Nicomachean Ethics III.9, Courage III: Paradoxes about Courage

The final chapter on the virtue of courage is short, but it contains some paradoxes that are interesting to consider. 

Though courage is concerned with feelings of confidence and of fear, it is not concerned with both alike, but more with the things that inspire fear; for he who is undisturbed in face of these and bears himself as he should towards these is more truly brave than the man who does so towards the things that inspire confidence. It is for facing what is painful, then, as has been said, that men are called brave. Hence also courage involves pain, and is justly praised; for it is harder to face what is painful than to abstain from what is pleasant.

One thing Aristotle has already said is that which of the two extremes is more important to avoid can vary both by virtue and by individual. For those who incline to the Nameless Vice of the Celts (such as apparently myself), or for the sanguine, it is much more important to attend to the things that justly ought to be feared than to the things that inspire confidence. Confidence is the problem in such cases. The virtue of courage for such people lies in taking care to be appropriately fearful.

That conflict is mild, though, compared to those that follow. He starts with an easy example, boxing (which was a slightly different sport of extreme popularity in Ancient Greece):

Yet the end which courage sets before it would seem to be pleasant, but to be concealed by the attending circumstances, as happens also in athletic contests; for the end at which boxers aim is pleasant- the crown and the honours- but the blows they take are distressing to flesh and blood, and painful, and so is their whole exertion; and because the blows and the exertions are many the end, which is but small, appears to have nothing pleasant in it.

If you have done it, you know how little you even think of the small reward of glory during the moment of taking blows in a sport-fighting contest. Your mind does attune to the tactics of victory over the particular opponent, but doesn't even think of the 'end' of receiving a medal or belt. Thus, the pleasant end is not even the goal (telos) of the action any longer, yet it has to be said to still be the motivating end. The means-to-the-end becomes the immediate goal, with the final goal no longer a consideration for the moment. 

And so, if the case of courage is similar, death and wounds will be painful to the brave man and against his will, but he will face them because it is noble to do so or because it is base not to do so. And the more he is possessed of virtue in its entirety and the happier he is, the more he will be pained at the thought of death; for life is best worth living for such a man, and he is knowingly losing the greatest goods, and this is painful. But he is none the less brave, and perhaps all the more so, because he chooses noble deeds of war at that cost.

This is the great paradox: the braver the man, the more painful the pain of death and wounds becomes. He thus has to be even braver to face these even more painful losses, because he is sacrificing something -- the very best kind of human life -- that lesser men don't have to lose. Many of them may live lives that aren't very enjoyable or happy at all; they may be from that place where (as Chesterton puts it) 'the perverse in pleasure pine and men are weary of green wine, and sick of crimson seas.' For them death could even be a release, and an honorable death much to be chosen if it gave both release and honor. 

For the truly brave and virtuous man, the virtue ends up conveying much less good, and much more pain: and yet he is the best case for the perfection of the virtue. 

It is not the case, then, with all the virtues that the exercise of them is pleasant, except in so far as it reaches its end. But it is quite possible that the best soldiers may be not men of this sort but those who are less brave but have no other good; for these are ready to face danger, and they sell their life for trifling gains.

So much, then, for courage; it is not difficult to grasp its nature in outline, at any rate, from what has been said.

Next up is temperance, a virtue that the later Christian Aristotelians especially loved to discuss.

UPDATE: On the subject of that last remark, courage suffers a significant downgrade in Aquinas' adjustment of Aristotle's ethics. Whereas it is the exemplary virtue for Aristotle, Aquinas demotes it somewhat. He mentions it in Summa Theologica Prima Secundæ Partis, and really gets into to it in Secunda Secundæ Partis. Here courage is renamed 'fortitude,' from fortis or strength, and is associated with the capacity to attain martyrdom. It is named as one of the cardinal moral virtues, along with Temperance, Justice, and Prudence.

That said, once you've mastered Aristotle's ethics you will find that the basic structure survives into Aquinas and therefore into Catholic moral teaching. For example, compare Aquinas' remarks on the voluntary and the involuntary and with what you've read of Aristotle's, and you'll see a great deal of continuity. The basic structure survives, and thus all the groundwork required to understand Aristotle is immediately useful in understanding the High Medieval moral teachings.