The Goal of Courage

People can fight with confidence due to pain and anger. This is satisfied when revenge has been exacted. Animals share this apparent courage. It isn't true courage but it appears like it. True courage is due to honor and principle and isn't as reactive. But reactive responses can make a person appear courageous. And we have stated that someone who considers himself indestructible due to experience or drunkenness isn't really brave but sanguine.

Sometimes a person might appear brave because they don’t have a realistic grasp on the danger. This person is similar to the person who feels indestructible only he thinks things are alright out of ignorance. Both kinds of courage will flee when facts to the contrary present themselves. A truly brave person will have a measure of self-discipline and acts out of calculation and principle. Reactions proceed from a person’s habits of character. Hopefully this helps distinguish between brave men and those who think they are brave.

Courage is a combination of confidence and fear but not overconfidence. It deals mainly with fear. To bear what you are fearful of takes more courage than things we are confident in. A person who is facing something painful is praised while facing things that are pleasant isn't a big deal. But courage does seek something pleasant in the future.

The end that courage is seeking is a pleasant one however. A courageous person endures the pain for a goal that is set in front of him. A boxer takes the pain of punches for the glory of a win. A person would go boldly to an interview for a job. It seems that all the virtues have this dynamic; enduring a present pain for something better in the future. This concludes courage; the next virtue we study will be temperance.