Essay on Courage: Definition and Importance
lists virtues into the categories of moral virtues and virtues of men in his work . Hobbes outlines moral virtues as virtues in citizens, that is virtues that without exception are beneficial to society as a whole. These moral virtues are justice (i.e. not violating the law) and charity. Courage as well as prudence and temperance are listed as the virtues of men. By this Hobbes means that these virtues are invested solely in the private good as opposed to the public good of justice and charity. Hobbes describes courage and prudence as strengths of mind as opposed to a goodness of manners. These virtues are always meant to act in the interests of individual while the positive and/or negative effects of society are merely a byproduct. This stems forth from the idea put forth in that the is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" and self-preservation is the most fundamental aspect of behavior. According to Hobbes courage is a virtue of the individual in order to ensure a better chance of survival while the moral virtues address Hobbes's social contract which civilized men display (in varying degrees) in order to transcend the state of nature. Hobbes also uses the idea of fortitude as a virtue. Fortitude is "to dare" according to Hobbes, but also to "resist stoutly in present dangers". This is a more in-depth elaboration of Hobbes's concept of courage that is addressed earlier in [].
He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear. I do not wish to put myself or any man into a theatrical position, or urge him to ape the courage of his comrade. Have the courage not to adopt another’s courage. There is scope and cause and resistance enough for us in our proper work and circumstance. And there is no creed of an honest man, be he Christian, Turk or Gentoo, which does not equally preach it. If you have no faith in beneficent power above you, but see only an adamantine fate coiling its folds about Nature and man, then reflect that the best use of fate is to teach us courage, if only because baseness cannot change the appointed event. If you accept your thoughts as inspirations from the Supreme Intelligence, obey them when they prescribe difficult duties, because they come only so long as they are used ; or, if your skepticism reaches to the last verge, and you have no confidence in any foreign mind, then be brave, because there is one good opinion which must always be of consequence to you, namely, your own.
We have little right in piping times of peace to pronounce on these rare heights of character; but there is no assurance of security. In the most private life, difficult duty is never far off. Therefore we must think with courage. Scholars and thinkers are prone to an effeminate habit, and shrink if a coarser shout comes up from the street, or a brutal act is recorded in the journals. The Medical College piles up in its museum its grim monsters of morbid anatomy, and there are melancholy skeptics with a taste for carrion who batten on the hideous facts in history, â persecutions, inquisitions, St. Bartholomew massacres, devilish lives, Nero, Caesar Borgia, Marat, Lopez ; men in whom every ray of humanity was extinguished, parricides, matricides and whatever moral monsters. These are not cheerful facts, but they do not disturb a healthy mind; they require of us a patience as robust as the energy that attacks us, and an unresting exploration of final causes. Wolf, snake and crocodile are not inharmonious in Nature, but are made useful as checks, scavengers and pioneers ; and we must have a scope as large as Nature’s to deal with beast-like men, detect what scullion function is assigned them, and foresee in the secular melioration of the planet how these will become unnecessary and will die out.
An Essay on Courage: Taylor Bryn Wright
Hume considered what excessive courage does to a hero's character in the s section "Of the Other Virtues and Vices": "Accordingly we may observe, that an excessive courage and magnanimity, especially when it displays itself under the frowns of fortune, contributes in a great measure, to the character of a hero, and will render a person the admiration of posterity; at the same time, that it ruins his affairs, and leads him into dangers and difficulties, with which otherwise he would never have been acquainted".
“Number the stars” which won the Newbery Medal in 1990, tells the story of two ten year old girls, whose homeland is occupied by Nazi Germany during the second world war, it documents the hardships they faced & the courage shown by their parents in shielding one of them(who was a jew) from the nazis.
See too what good contagion belongs to it. Everywhere it finds its own with magnetic affinity. Courage of the soldier awakes the courage of woman. Florence Nightingale brings lint and the blessing of her shadow.1 Heroic women offer themselves as nurses of the brave veteran. The troop of Virginian infantry that had marched to guard the prison of John Brown ask leave to pay their respects to the prisoner. Poetry and catch the hint, and soar to a pitch unknown before. Everything feels the new breath except the old doting nigh-dead politicians, whose heart the trumpet of resurrection could not wake.
In , Plato describes courage as a sort of perseverance – "preservation of the belief that has been inculcated by the law through education about what things and sorts of things are to be feared". Plato explains this perseverance as being able to persevere through all emotions, like suffering, pleasure, and fear.
On Courage: Essay — Richard Farrell
Plato's discusses courage, but fails to come to a satisfactory conclusion on what courage is. Many definitions of courage are offered, including:
Definition Essay: The Meaning Of Courage
Without an appropriate balance between fear and confidence when facing a threat, one cannot have the courage to overcome it. Professor Daniel Putman states "if the two emotions are distinct, then excesses or deficiencies in either fear or confidence can distort courage". Courage does not mean that you are not afraid, it means that you are willing to face the challenges that lay ahead of you.
What are some good ideas to discuss in an essay about courage?
But we do not exhaust the subject in the slight analysis ; we must not forget the variety of temperaments, each of which qualifies this power of resistance. It is observed that men with little imagination are less fearful ; they wait till they feel pain, whilst others of more sensibility anticipate it, and suffer in the fear of the pang more acutely than in the pang. ‘T is certain that the threat is sometimes more formidable than the stroke, and ‘t is possible that the beholders suffer more keenly than the victims. Bodily pain is superficial, seated usually in the skin and the extremities, for the sake of giving us warning to put us on our guard ; not in the vitals, where the rupture that produces death is perhaps not felt, and the victim never knew what hurt him. Pain is superficial, and therefore fear is. The torments of martyrdoms are probably most keenly felt by the by-standers. The torments are illusory. The first suffering is the last suffering, the later hurts being lost on in-sensibility. Our affections and wishes for the external welfare of the hero tumultuously rush to expression in tears and outcries : but we, like him, subside into indifferency and defiance when we perceive how short is the longest arm of malice, how serene is the sufferer.
10 Lines on Courage / Essay on Courage in english
It is the strength of the that it faced this problem, put the monsters in the centre, gave them victory but no honor, and found a potent and terrible solution in naked will and courage. 'As a working theory absolutely impregnable.' So potent is it, that while the has faded forever into literary ornament, the northern has power, as it were, to revive its spirit even in our own times. It can work, as it did even with the Viking, without gods: martial heroism as its own end.