Eudemian Ethics

It has then been stated in general terms that there are middle states in the virtues and that these are purposive, and also that the opposite dispositions are vices and what these are. But let us take them separately and discuss them seriatim. And first let us speak about Courage.

Now almost everybody holds that the brave man is concerned with fears, and that courage is one of the virtues. And in our schedule previously we distinguished daring and fear as contraries, for they are indeed in a manner opposed to one another.

It is clear, therefore, that the persons named after these states of character will also be similarly opposed to each other—that is, the coward (for that is the term that denotes being more afraid than is proper and less daring than is proper) and the daring man (for that denotes the characteristic of being less afraid than is proper and more daring than is proper—and from this the name is derived, as the word daring is cognate with the word dare).

So that since courage is the best state of character in relation to feelings of fear and daring, and the proper character is neither that of the daring (for they fall short in one respect and exceed in another) nor that of the cowardly (for they also do the same, only not as regards the same things but inversely— they fall short in daring and exceed in being afraid), it is clear that the middle state of character between daring and cowardice is courage, for this is the best state.

And it seems that the brave man is in general fearless, and the coward liable to fear; and that the latter fears things when they are few in number and small in size as well as when numerous and great, and fears violently, and gets frightened quickly, whereas the former on the contrary either never feels fear at all or only slightly and reluctantly and seldom, and in regard to things of magnitude; and he endures things that are extremely formidable, whereas the other does not endure even those that are slightly formidable.

What sort of things, then, does the brave man endure? First, is it the things that are formidable to himself or formidable to somebody else? If the things formidable to somebody else, one would not indeed call it anything remarkable; but if it is those that are formidable to himself, what is formidable to him must be things of great magnitude and number. But formidable things are productive of fear in the particular person to whom they are formidable—that is, if they are very formidable, the fear they produce will be violent, if slightly formidable, it will be weak; so it follows that the brave man’s fears are great and many. Yet on the contrary it appeared that courage makes a man fearless, and that fearlessness consists in fearing nothing, or else few things, and those slightly and reluctantly.

But perhaps formidable is an ambiguous term, like pleasant and good. Some things are pleasant and good absolutely,whereas others are so to a particular person but absolutely are not so, but on the contrary are bad and unpleasant—all the things that are beneficial for the base, and all those that are pleasant to children qua children.

And similarly some things are formidable absolutely and others to a particular person: thus the things that the coward qua coward fears are some of them not formidable to anybody and others only slightly formidable, but things that are formidable to most men, and all that are formidable to human nature, we pronounce to be formidable absolutely.

But the brave man is fearless in regard to them, and endures formidable things of this sort, which are formidable to him in one way but in another way are not—they are formidable to him qua human being, but qua brave not formidable except slightly, or not at all. Yet such things really are formidable, for they are formidable to most men.

Owing to this the brave man’s state of character is praised, because it resembles that of the strong and the healthy. These have those characters not because no labor in the one case or extreme of temperature in the other can crush them, but because they are not affected at all, or only affected slightly, by the things that affect the many or the majority.

Therefore whereas the sickly and weak and cowardly are affected also by the afflictions commonly felt, only more quickly and to a greater extent than the mass of men, the healthy, strong and brave, although affected by the very great afflictions, are affected by them more slowly and less than the mass of men, and moreover they are entirely unaffected or only slightly affected by things that affect the mass.

But the question is raised whether to the brave man nothing is formidable, and whether he would be insensible to fear. Or is it not possible that he may feel fear in the way described? For courage is following reason, and reason bids us choose what is fine. Hence he who endures formidable things not on account of reason is either out of his mind or daring,

but only he who does so from motives of honor is fearless and brave. The coward, therefore, fears even things that he ought not to fear, and the daring man is bold even about things about which he ought not to be bold, but the brave man alone does both as he ought, and is intermediate in this respect, for he feels both confidence and fear about what ever things reason bids; but reason does not bid him endure things that are extremely painful and destructive, unless they are fine.

The daring man, therefore, faces such things with confidence even if reason does not bid him face them, and the coward does not face them even if it does, but only the brave man faces them if reason bids.

There are five kinds of courage so called by analogy, because brave men of these kinds endure the same things as the really courageous but not for the same reasons. One is civic courage; this is courage due to a sense of shame. Second is military courage; this is due to experience and to knowledge, not of what is formidable, as Socrates said, but of ways of encountering what is formidable.

Third is the courage due to inexperience and ignorance, that makes children and madmen face things rushing on them, or grasp snakes. Another is the courage caused by hope, which often makes those who have had a stroke of luck endure dangers,and those who are intoxicated—for wine makes men sanguine.

Another is due to some irrational emotion, for example love or passion. For if a man is in love he is more daring than cowardly, and endures many dangers, like the man who murdered the tyrant at Metapontium and the person in Crete in the story; and similarly if a man is under the influence of anger and passion, for passion is a thing that makes him beside himself. Hence wild boars are thought to be brave, though they are not really, for they are so when they are beside themselves, but otherwise they are variable, like daring men.

But nevertheless the courage of passion is in the highest degree natural; passion is a thing that does not know defeat, owing to which the young are the best fighters. Civic courage is due to law.

But none of these is truly courage, though they are all useful for encouragement in dangers.

Up to this point we have spoken about things formidable in general terms, but it will be better to define them more precisely. As a general term the formidable denotes what causes fear, and that is of a property of things that appear capable of causing pain of a destructive kind: for persons expecting some other pain might perhaps experience a different sort of pain and a different feeling, but will not have fear—for example if a man foresaw that he was going to feel the pain felt by the jealous, or the sort of pain felt by the envious or by those who are ashamed.

But fear only occurs in the case of pains that seem likely to be of the kind whose nature it is to destroy life. Hence some people who are even very soft about certain things are brave, and some who are hard and enduring are also cowardly.

Moreover it is thought to be almost a special property of courage to be of a certain disposition in regard to death and the pain of death; for if a man were such as to be capable of rational endurance in respect of heat and cold and pains of that sort that are not dangerous, but at the same time soft and excessively timid about death, not because of any other feeling but just because it brings destruction, while another man was soft in regard to those pains but impassive as regards death, the former would be thought a coward and the latter brave.

For we speak of danger only in the case of such formidable things as bring near to us what causes destruction of that sort, and when this appears near it appears to be danger.

The formidable things, therefore, in relation to which we speak of a man as brave are, we have said, those that appear likely to cause pain of the destructive kind—provided that these appear close at hand and not far off, and are or appear to be of a magnitude proportionate to a human being;

for some things must necessarily appear fearful to every human being and throw everybody into alarm, since it is quite possible that,just as heat and cold and some of the other forces are above us and above the conditions of the human body, so also are some mental sufferings.

Therefore whereas the cowardly and the daring are mistaken owing to their characters, since the coward thinks things not formidable formidable and things slightly formidable extremely formidable, and the daring man on the contrary thinks formidable things perfectly safe and extremely formidable things only slightly formidable, to the brave man on the other hand things seem exactly what they are.

Hence a man is not brave if he endures formidable things through ignorance (for instance, if owing to madness he were to endure a flight of thunderbolts), nor if he does so owing to passion when knowing the greatness of the danger, as the Celts take arms and march against the waves; and in general, the courage of barbarians has an element of passion.

And some men endure terrors for the sake of other pleasures also—for even passion contains pleasure of a sort, since it is combined with hope of revenge. But nevertheless neither if a man endures death for the sake of this pleasure nor for another, nor for the sake of avoiding greater pains, would any of these persons justly be termed brave.

For if dying were pleasant, profligates would be dying constantly, owing to lack of self-control, just as even as it is, when, although death itself is not pleasant, things that cause it are, many men through lack of self control knowingly encounter it; none of whom would be thought brave, even though he were thought to die quite readily. Nor yet are any of those brave who, as many men do, commit suicide to escape from trouble, as Agathon says: The base among mankind, by toil o'ercome, Conceive a love of death. Agathon Fr. 7

As also Cheiron, in the legendary story of the poets, because of the pain from his wound prayed that though immortal he might die.

And in like manner to these, all who face dangers because of experience are not brave; this is how perhaps most of the military class face dangers. For the fact is the exact opposite of the view of Socrates, who thought that bravery was knowledge: sailors who know how to go aloft are not daring through knowing what things are formidable, but because they know how to protect themselves against the dangers; also courage is not merely what makes men more daring fighters,

for in that case strength and wealth would be courage—as Theognis puts it: For every man by poverty subdued. Theog. 177

But manifestly some men do face emergencies in spite of being cowards, owing to experience, and they do so because they do not think that there is any danger, as they know how to protect themselves. A proof of this is that when they think that they have no protection and that the cause of alarm is now close at hand, they turn tail.

But among all such causes, it is when shame makes men face what is alarming that they would appear to be bravest, as Homer says Hector faced the danger of encountering Achilles: And shame on Hector seized— Source unknown and Polydamas will be the first to taunt me. Hom. Il. 22.100

Civic courage is this kind. But true courage is neither this nor any of the others, though it resembles them, as does the courage of wild animals, which are led by passion to rush to meet the blow. For it is not from fear that he will incur disgrace that a man ought to stand his ground, nor from motives of anger, nor because he does not think that he will be killed or because he has forces to protect him, for in that case he will not think that there is really anything to be afraid of.

But, since indeed all goodness involves purposive choice (it has been said before what we mean by this—goodness makes a man choose everything for the sake of some object, and that object is what is fine), it is clear that courage being a form of goodness will make a man face formidable things for some object, so that he does not do it through ignorance (for it rather makes him judge correctly), nor yet for pleasure, but because it is fine, since in a case where it is not fine but insane he will not face them, for then it would be base to do so.

We have now given an account that is fairly adequate for our present procedure of the kind of things in relation to which Courage is a middle state, and between what vices and for what reason it is this, and what is the power that formidable things exercise.