Cultivating Courage

This reflection offers a framework for cultivating the cardinal virtue of andreia, which is often translated as courage or fortitude. Its most literal translation, however, is manliness. That tells us a lot about the virtue, and a lot about manliness. ​​

Courage is the virtue governing confidence and fear. It is the mean between the vice of deficiency--namely, cowardice--and the vice of excess--rashness. The object of courage is not necessarily the elimination of fear, but the right judgment concerning what is worth fearing, and the will to act rightly in spite of it.

A Method for the Cultivation of Courage

1. Situational Diagnosis

Conduct an audit of your domains (professional, personal, social). Identify one instance where fear governs your action (through inaction, evasion, silence, etc.) and one where overconfidence governs it (unnecessary confrontation, aggression, impulsivity, and so on).

Objective: To move from an abstract sense of "needing courage" to a concrete assessment of imbalance. Courage requires a specific target. You must be able to conceptualise and imagine that target clearly. That target is the mean.

2. Deliberation and Targeting the Mean

For a chosen situation, define the vicious extremes and the virtuous mean.

The vice of deficiency that is cowardice: "I with-hold making criticisms in meetings at work, to avoid conflict."

The vice of excess that is rashness: "I deliver criticisms harshly, without regard for the feelings of my colleagues, or the need to maintain good relationships with them."

The virtue that is the mean, which here is courage): I state the objective facts of the issue calmly, with firmness but respect, and propose a solution.

The objective of this reasoning (this practical wisdom) is to translate the abstract mean into a specific, actionable plan. The right action is that which is done in the right manner, toward the right people, at the right time.

3. Executive Action

Execute the planned action. The focus is on the correctness of the deed itself, not the emotional state accompanying it. The feeling of fear is irrelevant to the virtue of the act.

The objective here is to habituate the will to act according to reason, not passion. Virtue is formed in action.

Notice that you are doing two things at once here: you are solving concrete problems, such as the need to communicate a criticism and proposed solution to your colleagues, and you are cultivating the virtue of courage.

4. Post-Action Analysis

Later, after the event, analyse the outcome against your deliberation.

Did your action hit the intended mean?

What was the actual consequence?

What error in practical judgment, if any, was made?

The objective here is to integrate experience into practical wisdom. This reflection transforms a single act into a lesson for future deliberation.

5. Progressive Integration

Systematically apply this process across other domains and situations, increasing the stakes as your courage expands and strengthens.

The objective here is to develop a settled habit of courage, where the courageous response becomes the default orientation. It becomes second nature.

Forms of courage

For the contemporary man, courage manifests in specific, often non-physical arenas:

Moral courage: accepting social or professional cost for a principled stand.

Personal courage: enforcing a boundary with a family member or terminating a detrimental relationship.

Intellectual courage: abandoning a cherished belief when presented with sufficient evidence, or enduring the ambiguity of unresolved complex problems.

Physical courage: standing up to bullies and threats, and standing by others who are threatened, when that is the wise, just, and faithful thing to do.

The Governing Principle

Courage is the foundational virtue that secures the possibility of all others. Without it, justice remains unenforced, temperance unchallenged, and wisdom unacted upon. It is the capacity to will the good, even at a cost to oneself.

I noted in the introduction that the most straight-forward translation of this virtue (andreia) is not courage but rather manliness. I wrote that this tells us a lot about the virtue, and a lot about manliness. The very word andreia binds courage irrevocably to manliness. This tells us two things. First, that courage is not a passive state but the active, assertive energy required to do what is right. Second, it defines true manliness not by physical power, but by moral responsibility—the willingness to accept the cost of upholding the good. A man without courage is a man in name only, because he lacks the fundamental capacity to translate his convictions into reality.

This is why the Greeks named this virtue andreia or manliness. It tells us that the essence of manliness is not aggression, but mastery: the command of one's own fear and the courageous application of strength for a righteous purpose. To be a man, in the deepest classical sense, is to be a source of protective, purposeful action in the world, to stand between chaos and order, and to will the good into existence, no matter the cost to himself. Courage makes life worth living. Or rather, it makes us live in a way that serves what makes life worthwhile, even when the tendency is to run from or otherwise abandon that.