Finding Courage

Abstract

Courage appears to be the ability not to be deterred by fear or danger from doing what you ought to do, but this definition leaves many questions unanswered. No one at the human level has perfect courage. For human beings, courage is mainly a commitment to keep developing this sort of ability in a variety of contexts. You cannot develop this or any other virtue entirely on your own. To develop courage, you should have good examples among older people and a community that supports courage. You also need to be immune to false ideas about courage, such as equating it with fearlessness (a quality that is simply stupid). You should also avoid being taken in by false thoughts of cowardice, when others dare you to do bad or stupid things. It is not cowardice to hold back from action for fear of doing wrong.