Courage

Use in the book

Courage is the crucial accepted good in the argument about fine and advantageous action. At 115b Socrates identifies the attempt to rescue a comrade or kinsman whom one ought to save as courage. The obligation matters: the example is not a general celebration of risk-taking, and the text does not offer a comprehensive definition of courage. It isolates the admirable feature of an undertaking whose consequences can include wounds and death.

Alcibiades initially treats this as evidence that fine actions may be bad. Socrates distinguishes the courageous attempt from death, then asks what Alcibiades would exchange courage for. His answer is absolute: he would not accept even life as a coward. Socrates draws out a ranking in which cowardice is a very great bad, placed alongside death, while life and courage are opposed goods. The point is to secure Alcibiades' valuation from his own avowal. A reader should not replace these premises with a later thesis that death is no bad at all.

Because courage is good, the rescue is good precisely in the respect in which it was called fine. Its deaths and wounds supply a different respect in which it is bad. The argument thus blocks the unqualified inference from “the courageous act has a bad consequence” to “its courage is bad.” It does not show that every courageous rescue is safe, or remove all grounds for calling an undertaking bad in another respect.

Courage returns in the royal comparison. The most courageous Persian tutor prepares the prince to be fearless, treating fear as slavery (121e–122a); Spartan courage belongs to the list of qualities before which Alcibiades would seem a child (122c). These are presented as educational ideals in Socrates' competitive exhortation. They are not developed into a theory distinguishing rational from irrational fear. The contrast with Alcibiades' refusal to live as a coward is useful: he already values courage intensely, yet lacks the disciplined formation that the speech attributes to his rivals.

Places to read

1. 115b–116a2Courage identifies the fine and good aspect of rescue, while wounds and death are treated separately
2. 121e–122aThe most courageous Persian tutor prepares the prince to be unafraid
3. 122cCourage is among the Spartan qualities held up against Alcibiades

Translation in this edition

“Courage” should not be collapsed into mere audacity or into the separate verb θαρρεῖν, “take heart,” at 127d. The printed ranking of courage and death includes supplied material whose two different textual bases are explained in the note.

ἀνδρεία / ἀνδρεῖος

Attested: ἀνδρεία (andreia; 115b); ἀνδρειότατος (andreiotatos; 122a). At 115b: Courage in the attempt to save those whom one ought to save. At 122a: Most courageous, the fourth Persian tutor’s distinguishing excellence. Lexical identification: family label: ἀνδρεία / ἀνδρεῖος. See Courage and cowardice.

βοηθέω / βοήθεια

Attested: βοήθειαν (boētheian; 115b). At 115b: Help given in battle to comrade or kin, evaluated by courage and by wounds or death in different respects. Lexical identification: family label: βοηθέω / βοήθεια. See Courage and cowardice.

δειλία / δειλός

Attested: δειλὸς (deilos; 115d); δειλία (deilia; 115d). At 115d: Cowardly, a condition in which Alcibiades says he would not consent to live. At 115d: Cowardice, ranked as an extreme bad by Alcibiades. Lexical identification: family label: δειλία / δειλός. See Courage and cowardice.

θάνατος / ἀποθνῄσκω

Attested: θάνατος (thanatos; 115c); θάνατον (thanaton; 115e). At 115c: Death as a consequence distinct from the courage of rescue. At 115e: Death ranked among the worst things in Alcibiades’ accepted evaluation. Lexical identification: family label: θάνατος / ἀποθνῄσκω. The attestation θάνατον at 115e occurs in wording supplied by Burnet from Stobaeus; the preceding exchange already states the opposing values. See Courage and cowardice.

τραῦμα / ἕλκος

Attested: τραύματα (traumata; 115b); ἕλκη (helkē; 115b). At 115b: Wounds incurred by men helping companions in battle. At 115b: Wounds as the respect in which the otherwise courageous undertaking is called bad. Lexical identification: family label: τραῦμα / ἕλκος. See Courage and cowardice.

Use in the book

The Hermetic account says that thymos becomes courage when it enters a settled relation to the soul’s thought and is no longer led astray by cowardice. Courage is therefore an ordered disposition of an impulse. It is not simply equivalent to aggression or physical strength.

Places to read

1. I.49.4.1Spirit ordered in relation to thought becomes courage.

Translation in this edition

“Courage” is direct and avoids making the virtue exclusively male despite the word’s formation.

Use in the book

The brief opposition between the courageous person and the brave person turns on having courage versus liking to show it. A dramatic example treats conversational familiarity during danger as evidence of presence of mind and therefore courage. The concluding historical pointer nevertheless insists that courage has its follies. The unnamed episode of Sertorius’s Iberians is not enough to build a new narrative or moral diagnosis.

Places to read

1. I, p. 86, entry 4, ¶1Possessing courage differs from liking to exhibit it.
2. II, p. 594–595, entry 14, ¶1Ease of speech in danger shows presence of mind.
3. II, p. 854, entry 11, ¶1Courage can have follies.

Translation in this edition

The English translation retains the pointed repetition of courage. Familiarité in danger becomes familiarity, with the note explaining conversational ease rather than previous acquaintance with danger. The dramatic identification is qualified to the wording transmitted by Joubert.

Timidity of spirit

French: pusillanimité.

Pusillanimité is retained as pusillanimity in the English translation. The reported Rousseau judgment applies it to concealing aging from oneself; the stylistic judgment applies it to rejecting an expression that harms neither sound, sense, taste nor clarity. It is a shrinking from what can be faced, not simply physical fear.

Places to read: I, p. 346, entry 3, ¶1; II, p. 748, entry 7, ¶2.

Use in the book

In I.98 courage arises from the Spirit’s disclosure of divine love and enduring treasure. Knowledge of being beloved gives the speaker a ground of steadiness that reproach, poverty, sickness, and death cannot finally remove. The prayer does not merely request a stronger will in isolation; it asks for the apprehension of goods capable of sustaining that will.

I.84 makes the conduct of courage concrete. One should expect human infirmity, forgive without lazy indifference, correct meekly, and continue doing good despite treachery or mistreatment. Christ’s persistence in benefiting those who abused him provides the pattern. Courage here refuses both retaliation and the abandonment of charitable action.

The late practical meditations connect the same virtue to differing conditions of life. IV.89 values patience, faith, and courage above the ornament of wealth, while allowing that riches can have good uses. IV.91 imagines divine favour making a person courageous as an angel, even amid calamity. Its severe devotional rhetoric expresses confidence in a good greater than suffering; it does not require readers to confuse suffering itself with the whole substance of happiness.

Places to read

1. I.84Christlike courage continues beneficence while forgiving and meekly correcting wrongdoing.
2. I.98The Spirit strengthens against assaults and temptations by making divine love and treasure known.
3. IV.89Courage joins patience and faith as an ornament worth more than wealth.
4. IV.91The assurance of being beloved supports courage amid distress.

In this edition

The word’s active setting matters: courage maintains charity and fidelity rather than celebrating aggression. Read the intense claims about affliction as devotional arguments about sustaining goods, not as denials that bodily pain and danger occur.