On the importance of lacking the courage (series: notes to myself)

Courage is a virtue. Everybody knows this. It’s one of the four classic ones. It's used as an example in any ethics class, often in some old-fashioned way. You know, like philosophers always talking about horses as if they were the most obvious objects in the world. 

In the good old days (kind of), courage referred to your attitude in battle. And not in any battle, but one in which you engaged with the enemy in hand-to-hand combat, with weapons the size of a broom. After all, our founding father, Socrates, served in the Athenian army as hoplite and distinguished himself during the Peloponnesian war. Not your average prof in some academic ivory tower. Plato was taught by the equivalent of a decorated marine, who died for his beliefs.

Aristotle argued that courage is in between rashness and cowardice. It seems something good, always to be praised. You want to be courageous, if not in battle, at least in everyday life, at least in upholding your beliefs, defending your actions, taking the right stance, assuming responsibilities, this sort of things. 

And yet, sometimes, lacking the courage seems to be a highly moral attitude too. It may all be based on some linguistic ambiguity, I’m happy to admit it. But we often appreciate that we did something good because we lacked the courage not to do it. We did it, even if it was something small, useless, unappreciated, our action seen by nobody, unrewarded by anyone. And we did it because we thought about doing it, and once that thought surfaced, it was impossible to unthink it, we just could not bring ourselves to ignore it and not do what the thought suggested.

Take what happens when I use a small bar of soap in a hotel. I use it a few times, and I fear that it will be thrown away if I leave it behind (I know that there are some cases of recycling, but...). A waste. A tiny, irrelevant, pointless waste, and yet still a waste. No matter how small, that little soap bar should not be thrown away. It is calculated that, in the US alone, about 3.3 million bars of soap are thrown away daily in hotels. I have this number in my mind while I’m packing, the little bar of used soap left in the bathroom. I don’t need it. It's going to be a mess to put it in the bag. Bringing it home is a stupid, stupid, stupid, small action with no significance or consequences. I know it will make no difference to anything or anyone. Nothing will change if I leave it behind. For all I know, it may even be recycled. I know I should force myself to be rationally calculative and abandon that piece of cleaning material to its destiny. 

But I can’t. I don’t have the courage to do this. Damming myself, my stupidity, and my inability to overcome such a sense of “can’t”, I re-open the bag and carefully pack this tiny, slippery object there, knowing that I will be using it at home without even having an option about the soap itself. It’s the one I found in the hotel, randomly.

Job done. I go back. Good. But... I also used the shampoo. Not all of it. Half of the small bottle. New thought. Oceans of bubbly water in my mind. A new sense of “I can’t’ leave it there”. I don’t have the courage to leave it there either. Maybe they recycle it, maybe not. I must ask next time. I always forget. I must bring my own. I forget that too. I pack it. I lacked the courage, again.

The point is not the soap or the shampoo but the realization that I often lack the courage to do things I think I should not do. Or better, sorry: of not doing something that I could, and nobody would blame me or even notice, but shouldn’t and can't. It's not because of some consequence in the world. Or because of some virtue that I’m trying to acquire or refine. Not even of some sense of duty. It’s more because I see how things are and how even a tiny gesture may make them that little bit better, or even just a fraction of a fraction less bad. It is a response to the call of what is in front of me. It has nothing to do with my reason, my nature, my motivations, and everything to do with the other, the relationship we can build. I can’t silence the voice of the other.

The ancient Greek word for courage is andreia (ᾰ̓νδρείᾱ). Yes, that’s where Andrew comes from. Cowardice is anandria. As usual, the an- negates, it means “not”. But that “an” ends up connecting with the “not” of not doing what I perceive to be the right thing. And so {[not + courage] + [not + doing] = doing the right thing}. But clearly, this double negative is very different from having the courage to save the bar of soap. I would like to call it ananandria. A poor neologism nobody will want to steal. It’s the counterpart of Aristotle’s akrasia, or weakness of the will, which cannot bring itself to do the right thing it knows it could and should do.

I have started noticing these significant moments of lack of courage, these cases of moral ananandria. They make me feel less isolated, not a grain of sand on a beach but a node in the boundless network of the universe. I even try to educate myself to respect such a lack of courage, cherish its appearance, and foster its strength. And I recognise it in others. People who do not have the courage not to do the right thing. No matter how small, irrelevant, unrecognised, invisible, immaterial. They can’t. Even if it costs them something, despite being an effort, no matter how they wish they could just move on. I like them. I trust them. “I just can’t”: sometimes, it may be the most moral justification for the right action.