The Recovery of Virtue

ntelligent human action is goal-directed, but when pain, fear, or danger intrude, it is difficult to sustain the mental equilibrium to follow through, even if the goal is very important and the action critical. Hence, the need for courage. As Aquinas put it, the virtue of courage is "to remove any obstacle that withdraws the will from following the reason."1 Such overcoming of dangers, pain, and obstacles is well illustrated by the following incident. Sgt. John L. Levitow was on a C-47 cargo aircraft flying a night mission over Vietnam in February 1969 when the plane was hit and damaged, wounding all the occupants of the cargo compartment and throwing them against the floor or fuselage.2 One crewman had been launching flares, and the explosion threw an ignited flare from his grasp into the cargo compartment. The plane was out of control, and the flare rolled wildly from side to side. Levitow had moved forward to help another badly wounded man, even though he himself was stunned by the blast and had over forty fragment wounds in his back and legs. Seeing the smoking flare