Courage in War - Another Reason Why I Don't Get Aristotle

War's been on my mind a lot this week - I'm sure my annoying compilation of questions in class was a tip-off. This week alone, I've been reading a war book (The Things They Carried), listening to war songs (everything recorded by Billy Joel, you know it's true), watching war movies (Friendly Fire), listening to anti-war activists, reading up on our two current wars. Willing myself away from the topic of war failed to make the subject go away, so I just tried to embrace it. This is also impossible.

I like to think I can tackle any deep, philosophical or spiritual subject; but apparently the one thing I can't really handle is war. This is probably because 1) I could never fight, I'm too much of a coward - and somehow I just know my lovely liberal values would become complete moot on a battlefield ("I got soul but I'm not a soldier"); and 2) war doesn't make sense to me, not intellectually, but emotionally - as in, how the hell could you actually live with killing someone? Even if there was a reason? Even if you thought it was 'right'?

A friend shared Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" speech with me, and it just enveloped me in intense sadness. There's a line in which he says, "Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot." All the glory and triumph and terrible art of war is one big cosmic joke to whoever's watching us. And that whoever is not Aristotle, so I went to read what Aristotle has to say about courage, because when I think of war, courage is the virtue that comes to mind.

He says danger is at its "greatest and finest" in war - I don't know what that means. Discussing the balance between too much and too little of the virtue of courage, he says that the overly courageous person is either a madman or faking it (134). It's odd that he picks the former category for the Celts. The Celts seem to have owned much of Europe when Aristotle was alive, so they were pretty damn good at fighting, probably not just an entirely insane race of people. I also wouldn't call the Mongols or Romans madmen, I would just call them good, maybe even courageous, fighters.

But then he says that courage is mostly confidence and partially fear - not equally midway between overconfidence and complete fear (137). Then he says, "the person who is undisturbed in face of fearsome things...is courageous." After he weeds out several different kinds of non-courage, he's basically nullified the honor of every soldier who ever lived. Why would one need to be undisturbed by fearsome things to be courageous? Isn't that lack of fear just a putting-off of fear? Do not soldiers who win Silver Stars still end up with PTSD? I was surprised to find this fairly honest government site about the mental effects of serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, and I can only conclude that these soldiers are simply normal people being subjected to conditions not meant for normal people.

Maybe it's just because Aristotle bores me that I feel obliged to discredit everything he says, but here, he's really just not getting through to me. I don't know enough to issue this opinion, but I just don't see how a courageous person can do anything but stifle their fear for the moment - maybe forget fear, or be too busy to be afraid - but I don't know any Vietnam, Gulf War, or current soldier who doesn't talk about what was really terrifying about their experience with war. So few people will ever see or understand what Aristotle sees as 'true' courage in war, but I think we can all understand that war is fearsome. And to me, one who remains undisturbed by killing and death seems to be more ill than courageous.