Courage and Moral Anger

On at least one prominent and traditional view, courage involves actions undertaken to accomplish an important objective in the face of danger to the person performing the action. The danger may be to one’s physical or psychological well being, or to one’s reputation, professional standing, or personal relationships. Such actions are, moreover, usually distinguished from rash, foolish, or reckless actions, though this is not always a stable distinction. On this view, courage as a virtue is thought to be the dispositional state that underlies and prompts courageous acts, and as such has traditionally been viewed as constituted, in part, by fear and the use of practical reasoning to make correct judgments about dangerous situations in which one is tempted or otherwise inclined to yield to fear. In short, courage involves controlling the passion of fear through reason, striking a mean between over-confidence and exaggerated timidity. 1