Gallantry redirects here. Or see Gallant for other meanings.

Fortitudo, by Sandro Botticelli

Courage, also known as bravery, will, intrepidity, and loyalty, is the ability to confront fear, pain, risk/danger, uncertainty, or intimidation. "Physical courage" is courage in the face of physical pain, hardship, or threat of death, while "moral courage" is the ability to act rightly in the face of popular opposition, shame, scandal, or discouragement.

Courage is the mental and moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty.

[edit] Theories of courage

[edit] Western Antiquity and Middle Ages

As a virtue, courage is discussed extensively in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, where its vice of deficiency is cowardice and its vice of excess is recklessness.^[1]

In Roman Catholicism, courage is referred to as "Fortitude"^[2] as one of the four cardinal virtues, along with prudence, justice, and temperance. ("Cardinal" in this sense means "pivotal"; it is one of the four cardinal virtues because to possess any virtue, a person must be able to sustain it in the face of difficulty.) In both Catholicism and Anglicanism, courage is also one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.

[edit] Eastern traditions

The Tao Te Ching states that courage is derived from love ("慈 loving 故 causes 能 ability 勇 brave") and explains: "One of courage, with audacity, will die. One of courage, but gentle, spares death. From these two kinds of courage arise harm and benefit."^[3][4]

Courage (shauriya) and Patience (dhairya) appear as the first two of ten characteristics (lakshana) of dharma in the Hindu Manusmruti, besides forgiveness (kshama), tolerance (dama), honesty (asthaya), physical restraint (indriya nigraha), cleanliness (shouchya), perceptiveness (dhi), knowledge (vidhya), truthfulness (satya), and control of anger (akrodh). Islamic beliefs also present courage as a key factor in facing the Devil and in some cases Jihad to a lesser extent; many believe this because of the courage the Prophets of the past displayed against people who despised them for their beliefs.

[edit] Modernity

Søren Kierkegaard opposed courage to angst, while Paul Tillich opposed an existential courage to be to non-being, fundamentally equating it with religion:

"Courage is the self-affirmation of being in spite of the fact of non-being. It is the act of the individual self in taking the anxiety of non-being upon itself by affirming itself ... in the anxiety of guilt and condemnation. ... every courage to be has openly or covertly a religious root. For religion is the state of being grasped by the power of being itself."^[5]

J.R.R. Tolkien identified in his 1936 lecture "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" a "Northern 'theory of courage'"—the heroic or "virtuous pagan" insistence to do the right thing even in the face of certain defeat without promise of reward or salvation:

Virtuous pagan heroism or courage in this sense is "trusting in your own strength," as observed by Jacob Grimm in his Teutonic Mythology,

Ernest Hemingway famously defined courage as "grace under pressure."^[8]

[edit] Civil courage

Civil courage (sometimes also referred to as "Social courage") is defined by many different standards. In general, the term is usually referred to when civilians stand up against something that is deemed unjust and evil, knowing that the consequences of their action might lead to their death, injury or some other form of significant harm.

In some countries (e.g. Brazil, France and Germany) civil courage is enforced by law; this means that if a crime is committed in public, the public is obliged to act, either by alerting the authorities, or by intervening in the conflict. If the crime is committed in a private environment, those who witness the crime must either report it to the authorities or attempt to stop it.

[edit] Symbolism

Its accompanying animal is the lion. Often, Fortitude is depicted as having tamed the ferocious lion. Cf. e.g. the Tarot trump called Strength. It is sometimes seen as a depiction of the Catholic Church's triumph over sin. It also is a symbol in some cultures as a savior of the people who live in a community with sin and a corrupt church or religious body.

[edit] See also

• Bushido
• Chivalry
• Cowardice
• Dharma
• Virtue

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] References

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Courage

Look up Courage in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Catholic Encyclopedia "Fortitude"
• Summa Theologica "Second Part of the Second Part" See Questions 123-140
• Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (New York: The Free Press, 1973).
• Douglas N. Walton, Courage: A philosophical investigation (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986).
• Stephen Palmquist, "Angst and the Paradox of Courage" [1], Chapter XII in The Tree of Philosophy (Hong Kong: Philopsychy Press, 2000)
• Courage Institute International, Share insights about building your own courage or ennobling teams to lift performance with courage. (http://www.courageinstitute.org)