The Value of Courage PDF
Preview The Value of Courage
The ValueFinal.indd 1 2003-06-12, 10:11:25 Th e Value of Courage Per Bauhn Nordic Academic Press The ValueFinal.indd 3 2003-06-12, 10:11:26 Nordic Academic Press Box - Lund, Sweden Tel: + () Fax: + () E-mail: [email protected] www.nordicacademicpress.com © Nordic Academic Press and the author Cover: Jacob Wiberg Cover illustration: Painting by Franz von Stuck (–), Judith and Holofernes (), Staatliches Museum, Schwerin. Photo: Erich Lessing/IBL Printed in Latvia Preses Nams, Riga --- The ValueFinal.indd 4 2003-06-12, 10:11:26 Table of Contents Preface . Th e Need for Courage . Courage as the Ability to Confront Fear . Th e Courage of Creativity . Th e Courage of Conviction Th e Fear of Meaninglessness Th e Fear of Dying Th e Fear of Social Death . Th e Objective Self and Moral Reasoning . Th e Common Good and Morality . Combining the Two Forms of Courage Lewis Robespierre Irreconcilable Motivational Confl icts? . Heroism and Courage Th e American Civil War Experience Heroism and Ordinary Virtues . Prudence and Courage . Some Concluding Refl ections on Courage Th e Objection Regarding Courage as a Form of Sexism Th e Objection Regarding Courage as a Cultivation of Insensitivity Th e Objection Regarding Courage as Incapable of Dealing with Tragedy Literature Index The ValueFinal.indd 5 2003-06-12, 10:11:27 Preface Th is is a philosophical study of courage. As such it contains an analysis of the concept of courage, a distinction between two forms of courage, and a discussion of the importance of courage to the good life and to moral life. Th e importance to individuals and to communities of the virtue of courage should by itself constitute a suffi cient reason for writing a book like this one. However, a curious reader might suspect that behind the philosophical argument there is hidden a more personal story which, if revealed, would explain why the present writer chose to devote a whole book to the subject of confronting fears. In assuming this, the curious reader would be right. But since this is intended as a philosophical argument and not as a piece of autobiography, I will refrain from expanding on that theme. Moreover, bearing in mind that very common mistake in reasoning which is called the genetic fallacy, I believe that the validity of the claims put forward in this book can and should be assessed without invoking facts about their origin in the personal history of the writer. In my work on this book I have incurred several debts of grati- tude which I am happy to acknowledge. First of all, I would like to express my thanks to Alan Gewirth, who has for many years been my philosophical mentor, a constant source of inspiration and encouragement, and a perceptive partner in discussion. In letters as well as in conversation Alan has helped me to clarify my argument. He read the complete manuscript in its penultimate version and the exchange of ideas that we had in Chicago in March was a great help to me in preparing the fi nal draft. Alan’s comments have done a lot to make this a better book; if I had had more of his philosophical understanding and powers of reasoning it would have been better still. The ValueFinal.indd 7 2003-06-12, 10:11:27 I would also like to thank Christer Lindberg, long-time friend and colleague, who has read the complete manuscript and contributed to its improvement. I have also benefi ted from informal discus- sions with Carl-Göran Heidegren, Anja Hänsch, Svante Lundberg, and Th omas Malm. A summary of the argument of this book was presented to the Higher Seminar in Practical Philosophy, Lund University, in January . Students of Peace and Confl ict Studies have contributed their views on courage within the framework of a series of lectures entitled “Courage, Meaning, and Morality” that I gave at Lund University in and . My English has been checked and corrected by Alan Crozier and Duncan Smart. Th e fi nal stage of my research was fi nanced by the Swedish Royal Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities. Grants from the Erik and Gurli Hultengren Foundation for Philosophy and from the Crafoord Foundation contributed to the fi nancing of the printing and publishing of the book. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my parents, Gustaf and Karla Bauhn. My father, who died while I was working on this book, exemplifi ed throughout his life a courageous individualism and a deep-seated love of personal freedom. Likewise, my mother has contributed to my understanding of courage by repeatedly proving to me that it is indeed possible to make something good come out of adverse circumstances. She is also a living example of the often ignored fact that courage is by no means incompatible with the “softer” virtues of compassion and empathy; on the con- trary, courage may be fuelled by one’s perception of other people being in need of one’s support. For what I have learnt from them about courage, I am immensely grateful to my parents. Th is book is dedicated to them. The ValueFinal.indd 8 2003-06-12, 10:11:28 Th e Need for Courage Th is is a book about the personal and moral importance of cour- age. As I will clarify in Chapter , courage should not be reduced to a martial virtue, emphasizing fearlessness in the face of physi- cal danger, although it has implications for battlefi eld behaviour. I will argue that courage, generally speaking, is a disposition to confront fear (rather than being fearless), and that it is essential to the advancing of the personal good of the agent as well as of the common good of human communities. In this chapter I intend to present a background picture of why there is a need today for a discussion of the virtue of courage. In short, my argument will be that certain widely spread modern ailments, such as depression and feelings of alienation, can, at least in part, be understood as reactions to various depersonalizing conditions and beliefs present in contemporary social life that are likely to undermine people’s sense of being autonomous agents. Courage is necessary to restore that sense. Mankind’s aspirations for a good life have faced various kinds of challenges at diff erent times and in diff erent societies. Once wars, plagues, famines, the abuse of tyrants, and the torments of hard physical labour constituted the major threats to human well-being. In many parts of the world this is still the case. However, even in modern democratic societies the good life may be endangered, not primarily by physical threats external to the human individual, such as war and starvation, but rather by psychological or motivational defi ciencies, internal to the individual, such as depression, aliena- tion, and lack of meaning. Th ese internal defi ciencies constitute a threat to the good life by undermining the individual’s confi dence in herself as an agent having goals worth achieving and as possess- ing the capacity to realize them. The ValueFinal.indd 9 2003-06-12, 10:11:28 Many people in modern societies seem to suff er from anxieties and distorted conceptions of themselves, manifested in a booming market for anti-depressants, and in the appearance of anorectic girls that seem to punish their bodies for not conforming to ideals of bodily perfection. In her best-selling book Prozac Nation Elizabeth Wurtzel relates a report that pictures depression as a particular af- fl iction of our times: Th ose born after are three times as likely as their grandparents’ generation to suff er from depression. In fact, of Americans born before , only one percent had experienced a depression epi- sode by age seventy-fi ve, while of those born after , six percent were already depressed by age twenty-four. Apparently, the trend is global, with studies in Italy, Germany, Taiwan, Lebanon, Canada, France, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere yielding similar numbers. (Wurtzel, p. . Th e fi gures given by Wurtzel are also in Goleman, p. ; Goleman also provides the source: Lewinsohn, Peter, et al., “Age-Cohort Changes in the Lifetime Occurrence of Depression and Other Mental Disorders”, Journal of Abnormal Psychology ().) A similar picture is given by consultant psychiatrist Paul Crichton: Th ere has been an overall increase in serious depression in Americans born since the Second World War. A similar increase has been found in Munich, Florence, Paris, Beirut, Taiwan and New Zealand. Th e psychiatrist David Healy has estimated that in , per cent of the psychiatric patients admitted in north Wales had been given a diagnosis of melancholia and that most of them, about forty per million, would now be diagnosed as suff ering from a major depressive disorder with psychotic symptoms. Th e equivalent fi gure today would be per million, a twenty-four-fold increase. At a press conference on the publication of his recent annual report, Th e State of Public Health , the former Chief Medical Offi cer, Sir Kenneth Calman, is reported to have stated that between and there had been a per cent increase in the number of women in England and Wales on antidepressants and a per cent The ValueFinal.indd 10 2003-06-12, 10:11:28 increase in the number of men. He wondered whether the demands of modern life could be a cause. (Crichton, p. .) Moreover, psychological studies indicate that, in children, depres- sion seems to be caused by a pessimistic conviction that there is nothing they can do to improve their lot: Th e most direct evidence that a pessimistic outlook makes children highly susceptible to depression comes from a fi ve-year study of children beginning when they were in third grade…. As the children grew through the elementary-school years, there was a telling shift in their thinking about the good and bad events of their lives, with the children increasingly ascribing them to their own traits: “I’m getting good grades because I’m smart”; “I don’t have many friends because I’m no fun.” Th is shift seems to set in gradually over the third to fi fth grades. As this happens those children who develop a pessimistic outlook – attributing the setbacks in their lives to some dire fl aw in themselves – begin to fall prey to depressed moods in reaction to setbacks. What’s more, the experience of depression itself seems to reinforce these pessimistic ways of thinking, so that even after the depression lifts, the child is left with what amounts to an emotional scar, a set of convictions fed by the depression and solidifi ed in the mind: that he can’t do well in school, is unlikable, and can do nothing to escape his own brooding moods. Th ese fi xed ideas can make the child all the more vulnerable to another depression down the road. (Goleman, p. .) Th ese fi ndings suggest that we should pay attention to those factors of social life that may aff ect people’s conception of themselves, in order to understand important aspects of their mental well-being. We should not reject the possibility that there might be aspects of the modern condition that may well have an adverse impact on people’s sense of autonomy and meaning. One idea that has been put forward is that modern men and women are too self-centred in their interactions with the external world, thereby disconnect- ing themselves from conceptions of the common good and other moral ideals from which earlier generations were able to derive The ValueFinal.indd 11 2003-06-12, 10:11:29
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