MINISTERIO DE EDUCACION

Later I will argue that the courage-wisdom section may be usefully viewed as an attempt by Socrates to lead Protagoras out of a somewhat confused and largely ‘manly’ way of thinking about courageous behavior and into an ‘epistemic’ way of thinking about it. But all I wish to do

Well, then, if painful things are sometimes good for you, why are they good for you? For instance, are painful shots good for you because they make you sick, or because they keep you healthy? — Because they keep me healthy. And why don’t you want to get sick? Is it because it’s very painful to be sick? —Yes, that’s why. So being sick is bad because it’s very painful? —Yes. More painful than getting a shot at the doctor’s, or less? —More painful. So painful shots are good for you because they prevent something even more painful? —That’s right. Then might pain go together with badness after all? —I don’t know.

This conversation focuses on the relation between two pairs of terms, ‘good/bad’ and ‘pleasant/painful’. Similar conversations might be imagined involving the other two relations, between ‘good/bad’ and ‘noble/shameful’ and between ‘noble/shameful’ and ‘pleasant/painful’. Cf. First Alcibiades 115aff.

now is to distinguish these two ways of thinking about courageous behavior. Each way involves distinctive ways of answering the pair of questions distinguished above: “What is courageous behavior?” and “What is responsible for courageous behavior?” I begin with the somewhat confused, largely ‘manly’ way.

Someone who thinks in this way will readily agree that courage is a praiseworthy quality that has to do with fear and confidence. The courageous man, in virtue of his courage, goes confidently forward to meet what the coward shrinks from in fear, and he is to be highly regarded because of his courage. What counts as courageous behavior? Is it any old confident going-forward to meet what most people fear to meet, or are there further limitations? Here the person who thinks in this way is of two minds. On the one hand, he is inclined to say that any case in which a person boldly goes where most of us are too afraid to go is a case of courageous behavior. Thus a temple-robber, in the very act of robbing a temple, would on this view

demonstrate courage, since he would be boldly committing an act which most of us are too afraid to commit. Indeed, on this view, part of what makes the robber so manly and brave (and

deserving of qualified praise)1 _{is that while most other people are held back by a fearful sense of} shame at the thought of committing unjust and impious acts, the robber, if he has any social fears, is ‘man’ enough to override them.2 On the other hand, the person who thinks in this somewhat confused way about courageous behavior will also be inclined to say that courage is inherently noble and beautiful (kalon) and that any case of bold behavior which is not kalon, however rare or gutsy, is not a case of courageous behavior. Thus if unjust acts are ignoble and ugly, they cannot, on this view, be courageous. But while the person who thinks in this way will want to deny that courage is ever directly responsible for a person’s acting against to kalon (the

1 _{E.g., “I will say this for him, the man has guts.”}

2 _{Cf. Gorgias 494d, where Socrates suggests that because Callicles is andreios (courageous, manly) he will not be}

noble), he may agree that courage sometimes makes a person act against his best interests, i.e., against to agathon (the good). He may, for instance, say that when Achilles sacrificed his life to avenge Patroclus, he acted nobly and beautifully, but against his best interests. Indeed, on this view, part of what makes Achilles’ behavior so brave is that he was willing to act against his own good for the sake of the noble.

As for the question “What is responsible for courageous behavior?”, the person who thinks in this way will probably say that it is a kind of psychic toughness, something that enables one to persevere in the face of pain or fearful things. On the one hand, he will be inclined to say that it involves an ability to override one’s sense of shame so as to bring oneself to violate a social taboo. On the other hand, he will be inclined to say that it implies a proper upbringing which makes a person able to distinguish between the noble and the shameful, together with a passionate commitment to the noble which is strong enough to override one’s desire for the pleasant or for the good (if ever either one of these conflicts with the noble).

Consider now a person who thinks of courageous behavior in an ‘epistemic’ way. Like the person just mentioned, he, too, will agree that courage is a praiseworthy quality that has to do with fear and confidence. And like this other person, he will find something in fearless rogues which he is tempted to call courage, even as he is also tempted to say that acting courageously is incompatible with acting unjustly, though compatible with acting against one’s best interests. Unlike the abovementioned thinker, however, the ‘epistemic’ thinker will call these ways of thinking into question and notice how they conflict. He will also try hard to arrive at a single, coherent account of courageous behavior. And he will test how well his own understanding of courage measures up to the knowledge of courage. In addition to trying to fit his best thoughts

about courageous behavior together with each other, he will also try to fit his best thoughts about courage together with his best thoughts about the other human virtues, e.g., justice and wisdom. He will be troubled by the conclusion that a courageous man’s behavior is sometimes at odds with a just man’s behavior, or that a wise man’s behavior is sometimes at odds with a courageous man’s behavior. As he works his way towards a coherent account not just of the courageous man but of the wholly or truly good man, “in hands and feet and mind foursquare,”1 he will try to refute such conclusions.

How will the person who thinks in this way about courage (and who inhabits an

epistemic frame of mind with regard to the activity of living a human life) address the question: “What is responsible for courageous behavior?”? Since he thinks of the activity of living a human life as properly governed by knowledge, he assumes that if courage is a human virtue, i.e., if to live courageously is to succeed in some way at living a human life, then courageous behavior must be a kind of knowledge-guided behavior. Courage may turn out to be an executive virtue, but if so, it will only count as a virtue so long as it is under the guidance of knowledge; take this guidance away, and whatever courage-like state may remain will not be a virtue, if what is meant by a virtue is something that can be counted on to give rise to good human behavior. Assuming courage is a virtue in this sense (this person will think), a

courageous man’s behavior must at least in part be thanks to his knowledge of how to live well.