Certain presuppositions are hard to kill off. The notion of courage does not escape this observation. The centuries and prevailing ideologies are said to have not been able to mark it, unflinching in its marble like prestige. It is with such illusory obviousness that the three authors take issue in this philosophical history of Western conceptions of courage. A successful deconstruction, supported by an argued pitch drawn from the greatest representatives of political and moral thought.

Is there a more commonly admired virtue than courage? Throughout the ages the figures of heroes have made the masses dream and have been offered as paragons to common mortals. One might think that the prestige enjoyed by these bravest of the brave is independent of the epochs in which they lived. It is nothing of the kind shows the work (1) by Thomas Berns, lecturer at the Free University of Brussels and at the ULg’s philosophy department, Laurence Blésin, a researcher at the UCL’s The Philosophy of Law Centre, and Gaëlle Jeanmart, lecturer at the ULg. Quite the contrary, this philosophical history discloses how the latter is intimately connected to the predominant conceptions which held sway in given societies, as much in the present as in the past. In this respect the help of the genealogy proves precious.

In Ancient Greece for example, and first of all for Homer, the courageous act (menos) is of a very physical character and tied to an intense ardour. It is also eminently visible because it is nothing but exteriority, dictated by gestural signs and not by a state of mind; war is its natural element for the simple reason that it is public. As for the decision which pushes towards bravura acts, it comes form some place other than deep inside. We could wish for no further proof than this single reply, drawn from so many amongst the Iliad, where Agamemnon says to Achilles: ‘If you are strong its because a god has given you strength.’

In classical times the notion of courage abandoned the register of war to become moralised. Each subject was led to carry out a private battle in order to become better. ‘The victory over oneself is of all victories the primary one and the most glorious, whilst the defeat one succumbs to one’s own weapons is both the most shameful and the most cowardly,’ says Plato  in his Courage. A shift from the field of battle to the field of morality thus, symptomatic of a Socrates enamoured with truth: from the fifth century before our common era acting courageously still meant carrying out combat, but against internal enemies (desires, weaknesses, fears). In short, courage-ardour gave way to courage-mastery, a new ethics which demanded a triumph over the resistances within the self to act correctly, in other words in ways dictated by reason.

(1) Du courage. Une histoire philosophique, coll. "encre marine", Paris, Les Belles Lettres, February 2010. This publication has benefitted from the support of the Bernheim Foundation.