Aristotle & Virtue

Aristotle considers courage and every other moral virtue to be a mean between two extremes. If one had an excess of fear combined with a lack of confidence, fear would affect the decisions of such a person and one would display cowardice. If the inverse were true, that person would be considered reckless. The virtue of courage is “a mean with respect to fear and confidence.” (1115a). It is an emotion where one feels both …

…that might be incurred in fulfilling those responsibilities. He realized the importance of his job and he went beyond what e was called upon to do. He acted in such a timely fashion as to not only save the lives of individual members of his platoon, but also to prevent the loss of the entire engagement which would have annihilated everyone with him. Rascon acted selflessly “to take care of the man next to [him].”