Nicomachean Ethics iii<\/a> 9). The courageous man acts “for the sake of what is noble, for that is the aim of virtue” (iii. 7). “Noble,” in these and other passages, is the translation of kalos and “base” the translation of aischros, words which usually are rendered by “beautiful” and “ugly.” A beautiful or noble deed is a deed to be praised. Courage does what is to be praised and rejects what is to be despised.<\/p>\nOne praises that in which a being fulfills its potentialities or actualizes its perfections. Courage is the affirmation of one’s essential nature, one’s inner aim or entelechy, but it is an affirmation which has in itself the character of “in spite of”, it includes the possible and, in some cases, the unavoidable sacrifice of elements which also belong to one’s being but which, if not sacrificed, would prevent us from reaching our actual fulfillment. This sacrifice may include pleasure, happiness, even one’s own existence. In any case it is praiseworthy, because in the act of courage the most essential part of our being prevails against the less essential. It is the beauty and goodness of courage that the good and the beautiful are actualized in it. Therefore it is noble.<\/p>\n
Perfection for Aristotle (as well as for Plato) is realized in degrees, natural, personal, and social; and courage as the affirmation of one’s essential being is more conspicuous in some of these degrees than in others. Since the greatest test of courage is the readiness to make the greatest sacrifice, the sacrifice of one’s life, and since the soldier is required by his profession to be always ready for this sacrifice, the soldier’s courage was and somehow remained the outstanding example of courage. The Greek word for courage, andreia (manliness) and the Latin word fortitude (strength) indicate the military connotation of courage. As long\\as the aristocracy was the group which carried arms the aristocratic and the military connotations of courage merged. When the aristocratic tradition disintegrated and courage could be defined as the universal knowledge of what is good and evil, wisdom and courage converged and true courage became distinguished from the soldier’s courage. The courage of the dying Socrates was rational-democratic, not heroic- aristocratic. But the aristocratic line was revived in the early Middle Ages. Courage became again characteristic of nobility. The knight is he who represents courage as a soldier and as a nobleman. He has what was called hohe Mut, the high, noble, and courageous spirit.<\/p>\n
The German language has two words for courageous, tapfer and mutig. Tapfer originally means firm, weighty, important, pointing to the power of being in the upper strata of feudal society. Mutig is derived from Mut, the movement of the soul suggested by the English word “mood.” Thus words like Schwermut, Hochmut, Kleinmut (the heavy, the high, the small “spirit”). Mut is a matter of the “heart,” the personal center. Therefore mutig can be rendered by beherzt (as the French-English “courage” is derived from the French coeur, heart). While Mut has preserved this larger sense, Tapferkeit became more and more the special virtue of the soldier\u2014who ceased to be identical with the knight and the nobleman. It is obvious that the terms Mut and courage directly introduce the ontological question, while Tapferkeit and fortitude in their present meanings are without such connotations. The title of these lectures could not have been “The Fortitude to Be” (Die Tapferkeit zum Sein); it had to read “The Courage to Be” (Der Mut zum Sein). These linguistic remarks reveal the medieval situation with respect to the concept of courage, and with it the tension between the heroic-aristocratic ethics of the early Middle Ages on the one hand and on the other the rational-democratic ethics which are a heritage of the Christian-humanistic tradition and again came to the fore at the end of the Middle Ages. This situation is classically expressed in Thomas Aquinas’ doctrine of courage. Thomas realizes and discusses the duality in the meaning of courage. Courage is strength of mind, capable of conquering whatever threatens the attainment of the highest good. It is united with wisdom, the virtue which represents the unity of the four cardinal virtues (the two others being temperance and justice). A keen analysis could show that the four are not of equal standing. Courage, united with wisdom, includes temperance in relation to oneself as well as justice in relation to others.<\/p>\n
[The question then is whether courage or wisdom is the more comprehensive virtue. The answer is dependent on the outcome of the famous discussion about the priority of intellect or will in the essence of being., and consequently, in the human personality.] Since Thomas decides unambiguously for the intellect, as a necessary consequence he subordinates courage to wisdom. A decision for the priority of the will would point to a greater, though not a total, independence of courage in its relation to wisdom. The difference between the two lines of thought is decisive for the valuation of “venturing courage” (in religious terms, the “risk of faith”). Under the dominance of wisdom courage is essentially the “strength of mind” which makes obedience to the dictates of reason (or revelation) possible, while venturing courage participates in the creation of wisdom. The obvious danger of the first view is uncreative stagnation, as we find in a good deal of Catholic and some rationalistic thought, while the equally obvious danger of the second view is undirected willfulness, as we find in some Protestant and much Existentialist thinking.<\/p>\n
However Thomas also defends the more limited meaning of courage (which he always calls fortitude) as a virtue beside others. As usual in these discussions he refers to the soldier’s courage as the outstanding example of courage in the limited sense. This corresponds to the general tendency of Thomas to combine the aristocratic structure of medieval society with the universalist elements of Christianity and humanism. Perfect courage is, according to Thomas, a gift of the Divine Spirit. Through the Spirit natural strength of mind is elevated to its supernatural perfection. This however means that it is united with the specifically Christian virtues, faith, hope, and love. Thus a development is visible in which the ontological side of courage is taken into faith (including hope), while the ethical side of courage is taken into love or the principle of ethics. The reception of courage into faith, especially insofar as it implies hope, appears rather early, e.g. in Ambrose’s doctrine of courage. He follows the ancient tradition, when he calls fortitudo a “loftier virtue than the rest,” although it never appears alone. Courage listens to reason and carries out the intention of the mind. It is the strength of the soul to win victory in ultimate danger, like those martyrs of the Old Testament who are enumerated in Hebrews n. Courage gives consolation, patience, and experience and becomes indistinguishable from faith and hope. In the light of this development we can see that every attempt to define courage is confronted with these alternatives: either to use courage as the name for one virtue among others, blending the larger meaning of the word into faith and hope; or to preserve the larger meaning and interpret faith through an analysis of courage. This book follows the second alternative, partly because I believe that “faith” needs such a reinterpretation more than any other religious term.<\/p>\n
Courage and Wisdom: The Stoics<\/strong><\/p>\nThe larger concept of courage which includes an ethical and ontological element becomes immensely effective at the end of the ancient and the beginning of the modern world, in Stoicism and Neo-Stoicism. Both are philosophical schools alongside others, but both are at the same time more than philosophical schools. They are the way in which some of the noblest figures in later antiquity and their followers in modern times have answered the problem of existence and conquered the anxieties of fate and death. Stoicism in this sense is a basic religious attitude, whether it appears in theistic, atheistic, or transtheistic forms. Therefore it is the only real alternative to Christianity in the Western world. This is a surprising statement in view of the fact that it was Gnosticism and Neoplatonism with which Christianity had to contend on religious-philosophical grounds, and that it was the Roman Empire with which Christianity had to battle on religious-political grounds. The highly educated, individualistic Stoics seem to have been not only not dangerous for the Christians but actually willing to accept elements of Christian theism. But this is a superficial analysis. Christianity had a common basis with the religious syncretism of the ancient world, that is the idea of the descent of a divine being for the salvation of the world. In the religious movements which centered around this idea the anxiety of fate and death was conquered by man’s participation in the divine being who had taken fate and death upon himself. Christianity, although adhering to a similar faith, was superior to syncretism in the individual character of the Savior Jesus Christ and in its concrete-historical basis in the Old Testament. Therefore Christianity could assimilate many elements of the religious-philosophical syncretism of the later ancient world without losing its historical foundation; but it could not assimilate the genuine Stoic attitude. This is especially remarkable when we consider the tremendous influence of the Stoic doctrines of the Logos and of the natural moral law on both Christian dogmatics and ethics. But this large reception of Stoic ideas could not bridge the gap between the acceptance of cosmic resignation in Stoicism and the faith in cosmic salvation in Christianity. The victory of the Christian Church pushed Stoicism into an obscurity from which it emerged only in the beginning of the modern period. Neither was the Roman Empire an alternative to Christianity. Here again it is remarkable that among the emperors it was not the willful tyrants of the Nero type or the fanatical reactionaries of the Julian type that were a serious danger to Christianity but the righteous Stoics of the type of Marcus Aurelius.<\/p>\n
The reason for this is that the Stoic has a social and personal courage which is a real alternative to Christian courage. Stoic courage is not an invention of the Stoic philosophers. They gave it classical expression in rational terms; but its roots go back to mythological stories, legends of heroic deeds, words of early wisdom, poetry and tragedy, and to centuries of philosophy preceding the rise of Stoicism. One event especially gave the Stoics’ courage lasting power\u2014 the death of Socrates. That became for the whole ancient world both a fact and a symbol. It showed the human situation in the face of fate and death. It showed a courage which could affirm life because it could affirm death. And it brought a profound change in the traditional meaning of courage. In Socrates the heroic courage of the past was made rational and universal. A democratic idea of courage was created as against the aristocratic idea of it. Soldierly fortitude was transcended by the courage of wisdom. In this form it gave “philosophical consolation” to many people in all sections of the ancient world throughout a period of catastrophes and transformations.<\/p>\n
The description of Stoic courage by a man like Seneca shows the interdependence of the fear of death and the fear of life, as well as the interdependence of the courage to die and the courage to live. He points to those who “do not want to live and do not know how to die.” He speaks of a libido moriendi, the exact Latin term for Freud’s “death instinct.” He tells of people who feel life as meaningless and superfluous and who, as in the book of Ecclesiastes say: I cannot do anything new, I cannot see anything new! This, according to Seneca, is a consequence of the acceptance of the pleasure principle or, as he calls it, anticipating a recent American phrase, the “good-time” attitude, which he finds especially in the younger generation. As, in Freud, the death instinct is the negative side of the ever-unsatisfied drives of the libido, so, according to Seneca, the acceptance of the pleasure principle necessarily leads to disgust and despair about life. But Seneca knew (as Freud did) that the inability to affirm life does not imply the ability to affirm death. The anxiety of fate and death controls the lives even of those who have lost the will to live.<\/p>\n
This shows that the Stoic recommendation of suicide is not directed to those who are conquered by life but to those who have conquered life, are able both to live and to die, and can choose freely between them. Suicide as an escape, dictated by fear, contradicts the Stoic courage to be. The Stoic courage is, in the ontological as well as the moral sense, “courage to be.” It is based on the control of reason in man. But reason is not in either the old or the new Stoic what it is in contemporary terminology. Reason, in the Stoic sense, is not the power of “reasoning,” i.e. of arguing on the basis of experience and with the tools of ordinary or mathematical logic. Reason for the Stoics is the Logos, the meaningful structure of reality as a whole and of the human mind in particular. “If there is,” says Seneca, “no other attribute which belongs to man as man except reason, then reason will be his one good, worth all the rest put together.” This means that reason is man’s true or essential nature, in comparison with which everything else is accidental. The courage to be is the courage to affirm one’s own reasonable nature over against what is accidental in us.<\/p>\n
It is obvious that reason in this sense points to the person in his center and includes all mental functions. Reasoning as a limited cognitive function, detached from the personal center, never could create courage. One cannot remove anxiety by arguing it away. This is not a recent psychoanalytical discovery; the Stoics, when glorifying reason, knew it as well. They knew that anxiety can be overcome only through the power of universal reason which prevails in the wise man over desires and fears. Stoic courage presupposes the surrender of the personal center to the Logos of being; it is participation in the divine power of reason, transcending the realm of passions and anxieties. The courage to be is the courage to affirm our own rational nature, in spite of everything in us that conflicts with its union with the rational nature of being-itself. What conflicts with the courage of wisdom is desires and fears. The Stoics developed a profound doctrine of anxiety which also reminds us of recent analyses. They discovered that the object of fear is fear itself. “Nothing,” says Seneca, “is terrible in things except fear itself.” And Epictetus says, “For it is not death or hardship that is a fearful thing, but the fear of death and hardship.” Our anxiety puts frightening masks over all men and things. If we strip them of these masks their own countenance appears and the fear they produce disappears. This is true even of death. Since every day a little of our life is taken from us\u2014since we are dying every day\u2014the final hour when we cease to exist does not of itself bring death; it merely completes the death process.<\/p>\n
The horrors connected with it are a matter of imagination. They vanish when the mask is taken from the image of death. It is our uncontrolled desires that create masks and put them over men and things. Freud’s theory of the libido is anticipated by Seneca but in a larger context. He distinguishes between natural desires which are limited and those which spring from false opinions and are unlimited. Desire as such is not unlimited. In undistorted nature it is limited by objective needs and is therefore capable of satisfaction. But man’s distorted imagination transcends the objective needs (“When astray\u2014your wanderings are limitless”) and with them any possible satisfaction. And this, not the desire as such, produces an “unwise (inconsulta) tendency toward death.” The affirmation of one’s essential being in spite of desires and anxieties creates joy. Lucillus is exhorted by Seneca to make it his business “to learn how to feel joy.” It is not the joy of fulfilled desires to which he refers, for real joy is a “severe matter”; it is the happiness of a soul which is “lifted above every circumstance.” Joy accompanies the self-affirmation of our essential being in spite of the inhibitions coming from the accidental elements in us. Joy is the emotional expression of the courageous Yes to one’s own true being. This combination of courage and joy shows the ontological character of courage most clearly. If courage is interpreted in ethical terms alone, its relation to the joy of self-fulfillment remains hidden. In the ontological act of the self- affirmation of one’s essential being courage and joy coincide. Stoic courage is neither atheistic nor theistic in the technical sense of these words.<\/p>\n
The problem of how courage is related to the idea of God is asked and answered by the Stoics. But it is answered in such a way that the answer creates more questions than it answers, a fact which shows the existential seriousness of the Stoic doctrine of courage. Seneca makes three statements about the relationship of the courage of wisdom to religion. The first statement is: “Undisturbed by fears and unspoiled by pleasures, we shall be afraid neither of death nor of the gods.” In this sentence the gods stands for fate. They are the powers that determine fate and represent the threat of fate. The courage that conquers the anxiety of fate also conquers anxiety about the gods. The wise man by affirming his participation in universal reason transcends the realm of the gods. The courage to be transcends the polytheistic power of fate. The second assertion is that the soul of the wise man is similar to God. The God who is indicated here is the divine Logos in unity with whom the courage of wisdom conquers fate and transcends the gods. It is the “God above god.”<\/p>\n
The third statement illustrates the difference of the idea of cosmic resignation from the idea of cosmic salvation in theistic terms. Seneca says that while God is beyond suffering the true Stoic is above it. Suffering, this implies, contradicts the nature of God. It is impossible for him to suffer, he is beyond it. The Stoic as a human being is able to suffer. But he need not let suffering conquer the center of his rational being. He can keep himself above it because it is a consequence of that which is not his essential being but is accidental in him. The distinction between “beyond” and “above” implies a value judgment. The wise man who courageously conquers desire, suffering, and anxiety “surpasses God himself.” He is above the God who by his natural perfection and blessedness is beyond all this. On the basis of such a valuation the courage of wisdom and resignation could be replaced by the courage of faith in salvation, that is by faith in a God who paradoxically participates in human suffering. But Stoicism itself can never make this step. Stoicism reaches its limits wherever the question is asked: How is the courage of wisdom possible?<\/p>\n
Although the Stoics emphasized that all human beings are equal, in that they participate in the universal Logos, they could not deny the fact that wisdom is the possession of only an infinitely small elite. The masses of the people, they acknowledged, are “fools,” in the bondage of desires and fears. While participating in the divine Logos with their essential or rational nature, most human beings are in a state of actual conflict with their own rationality and therefore unable to affirm their essential being courageously. It was impossible for the Stoics to explain this situation which they could not deny. And it was not only the predominance of the “fools” among the masses that they could not explain. Something in the wise men themselves also faced them with a difficult problem. Seneca says that no courage is so great as that which is born of utter desperation. But, one must ask, has the Stoic as a Stoic reached the state of “utter desperation”? Can he reach it in the frame of his philosophy? Or is there something absent in his despair and consequently in his courage? The Stoic as a Stoic does not experience the despair of personal guilt. Epictetus quotes as an example Socrates’ words in Xenophon’s Memorabilia of Socrates: “I have maintained that which is under my control” and “I have never done anything that was wrong in my private or in my public life.” And Epictetus himself asserts that he has learned not to care for anything that is outside the realm of his moral purpose. But more revealing than such statements is the general attitude of superiority and complacency which characterizes the Stoic diatribai, their moral orations and public accusations. The Stoic cannot say, as Hamlet does, that “conscience” makes cowards of us all. He does not see the universal fall from essential rationality to existential foolishness as a matter of responsibility and as a problem of guilt. The courage to be for him is the courage to affirm oneself in spite of fate and death, but it is not the courage to affirm oneself in spite of sin and guilt. It could not have been different: for the courage to face one’s own guilt leads to the question of salvation instead of renunciation.<\/p>\n
Courage and Self-affirmation: Spinoza<\/strong><\/p>\nStoicism retired into the background when faith in cosmic salvation replaced the courage of cosmic renunciation. But it returned when the medieval system which was dominated by the problem of salvation began to disintegrate. And it became decisive again for an intellectual elite which rejected the way of salvation without however replacing it with the Stoic way of renunciation. Because of the impact of Christianity on the Western world the revival of the ancient schools of thought at the beginning of the modern period was not only a revival but also a transformation. This is true of the revival of Platonism as well as of that of Skepticism and Stoicism; it is true of the renewal of the arts, of literature, of the theories of the state, and of the philosophy of religion. In all these cases the negativity of the late-ancient feeling toward life is transformed into the positiveness of the Christian ideas of creation and incarnation, even if these ideas are either ignored or denied. The spiritual substance of Renaissance humanism was Christian as the spiritual substance of ancient humanism was pagan, in spite of the criticism of the pagan religions by Greek humanism and of Christianity by modern humanism. The decisive difference between both types of humanism is the answer to the question whether being is essentially good or not. While the symbol of creation implies the classical Christian doctrine that “being as being is good” (esse qua esse bonum est) the doctrine of the “resisting matter” in Greek philosophy expresses the pagan feeling that being is necessarily ambiguous insofar as it participates in both creative form and inhibiting matter.<\/p>\n
This contrast in the basic ontological conception has decisive consequences. While in later antiquity the various forms of metaphysical and religious dualism are tied up with the ascetic ideal\u2014the negation of matter\u2014the rebirth of antiquity in the modern period replaced asceticism by active shaping of the material realm. And while in the ancient world the tragic feeling toward existence dominated thought and life, especially the attitude toward history, the Renaissance started a movement which was looking at the future and the creative and new in it. Hope conquered the feeling of tragedy, and belief in progress the resignation to circular repetition.<\/p>\n
A third consequence of the basic ontological difference is the contrast in the valuation of the individual on the part of ancient and modern humanism. While the ancient world valued the individual not as an individual but as a representative of something universal, e.g. a virtue, the rebirth of antiquity saw in the individual as an individual a unique expression of the universe, incomparable, irreplaceable, and of infinite significance. It is obvious that these differences created decisive differences in the interpretation of courage. It is not the contrast between renunciation and salvation to which I am referring now. Modern humanism is still humanism, rejecting the idea of salvation. But modern humanism also rejects renunciation. It replaces it by a kind of self-affirmation which transcends that of the Stoics because it includes the material, historical, and individual existence. Nevertheless, there are so many points in which this modern humanism is identical with ancient Stoicism that it may be called Neo-Stoicism. Spinoza is its representative. In him as in nobody else the ontology of courage is elaborated. In calling his main ontological work Ethics he indicated in the title itself his intention to show the ontological foundation of man’s ethical existence, including man’s courage to be. But for Spinoza\u2014as for the Stoics\u2014the courage to be is not one thing beside others. It is an expression of the essential act of everything that participates in being, namely self-affirmation.<\/p>\n
The doctrine of self-affirmation is a central element in Spinoza’s thought. Its decisive character is manifest in a proposition like this: “The endeavour, wherewith everything endeavours to persist in its own being, is nothing else but the actual essence of the thing in question” (Ethics iii. prop. 7). The Latin word for endeavor is conatus, the striving toward something. This striving is not a contingent aspect of a thing, nor is it an element in its being along with other elements; it is its essentia actualis. The conatus makes a thing what it is, so that if it disappears the thing itself disappears (Ethics ii, Def. 2). Striving toward self-preservation or toward self-affirmation makes a thing be what it is. Spinoza calls this striving which is the essence of a thing also its power, and he says of the mind that it affirms or posits (affirmat sive ponit) its own power of action (ipsius agendi potentiam) (iii. prop. 54).<\/p>\n
So we have the identification of actual essence, power of being, and self-affirmation. And more identifications follow. The power of being is identified with virtue, and virtue consequently, with essential nature. Virtue is the power of acting exclusively according to one’s true nature. And the degree of virtue is the degree to which somebody is striving for and able to affirm his own being. It is impossible to conceive of any virtue as prior to the striving to preserve one’s own being (iv. prop. 22). Self-affirmation is, so to speak, virtue altogether. But self-affirmation is affirmation of one’s essential being, and the knowledge of one’s essential being is mediated through reason, the power of the soul to have adequate ideas. Therefore to act unconditionally out of virtue is the same as to act under the guidance of reason, to affirm one’s essential being or true nature (iv. prop. 24). On this basis the relation of courage and self-affirmation is explained. Spinoza (iii. prop. 59) uses two terms, fortitude and animositas. Fortitude (as in the Scholastic terminology) is the strength of the soul, its power to be what it essentially is. Animositas, derived from anima, soul, is courage in the sense of a total act of the person. Its definition is this: “By courage I mean the desire [cupi-ditas] whereby every man strives to preserve his own being in accordance solely with the dictates of reason” (iii. prop. 59). This definition would lead to another identification, of courage with virtue in general. But Spinoza distinguishes between animositas and generositas, the desire to join other people in friendship and support.<\/p>\n
This duality of an all-embracing and a limited concept of courage corresponds with the whole development of the idea of courage to which we have referred. In a systematic philosophy of the strictness and consistency of Spinoza’s this is a remarkable fact and shows the two cognitive motives which always determine the doctrine of courage: the universally ontological and the specifically moral. This has a very significant consequence for one of the most difficult ethical problems, the relation of self-affirmation and love toward others. For Spinoza the latter is an implication of the former. Since virtue and the power of self-affirmation are identical, and since “generosity” is the act of going out toward others in a benevolent affect, no conflict between self-affirmation and love can be thought of. This of course presupposes that self-affirmation is not only distinguished from but precisely the opposite of “selfishness” in the sense of a negative moral quality. Self-affirmation is the ontological opposite of the “reduction of being” by such affects as contradict one’s essential nature. Erich Fromm has fully expressed the idea that the right self-love and the right love of others are interdependent, and that selfishness and the abuse of others are equally interdependent. Spinoza’s doctrine of self-affirmation include both the right self-love (although he does not use the term self-love, which I myself hesitate to use) and the right love of others. Self-affirmation, according to Spinoza, is participation in the divine self-affirmation. “The power whereby each particular thing, and consequently man, preserves his being is the power of God” (iv. prop. 4).<\/p>\n
The participation of the soul in the divine power is described in terms of both knowledge and love. If the soul recognizes itself “sub aeternitatis specie” (v. prop. 30), it recognizes its being in God. And this knowledge of God and of its being in God is the cause of perfect beatitude and consequently of a perfect love toward the cause of this beatitude. This love is spiritual (intellectually) because it is eternal and therefore an affect, not subject to the passions which are connected with bodily existence (v. prop. 34). It is the participation in the infinite spiritual love with which God contemplates and loves himself, and by loving himself also loves what belongs to him, human beings. These statements answer two questions about the nature of courage which had remained unanswered. They explain why self-affirmation is the essential nature of every being and as such its highest good.<\/p>\n
Perfect self-affirmation is not an isolated act\/which originates in the individual being but is participation in the universal or divine act of self-affirmation, which is the originating power in every individual act. In this idea the ontology of courage has reached its fundamental expression. And a second question is answered, that of the power which makes the conquest of desire and anxiety possible. The Stoics had no answer to that. Spinoza, out of his Jewish mysticism, answers with the idea of participation. He knows that an affect can be conquered only by another affect, and that the only affect which can overcome the affects of passion is the affect of the mind, the spiritual or intellectual love of the soul for its own eternal ground. This affect is an expression of the participation of the soul in the divine self-love. The courage to be is possible because it is participation in the self-affirmation of being-itself.<\/p>\n
One question, however, remains unanswered, by Spinoza as well as by the Stoics. It is the question formulated by Spinoza himself at the end of his Ethics. Why, he asks, is it that the way of salvation (salus) which he has shown is being neglected by almost everyone? Because it is difficult and therefore rare, like everything sublime, he answers in the melancholy last sentence of his book. This was also the answer of the Stoics, but it is an answer not of salvation but of resignation.<\/p>\n
Courage and life: Nietzsche<\/strong><\/p>\nSpinoza’s concept of self-preservation as well as our interpretative concept “self-affirmation,” if taken ontologically, posit a serious question. What does self-affirmation mean if there is no self, e.g. in the inorganic realm or in the infinite substance, in being-itself? Is it not an argument against the ontological character of courage that it is impossible to attribute courage to large sections of reality and to the essence of all reality? Is courage not a human quality which can be attributed even to higher animals only by analogy but not properly? Does this not decide for the moral against the ontological understanding of courage? In stating this argument one is reminded of similar arguments against most metaphysical concepts in the history of human thought. Concepts like world soul, microcosmos, instinct, the will to power, and so on have been accused of introducing subjectivity into the objective realm of things. But these accusations are mistaken. They miss the meaning of ontological concepts. It is not the function of these concepts to describe the ontological nature of reality in terms of the subjective or the objective side of our ordinary experience. It is the function of an ontological concept to use some realm of experience to point to characteristics of being-itself which lie above the split between subjectivity and objectivity and which therefore cannot be expressed literally in terms taken from the subjective or the objective side. Ontology speaks analogously. Being as being transcends objectivity as well as subjectivity. But in order to approach it cognitively one must use both. And one can do so because both are rooted in that which transcends them, in being-itself. It is the light of this consideration that the ontological concepts referred to must be interpreted. They must be understood not literally but analogously. This does not mean that they have been produced arbitrarily and can easily be replaced by other concepts. Their choice is a matter of experience and thought, and subject to criteria which determine the adequacy or inadequacy of each of them. This is true also of concepts like self-preservation or self-affirmation, if taken in an ontological sense. It is true of every chapter of an ontology of courage. Both self-preservation and self-affirmation logically imply the overcoming of something which, at least potentially, threatens or denies the self. There is no explanation of this “something” in either Stoicism or Neo-Stoicism, though both presuppose it.<\/p>\n
In the case of Spinoza it even seems impossible to account for such a negative element in the frame of his system. If everything follows by necessity from the nature of the eternal substance, no being would have the power to threaten the self-preservation of another being. Everything would be as it is and self-affirmation would be an exaggerated word for the simple identity of a thing with itself. But this certainly is not Spinoza’s opinion. He speaks of a real threat and even of his experience that most people succumb to this threat. He speaks of conatus, the striving for, and of potentia, the power of self-realization. These words, though they cannot be taken literally cannot be dismissed as meaningless either. They must be taken analogously.<\/p>\n
From Plato and Aristotle on, the concept of power plays an important role in ontological thought. Terms like dynamis, potentia (Leibnitz) as characterizations of the true nature of being prepare the way for Nietzsche’s “will to power.” So does the term “will” used for ultimate reality from Augustine and Duns Scotus on to Boehme, Schelling, and Schopenhauer. Nietzsche’s will to power unites both terms and must be understood in the light of their ontological meaning. One could say paradoxically that Nietzsche’s will to power is neither will nor power, that is, is neither will in the psychological sense nor power in the sociological sense. It designates the self-affirmation of life as life, including self-preservation and growth.<\/p>\n
Therefore the will does not strive for something it does not have, for some object outside itself, but wills itself in the double sense of preserving and transcending itself. This is its power, and also its power over itself. Will to power is the self-affirmation of the will as ultimate reality — Nietzsche is the most impressive and effective representative of what could be called a “philosophy of life.” Life in this term is the process in which the power of being actualizes itself. But in actualizing itself it overcomes that in life which, although belonging to life, negates life. One could call it the will which contradicts the will to power.<\/p>\n
In his Zarathustra, in the chapter called “The Preachers of Death” (Pt. I, chap. 9), Nietzsche points to the different ways in which life is tempted to accept its own negation: “They meet an invalid, or an old man, or a corpse\u2014 and immediately they say: ‘Life is refuted!’ But they only are refuted, and their eye, which seeth only one aspect of existence.” Life has many aspects, it is ambiguous. Nietzsche has described its ambiguity most typically in the last fragment of the collection of fragments which is called the Will to Power. Courage is the power of life to affirm itself in spite of this ambiguity, while the negation of life because of its negativity is an expression of cowardice. On this basis Nietzsche develops a prophecy and philosophy of courage in opposition to the mediocrity and decadence of life in the period whose coming he saw.<\/p>\n
Like the earlier philosophers Nietzsche in Zarathustra considered the “warrior” (whom he distinguishes from the mere soldier) an outstanding example of courage. ” ‘What is good?’ ye ask. To be brave is good” (I, 10), not to be interested in long life, not to want to be spared, and all this just because of the love for life. The death of the warrior and of the mature man shall not be a reproach to the earth (I, 21). Self-affirmation is the affirmation of life and of the death which belongs to life. Virtue for Nietzsche as for Spinoza is self-affirmation. In the chapter on “The Virtuous” Nietzsche writes: “It is your dearest Self, your virtue. The ring’s thirst is in you: to reach itself again struggleth every ring, and turneth itself” (II, 27).<\/p>\n
This analogy describes better than any definition the meaning of self-affirmation in the philosophy of life: The Self has itself, but at the same time it tries to reach itself. Here Spinoza’s conatus becomes dynamic, as, generally speaking, one could say that Nietzsche is a revival of Spinoza in dynamic terms: “Life” in Nietzsche replaces “substance” in Spinoza. And this is true not only of Nietzsche but of most of the philosophers of life. The truth of virtue is that the Self is in it “and not an outward thing.” “That your very Self be in your action, as the mother is in the child: let that be your formula of virtue!” (II, 27.) Insofar as courage is the affirmation of one’s self it is virtue altogether. The self whose self-affirmation is virtue and courage is the self which surpasses itself: “And this secret spake Life herself unto me. ‘Behold,’ said she, ‘I am that which must ever surpass itself ” (II, 34).<\/p>\n
By italicizing the last words Nietzsche indicates that he wants to give a definition of the essential nature of life. “. . . There doth Life sacrifice itself\u2014for power!” he continues, and shows in these words that for him self-affirmation includes self-negation, not for the sake of negation but for the sake of the greatest possible affirmation, for what he calls “power.” Life creates and life loves what it has created\u2014 but soon it must turn against it: “so willeth my [Life’s] will.” Therefore it is wrong to speak of “will to existence” or even of “will to life”; one must speak of “will to power,” i.e. to more life. Life, willing to surpass itself, is the good life, and the good life is the courageous life. It is the life of the “powerful soul” and the “triumphant body” whose self-enjoyment is virtue. Such a soul banishes “everything cowardly; it says: bad\u2014that is cowardly” (III, 54). But in order to reach such a nobility it is necessary to obey and to command and to obey while commanding. This obedience which is included in commanding is the opposite of sub-missiveness. The latter is the cowardice which does not dare to risk itself. The submissive self is the opposite of the self-affirming self, even if it is submissive to a God. It wants to escape the pain of hurting and being hurt. The obedient self, on the contrary, is the self which commands itself and “risketh itself thereby” (II, 34). In commanding itself it becomes its own judge and its own vietim. It commands itself according to the law of life, the law of self-transcendence. The will which commands itself is the creative will. It makes a whole out of fragments and riddles of life. It does not look back, it stands beyond a bad conscience, it rejects the “spirit of revenge” which is the innermost nature of self-accusation and of the consciousness of guilt, it transcends reconciliation, for it is the will to power (II, 42). In doing all this the courageous self is united with life itself and its secret (II, 34).<\/p>\n
We may conclude our discussion of Nietzsche’s ontology of courage with the following quotation: “Have ye courage, O my brethren? . . . Not the courage before witnesses, but anchorite and eagle courage, which not even a God any longer beholdeth? . . . He hath heart who knoweth fear but vanquisheth it; who seeth the abyss, but with pride. He who seeth the abyss but with eagle’s eyes,\u2014he who with eagle’s talons graspeth the abyss: he hath courage” (IV, 73, sec. 4). These words reveal the other side of Nietzsche, that in him which makes him an Existentialist, the courage to look into the abyss of nonbeing in the complete loneliness of him who accepts the message that “God is dead.” About this side we shall have more to say in the following chapters.<\/p>\n
At this point we must close our historical survey, which was not meant to be a history of the idea of courage. It had a double purpose. It was supposed to show that in the history of Western thought from Plato’s Laches to Nietzsche’s Zarathustra the ontological problem of courage has attracted creative philosophy, partly because the moral character of courage remains incomprehensible without its ontological character, partly because the experience of courage proved to be an outstanding key for the ontological approach to reality. And further, the historical survey is meant to present conceptual material for the systematic treatment of the problem of courage, above all the concept of ontological self-affirmation in its basic character and its different interpretations.<\/p>\n
[From Tillich’s Courage to Be<\/em>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Courage and Fortitude: From Plato to Thomas Aquinas Courage and Wisdom: The Stoics Courage and Self-affirmation: Spinoza Courage and life: Nietzsche — Courage and Fortitude: From Plato to Thomas Aquinas In Plato’s Republic courage is related to that element of the soul which is called thymos (the spirited, courageous element), and both are related to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_disable_autopaging":false},"categories":[9,13,46],"tags":[3440,85,3447,3443,3441,3446,3448,3435,665,3432,2697,3444,3433,3438,3434],"class_list":["post-1458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-greek-history","category-philosophy","tag-aristocracy","tag-aristotle","tag-courage","tag-descartes","tag-fortitude","tag-guardians","tag-kant","tag-nicomachean-ethics","tag-nietzsche","tag-paul-tillich","tag-plato-republic","tag-rigor","tag-self-affirmation","tag-stoics","tag-thomas-aquinas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1458\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}