eyes of the world yet why wont world powers act against Russias naked hegemony and aggression? Europe NATO and the U.N. are appeasing Putin because their member states are enslaved to Russias oil and gas monopoly which is pumped from Ukraine throughout Europepush against Putins fascism and the lights go out all over Europe. Like America Europe is adverse to self-sustaining energy production in their own countries through fracking the Keystone pipeline nuclear power oil refineries and other means of domestic energy exploration due to propaganda and lobbying efforts from the radical global environmental movement.
Where are all the real men of courage today? Have they all been compromised by implicit or explicit threats from fascist powers? Who will pay the price to stand for truth despite the costs? Who will who can look at overwhelming odds and the relentless pressures of society and say to himself Here I am Lord send me."
From antiquity to modern times the heroes of history philosophy poetry are often cruel brutal self-seeking pitiless extreme and unjust but cowards they are not. They do not weaken or surrender. They do not despair even in the midst of desperate odds. They have the power and determinism to triumph over whatever they set their minds and wills to achieve. Their very acts of courage define them and place these men in the Pantheon of heroes.
This is where we get the Greek term demigod for the very connotation of heroism exalts these legendary heroes nearly to the standing of the gods. In the Homeric age this is indeed the condition where men like Odysseus Theseus Perseus and Hercules as demigods struggled with the gods as they struggled with men. The two Homeric epics Odyssey but particularly the Iliad are filled with men who cannot be cowered or intimidated. For example in Tennysons poem Ulysses the now restless King of Ithaca reminisces over the years he spent in battle at Troy and his long torturous expedition home says to his companions
Some work of noble note may yet be done
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods …and though
We are now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are we are:
One equal temper of heroic hearts
Made weak by time and fate but strong in will
To strive to seek to find and not to yield.
Courage is the quality above all others in the Iliad which personifies the heroic figures of Achilles and Hector Ajax Patroclus and Diomedes Agamemnon and Menelaus. Cunningthe expertise of Odysseus that man of many schemes and the subtleness in discourse of Nestor is the only other value which seems to be similarly prized as courage and made the subject of competition honor and duty. Yet the most elegant rhetoric is only the prologue to great actions and but for the night mission of Odysseus and Diomedes into the Trojan camp (e.g. breaching the impregnable walls of Troy with the famed Trojan Horse") the legendary feats of the Iliad are improvisational deeds of skilldirect aggressive bold not surreptitious.
Of the unlimited passions possessed by heroes fear is among the primary. When they are called fearless it is only in an ironic sense for little frightens them or causes their countenance to become dispirited. Like with all men fear robs them of courage likewise anger with all its physical dynamism nonetheless the courageous are fearless only in the sense that they refuse to allow their fear to impede their will to action. Their courage is commensurate to the danger sensed or identified in order to achieve that duty to be done as though the fear of failure pain or death never existed.
Yet valiant men regularly speak of courage as the equal of fearlessness and identify the coward like one who is transfixed by fear. An ambush Indomeneus claims in the Iliad will show who is cowardly and who is brave; the coward will change color at every touch and turn; he is full of fears and keeps shifting his weight first on one knee and then on the other; his heart beats fast as he thinks of death and one can hear the chattering of his teeth." The courageous man conquering fear will seem to be fearless.
From antiquity to modern times courage defines men of action men in war established not merely in the heroes of the siege Troy but in the proponents of numerous other battlesLeonidas at Thermopylae Aeneas and Turnus enjoined in singular combat the victors in Plutarch the warrior-nobility in Shakespeare the enlightened Prince Andrew and young Rostov in War and Peace. The manner of courage that combines physical power with feats of strength; and as indicated by the Latin-root of fortitude" meaning courage it is a reservoir of civic ethical or religious strength to endure exploits even when the spirit is willing but the flesh is too weak to endure to the end. Courage of this manner is a virtue in the chief sense of the Latin word virtusmeaning manliness the spirit or fortitude of spirit the prerequisites to be a Man.
Courage appears in many other forms also. The courage of the tragic hero of Oedipus and Antigone is accompanied with vigor of mind not body. Strength of mind perhaps above being lion-hearted is a particular human power. Fight vs. FlightCourage is not only conquering ones fears and in preventing the body from flight regardless the pain or danger. It involves at minimum as much will to action strengthening its resolutions and constantly disciplining the mind to determine and confronting the truth.
Regarding the sublime narrative of Antigone as recounted by Sophocles I quoted Bard College president Edward Rothstein in my 2002 book The Inseparability of Law and Morality:
The Greek tragedy Antigone tells of the ruler Creon forbidding the burial of a traitor and of Antigones defiance of his order as she proclaims a higher law… Antigone showed the issues of faith and allegiance … struggle between public law and religious tradition between accommodation and absolution.
The heroine Antigone chose to disobey the tyrannical rule of King Creon for the divine faith of natural lawthe transcendent ideas which have descended to humanity down through the agesthat law is not merely a set of principles and standards created by humans but rather part of an objective moral order existing in the universe and accessible to human reason. Indeed this is the Higher law" or Natural law" of the Bible of the ancient Hebrews Greeks Romans Americas Founding Fathers the European States up to the French Revolution (1789-99) where secular humanism led directly to the anti-church anti-clergy and anti-Christian genocide throughout France. Seventy years later the evolution atheism of Darwin began to be universally embraced by leftist intellectuals humanists socialists liberals progressives and radicals of every ilk and taught as the successor ideals of the Age of Enlightenment which would systematically replace the dead religion" of Christianity. Beginning in France then all over Europe and in modern times throughout the world State worship and evolution atheism would be the twin demons the Left used to deconstruct the formerly Judeo-Christian worldview thus breaching the previously unshakable moral foundations of Western civilization which were extant for over 3000 years
For Hegel taking an opposing view civic courage involves embracing dangers even to the level of sacrifice for the State. Likewise for him pure courage is entirely a civic virtue. The intrinsic worth of courage as a disposition of the mind" he writes is to be found in the genuine absolute final end the sovereignty of the state. The work of courage is to actualize this final end and the means to this end is the sacrifice of personal actuality." However Hegel concedes that courage is multiform" he argues that the mettle of an animal or a brigand courage for the sake of honor the courage of a knight for the sake of honor these are not true forms of courage. The true courage of civilized nations is readiness for sacrifice in the service of the state so that the individual counts as only one amongst many." Hegels State-centric view of courage sounds like Marx sounds like the progressives sounds like the Democrat Socialist Party of today.
In the writings of Plato and Aristotle we find that they often condemn the constitutions of Crete and Sparta for their incessant warmongering; for deifying war as the noble end and highest aspiration of the state while praising courage is only a measure above the whole of virtue." Courage must be united with the other virtues to make a man good not only as a citizen but as a man. Justice temperance and wisdom" says the Athenian Stranger in Platos Laws when united with courage are better than courage only."
Moreover courage in battle is not the be all and end all of courage. Although Plato recognizes the necessity for it Plato believes that a wise statesman or what he calls in his Republic a philosopher-king" would place it in its correct place if men are to be educated to be good citizens not purely good auxiliaries" or soldiers. Plato argues that it would be foolish for a senator or a wise legislator to order peace for the sake of war and not war for the sake of peace." Therefore the Athenian Stranger advocates that a wider understanding of courage than the form the Cretans and Spartans seem to favor not merely in overt warfare but in the undertakings of peacein the struggle to follow the good life and construct a good society.
Nonetheless through the ages the form of courage which the philosophers poets and historians exalt has been the heroism of men who fight off fear and willingly jeopardize their lives for their fellow men for their countrythe courage of the citizen doing his duty or what is still more remarkable of the soldier opposing the enemy despite the odds against him. This circumstance among others is one cause why numerous writers from the Greeks to Hegel have established a moral incentive in war: or like William James have looked for its moral equivalent. On this point they are connected not only by those who see only deprivation in war but also by the numerous expressions of the understanding that peace can have its heroes also.
Christian apologist and scholar C.S. Lewis in his Screwtape Letters wrote that Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point." Indeed this is reminiscent of the biblical story of Gideon in Judges 7 who was charged by God to fight 135000 Midianites yet despite the overwhelming odds (God who wanted no uncertainty in Israel as to who gave them the victory) cut down Gideons army from 32000 to 10000 to just 300 men. The difference between the 300 who went into battle vs. the 32000 who were too afraid to fight was that the 300 were just as afraid as the 32000 yet as C.S. Lewis wrote The form of every virtue at the testing point" compelled Gideon and the 300 into battle... into the triumph of the ages.
Gideons legendary valor brings to remembrance Tennysons immortal words on courage
Made weak by time and fate but strong in will
To strive to seek to find and not to yield.
*N.B.: This article is based in part on an excerpt from Great Books of the Western World Vol. 2: The Great IdeasA Syntopicon Vol. 1 Chp. 13: Courage Mortimer J. Adler Editor in Chief