“The highest of the spurious forms of courage is political courage; its goal is honor. For examples Aristotle quotes Hector and Diomedes worrying about what will be said of them if they do not fight. But just what is it that differentiates this from acting “for the sake of the kalon [the noble, the beautiful]?” If courage always means courage in war, then it will always manifest itself in a political context. Cities make war; individual men do not. But if courage is a virtue, it ought to be something that transcends any particular polis. This is just the problem of Achilles. Apart from the polis he cannot show his virtue, but once he returns to the fighting his motives are necessarily obscure. Does he return for the sake of Patroklos, of the Greeks, of honor, of immortality? Andreia [manliness] is in principle invisible, for one cannot see it apart from a political context, which is to say apart from the ulterior motives for action that are attributed to the political man.”
- Michael Davis on Aristotle’s Poetics
Davis claims earlier that for Aristotle, all examples of courage are explained with reference to decision-making in war. This makes perfect sense – if one wishes to talk about courage in reference to a lack of fear during a storm, for example, one runs into a problem: how does one differentiate between insanity and courage?
Aristotle brings the problem of courage into the realm of knowledge (cf. Plato, Protagoras) by explaining courage as that which is best seen as decision-making in war, such decision-making – where one directly confronts one’s own death, or weighty responsibilities concerned with death – being used metaphorically to deal with all other examples when one is or is not courageous.
Politics, then, sits between “courage” and “knowledge,” as it creates the condition through which virtue and that ‘which is’ interact. And yet Davis says political courage is a spurious courage, as it aims for something false. Yes, it involves “knowledge,” a knowledge of how to get honor, but is that really knowledge?
The noble and the beautiful truly must be well beyond honor, and thus beyond the political. Which sounds well and good, if we’re crazy anarchists. But anarchy in politics is anarchy in thought, too: note that Achilles doesn’t have the possibility of virtue apart from the city, and even within the city, while there are possibilities for a ground upon which he can be said to be virtuous, the multiple possibilities confuse the issue.
The central issue for us is: Does loving wisdom require a more perfect order? It seems that it does, but the central strength of the political is that it doesn’t demand perfection, and can work with confusion. Look, let’s say there was some guy who was the smartest guy at Harvard, and had solved serious problems in particle physics, was really nice, and had thoughtful plans for how to run the country. So we, the American people, got together and proclaimed him dictator, saying that was his right by his virtue and knowledge. He’s got two of the 3 categories down, why not let the political stem from his perfection?
It sounds well and good, until he makes a mistake, and is responsible for far more than he could ever handle. Even making a mistake, we could say he is perfect in virtue, and nearly perfect in knowledge. But it is as if there is a whole other set of issues that contemplation of virtue and contemplation itself cannot address. And that set of issues concerns andreia, which is manliness, which is acting so as to assert an identity. People want to know their own actions say something about them in the world, and thus the near perfect rule of one would never be enough for them.
I think what we are seeing in Davis’ commentary – and perhaps it is unwitting – is the sheer power of the political in Aristotlean thought. Knowledge ultimately matters that much more than political considerations; but if we try to steer from political considerations, and impose an ideal, in however slight a way, we are risking a lot.
- An Introduction to Political Philosophy
- Heidegger’s Sojourns: Pindar and the Possibility of Political Philosophy
- Briefly Noted: Thomas L. Pangle, “Socratic Political Philosophy in Xenophon’s Symposium”
- Creating Statesmen, Part 1: Aristotlean Natural Right
- Ancients and Moderns: On Aristotle’s Politics I.1 (1252a 1-25)
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