Abstract An important virtue of Emotion and Virtue is its careful sophisticated discussion the central yet ill-understood courage. However, Sreenivasan’s treatment courage raises as many questions it answers; several these can be brought into sharper focus by comparison with argument Plato Aristotle on topic.

Not so long ago, cardiothoracic surgeons were often called to see patients late in the natural history of their disease and asked to consider higher-risk operations. Most surgeons of an earlier era, when routine cases often carried a greater than 5% mortality, were willing to do this. The growth of intense institutional and public scrutiny of 30-day mortality has brought this era to an end. Thi...