Dan Putman The Two Prongs of Courage

 

First, in feelings of fear and confidence the mean is bravery (andreia). The excessively fearless person is nameless . . . while the one who is excessively confident is rash; the one who is excessively afraid and deficient in confidence is cowardly.

—Aristotle

Why do we fail at being courageous? Aristotle

is implying that it has to do with two feelings, fear and confidence, which appear, at least superficially, to be mutually exclusive. If I fear going into battle to the point of running away, my cowardice seems directly related to a lack of confidence. He mentions the relationship of fear and confidence several times in his more detailed discussion of courage. "Hence whoever stands firm against the right things and fears the right things, for the right end, in the right way, at the right time, and is correspondingly confident, is the brave person. . . ." And "The person who is excessively afraid is the coward. . . . Though indeed he is also deficient in confidence, it is more his excessive pain that distinguishes him." But what exactly is the relationship between these two feelings? Aristotle’s analysis is insightful but sketchy. Are fear and confidence flip sides of the same emotion? Or could I have a high level of fear in life and still be confident? And what exactly does "confidence" mean? The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between fear and confidence as these relate to the virtue of courage.

I first want to examine some of the terms used. "Confidence" used in translation of Aristotle (for the Greek tharsos) is ambiguous at best. I am confident that what astronomy tells us about the solar system is accurate but that is not what is meant here. Nor can the term simply refer to confidence in the worthiness of the cause or goal or in the worth of a potential action. I can have that sort of confidence and still be a coward when it comes to actual behavior. Courage is not an intellectual virtue. The meaning seems closer to self-confidence. But this also is inadequate. It is not self-confidence about my carpentry skills. It is a confidence in myself to do what is fine or best in difficult circumstances. It is a confidence that I can face that threat, be it physical or social, for the sake of a worthy cause. Clearly, a cause may inspire such confidence, but I also require a positive view of my own ability as an agent to act on it. We do not have a distinct English word summarizing this trait. Along with other writers I will use "confidence" in this paper, keeping in mind that it refers to a faith in oneself to act for the best in threatening circumstances for the sake of a worthy goal.

What is "appropriate" fear and "appropriate" confidence? Aristotle’s model for fear is fear of death and that certainly counts as an appropriate fear. But there are different levels of appropriate fear which Aristotle hints at with phrases like "in the right way, at the right time," etc. Generally speaking, a fear is appropriate if it matches the danger posed by the situation. Depending on the threat, this will vary from person to person but that does not make it completely relative. Given the situation, people can overreact and underreact, be overly frightened or not frightened enough. Just as with temperance, the mean is relative to the situation and the person’s own background, but there is a mean. The ideal in courage is not just a rigid control of fear nor is it a denial of the emotion. The ideal is to judge a situation accurately, accept the emotion as part of human nature and, hopefully, use well-developed habits to confront the fear and allow reason to guide our behavior toward a worthwhile goal. Analogous to other practical virtues, appropriate fear in this case is related to phronesis or practical wisdom as applied to threatening or dangerous situations.

What is the "appropriate" level of confidence? This is less clear. What Aristotle means by the appropriate level is two-fold. First is a realistic confidence in the worth of a cause without which positive action would be pointless. The cause must be worth the risk and we must be confident of that. Getting this "right" prevents us from being duped by shallow demagogues or risking our life or reputation for a cause of limited value. But we also need to know ourselves. We need to know when to stand up and when to flee, when to fight and when to surrender. This is not just a function of the cause and the situation; it is also a function of knowing our own skills and abilities. A second meaning of appropriate confidence then is a form of self-knowledge that we can rely on. We need to have a trust in ourselves that, by putting our life or reputation on the line, we can function in some kind of effective way, whether that means physical action, dealing with severe criticism, or, in a worst case scenario where action is impossible, simply being able to deal with intense pain or to face death. This sense of appropriate confidence has a great deal to do with a sense that the self is capable of effective action in difficult or threatening situations. Courage then requires an appropriate confidence in the value of a cause and an appropriate confidence in one’s own abilities as an agent.

The fact that fear and confidence are distinct emotions comes out in Aristotle’s discussion of the vices associated with courage. Someone could simply be excessively fearless. As Aristotle says, such a person would appear to be psychologically unstable because he might, for example, have no fear of earthquakes or large waves. Yet at the same time he might or might not have the confidence to face them for a worthwhile cause (such as saving a friend’s life). Confidence is a positive emotion that one can do something or that one’s death serves a noble purpose. That is distinct from sitting on a deck chair on the Titanic being fearless about its sinking. We might attribute the latter to some type of temporary insanity (or on the Titanic, it might have been appropriate). In any case a person could, for whatever reason, simply have no fear and this might have nothing whatsoever to do with any level of confidence for doing anything or in having one’s suffering or death serve a noble purpose.

We can also imagine someone being supremely confident with fear not being a defining factor. It is not necessarily that the person’s confidence has resulted from "overcoming" fear. It may be present for various other genetic or environmental reasons. The person walks around blithely self-confident in all situations. Such a person may have an incredibly distorted image of her own abilities but the situation is certainly possible.

If the two emotions are distinct, then excesses or deficiencies in either or both can distort courage. Here are some of the more interesting possibilities. Keep in mind that actions are assumed to follow from these character traits. I will focus on the emotions here.

  1. Higher fear than a situation calls for, low confidence—the common perception of the coward.
  2. Excessively low fear when fear is appropriate, excessively high confidence—the common perception of the rash person.
  3. Excessively high fear yet confidence level is also excessively high. One possibility for how this could occur is someone who has extensive anxiety from traumatic experiences in childhood that permeates much of his or her life. Fears are often inappropriate. Yet the individual responds with high or excessive confidence which may also be inappropriate, leading at times to rash behavior. Irrational fear that cannot be confronted realistically may motivate rashness to "prove" something to oneself or others. The two excessive feelings could co-exist in an individual and lead to contradictory actions in a person’s life, perhaps involving the same situation—at one time cowardice from excessive fear, at another time rashness based on unrealistic confidence.
  4. Excessively low fear and low confidence. This is the example of the person on the sinking ship with low confidence and possibly low self-regard who suddenly loses all fear. A more interesting question is whether this could be a life-long or generalized condition. Such a person would have little confidence in life both with regard to the worth of causes and regarding his own abilities. At the same time he would generally be unafraid of life, even when he should be. This may seem impossible but one scenario might be that a person does not care that he cannot handle different situations. Yes, I’m not very good at dealing with life. I don’t care. And this is supposed to be a war zone? I don’t care. There may be (emphasize "may be") people who do not care about either one in which case they would be below the appropriate amount of both fear and confidence.

Five other possibilities remain, only one of which is the ideal of courage. The other four all involve an imbalance in either the amount of fear or the level of confidence while the other emotion is appropriate. In these cases a habit of virtue (appropriate response to environment or being able to judge what is worthwhile in life and act on it with confidence) clashes with a vice. For example, a major source of failing to act courageously is limited confidence in the face of appropriate or realistic fear. Cases of strong and appropriate fear challenge all humans. It does not take much in the way of limited confidence for an individual to run or avoid such situations. Even a small doubt about the worthiness of a cause can rationalize flight or inaction as can a small question about one’s ability to deal with the threat. If these doubts are not justified, then the level of confidence is not appropriate. Obviously, sometimes avoidance of danger or threat is appropriate, but many cases arise, small and large, in which avoidance is falsely rationalized as the course of action even if the fear accurately reflects the situation. What is called today moral courage provides many examples. How do we respond to our company’s surreptitious polluting of the environment? How do we respond in a group to groundless gossip about a friend? The fears involved in acting may be realistic but whether we act may hinge on our level of confidence in ourselves to "put ourselves forward," so to speak. Protecting our insecure ego facilitates a great deal of moral cowardice. Such a cowardly response could be a deep vice that permeates our life but often it is occasional, a form of akrasia in which we know what we should do but cannot get ourselves to do it. Low confidence is a major block to courage even when the fear involved is justified and appropriate.

Of the other three negative possibilities two lend themselves toward rashness. Someone may be a poor judge of danger and her level of fear may thus be inappropriately low yet her level of confidence in her abilities or in the cause at hand may not be excessive. Such a case, which would lead to rash action, is a misreading of danger and a poor response to it. Similarly, a person can be overconfident yet have appropriate fear and this could also lead to rashness. Again, doesn’t overconfidence ipso facto mean inappropriately low fear? Consider a war scene where a soldier is well aware that death is possible and fears dying as much as his buddy. But he misreads his own abilities in the situation and becomes overconfident against the danger. The two emotions are deeply intertwined but they rely on distinct perceptions—the danger of the situation, the worthiness of the cause, the level of one’s ability. The final negative possibility is appropriate confidence and high fear which tends toward cowardice. A person can misread danger and blow it out of proportion. Again, this is likely tied to a low confidence level but it is not necessarily so. The excessive response to danger may be socially enforced (a kind of social paranoia) unrelated to one’s personal confidence level or it might be a response carried over from childhood that continues to affect us independent of a confidence level built up over a lifetime.

A clearer distinction between fear and confidence and the balance between them helps to clarify Aristotle’s examples of false courage—actions that look courageous but which are not. The courage of "citizens" is motivated by shame, not confidence. Such individuals may be appropriately fearful of the situation and act bravely but they are motivated not for a positive reason or noble cause but out of another kind of fear, the fear of losing face in one’s community. Similarly, those who act courageously by being compelled by superiors are acting out of fear of the superiors, not out of confidence. Those who, like professional soldiers, act out of experience and expertise also look courageous. But the confidence of expertise is deceptive because it is an "easy" confidence. Professionals can handle many kinds of situations that amateurs cannot but the test of confidence is when real fear is present and Aristotle claims such soldiers then often fail. They lack both confidence in the cause (as mercenaries) and confidence in their abilities when those abilities are threatened by others of equal expertise.

Aristotle also claims that acting out of pure emotion is not courage. Confidence requires a worthwhile goal and strong emotions often bypass the intellect and distort the reality of dangerous situations. Pure impulsiveness gives a false, often irrational confidence in one’s abilities and blocks appropriate fears. Still other people look courageous who are actually overconfident. As alluded to above, the difference between the courageous person and the latter is that the overconfident think nothing bad will ever happen to them, an unrealistic appraisal of life. Finally, ignorance is not courage. The level of confidence is unknown in these cases; the problem with ignorance is lack of recognition of appropriate danger. Aristotle is not arguing that all these simulacra of courage are negative. (He especially exempts from criticism the false courage of citizens.) They just do not hit the mark as courageous because the appropriate levels of fear or confidence are missing.

Courage lies in the interface where the limit of our confidence in our own abilities meets the reality of a feared situation. Over time appropriate confidence tends to correlate with the appropriate level of fear not because they are on the same emotional continuum but because one (confidence) often (though not always) builds on dealing well with the other. We learn from fearful situations both what is worthwhile to stand for in life and what we can expect from our abilities and skills. Perhaps a useful analogy is between the emotion of joy and the emotional resolve we call perseverance. Many of the greatest joys in life are the result of working through a problem or staying with a difficult task or project through to completion. Success in the latter is intimately linked to a sense of joyful accomplishment. Joy and resolve are not the same feelings nor are they necessarily linked, but they are, in Aristotle’s term, a "natural" combination. Likewise, appropriate confidence, especially in our own abilities, may well have a genetic component and certainly relates to the way individuals are raised. But overcoming fears is a major source of building confidence in ourselves. Exercising the virtue of courage expands such confidence and broadens our ability to deal with fear without making confidence unrealistic or denying the reality of dangerous or threatening situations.