Author: Andrew Taggart
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Contest 1: Withstanding. Toughness Training
Suppose there were a first contest in toughness and it was called “withstanding” or “wise endurance.” A tough person is someone who withstands or wisely endures certain things. Forgo the puzzling matter of which things should be endured and which should not. (Here see Plato’s Laches.) Simply suppose that this is something that needs to be withstood…
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The Logical Order of Contests of Toughness
Suppose you wanted to become tougher and suppose too that you believed that you could only do so by training. Suppose, thirdly, that such training would consist of “tests of characters”–events that, putting pressure on you, come your way and require your right response–and of contests. Not quite a game and not quite battle but resembling both in different respects,…
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A Defense of Boasting
We now have a very low estimation of boasters. They are loud-mouthed, arrogant, sometimes self-deceiving, and, while boasting especially, very inconsiderate of others. Such a level of self-importance disgusts us, the non-boasters. We have the presumption that those who are properly confident have no need to speak of themselves, let alone to sing their own…
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In Praise of Rashness
In The Mysteries of Courage, the legal scholar William Ian Miller invites us to take a second look at rashness. Might rashness be worthy of praise, if only praise in halves? In the endnotes, Miller references Urmson’s essay on Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean. On this view, cowardice is identified with excessive caution or timidity, courage (the…
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5 Puzzles About Courage
In preparation for a fall course I am teaching at Kaos Pilots entitled “Time to Get Tough,” I am reading William Ian Miller’s interesting book The Mystery of Courage. In the “Introduction,” Miller writes, “The core of courage’s ancient tale is attack and defense against the Other, other men to be exact. The core is about the…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 