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Courage as One of the Most Important Virtues

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The Virtue of Courage in Theories and Experience Essay

Introduction, the virtue of courage, a personal experience.

The word virtue is usually misunderstood as an easy concept in religion and morality. It is a forgotten word in the age of computers and the internet. Many have taken it for granted, and only those interested in philosophy or religion are somewhat interested in it.

We have to contemplate that this is what the world needs now. The peoples of the world should go back to basics, study philosophy and religion, know the virtues of their own religion. The global village, as authors and commentators contend, is a complicated world with less morality and virtues, and more material things.

Virtue is a forgotten word. What tradition and religion have taught is gone. The teachings of the old and the wise seemed buried in the annals of yesteryears.

Virtues define the way Christians live the teachings of Christ or the way Muslims live the teachings of Mohammed; or the teachings of Buddha, and so with other religious sects and denominations.

St. Augustine, a doctor of the Catholic Church, refers to virtue as something that connotes power or strength. Since power usually connotes activity, then virtue is an act. Virtue has a goal. One who possesses virtue is a person who practices his/her faith because the practice of virtue is directed to another. The act of possessing and directing virtue is a good act. Since it is an act, therefore it is directed to something and to someone, not just to the self. (Aquinas, 2010, p. 3)

An emerging concept is the phrase ‘virtue ethics’ or the need of the present generation the return to virtue ethics, which is characterized by focusing on character traits of individuals in their relationship with others or to the community in general. This includes personal commitments and community traditions. (Kotva, 1996, p. 12)

Virtue ethics means three things: first, it is human nature as it really is; second, it is human nature in how it can be; and third, those which pertain to habits, our talents and capabilities, interests, likes, and the things that should not be done. There are likes, capabilities, and talents in us as humans that should not be encouraged because they are directed to our very nature and would not result in an acceptable end. Virtue theory deals with who we are and who we could be, according to the standards of morality as acceptable by the majority. (Kotva, 1996, p. 17)

Most ideas and concepts of virtue are taken from the moral teachings of the bible of Christians and in other moral teachings of other religions, like the Quran of the Muslims, or the teachings of Buddha. We can understand that moral teachings are the basis for most ideas and concepts of virtue practices. (Oakley & Cocking, 2001, p. 7)

Courage, or fortitude, is one of the cardinal virtues, along with prudence (also known as wisdom), justice, and temperance. (Mitch, 2000, p. 13) The Event Temples’ website calls it the heart virtues. They are however almost similar. They are only different when it comes to terminology. The concept, the ideas, the philosophies, origin, and evolution are the same. Virtues come from the sacredness of man, but they have to come out before they become virtues. It is the same as saying that man is by nature good. He comes from the ‘good’ (God) and will return to God.

I would like to focus on the virtue of courage. This is courage in the truest sense of the word because it leads to many other virtues. Courage is strength, leadership, or love. To me, virtue always bears a religious connotation, although there are many people who possess ‘good’ virtues, and yet they don’t have a particular religion at all. Be that as it may, courage has made martyrs, and enabled the first Christians, Muslims, and others, to stand and form their respective community of believers. Courage is the world needs now. Let me expound on this.

Courage is the most celebrated of all the virtues when we talk of political virtues. Sacred books of religions of the world are filled with stories of courage of the people of God. Moses showed extreme courage when he led the people from bondage in Egypt to the land God promised of them. Other leaders after Moses also showed courage. His successor Aaron did the same. Leaders of the world practice courage, although some do not know how to do it correctly.

Indeed courage can motivate and give justice to the oppressed, and protect the innocent and those deprived of justice. Citizens with enough courage risk their lives for love of country and fellow citizens. Bravery, which is synonymous with courage, is one of the prerequisites of a good citizen in a country wanting heroes during times of war and calamities. Courage is a trait needed for soldiers so that they can protect their country from foreign invaders (Rabieh, 2006, p. 1). Expressing one’s own dignity is synonymous with courage (Meyer, 2002, p. 195).

But in the present age, courage, like any other virtue, is taken for granted. Christians do not see this virtue as too important anymore. (Spiegel, 2004, p. 61) In other religions like Islam, courage has been practiced with a remarkable dedication that many of those who have it are being feared by other religions.

It came to me in one of my moments of reflection, a question that I have to answer myself – is courage an expression of anger? If that were so then it is not a virtue, because killing as an expression of anger is not a virtue. Or if you inflict injury or death to others in the name of religion or belief, is that courage? In one of my face-to-face moments with God, I asked him straightforward, “Then why are ‘they’ doing this?” Is it because they have courage? Is the courage involved in what ‘they’ are doing? Is virtue involved in it?

War is caused by anger. This is not courage practiced by soldiers. The war in Iraq and Afghanistan is caused by anger met with anger. The terrorists who attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, were angry at the American people. But then, the United States met anger with anger.

In my moment of contemplation, I closed my eyes to the world. The answer was there – courage is learned with good intentions. Those who know how to close their eyes and pray and contemplate are given the courage to help others who are suffering. (Jamison, 2006, p. 44)

There is a different meaning to courage; a distinct, honorable, and religious meaning that all of us should understand.

This is a different meaning of courage – loving and caring for those who are suffering in one form of courage. The likes of Thomas Merton, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Pope Benedict XVI, they have courage in their heart because they love the poor and the downtrodden. (Aguilar, 2008, p. 158)

Those Buddhists and the so-called contemplatives who embrace the life of solitude but who care for those who are suffering, victims of war and injustice, they are a few of the most courageous people. Thich Nhat Hanh, Thomas Merton, the Pope, and other religious personalities, renounce violence, injustice, and human rights. They conduct interreligious dialogue, exchange ideas between religions and faiths for the purpose of discussing the subject of love, non-violence, and solutions to the problems and ills of the world. They are apolitical. Thich Nhat Hanh is a Buddhist who advocated the end of the war in Vietnam through peaceful means and did not take sides, but the Vietnamese government threatened to kill him. Interreligious dialogues have been conducted by Buddhist and Christian monks purposely to talk about religion, peace, and love. (King, 2001, p. 7)

These people want to change the world in their own little way. It takes a lot of courage to do that. Thich Nhat Hanh’s ideas and reflections on non-violence and on the subject of Engaged Buddhism are widely accepted and admired throughout the world, and he has been acclaimed as one of the best sources on the topic of peace and reconciliation. We should be concerned and engaged in the suffering of the people, especially those who are caught in the middle of a war. We have to attend to the victims of war and violence because by doing so we practice the teachings of Buddha.

There are instances that I take courage in asking the topic of virtues, with philosophical underpinnings. I have always thought that courage is for something that is worthy, something that is executed for a particular honorable goal.

Our energetic heart which contains the six virtues refers to courage as the zeal of valor. In fact, courage is also linked to the other five forms of expression, as mentioned in the Event Temples. (Event Temples, 2007, p. 1)

I believe the energetic heart awakens the soul. Courage then is an expression of our energetic heart and it is done so with a feeling of honor and valor and not anger. When we use courage, or if we practice courage as a virtue, we are using our heart not our head, because virtue comes from the heart.

Let me relate a personal experience that awakened my feeling of courage, which to me tested my personal questions in this material world. Let me get back to the topic of soldiers who need enough courage in fulfilling their duties. It is taught and learned in training, the virtue of courage. It is very important in the life of a soldier because he cannot perform the duties and responsibilities of a soldier without courage. The training of a soldier demonstrates that virtues can be taught and learned. A soldier undertakes training but he has to take it by heart, make training an experience of a life that his soul can feel it, and express the virtues he has learned as a soldier.

A short stint in military training (as a student) allowed me to experience the sacrifices of other people who dedicate their lives to the service of their country. It was a unique experience, to be trained and pressured in doing things you do not like to do. This brief experience was only interrupted for reasons I cannot divulge, but I learned to experience the virtue of courage which cannot be taken out of me now.

Now I can express myself, my soul’s ‘feelings’ through courage, without being angry. Now I can defend my ideas and what I believe is right without being emotional. Courage is not about being great. It is about standing firm for something you believe. It is the opposite or the absence of cowardice. But it is not all about fighting or having guns. As mentioned earlier, the most courageous people like the Pope, Thomas Merton, and Mother Teresa, do not know what a gun is, but they love and fight for the sick and the poor, and they do not have arms or any weapon to defend themselves except their honest and sincere prayer to help.

In the world of business, you need a lot of courage.

There was this co-worker, a leader like me, who seemed to be always in control, not giving me (us) any time to provide suggestions, improvements, or probable ideas for our organization. She said she was senior to many of us, and so her ideas should prevail. Of course, we all reacted, but sometimes we have to effect change at a slow pace or mellow manner. If not, many things would be affected. In this situation, we wanted to change not only on the individual in question but for all of us.

Of course, this person should not be tolerated, but my point was to focus not only on one person but on all of us – because we are in an organization and we are working as a team and everyone should regard the other as a co-worker, or a brother or a sister. We cannot change always for the sake of changing. We cannot go on, diverge, from the normal path, just because change has to be done. There are people and things that must go to create timing. I did not react instantly, not because I did not have the courage but because I wanted him to realize that courage is not a virtue to control others. But it was also a period of self-awareness, referred to by Cam Caldwell (2010). I was expressing myself in response to this person’s actions.

We had a confrontation; mine was a sincere outpouring of opinion that I wanted to share and not a feeling of holier-than-thou attitude. I just wanted to let him know that he had courage in the wrong way. I was a bit successful because after that there were changes in the office.

It became a wonderful experience for me. I think I displayed courage in that instance when it was needed most. What came out was a friendship that was never expected. We both came out of our comfort zones. Through courage, which was not only ‘my’ own courage but his too, we have formed a bond among ourselves, including the members of our team. Now, this bond enabled us to give out what we can to contribute to our organization. It has become a motivating factor. Our joined talents and capabilities have made all of us successful.

Experiences teach us many lessons in life. Virtues sometimes emerge as an outcome of the many things that happen day by day. There are times I think that it is just a coincidence, but these are instruments or ‘tools’ of God that allow us to learn from it.

My life has changed from the time I realized I had courage. This pivotal event did not come to me when I said I experienced a sort of military training. Having the virtue of courage is like a transformation on my part. My inner thoughts, my intuition, and perhaps my soul are in unison, trying to awaken me in saying that virtues have been here inside. You just have to let it come out.

Is it not wonderful to hear when someone addresses you and say, “You are a courageous man”? That is nice to hear because the sentence has many meanings. It could mean you have a compassionate heart, or you’re a brave person.

Courage has allowed my heart to look at life beyond the secluded corners of my home. It motivated me to see my neighbors with compassion and be one with those in suffering. Courage is a virtue that incorporates other virtues like compassion, and even love. It has moved me to work and fight for others, and to help uplift the lives of those who are suffering.

Aguilar, M. (2008). Contemplating God, changing the world. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. p. 158.

Aquinas, T. (2010). Disputed questions on virtue . J. Hause & C. E. Murphy, (Trans.). Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. p. 3.

Caldwell, C. (2010). Identity, self-awareness, and self-deception: ethical implications for leaders and organizations. Journal of Business Ethics (2009) 90:393-406. Web.

Event Temples (2007). Living from the heart . Web.

Jamison, C. (2006). Finding sanctuary: monastic steps for everyday life. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. p. 44.

King, R. H. (2001). Thomas Merton and Thich Nhat Hanh: engaged spirituality in an age of globalization . New York: Continuum International Publishing Group Inc. p. 7.

Kotva, J. J. (1996). The Christian case for virtue et hics. Washington, D. C.: Georgetown University Press. pp. 12-7.

Meyer, M. J. (2002). Dignity is a (modern) virtue. In D. Kretzmer & E. Klein, Eds. The concept of human dignity in human rights discourse . The Netherlands: Kluwer Law International. p. 195.

Mitch, S. (2000). Courageous virtue . United States of America: Emmaus Road Publishing. p. 13.

Oakley, J. & Cocking, D. (2001). Virtue ethics and professional roles . Cambridge, United Kingdom: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge. p. 7.

Rabieh, L. (2006). Plato and the virtue of courage . United States of America: The Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 1.

Spiegel, J. (2004). How to be good in a world gone mad: living a life of Christian virtue. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications. p. 61.

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Barbara McClintock at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, New York in 1963. Courtesy the Barbara McClintock Papers, American Philosophical Society

Against humility

Intellectual humility has recently been hailed as the key to thinking well. the story of barbara mcclintock proves otherwise.

by Rachel Fraser   + BIO

Suppose you want to be a better person. (Lots of us do.) How might you go about it? You might try to become more generous and commit to donating more of your income to charity. Or you might try to become more patient, and practise listening to your partner, instead of snapping at them. These commonsense prescriptions invoke an ancient ethical tradition. Generosity and patience are virtues – excellences of character, whose exercise makes us flourish. To live well, says the virtue ethicist, is to cultivate and exercise just such excellences of character.

Part of living well, though, is thinking well. Our souls have an intellectual, as well as a practical, part; we cannot live fully flourishing lives unless we flourish intellectually. Are there, then, specifically intellectual virtues – excellences of intellectual character, whose exercise makes us good thinkers? Aristotle – whose works remain a touchstone for contemporary virtue theorists – certainly thought so. The intellectual part of the soul, he wrote in his Nicomachean Ethics , strives to attain truth; accordingly, he thought, the intellectual virtues are just those dispositions that qualify it to perform this function. Where the virtue ethicist bids us to be generous and patient, temperate and brave, the virtue epistemologist bids us to be thoughtful and fair, to be diligent and open-minded. At their most ambitious, the virtue epistemologist argues not just that such traits are valuable for their own sake, or that the exercise of such virtues will (tend to) yield knowledge, but, further, that our grasp of what knowledge is, in the first place, parasitic on our understanding of such virtues. If I know that – say – DNA has a double helix shape, that’s because I believe what an intellectually virtuous agent would believe about DNA, under circumstances similar to mine.

Barbara McClintock’s unpublished index of maize specimens, 1971. Courtesy the Barbara McClintock Papers, American Philosophical Society

Like everything else, virtues go in and out of style. One purported intellectual virtue in particular has recently become intensely fashionable. Philosophers , psychologists and journalists all urge us to be more intellectually humble. Different thinkers characterise intellectual humility differently, but there are some recurring themes. The intellectually humble have a keen sense of their own fallibility (‘I’ve been mistaken in the past’). They tolerate uncertainty (‘We might never know the full truth of what happened’). They recognise the partiality and ambiguity of their evidence, along with the limits of their ability to assess it (‘New information might come to light’; or ‘I might be misinterpreting this data’).

Intellectual humility was rarely discussed between 1800 and the early 2000s, but in the early 2010s, the number of mentions the trait received began to grow exponentially. Enthusiasm for intellectual humility, then, looks to be bound up with a specific set of epistemological anxieties related to information management in the age of the internet and social media. (Facebook was founded in 2004.) And, indeed, intellectual humility is often said to guard against precisely those pathologies that social media can incubate. ‘When citizens are intellectually humble,’ write the philosophers Michael Hannon and Ian James Kidd, ‘they are less polarised, more tolerant and respectful of others, and display greater empathy for political opponents.’ The intellectually humble, writes the psychologist Mark Leary, ‘think more deeply about information that contradicts their views’, and ‘scrutinise the validity of the information they encounter’.

But the empirical work that underwrites these glowing assessments is often questionable. Many studies assess the intellectual humility of their experiments’ participants via self-reports. Subjects are asked to rate their level of agreement with claims like ‘I am willing to admit it if I don’t know something’; those who rate high levels of agreement are classed as having a high level of intellectual humility. The worry is not just that we are often poor judges of our own strengths and weaknesses, but rather, more specifically, that it is precisely those who are lacking in humility who are likely to give themselves high scores. Humble people, after all, don’t go around talking about how humble they are. To say ‘I’m very humble’ makes for a comically self-undermining boast.

Barbara McClintock at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island, c 1960. Courtesy the Barbara McClintock papers, American Philosophical Society

Even so, one might think, intellectual humility surely has an important role to play. Intellectual humility can temper some of our worst instincts. People often underestimate just how hard it can be to work out the truth. Equivocal, murky evidence is blotted out in favour of the tidy, familiar narrative. Expertise in one domain is illicitly projected onto others. Past failures – fallacious inferences, or snafus of spatial reasoning – are glossed over. Those who value intellectual humility, to their credit, beseech us to be on our guard against these all-too-human tendencies.

T his model of the human psyche emphasises our hastiness and hubris. But we are subject to other flaws, too – to cravenness, and self-deception. And when it comes to these other flaws, intellectual humility is prone to function less as a guardrail, and more as an alibi. Simone de Beauvoir’s midcentury masterpiece The Mandarins (1954) dramatises this dynamic. The novel opens as the Second World War is coming to a close. (‘The streets would smell again of oil and orange blossoms … and he would drink real coffee to the sound of guitars.’) It follows a group of Left-wing intellectuals who are trying to make sense of the war’s legacy, and of how they might integrate their political commitments with their personal projects.

About halfway through the book, a mysterious stranger arrives from Russia. He is introduced as a high-ranking Soviet functionary – ‘George’ – who has recently defected to the West; he is said to have smuggled out with him ‘sensational information’ that will be ‘devastating’ for the Soviet regime – a regime in which many of the novel’s characters are profoundly invested. (‘[T]he only chance to see humanity delivered from want, slavery, and stupidity,’ thinks one character, Henri, ‘is the Soviet Union. No effort, then, must be spared to help her.’) George presents Henri and his friend Robert with documents showing that ‘Russian socialism’ – the lodestar of their political hopes – relies on a brutal system of forced labour camps.

Henri and Robert respond quite differently to the evidence. After some initial resistance – ‘George was suspect, Russia was so far away, and you hear so many things’ – Henri comes to believe that the labour camps are real. He realises that the evidence comes from too many different sources – official documents, testimony from American observers as well as deportees – for him to credibly doubt it. Henri realises, painfully, that he can no longer place his hopes in Russian socialism. ‘In Russia, too,’ he thinks, ‘men were working other men to death.’

Both use a pose of humility to hide what is, in reality, just cowardice

Robert responds with more diffidence. He chooses, Beauvoir writes, ‘to doubt’. He insists that it would be irresponsible to judge with only the information to hand, and that nothing has been ‘genuinely established’. Reflecting on his friend’s behaviour, Henri thinks to himself that Robert has taken ‘refuge in scepticism’. Later, when Robert talks over the situation with his wife, Anne, she is initially inclined to disagree with her husband – to think that the evidence they have is decisive, that further enquiry will be otiose, and that Robert should help to publicise the revelations about the camps. But Robert insists that he cannot proceed until he knows more. Anne falls silent. ‘I didn’t insist,’ she records. ‘What right, after all, did I have to protest? I’m too incompetent.’

Of Beauvoir’s trio of characters, Henri is clearly the most admirable. This puts pressure on those who would treat intellectual humility as a virtue. Robert attends to the possibility of error, and to the difficulty of judging complex bodies of evidence. Henri, by contrast, is almost impetuous. Anne takes her peer’s disagreement seriously, and is intensely conscious of the limits of her political expertise, whereas Henri doesn’t care that his old friend Robert has come to a different conclusion. Robert and Anne, then, cleave closer than Henri to the dictates of intellectual humility. And yet, Henri deserves more praise than either.

One might argue that neither Robert nor Anne is genuinely intellectually humble. Rather, they only pretend to be humble. Both use a pose of humility to hide what is, in reality, just cowardice. As such, one might think, neither makes genuine trouble for the idea that intellectual humility is a virtue. Rather, these cases simply show that the virtue of intellectual humility must be married to that of intellectual courage.

I t’s not so clear, though, that we can draw a principled distinction between intellectual humility and intellectual cowardice (or, conversely, between intellectual hubris and intellectual courage). We are inclined to think of Henri as intellectually courageous – rather than as hubristic and rash – because he got things right, and to think of Robert as cowardly because he got things wrong. Imagine a version of The Mandarins – and, indeed, a version of history – in which George’s documents were all forgeries: part of an elaborate CIA conspiracy to discredit the Soviet Union. Against such a backdrop, what we were before inclined to assess as Robert’s cowardice looks more like genuine humility. What seemed before, on Henri’s part, like clear-sightedness and nerve, starts to look more like recklessness. The lesson is that it’s hard to isolate our judgments of intellectual character from the results of that character’s exercise within a given context. To judge whether you were being humble (good), or timorous (bad), I will often first need to know whether you ended up with knowledge.

We have reason, then, to be sceptical of the ambitious virtue epistemologist’s claim that we understand what knowledge is via our grasp of the intellectual virtues. Still, that’s compatible with thinking that intellectual humility makes for a genuine virtue, and, as such, that we should aspire to cultivate it.

But what if it turns out that our intellectual icons – our exemplars of the intellectual good life – tend not to be humble? What if it turns out that the growth of knowledge proceeds not via humility, but rather via stubborn pig-headedness? These are not hypothetical questions. A look at the history of science suggests that intellectual humility, far from being a crucial ingredient in intellectual flourishing, might serve to corrode it.

She could look at maize cells and see details of their chromosomal structure that would be invisible to others

Consider the geneticist Barbara McClintock. She became fascinated by genetics while still a student at Cornell University in New York in the 1920s, and she went on to puzzle over the chromosomal structure of maize for decades. After struggling to find a secure faculty position within a university, McClintock spent much of her career at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, where she developed a highly idiosyncratic approach to the study of genetics. At a time when many geneticists studied the fruit fly Drosophila – and, later, bacteria – because of their speedy reproductive cycles ( Drosophila produce a new generation every 10 days), McClintock stuck with the more traditional maize, taking her time to really get to know each new batch of plants.

‘I know every plant in the field. I know them intimately,’ McClintock told her biographer, Evelyn Fox Keller. Deep, affectionate attention for her objects of study was a hallmark of McClintock’s method. McClintock’s peers were amazed by her perceptual acuity. She could look at maize cells under a microscope and see details of their chromosomal structure that would be invisible to other people. She explained: ‘[I go] intently over each part, slowly but with great intensity.’ She felt herself merge with the chromosomes she examined. ‘As you look at these things,’ she reflected, ‘they become part of you. And you forget yourself.’

In the early 1950s, McClintock began reporting on results that disturbed her peers. Back then, geneticists tended to operate with two crucial default assumptions. The first was that a gene’s position on the chromosome was fixed. The second was that genes were modular: that a given chunk of genetic information contained a rigid set of instructions that the organism could implement in only one way. McClintock realised that both assumptions were false. She realised that genes could be turned ‘on’ or ‘off’. How an organism will express a given gene is not rigidly determined by that gene on its own, but by how that gene interacts with other genetic units: the ‘controlling elements’ that either activate or shut down the gene’s instructions. Further, these controlling elements do not have a fixed position on the chromosome. Rather, they are able to ‘jump’ between different spots on the chromosomal string. The historian of science Sharon Bertsch McGrayne explains the consequences clearly. Suppose that a controlling element jumps next to a pigment gene and turns it off very early in development. The plant will end up with colourless leaves. By contrast, if the pigment gene is turned off midway through the plant’s development, the plant will end up with streaked or spotted leaves. Two plants might thus start off with exactly the same chromosomes, but have leaves that look very different: one set monochrome, the other dappled.

McClintock’s peers were baffled by her work. When she first presented her ideas, McClintock spoke for an hour at Cold Harbour. She was, McGrayne reports, greeted with a ‘dead silence’. (As anyone who has given an academic talk knows, this is a bad sign.) Harriet Creighton, an important collaborator of McClintock’s, recalled that the talk ‘fell like a lead balloon’. In 1953, McClintock published her ideas, but the paper received little attention. Fellow scientists joked that her project was ‘mad’, or called her ‘an old bag’.

Unperturbed by her peers’ incomprehension, McClintock was deeply invested in her own brilliance

Most people, confronted with such a mixture of hostility and incomprehension, would pause to reconsider their views. They would worry that, if their peers are so bewildered by their claims, then maybe their claims really are bizarre and unfounded. Certainly, intellectual humility would look to have required McClintock to take her peers’ concerns seriously. Yet McClintock ignored her detractors. She decided that publishing was a waste of time, and stopped presenting her work at Cold Harbour.

Barbara McClintock’s microscope and maize samples. Courtesy the Smithsonian National Museum of American History

But she didn’t give up on her project. Rather, she continued to pursue her ideas with a relentless focus, embedding her maize plants within an increasingly rich, highly visual structure of meaning. In many ways, then, McClintock’s behaviour was that of a crank. ‘I just knew I was right,’ she later insisted. But McClintock’s crankish single-mindedness paid off. More than 30 years after her disastrous presentation at Cold Harbour, she won a Nobel Prize for her work on mobile genetic elements. It was 1983, and she was the first woman to win the prize for physiology and medicine unshared.

By any plausible metric, McClintock lived an intellectually flourishing life. But she was not intellectually humble. As well as being unperturbed by her peers’ incomprehension, McClintock was deeply invested in her own brilliance. She was proud of her intuitive grasp of her plants. Fox Keller recounts that McClintock was able to predict what she would see in a plant’s nucleus, under her microscope, simply by inspecting the plant in the field. ‘Before examining the chromosomes,’ McClintock recounts, ‘I went through the field and made my guess for every plant as to what [I would see] … And I never made a mistake, except once.’ When, looking through her microscope, McClintock thought that she had made a faulty prediction, she was, she says ‘in agony’. She ‘raced right down to the field’. To her immense relief, she discovered that she had made a filing error: instead of recording the number of the plant she had cut open and examined under the microscope, she had written down the number of the plant adjacent. ‘And then,’ she told Fox Keller, ‘everything was alright.’

O f course, one might think that, although McClintock did live a flourishing life, it would still have been a better life if she had been more intellectually humble. But this is not especially plausible. Had McClintock been more attentive to her potential intellectual limitations, it’s not clear that she could have developed a way of doing and thinking about genetics that was so wholly her own, and which underwrote her ability to see past the dogmas that blinkered her contemporaries. McClintock herself was insistent that her work required a kind of quiet certainty – that the judgments she made required ‘complete confidence’. McClintock, then, serves to illustrate a key dictum of Friedrich Nietzsche’s psychology. In Beyond Good and Evil (1886), Nietzsche argued that even our noblest impulses are thoroughly mingled with our darker, wickeder drives. McClintock’s love of her corn plants and her egotism, her creativity and her caustic obstinacy – all these form a cohesive whole. There’s something facile in the attempt to split them off from each other, to hypostatise the good aspects of her character as separate from the bad.

What are the options for those who want to rescue the idea that intellectual humility is a virtue? One option would be to institute a two-tier system. McClintock, one might say, was a genius. And geniuses can get away with things the rest of us cannot. The traits that underwrite intellectual flourishing for geniuses will not underwrite intellectual flourishing for the masses, because the sort of ‘high grade’ flourishing available to McClintock is simply not available to the rest of us. She flourished, yes, but she can’t serve as a meaningful role model for ‘ordinary’ beings like us.

Delineating intellectual virtues is like prescribing which colours an artist should use if they want to paint well

It is deeply unattractive, though, to split humans into ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ types. But even if we could stomach the inegalitarian division (and I couldn’t), the suggestion is flawed. We’ve all met idiots who think they’re geniuses – idiots who would, given half a chance, identify themselves as belonging to the ‘higher type’. In general, it’s precisely those who would most benefit from a dose of intellectual humility who would classify themselves as standing outside its demands.

Barbara McClintock receiving an honorary degree from Yale University in 1982. Courtesy the Barbara McClintock Papers, American Philosophical Society

Still, there’s something right in the thought that we shouldn’t start imitating McClintock’s particular traits. We should admire McClintock because she was able to take a highly idiosyncratic bundle of talents and flaws, and fashion it into a knowledge-conducive intellectual personality. That’s a task that each of us faces. But, crucially, our talents and flaws and environments are very different from each other’s. In light of that diversity, delineating intellectual virtues – stable character traits capable of generically underwriting a life of intellectual flourishing – starts to seem like prescribing which colours an artist should use if they want to paint well. Any colour of paint can, in the right hands, be used to create a beautiful painting. Similarly, almost any character trait can, under sufficiently congenial circumstances, serve as a handmaiden to knowledge.

Intellectual humility, then, isn’t a virtue, because there are no intellectual virtues. There are traits that are sometimes conducive to knowledge, and traits that are sometimes not. But there are no general rules about which traits are which, and so there is no way to classify, for all times and temperaments, our intellectual traits as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. The search for intellectual virtues is the search for a rulebook or a recipe: a way to guarantee that we will find ourselves on the right side of truth. But when it comes to the intellectual good life, there are no such rulebooks or recipes; there is no method by which to guarantee against fake news or false confidence. Epistemological anxiety is as old as philosophy itself. It deserves a better rejoinder than the moralistic injunction to be humble.

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Virtues/Courage

Introduction:.

Courage is the resolve to act virtuously, especially when it is most difficult. It is acting for the good , when it would be much easier not to this time.

A courageous person understands danger, and chooses to overcome their fear and proceed to face the danger and act according to their values. It is not fearlessness, recklessness, or rashness. It is a well-considered, wise, and brave decision to behave constructively despite the fear, discomfort, temptation, or dilemma. Courage is a strength drawn from a wise balance between the weaknesses of cowardice and recklessness . It is the discipline to act on wisely-chosen values rather than an impulse. [ 1 ]

Courage may be manifest as:

• Valor and bravery - Often called physical courage .
• Perseverance, industry, or diligence - often called endurance .
• Integrity, genuineness, or honesty - often called moral courage .

Aristotle believed that the epitome of courage is facing noble death at the hands of the enemy during your offensive attack in a just war for the people. Demonstrating physical prowess, overcoming fear—especially fear of death, and launching an attack or an offensive effort are often considered the hallmarks of courage. [ 2 ]

Sometimes the most difficult obstacles we face are fatigue, boredom, and other chronic stressors such as relentless bad weather, lack of food or shelter, disrespect, uncertainty, and other annoyances and difficulties. Enduring in the face of these obstacles requires courage.

Ordinary people courageously persevere over fatigue, temptation, and hardship to benefit others. The single mother who gets her children dressed for school each day before she goes to work herself, the unskilled worker who endures a low-paying, demeaning, and exhausting job to earn the money to send his children off to college, and the alcoholic who never indulges in a drink are all choosing to do the right thing despite the hardships.

In the nineteenth century Henry Sidgwick first defined moral courage as: “facing the pains and dangers of social disapproval in the performance of what they believe to be duty.” The moral hero often overcomes shame and humiliation, rejects conformity, risks ostracism, jeopardizes career and status, and sets out alone to take an unpopular stand and do the right thing. Moral courage is choosing to risk embarrassment rather than tolerate injustice.

Examples of moral courage include:

• Women's suffrage activist Emmeline Pankhurst was arrested seven times before women gained the right to vote in the United Kingdom,
• The December 1, 1955 refusal of 42-year-old Rosa Parks to obey bus driver James Blake's order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger. She was arrested and unlike previous individual actions of civil disobedience, Parks' action sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott .
• And moral courage of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr ., Nelson Mandela , and the “ tank man ” who stopped a line of tanks during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 are all legendary examples.

The Virtue of Courage

Because courage allows us to act on our values rather than our impulses, its virtue has long been recognized and identified .

Courage is one of the four classic western cardinal virtues . Aristotle recognized courage as the virtue at the mean between rashness and cowardice. Courage requires moderation. The risks incurred must be in proportion to the ends sought. [ 3 ] Courage is morally neutral. Executing a daring bank heist requires bravery, but is morally reprehensible. Bravery can be demonstrated in the name of good or evil. Courage is a virtue when we choose to do good, especially when that is most difficult. Courage most demands our respect when it incurs risk without selfish motivation. Courage is moral strength in the face of danger. [ 4 ]

Courage is most virtuous when it is combined with knowledge, wisdom, and opinion. All of the virtues are interdependent, and they all depend on courage. [ 5 ]

This synthesized Socratic dialogue on the topic “ Is courage a moral virtue ?” examines the nuances of courage as a moral virtue.

Everyday Courage

Without risking imprisonment or making headlines, you can exercise the virtue of courage every day by:

• Being impeccable with your word, [ 6 ]
• Doing your best,
• Acting on your well-chosen values; exercising the virtues.
• Demonstrating commitment to a good cause through your active participation,
• Be willing to speak truth to power to right a wrong.
• Doing the right thing when faced with defining moments in our lives, and every day. Don't accept bribes, cheat on your taxes, or pad your expense vouchers.
• Courageously overcoming or at least controlling addictions.
• Complete the Wikiversity course on Finding Courage .
• Recall a time when you knew the right thing to do, it was difficult, yet you found the resolve to do the right thing. Describe the internal struggle and dialogue that allowed your values to prevail over your fears or other difficulties.
• Recall another time when you knew the right thing to do, it was difficult, and you did not get it done. Describe the internal struggle and dialogue that allowed you to subordinate your values in the face of fears or other difficulties.
• ↑ Miller, William Ian (2002). The Mystery of Courage . Harvard University Press. pp. 360. ISBN  978-0674008267 .  
• ↑ Comte-Sponville, André (2002). A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues: The Uses of Philosophy in Everyday Life . Picador. pp. 368. ISBN  978-0805045567 .  
• ↑ Ruiz, Don Miguel (1997). The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom . Amber-Allen Publishing. pp. 138. ISBN  978-1878424310 .  

Further Reading:

Students interested in learning more about courage may be interested in the following materials:

• Miller, William Ian (2002). The Mystery of Courage . Harvard University Press. pp. 360. ISBN  978-0674008267 .  
• Warrell, Margie (2008). Find Your Courage: 12 Acts for Becoming Fearless at Work and in Life . McGraw-Hill. pp. 304. ISBN  978-0071605373 .  

REVIEW article

Courage, justice, and practical wisdom as key virtues in the era of covid-19.

• Department of Educational and Psychological Studies, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, United States

Fowers et al. (2017) recently made a general argument for virtues as the characteristics necessary for individuals to flourish, given inherent human limitations. For example, people can flourish by developing the virtue of friendship as they navigate the inherent (healthy) human dependency on others. This general argument also illuminates a pathway to flourishing during the COVID-19 pandemic, the risks of which have induced powerful fears, exacerbated injustices, and rendered life and death decisions far more common. Contexts of risk and fear call for the virtue of courage. Courage has emerged more powerfully as a central virtue among medical personnel, first responders, and essential workers. Longstanding inequalities have been highlighted during the pandemic, calling for the virtue of justice. When important personal and public health decisions must be made, the central virtue of practical wisdom comes to the fore. Wise decisions and actions incorporate the recognition of relevant moral concerns and aims, as well as responding in fitting and practical ways to the specifics of the situation. Practicing courage, justice, and practical wisdom illuminates a path to flourishing, even in a pandemic.

Introduction

The year 2020 has been one of the most tumultuous, uncertain, and defining in living memory, with the COVID-19 pandemic and global political unrest vying with World War II, the Great Depression, and the Flu of 1918 as among the greatest challenges to physical, mental, and social health in modern times. As the virus rages across the globe, hospitals and medical personnel are being overwhelmed: as of February, 2021, there have been over 100,000,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 2,000,000 COVID-19 related deaths worldwide; in the United States alone, there have been over 27,000,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases and over 400,000 COVID-19 related deaths ( WHO, 2021 ). It is heart-breaking that many of those deaths occur without the comforting physical presence of loved ones and communal mourning has been extremely limited. The painstaking development of new treatment regimens and newly released vaccines are the sole rays of hope in many countries, including the United States ( Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center, 2020 ).

The coronavirus’ impact, however, extends much further than its biological course or mortality rate can express. The pandemic has cost tens of millions of people their loved ones, their jobs, their businesses, and their food security. Although a very helpful public safety tool, social distancing measures have increased social isolation and uncertainty amid the unprecedented rates of psychological distress during the pandemic ( Fowers and Wan, 2020 ). Accordingly, mental health has been adversely affected in many populations (e.g., Munasinghe et al., 2020 ; Gallagher et al., 2021 ; Yıldırım et al., 2021 ), but various indices of positive outlook, hope, and resilience have been found to buffer that stress.

COVID’s widespread impact is unlike anything the modern world has seen. When one couples the pandemic with the global social unrest related to police violence against people of color and the vitriolic partisanship and nationalist politics of our times, it can seem as though the human world is coming apart at the seams. We begin this article by identifying three thematic difficulties exacerbated by the pandemic: risk, injustice, and complexity. We then discuss how the virtues of courage, justice, and practical wisdom can help us to handle these difficulties and illuminate a pathway to flourishing, even during a pandemic. We do not claim that the difficulties of risk, injustice, and complexity are the only difficulties exacerbated by the pandemic, nor do we claim that the three virtues of courage, justice, and practical wisdom are the only useful virtues in addressing difficulties exacerbated by the pandemic. We highlight these three difficulties and these three virtues for their salience in the pandemic, and because they provide a compelling account of the relevance of a neo-Aristotelian virtue perspective for practical psychological life. We see this as worthwhile especially as this neo-Aristotelian perspective parallels Positive Psychology 2.0 (PP2.0).

There are three intensifying features of the risks we face amidst this pandemic and social unrest. First, we are reckoning with threats that are largely invisible, yet threaten our lives and livelihoods. Second, although both the virus and racialized violence are continually roiling through societies, either one can burst out suddenly and unexpectedly. Widespread uncertainty and fear result partly from the slow, painstaking acquisition of knowledge and the continued search for effective treatments and shortages of vaccines and testing supplies. These multi-faceted risks can be summarized as both uncertain certainties (e.g., the possibility of death, the higher likelihood of the virus adversely affecting older populations and those with pre-existing medical conditions) and certain uncertainties (e.g., the exact risk each individual has, precisely what type of exposure is needed to contract the virus). Finally, to make matters worse, most people are dealing with these difficulties with far greater social isolation than in ordinary times. Social connections are primary contributors to well-being as well as stress moderators. We are having to dig deep in our individual and collective resources to cope with and manage these challenges. We will argue that courage is the virtue that is central to addressing risk well.

The pandemic has also shined a harsh light on longstanding inequity and injustice in the degree of societal justice involving the distribution of harms and benefits 1 . A category of workers has acquired newfound recognition, although they have always been with us: “essential workers.” Those officially referred to in the United States as “essential critical infrastructure workers” (healthcare, pharmaceutical, and food supply workers) were informed by the United States Department of Homeland Security in 2020 of their “special responsibility to maintain their normal work schedule” ( Krebs, 2020 ). Unlike the large number of workers who could transition to remote work to prioritize their health and safety, essential workers were mandated by the executive branch of the United States government to put the health and safety of others ahead of their own. Although it is heartening to have these workers’ value recognized explicitly, their jobs remain low-paying and disproportionately populated by people of color ( Long et al., 2020 ). Despite the designation of “essential,” a recent examination pointed out that although we often celebrate people working in medicine, “we may think of course of the nurses and doctors treating patients; but we ought to think too of the people scrubbing and disinfecting the walls and floors” ( Kinder, 2020 ). One worker expressed this lack of recognition by saying, “people are not looking at people like us on the lower end of the spectrum. We’re not even getting respect.” Others state their yearning for appreciation and recognition, a desire for “a thank you. ‘I am glad you are here, thank you for coming to work.’ Hazard pay. Anything.” ( Kinder, 2020 ). In addition, the very act of deeming some workers “essential” has the unintended effect of devaluing the work of others who have lost their livelihoods (e.g., hospitality, entertainment, and arts workers) and whose work has not been recognized as sufficiently important to the good of our communities to merit the risk it entails.

In addition, everyone understands that medical professionals, first responders, and military personnel take on occupational risks beyond what other workers accept. These workers understand they must take outsized risks during crises and that they will often be the first ones called upon to take those risks. For these workers, the pandemic intensified pre-pandemic demands, and they were trained and equipped to engage with issues of life and death. In contrast, supermarket employees or postal service workers have not historically needed to consider such stress or intensity when accepting or conducting their jobs. Therefore, there are many millions who have been required to perform “front line work” who neither signed up for nor are compensated adequately for these risks. This seems to be an inequitable distribution of very consequential risk.

It is also necessary to recognize the historical injustice regarding access to health care in the United States, and the disproportionate toll of illness and death from COVID-19 suffered by people of color ( Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020 ) with, for example, Blacks comprising just under 13% of the population ( United States Census Bureau, 2020 ) and making up 17% of COVID-19 deaths. This disproportionate suffering, death, and loss have highlighted the history of less adequate medical care and support for health available to these populations. For these reasons, we will argue that people with the virtue of justice are needed to work toward a fairer sharing of burdens and benefits.

The complexity of the pandemic is another of its vexing features. Governments across the globe have confronted difficult issues about how to communicate with the public about risk, risk-management, changing information due to slowly increasing knowledge, and changing information about the likely future. Governments have also struggled with where to allocate resources to combat the virus and its effects. Many of these difficulties involve grappling with what seemed like contradictory or at least conflicting goals such as how to keep a country and its economy afloat, while also keeping its citizens safe and healthy. Some governments emphasized safety over the economy, some focused more on the economy than on safety, and some attempted to balance the two.

There are also extremely complex, consequential decisions forced on medical personnel as health care systems become increasingly overwhelmed. Difficult decisions are necessary in triaging and treatment planning given the limits on equipment and personnel. How does one estimate the likelihood of successful treatment with such an unpredictable illness? It is overwhelming to be in a position that seems to require determining which life is more valuable or worth saving than another.

This complexity is apparent in business and education as well. Many small businesses face the serious threat of going out of business permanently, with potentially devastating financial, social, and emotional consequences. Choosing or being compelled to prioritize the safety of the community through closing, or even severely reducing the number of people they can serve, has led to widespread job and business losses. Tough decisions have also been necessitated in education. There is little doubt that students and teachers alike prefer to be in the classroom environment over tele-classrooms, and that being in the physical classroom has long-lasting academic and social benefits that virtual education does not. Yet, government officials and school administrators must decide how to prioritize the health and well-being of students, staff, and teachers, the ability of parents to work, the educational benefits of in-person schooling, and the many other services schools provide.

Many personal decisions during the pandemic are challenging. A common thread in decision-making throughout COVID-19 has been attempting to balance what is best for an individual or “in-group” with what is best for others or the collective. For many, including medical professionals, first responders, and essential workers, the combination of risks to their own safety, their patient’s safety, and to their friends and families’ safety make for difficult decisions. Given the extremity of needs, one could choose to work over-time, which may appear noble and other-focused, but also may result in work-undermining fatigue or becoming ill and may put their colleagues at increased risk as well.

Another set of complex decisions is necessary for individuals needing non-COVID medical procedures. Given the danger associated with going to the hospital during the pandemic, and the limited resources and under-staffing many institutions face, many patients have chosen to delay treatments even for critical care such as heart attacks and strokes. In addition, many surgeries or appointments have been deemed by medical centers as “elective,” leading to cancelation or rescheduling. Although this rescheduling will not have dire consequences for many, there are others with serious, even life-threatening illnesses other than COVID (e.g., cancer treatment). We do not think there are any simple or universal answers for any of these complexities, but we do think they can be handled more or less wisely, so we will discuss how the virtue of practical wisdom can help.

The risks, systemic unfairness, and complexities of the pandemic have been extremely difficult for individuals and societies to manage, and there are many disagreements about how to best respond to these intensified problems. Clearly, some leaders and individuals have managed the difficulties better than others and understanding the capacities that make good leadership (and followership) possible can be beneficial today and in the future.

The key resources we discuss in this article are individual virtues and the collective encouragement and support for virtuous action. It is important to make explicit reference to the communal aspects of virtues, so that we are not misunderstood to see virtues as entirely internal to individuals. We must keep in mind that people are taught virtues by others, that communities and societies can value and promote virtues or devalue them, and that individuals are strongly influenced by others in their actions, virtuous or otherwise. Our view is that human action is always deeply and inextricably entwined with others, which, of course, includes virtuous action ( Fowers, 2015 , 2017 ; Fowers et al., 2017 ).

In this article, we will focus on the virtues of courage and justice, and the meta-virtue of practical wisdom. Situations of threat or risk call for the virtue of courage, balancing burdens and benefits in a consistently fair manner requires the virtue of justice, and when complex, multidimensional, and consequential decisions must be made, practical wisdom comes to the fore. We will argue that these virtues are necessary precisely because humans are frail creatures who can easily go wrong when at risk, balancing burdens and benefits, or in need of making wise decisions. A more general case for virtues as the very characteristics that make it possible for one to act well in circumstances that reveal our human limitations was made by Fowers et al. (2017) , who discussed friendship as the excellence associated with dependency, compassion as the virtue involved in suffering, and reverence and humility as the virtues involved in human limits. Because human limitations are always evident and life is challenging even in ordinary times, the virtues become the most promising pathway to flourishing as a human being, even in pandemic times.

What Is Virtue?

Many scholars use the term virtue colloquially, which may be sufficient for some purposes, but because this paper focuses specifically on virtues, it is incumbent on us to provide a clear conceptualization of virtue. Broadie (1991) described virtues simply and succinctly by saying that, “an excellence or virtue, as Plato and Aristotle understand that concept, is nothing but a characteristic which makes the difference between functioning and functioning well” (p. 37).

We take a neo-Aristotelian approach to virtues that portrays them with multiple features: Virtues (1) are acquired traits that (2) vary in strength across individuals, (3) are responsive to social roles, (4) are sensitive to the specifics of the situation, (5) facilitate the pursuit of valued aims, (6) make it possible to live well, (7) show up in behavior, (8) are based on knowledge, (9) are fully and properly motivated, and (10) are guided by practical wisdom ( Fowers et al., 2021 ). Virtuous action means that one knowingly chooses to act in ways that conduce to worthwhile goals, given the specifics of the situation, and with the kind of harmonious motivation and emotion that arises from having a settled disposition to do so. In addition, Aristotle (1999) suggested that virtues are the most fitting response to a given situation, being flanked by a vice of deficiency and a vice of excess. We discuss each of these features in what follows. We exemplify these features with the virtue of courage because it is so salient during this pandemic.

Of course, we recognize that our portrayal of the relationship between virtue ethics and flourishing is one among many, and we are open to critique and reformulation based on other perspectives. Other scholars have conceptualized this relationship differently and emphasized other domains, such as psychotherapy ( Wong, 2017 ; Jankowski et al., 2020 ) and organizational behavior ( Newstead et al., 2018 ). Perhaps most similar to the neo-Aristotelian approach we take is within PP 2.0 which sees virtue as a critical aspect of improving the lives of people and the functioning of society as a whole ( Wong, 2011 ).

Acquired, Scalar Traits

We see virtues as traits that are acquired through practice and guidance, and those traits vary across individuals. We suggest they are traits because Aristotle (1999) focused on virtues as “settled dispositions” that are stable and reliable. If one is to act courageously, especially when that action is called for suddenly and unexpectedly, as often occurs, one must be prepared to be courageous by having already acquired the trait. Importantly, we suggest that virtues are scalar (vary in strength across individuals) as opposed to the view that one either has a complete virtue or does not ( Cokelet and Fowers, 2019 ).

Sensitive to Roles and Situations

Although we see virtues as traits, this does not mean that anyone would exhibit courage constantly and in exactly the same ways across roles and situations. One of the aspects of virtues that the pandemic has highlighted is that roles are extremely important. This shows up with courage in that medical personnel, first responders, and a wide range of essential workers have been called upon by society to put their health at greater risk (act more courageously) than people in many other roles. These work roles place special demands on the individuals who fulfill them. For example, medical professionals risk their own health and safety (and that of their loved ones) each time they work a shift. In addition, situational variation means that courage will be evident in many different ways in a single individual’s experience. For example, food delivery workers must risk exposure to the virus to bring necessary food to others at work, but when they are not working, taking a similar level of risk would not be advisable. If one is caring for someone who is ill with the virus, that caring will require greater risk taking than the periods before or after the caregiving. This variation means that there is no one right way to be courageous, and that the demands of courage vary widely, between and within individuals and across situations and roles.

Valued Aims and Living Well

The reason that virtue theorists believe that roles and situations provide important guidance for virtue expression is that roles and situations often afford the pursuit of specific valued aims, such as health, public safety, and dignity. The reason it is sensible for medical personnel to put their health at risk is that they are working to maintain or re-establish the health of their patients. The reason that public demonstrations led by social justice advocates are worth the risk to public health is the aim of greater social justice. In other words, the justification for taking risks is that there is something important at stake. From a neo-Aristotelian perspective, risk-taking is not courageous when it serves lesser ends such as thrill-seeking or showing off.

We see discussions of virtues that do not recognize the linkage of virtue and the pursuit of a good life as incomplete. In our view, virtues are the characteristics that enable people to reliably and successfully pursue worthwhile ends, such as public health. From our neo-Aristotelian perspective, the best way to live is to experience a felicitous combination of worthwhile aims, such as belonging, societal justice, health, and social harmony. The focus on these elements of a good life is a key premise of Aristotle’s ethics and it differentiates his view from more common contemporary ethics, which tends to focus on doing the right thing based on ethical principles or the consequences of actions. That is, Aristotle saw the aim of ethics as promoting the best possible life for oneself and one’s communal world, and that includes multiple goods rather than a singular good.

Virtues must be evident in action to qualify as virtues. For the virtue of courage, it is obvious that brave thoughts or feelings are insufficient without acting in ways that involve risk taking. Of course, virtuous courage is not appropriate to every situation, but when a circumstance calls for courageous action, a person with the virtue of courage will take the appropriate risks to seek or maintain worthwhile aims.

Just as brave thoughts are insufficient, so is behavior that is not guided by knowledge about courage and the knowing intent to act courageously. Knowledge is important because when a person incidentally or accidentally takes risks, this cannot count as courage. The virtue of courage requires that one knowingly takes risks that are justified by acknowledged and valued aims.

Emotion and Motivation

Our view is that virtues require concordant emotion and motivation. Courage is the virtue that enables people to confront fear-inducing situations excellently. This is not to say that a courageous person is completely fearless. Many circumstances evoke fear, especially in the current pandemic: caring for an ailing loved one, being deemed an essential worker, being a member of a marginalized group during a time of increased violence, or working on the front lines of the medical, public policy, or policing professions. Indeed, one way to go wrong in the domain of risk-taking is failing to recognize real risks that properly evoke fear. Many situations engender fear in reasonable people. Being able to appropriately respond to fear-inducing situations does not mean that fear itself is problematic or should be eliminated. Rather, fear is a basic and powerful emotion that helps us recognize and respond to dangers.

In confronting fears, we must take risks to our physical or mental health, our social standing, and so forth. Risk taking only counts as a virtue when one willingly takes the risk and is fully motivated to do so. This concordance of behavioral and motivational states is discussed in terms of duty and desire. Acting virtuously means wanting to act in ways that seem best, without significant conflict between desire and duty. When one acts in a good way, but does not want to, this is a conflict between desire and duty known as continence ( Aristotle, 1999 ; Fowers, 2008 ). Continent action is clearly worthwhile, but it is both easier and better when one wholeheartedly wants to do what is for the best. Courage is a virtue precisely because one acts resolutely despite one’s justified fears. That is, courage is not the lack of fear, but its mastery.

Practical Wisdom

According to Aristotle (1999) , virtues such as courage are guided by practical wisdom ( phronesis ), which is what makes practical wisdom a meta-virtue. One of the main functions of practical wisdom is to clarify what courage, for example, consists in, by taking into account both the dangers and opportunities of the given situation and the worthwhile aims that can be pursued. This shows up clearly in Aristotle’s formulation of the structure of virtues, being flanked by vices of deficiency and excess. Courage is an excellent example of this structure because courage is called for in situations of risk and danger. Enacting the virtue of courage means taking the appropriate amount of risk given both the degree of danger and the ends (e.g., health, safety) that are at stake. When one shrinks from taking risks that are justified by the ends, this is a deficiency of risk-taking, often termed cowardice. Avoiding necessary risks may represent an excessive sensitivity to fear. Suppose a doctor is excessively sensitive to fear, and that doctor freezes instead of providing appropriate care to a very sick patient. Inaction would be a significant failing because inaction would not promote the good of the patient’s health. When one takes risks that are too great in view of the ends at stake, this is an excess of risk-taking, also called recklessness. For example, suppose a doctor were completely insensitive to fear and rushed into treating the patient without following established safety protocols. This doctor would fail to recognize the danger of the situation and therefore take excessive risks to his or her health. Practical wisdom is the capacity to properly recognize the appropriate degree of risk-taking. That is, practical wisdom helps us to recognize what courage amounts to, given both the specifics of the situation and the ends at play.

The COVID pandemic has clarified how situations and roles affect our judgments about the risks that are worth taking. Risking one’s health, indeed one’s life, has become far more common in this time, and those risks are regularly undertaken by medical workers, first responders, and people who produce and transport vital goods for others’ health (e.g., food, medicine). This risk-taking is courageous because the ends are so valuable that sizable risks are justified. In contrast, taking serious risks for the sake of entertainment or to obtain trivial items is seen by public safety experts as reckless because those ends do not warrant the danger incurred. Put another way, the dangerous risks undertaken by a nurse count as courage, whereas similar risks would be excessive for an ordinary person going to a neighborhood party. In addition, the nurse has extensive training, access to the necessary safety equipment (usually), and a team of professionals, all of which increases safety. Nurses generally take the risks they do knowingly, intentionally, with concordant motivation and emotion, and on a foundation of training.

In this context, it is easy to see why Aristotle did not propose that there is a simple and singular way to enact the virtues because variations in situational specifics and role requirements are potentially endless. Rather, Aristotle proposed a meta-virtue, practical wisdom, which entails attending to the morally salient details of a situation, planning actions, and integrating reason and emotions. We turn now to discussing the three salient virtues we have selected for emphasis in this paper: courage, justice, and practical wisdom.

Courage as a Pathway to Flourishing Through Frailty

Human beings are frail creatures because we can be harmed physically, psychologically, socially, or materially. It is important that we reckon with these dangers with open eyes so that we can successfully manage the risks to our safety and well-being. The emotion of fear is a powerful part of human harm avoidance that appears to have analogs in virtually all vertebrates ( LeDoux, 2012 ). The perception that a risk is significant can lead to autonomic nervous system arousal, and freeze, flight, or fight behavioral responses. During the pandemic, perceived risk is a significant predictor of depression ( Gallagher et al., 2021 ; Yıldırım et al., 2021 ). Therefore, humans appear to be naturally endowed with fear, which evolved because it helped our ancestors to avoid harms that impeded reproduction. That is, fear evolved because it helps us deal with our frailty.

We agree with Aristotle (1999) that humans have choices in how we respond to our circumstances, and situations of risk are generally no exception. Of course, risk and fear can be so overwhelming that no choice is possible, but this extremity is fortunately rare in ordinary life. The neo-Aristotelian aim is to habituate good choices and actions in response to situations that arise, and these responses are the virtues. In cases of risk and fear, courage is required. Recall that courage is understood as the appropriate degree of risk-taking, and that one can go wrong by shrinking from taking risks to pursue a valued aim (deficiency of cowardice) or by plunging into unnecessary or unwarranted risks given the ends at stake (excess of recklessness).

Our neo-Aristotelian view is that flourishing as a human being is a matter of regularly participating in a wide range of human goods, such as health, safety, pleasure, friendship, and so forth. These goods are frequently threatened in various ways. The pandemic is an excellent example of a threat that puts virtually all human goods at risk. COVID-19 is an obvious risk to health and life itself, but the recommendations to socially distance, wear masks, and avoid congregating also threaten our enjoyment of life, our relationships with others, and our social cohesion. The lack of regular, in-person contact with people with differing backgrounds may also threaten our ability to promote social justice.

As Aristotle (1999) pointed out, gods do not have to worry about threats to their well-being, but humans do. Because participating in human goods is the way to flourish, and those goods can be threatened, the capacity to respond courageously to those risks is necessary for a good human life. The courage that has been so prominently and consistently displayed by so many people during this pandemic has been inspiring. Conversely, the recklessness of many people has deepened and prolonged the pandemic, contributing to unnecessary suffering and death. Because it is public health that is at stake, we endorse Aristotle’s (1999) exhortation to “feel [fear and confidence] at the right times, with reference to the right objects, toward the right people, with the right motive, and in the right way, …and this is characteristic of virtue” (1106 b 17–23). Of course, having good judgment about risk-taking is no simple matter, and Aristotle presented practical wisdom as the capacity to make good decisions and take appropriate action, which we discuss more fully below.

Justice as a Pathway to Flourishing Through Frailty

Courage has been widely recognized during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it is also clear that the risks and benefits of the pandemic have not been equitably distributed. Aristotle (1999) famously called humans “political animals,” and one way to understand politics is in justice terms: the process of distributing burdens and benefits. Justice can refer to both a societal arrangement of those distributions and as a virtue. The virtue of justice refers to being a person who is a “performer of just actions” ( Aristotle, 1999 , 1129a 8). We focus on justice as a virtue in this section.

There are many ways to parse the concept of justice, but in this discussion of the pandemic, we focus on a fair distribution of benefits and burdens. Thus, the virtue of justice is enacted when an individual actively, knowingly, and with proper motivation contributes to an equitable distribution burdens and benefits. This virtue is flanked by a vice of excess, as when people take more than their share of benefits (e.g., vaccines, food, supplies) and less than their share of burdens (e.g., risks, cost). The vice of excess can emerge due to a disproportionate focus on benefiting oneself (egocentricity) or on benefiting one’s group (ethnocentricity). Both biases are common and inimical to well-being ( Fowers, 2015 ).

We see the vice of deficiency arising when one forgoes appropriate benefits and accepts excessive burdens. Aristotle (1999) did not believe that this vice of deficiency existed because he did not believe that one could treat oneself unfairly. Contemporary scholarship on the internalization of oppression (e.g., Gale et al., 2020 ) has clarified that people who are exploited or stigmatized frequently come to believe that they deserve less and become used to claiming less than their fair share. That is, people can be taught that they deserve less than their fair share by oppression, stigmatization, and marginalization, and this becomes internalized and ascribed to oneself or one’s group rather than to the oppression itself.

In a crisis such as this pandemic, it is common for many people to reflexively take more than their share (e.g., toilet paper hoarding) or to pursue unfair advantage (e.g., vaccinations for the privileged over the vulnerable). Seeking safety for oneself and one’s loved ones is a natural human tendency, but it is also one that can exacerbate societal injustice. Cultivating the virtue of justice prepares one to respond in more equitable ways because injustices are more visible to a just person and that person is also strongly motivated to pursue a fair distribution of burdens and benefits.

There is evidence that just society relations are positively related to individual well-being ( Di Martino and Prilleltensky, 2020 ). Wilkinson and Pickett (2020) draw on extensive data to argue that equality in the distribution of societal resources is positively correlated with many indices of well-being. There is some dispute about this conclusion along with some evidence of no relation between inequality and well-being Ngamaba et al., 2018 ). Another argument links cooperation, a ubiquitous human inclination ( West et al., 2007 ) with fairness because cooperation collapses without fairness. Cooperation is necessary for humans to flourish, suggesting that fair actions by cooperators is also required ( Fowers, 2015 ).

Concerns about societal justice are likely at least as old as the human species, and there has been an incredible variety of social arrangements and philosophies that address questions of justice ( MacIntyre, 1988 ; Henrich and Henrich, 2007 ). We offer no definitive answer to those questions here. We do want to emphasize one point, however. Although rules, laws, institutions and social practices are necessary, they are insufficient. This insufficiency is manifest in the racialized violence against people of color by police, the very people entrusted to enforce the laws we have against unnecessary violence as well as the provision of our constitutions that insist on equal treatment before the law. We need just laws and practices, but we also require people who have the virtue of justice to uphold those laws and practices faithfully. Cultivating and practicing the virtue of justice is the way to be a just person in the most consistent and broad way. For these reasons, we claim that some defensible form of the virtue of justice in individuals and in groups is a necessary element of a flourishing life.

Aristotle (1999) enumerated various virtues, each pertaining to different dimensions of human frailty and the vicissitudes of fortune. These virtues encompass much of what it means to live well. But enacting virtues requires good judgment about when and how they are appropriate to concrete situations and how they can contribute to what is good. This capacity for good judgment is a kind of meta-virtue that guides a person in organizing and integrating the other virtues. Aristotle called this capacity phronesis , which has been translated as practical wisdom.

Of course, there is a good deal of debate about what practical wisdom is and is not, with many views among philosophers and social scientists ( Grossmann et al., 2020 ; Kristjánsson et al., 2021 ). Some see it as a “skill” ( Stichter, 2018 ), others as a kind of intuitive artistry ( Dunne, 1993 ), still others as just one virtue among others ( Peterson and Seligman, 2004 ). We adopt what we see as the most comprehensive contemporary neo-Aristotelian account of practical wisdom here, which was provided by Darnell et al. (2019) . Those authors, along with Kristjánsson et al. (2021) provide extensive discussions of what makes this account preferable to others. These two papers make three key points. First, they have designed their model to be consistent with Aristotle’s philosophy as the primary source for most modern discussions of practical wisdom. Second, they have thoroughly embedded Aristotle’s conviction that practical wisdom is, above all, the capacity to fashion a good and moral life. Finally, they have integrated the best contemporary research on moral emotions, moral identity, moral reasoning, and moral decision-making.

Practical wisdom is the capacity to integrate the many virtues into a coherent and worthwhile life. Without practical wisdom, an individual could not live well consistently, because the complexity and contingencies of life would be overwhelming. To take a concrete example that is directly pertinent to the pandemic, first-responders often accept risk in their work to serve those who suffer from the effects of the virus. Accepting this risk requires the virtue of courage. However, extenuating circumstances can complicate the situational reasoning of a first-responder. For a first responder strained by repeated exposure to the dead and dying, it may be most appropriate to sometimes forgo the most demanding aspects of their work, and instead opt for rest. Discerning how to act courageously, and what risks to take in a situation requires an attention to particularity, and the capacity for this sort of discernment is one dimension of practical wisdom.

The pandemic has made the importance of good judgment glaringly obvious for people ranging from government officials to medical personnel to ordinary citizens. Practical wisdom is important even in ordinary circumstances, but everyone has had to make life and death decisions during this period, whether that involves public policy, medical treatment, essential services, or just obtaining groceries and other necessities.

Before we discuss practical wisdom in more detail, it is important to make two general points. First, similar to the virtues, practical wisdom is a capacity that varies between and within persons. No one has perfect practical wisdom, and it is unusual for people to entirely lack this capacity. Individuals who generally make practically wise decisions also make mistakes, and fatigue can lead to lapses in judgment. The best that imperfect people can do is to make practically wise decisions as often as possible and to develop this capacity as fully as possible. Second, Aristotle (1999) differentiated practical wisdom from sophia or theoretical wisdom. Theoretical wisdom is concerned with universal and unchanging matters, whereas practical wisdom relates to everyday decisions in practical life, where facts and situations vary continuously.

Darnell et al. (2019) discussed practical wisdom in contemporary terms. Their general description of practical wisdom is very apt:

Phronesis is meant to crown, as it were, virtuous habits with a cluster of intellectual abilities and experience that are both necessary and sufficient for ensuring that these habits will not go awry, will be reliable both over time and across different situations, and will be put into practice in a way that is reflective and motivationally robust (p. 16).

This description clarifies that practical wisdom is the overarching capacity to manage virtuous actions in a variety of situations and organize one’s actions into a coherent and well-motivated approach to life.

Four Components of Practical Wisdom

Darnell et al. (2019) also outlined four major functions that practical wisdom fulfills. This includes recognizing the salient features of the concrete situation, integrating multiple relevant factors into decisions and actions, an overall understanding of what is worthwhile, and guiding emotional responses with reason.

Moral Perception

The first component of practical wisdom is the ability to perceive what is most important about a given situation so that the relevant virtue or virtues can be activated. We discussed the example of risk or threat toward worthwhile ends as the key feature of a situation that calls for courage. Similarly, the need to balance the benefits and burdens that accrue in a situation calls for justice.

Integration

The second component is the ability to integrate multiple moral considerations in decisions and actions. Many situations are complex, calling for more than one virtue, and practical wisdom is the ability to integrate and organize those virtues to guide the best actions. This integration is especially salient when there is some degree of conflict between the virtues or one virtue needs to be prioritized over another one. For example, both honesty and compassion are relevant when medical personnel communicate with patients about their conditions and prognoses, and wisdom operates as the appropriate balancing of the two virtues.

Blueprint Function

The third component is a firm understanding of what is good, which can be thought of as having a blueprint for a good life. This component is often implicit in people’s actions, but, as Aristotle noted, we pursue what we think are worthwhile aims in all our actions. This is usually referenced in terms of goals, but goals are simply concrete versions of what one sees as good. The practically wise person’s understanding of what is good attunes them to certain features of a situation and not others; the benchmark of salience. The practically wise person uses their knowledge of what is good to weigh various concerns against each other, and they invoke that view of the good in translating their integration into practice. Because practical wisdom is so inextricably bound up in the understanding of what is good, it seems obvious that without this component, practical wisdom is rendered empty, because without a view of what is good, there is no basis for salience in interpretation, no means for comparison in integration, and no standard by which to evaluate various translations into action.

To illustrate the paramount importance of blueprinting with an example, consider the first responder without this capacity. They would not be sensitive to the importance of lives gained or lost; they might approach their work in an overly technical way; or they might be inured to the importance of their own health and well-being.

Reason Infused Emotions

Finally, moral emotions such as empathy, awe, guilt, and anger regarding injustice are important parts of every person’s moral life. Practical wisdom makes it possible to infuse these emotions with reason, which allows people to reflect and guide their emotions toward moral actions that are fitting for the situation and consistent with the actor’s overall understanding of what is worthwhile. The practically wise person’s emotions (and actions) must be responsive to reason, where reason tracks worthwhile ends. Without this correspondence, an individual is liable to act impulsively or with excessive or deficient emotions in difficult situations, and thereby fail to pursue the best course of action. For example, a person with a relative with chest pains might feel compassion toward their loved one’s fear of going to the hospital, given the concomitant risks. This compassion could coexist with the knowledge that the relative needs medical attention. If this individual’s emotions and actions are not attuned to reason, they might avoid bringing their relative to the hospital, even though seeking medical care would be the best course of action. This example illustrates that unless emotions (and actions) are responsive to reason, an individual cannot act virtuously. Therefore, emotions (and actions) that are responsive to reason are a necessary component of practical wisdom.

Once the practically wise person has detected the salient features of a situation and integrated those features into a coherent and actionable narrative, they must act. This final step of translation, is eminently specific, hinging as it does on many features of a given situation. The capacity to elegantly and appropriately act in a virtuous way based on an understanding of the contingencies of the current situation and the goods that can be pursued in that situation characterizes a practically wise person.

Practical Wisdom and the Virtues

Practical wisdom is thought of as a meta-virtue because it is required for the exercise of any particular virtue. There are many virtues, and although the precise taxonomy is contested, their multiplicity is not. Situations call upon us to be courageous, to be fair, to be compassionate, and each of these virtues requires the situationally appropriate expression of some typical human capacity for pursuing the good. As we have discussed, to be courageous is to take appropriate risks for the sake of a worthwhile end; to be fair is to give others their due in situations in which inappropriate favoritism is possible; and to be compassionate is to exercise sensitivity to the concerns of others in situations involving suffering. The excellence that marks out virtuous action from ordinary actions ( Broadie, 1991 ) partly consists in the ways that practical wisdom helps us to recognize which virtue or virtues are called for, to integrate and prioritize multiple virtues, to decide what will make an action virtuous according to one’s best understanding of a good life (blueprint), and to allow one’s emotional experience and behavior to be guided by reason. A person lacking one or more components of practical wisdom might not be able to detect that courage and compassion are called for, or they would be unable to determine the right combination of risk-taking or perspective-taking required by the given situation, or they would be unable to recognize how courage and compassion fit into a life plan, or they might get carried away by emotion and miss the opportunity for courageous and compassionate action. In sum, a person without practical wisdom cannot be consistently virtuous. This illustrates practical wisdom’s important role as a centerpiece in any virtue-theoretic interpretation of human activities and illuminates the pressing relevance of the concept for our troubled times.

Practical Wisdom as a Pathway to Flourishing Through Frailty

Even in ordinary times, human life is very complex. The advent of a very contagious virus that can be deadly has amplified that complexity significantly and introduced a host of new questions and issues about personal and public safety. Humans are relatively easy to overwhelm and tend to act following fast, intuitive judgments that involve many biases and shortcuts ( Kahneman, 2011 ). In addition, strong emotions such as fear and disgust can overwhelm more reasoned approaches to problems, and these emotions can be primary sources of confusion and impulsivity. When we add the multiplicity of human goods (e.g., friendship, pleasure, justice, social status, social harmony, etc.) and the multiple individual and group perspectives and interests to this complexity, it seems miraculous that human beings can act on a coherent plan at all. We have focused on reasoned choices as a key element of virtue and therefore of flourishing. There is, however, substantial evidence that a great many human actions are based on quick, automatic cognitive and emotional processes that do not involve the conscious, deliberate thought usually associated with reasoned action. Given the complexity and pace of human life, these automatic processes seem necessary, for if one needed to engage conscious deliberation for every decision, life would come to a grinding halt. Yet quick, automatic actions often create difficulties because they can lead to interpersonal or intergroup conflict or undermine longer-term plans and activities. Therefore, the complexity of life reveals many human frailties.

Practical wisdom is the capacity to deal excellently with complexity. Aristotle (1999) gave the following definition: “practical wisdom is a truthful rational characteristic of acting in matters involving what is good for man [ sic ]” (1140b 20–21). That seems like a very tall order, but if we look beyond Aristotle’s somewhat perfectionistic tone, we can see how practical wisdom can help. He said that we must be honest and rational as we assess our circumstances to determine how to act. By focusing on the key word “rational” we can begin to understand what that means for ordinary humans. By “rational,” Aristotle did not mean acting completely logically or systematically. Rather, he meant that people act according to reasons, that decisions and actions are best undertaken with good reasons. And he clarified that the best reasons for action are the human ends or goods that make life worthwhile, suggesting the incumbency of acting for the sake of human goods such as friendship, justice, and safety. Many of our actions will generally remain automatic and intuitive, such as activities related to driving to meet a friend or locking a door after entering the house or leaving a car. Therefore, automatic actions serve the more important ends. Moreover, the goal of virtue development is to make virtuous actions (e.g., kindness and fairness) automatic, to make them second nature. The key thing is to recognize that there is no inherent opposition or eliminative relation between quick, automatic actions and more deliberative ones. Each has its place, and they can be seen much more sensibly as complementary rather than taking an “either/or” view.

Practical wisdom helps with complexity by focusing our attention on the most central aspects of our circumstances so that we can act on the most important matters rather than being distracted by more trivial or eye-catching elements. The moral perception function of practical wisdom helps us identify what sort of situation we are facing, which suggests one or more relevant virtues. That makes it possible to organize, synthesize, or prioritize the relevant virtues, if needed. The actor’s overall understanding of what is worthwhile in life further motivates and guides action, and the reasons for acting one way rather than another help one to shape and direct our emotions in the best ways. Practical wisdom allows us to address a great deal of complexity by focusing our attention on the most important elements of our situation in view of our best understanding of how action in that situation can contribute to a good life. To see the importance of practical wisdom, consider the mayhem created by foolish decisions and short-sightedness.

A salient contemporary example of the value of practical wisdom can be found in current disputes about policing. This contentious domain includes demands that “Black lives matter,” which are met with counter-chants that “blue lives matter” and “defund the police” vs. “support the police.” These questions have typically been framed in very partisan ways and often in either/or terms. From a practical wisdom perspective, any temptation to enter such an “either/or” resolution should immediately be suspect because a key function of practical wisdom is to harmonize multiple concerns rather than plunking for one simple solution or the other.

The point that Black lives matter activists are making is that, in everyday policing practices, Black people’s lives are clearly far more often disrupted or ended than White lives. The point that blue lives matter voices make is that police frequently risk their safety and even lives in the service of their communities. Both points seem reasonable, true, and worthy of honoring. The blueprint function of practical wisdom can then direct our attention to what the valued aim of policing is. Two candidates for the aim of policing are law enforcement or the maintenance of social order. Maintaining social order is certainly part of policing, but that could all too easily evoke the specter of tyranny or white supremacy as the order being maintained. Indeed, the disproportionate police violence toward people of color seems to many as an expression of a racial hierarchy. Law enforcement is a common understanding of the aim of policing, but, as we see it, it is a means, not an end.

The ends of law enforcement, on our view, are public safety and societal justice 2 . Once we take seriously the idea that all lives matter, public safety acquires new meaning. It is safety for the entire public, and violence toward one member of society means that all members of society are at risk. Law enforcement is also a means toward the constitutive end of societal justice. It is a constitutive end because justice is both the desired aim and the necessary means. One can only enact justice through just actions, and social justice demands that everyone in society be treated justly. Equality before the law is a bedrock principle for democracies everywhere, and when “law enforcement” results in discriminatory practices toward a subset of society, the means has gone awry and is no longer serving societal justice. These are difficult times as we grapple anew with centuries of oppression and maltreatment. The best way forward is to keep our treasured ideals of public safety and justice foremost in our minds and to allow that blueprint to guide our attention to the aspects of our circumstances that will promote just actions and harmonize those actions with everyone’s safety.

COVID-19 has been enormously disruptive and has created severe strains on individual, relational, and societal well-being. It has strained the world economy and wreaked havoc on many people’s basic abilities to make a living and maintain a home. Although life is seldom easy, it has been especially difficult for the past year. Fowers et al. (2017) argued that humans have multiple frailties, and that the virtues are the characteristics that make it possible to flourish through those frailties. We have applied that viewpoint to three rampant and salient aspects of the pandemic: risk, injustice, and complexity. The virtue associated with fear and risk is courage, which is the appropriate degree of risk-taking, given the valued ends at stake. In this pandemic, lives and health are at risk, so extraordinary measures have been necessary. One of the key actions that has prolonged the pandemic is the refusal to recognize the risks and act with appropriate caution and safety protocols. Notably, the simple precaution of wearing face masks has been widely flouted in the United States, and this has been encouraged by several prominent political and social figures. The pandemic has also accentuated the recognition of injustices in our societies and protests against those injustices. The virtue of justice is called for to increase the kind of just actions to rectify historic imbalances that have continued into the present.

Practical wisdom, a meta-virtue that guides the expression of other virtues, is the trait that can help us to address confusion and complexity with excellence. One of the things that has made COVID-19 difficult is that there are many valued ends that have been put at risk by the pandemic, including, of course, health, but also livelihoods, belonging, education, and mental health. For example, it has proven extremely difficult for the government and people of the United States to balance these goods, with some prospering tremendously during the pandemic and many others losing their businesses, incomes, and even their dwellings. The inability to balance valued ends has cost our society and many individuals dearly, and we can only hope that practically wise leadership and followership will increase.

We chose to focus on courage, justice, and practical wisdom because they are so salient in the pandemic and so that we could give a reasonably in-depth account. There are many other virtues that have come to the fore in 2020 as well. For example, the ramping up of free food distribution and the many extraordinary kindnesses that have been observed also emphasize the virtues of generosity and compassion. On reflection, this pandemic, like virtually all other human struggles, can be characterized in Martin Luther King’s ( King, n.d. ) immortal words: “Every crisis has both its dangers and its opportunities. Each can spell either salvation or doom”. To the degree that we practice the virtues that conduce to public health and other goods, we maintain or increase the likelihood of flourishing. To the degree that we allow ourselves to practice deficiencies or excesses (e.g., cowardice or recklessness) relative to virtues, we increase our tendency to languish. Each of us makes many choices everyday that can guide us as individuals and as a society to flourish or to languish, so opportunities for virtuous actions and the pursuit of worthwhile ends abound, even, or especially, in a pandemic.

Author Contributions

BF conceptualized the manuscript, oversaw the contributions of the other authors, independently wrote 25% of first draft of the manuscript, and edited the penultimate and ultimate versions of the manuscript. LN wrote 25% of the first draft of the manuscript. AC wrote 25% of the first draft of the manuscript. RS wrote 25% of the first draft of the manuscript. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

• ^ Unfortunately, the term justice is commonly used to refer to many things. For our purposes, we will refer to justice in two ways, following Aristotle’s (1999) usage. First, as a set of societal arrangements that can be evaluated based on the equity and equality they represent. That is the focus of this section of the paper. Second, we will refer to justice as a virtue, which we describe as an acquired trait that is properly motivated and enacted by an individual (see the next major section of the paper.). We endeavor to keep these two usages distinct.
• ^ Recall that in a neo-Aristotelian framework, the term justice can refer to both a virtue that one can cultivate and to the aim of a fair social arrangement.

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Keywords : COVID-19, flourishing, frailty, practical wisdom, courage, justice

Citation: Fowers BJ, Novak LF, Calder AJ and Sommer RK (2021) Courage, Justice, and Practical Wisdom as Key Virtues in the Era of COVID-19. Front. Psychol. 12:647912. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.647912

Received: 30 December 2020; Accepted: 03 March 2021; Published: 26 March 2021.

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Copyright © 2021 Fowers, Novak, Calder and Sommer. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Blaine J. Fowers, [email protected]

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