According to Aristotle, we can possess Intellectual and Moral Virtues. The Moral Virtues are reflections of our emotional characteristics and are reflections of our character when our emotions are properly calibrated so that we feel the right way towards the right situations. Every emotional state can either be taken too far or not far enough and so each Moral Virtue lies somewhere between these two extremes – that is, each Moral Virtue lies between two Vices and to be virtuous we must find that balance.
In this discussion we will look at the Moral Virtues of Anger and Bravery
If you tend to be too angry, that can make you irascible or bad tempered – this is the first vice. If you fail to become angry enough when the situation demands it, that can make you slavish and stupid – this is the second vice.
This second vice is interesting because it is not as easily recognisable as the first, but we can see where Aristotle is coming from. Perhaps there is someone you know or are having to deal with who is particularly mean, unjust and tyrannical; perhaps you see your friend being bullied by this person or that person is trying to be a tyrant towards you. Anger at this person and their actions may well be justified, even if it is simply anger towards the injustice itself or injustice in general. In any case, if we don’t have the kind of anger that vitalises a push-back against injustice, we might just let it walk all over us and keep us under its boot and so, we can see why too little anger might show that we are either stupid (if we don’t recognising the injustice) or slavish.
Nevertheless, as much of a problem that this might be, Aristotle does acknowledge that having too much anger is the worse of the two vices and tends to be the most common. He even splits being too angry or bad-tempered into different varieties. Some people might have the problem of becoming angry too quickly, others might become angry too often. Some people might not get angry too quickly or too often, but when they do, they might be too prone to becoming violent. There is also the problem of being sulky or bitter which causes people to stay angry for too long. Worse still, we might imagine that someone is prone to all of the above; becoming angry quickly, often, violently and then holding onto their grudges for a long time. These are the different ways in which someone can have the Vice of being bad-tempered.
And so, how do we reach the state of having a Virtuous amount of anger? Well, Aristotle does concede that it can be very hard to know just how much anger is the right amount. From what has been said, it’s probably better to lean towards not having enough anger than having an excess of it, but that still isn’t ideal. In any case, he does recognise the difficulty and concedes that slight deviation from the ideal amount of anger is forgivable.
Now we will turn to the Virtue of Bravery.
If you tend to have too much confidence and not enough fear, this can make you fool-hardy and stupid in the face of danger – this is the first vice. If you have too much fear and not enough confidence, you will not be able to face the danger at all – this is the second vice.
Before we continue, it is only fair to point out that Aristotle did not apparently regard most of the sources of fear that we recognise as true sources of fear. He did not deem such things as shame or poverty or discomfort as real sources of fear that require real courage to overcome. Instead, he thought that the only true state of fear that required courage is when we are facing the immediate danger of death – especially in battle. Now, this is a tricky point to navigate because, on the one hand we could probably recognise that soldiers facing death in battle probably do have to face a greater amount of fear than the average person, but it is also likely that most of us are seldom likely to be in that situation and so we might wonder whether there is anything applicable to us that we can learn from Aristotle’s view on Bravery. Fortunately, this seems to be the case because after the initial announcement of what constitutes “true” fear, everything else about bravery does not directly reference being in battle and so might be applicable in less extreme situations.
Aristotle argues that someone who is Brave is not able to endure more frightening things than someone who is cowardly because they have less fears to endure, but because the frightening situations are less frightening to that Brave person. What does this mean? Well, imagine that a coward and a Brave person both have to face a pit of snakes. Now, they both have the same fear to endure which is the snakes but the coward will run away due to that fear, whereas the Brave person has a character such that the particular fear of snakes is not frightening to them. If there were a hundred things that the coward would run away from but only ten of those same fears would cause the Brave person to flee, we would say that such a person would be closer to having the true virtue of Bravery than the coward. On the other hand, the fool-hardy person might not find enough things frightening. Let’s say that this person was going into the pit of snakes with no equipment, no protection and no skill to the point where going into it would be clear suicide yet, the fool-hardy person, due to their excess of confidence, would still drive headlong into it despite how stupid and wasteful that decision might be. A Brave person in the same situation, lacking all of their equipment might recognise the wisdom of turning away from such a frightening prospect in that situation. This is another example of where a Virtue is closer to one Vice than the other – having too much confidence and being fool-hardy will make you closer to the ideal of Bravery than being a coward, but again – too much confidence still isn’t ideal.
Aristotle also argues that it matters why someone faces their fear and recognises that the wrong reasons can be a sign of “false courage”. For example, let’s say that someone strolls through a minefield without flinching – we might have said that this was a very Brave act but then, what if that person never knew that there was even a minefield there? Aristotle would argue that someone needs to be aware of the danger that they are facing in order to have legitimate courage in the face of it. On a similar vein, someone might be drunk or on a different kind of drug that annuls their proper perception of the situation – blurring the danger and making it seem less than it is. Again, without seeing the danger clearly, this person could not be said to have true courage in the face of it, but only a false, artificial kind of courage. Instead, Aristotle proclaims that real courage – real Bravery – is shown in the face of fear because doing so is the right and proper thing to do. If someone Braves a minefield not because they are ignorant or drunk but because it is their only hope of saving their family – that would be a sign of Bravery. The element of courage that is more important than fear or confidence is the will to overcome our fears in the service of what is right.
There is a little more to be said about courage. Courage is the key ingredient to bravery and it has two aspects: courage is the proper adjustment of the emotions of fear and confidence. When we feel fear and confidence in the right measure in the right situation, we have courage. And courage is also the moral strength to do the right thing, even despite what our emotions are.
This point about courage being a moral strength is also why Aristotle regards it as an exception amongst the virtues in the sense that, many of the other virtues can give us pleasure – it can be enjoyable for us to carry them out. Courage, on the other hand, is an exception to this because it can be so difficult. Nonetheless, it should be fostered, practice and cultivated because it is what we require to do the right thing, even when we don’t feel like it.
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