How to have moral courage

BY PROFESSOR AL GINI

In Harper Le’s book To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch tells his children: “I want you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.”

“Moral courage is a stimulus, a catalyst for action.”

From a Catholic philosopher’s point of view, the most interesting virtue is moral courage.

In a colloquial sense the concept of courage is usually associated with physical acts of daring-do that involve danger, risk and behaviour that overcomes seemingly insurmountable obstacles and odds.

Having been in the US Marine Corps I have seen many examples of that! But for the professional philosopher, physical courage is, in and of itself, not that interesting. We are instead fascinated by moral courage, tending to agree with Winston Churchill: “Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others.”

Moral courage is not an “extra” virtue but rather a critical human quality that serves as a necessary precondition for all other forms of moral conduct.

Moral courage is the readiness to face self-sacrifice for the sake of principle. Moral courage rejects being a mere spectator and instead seeks engagement. Moral courage is a stimulus, a catalyst for action.

As Nelson Mandela suggested, moral courage is not absence of fear but the strength to triumph over one’s fear and to act. Moral courage is the ability to transcend fear and endure risk for principle. It is the ability to put ethics into actual practice. And that is what fascinates philosophers.

The central problem for humanity today is not a lack of moral reasoning—we’ve got that in spades in our colleges, universities and seminaries—but rather a lack of moral engagement or moral courage. By that I mean a lack of willingness to take on ethical issues and questions, to extend ourselves, to put ourselves in harm’s way because we are concerned about the wellbeing of others.

Publicly we may lead lives which are economically and electronically interdependent but privately we are emotionally and ethically withdrawn, unappreciative and unempathetic to the wants, needs and desires of others. If we care about anyone else at all, it is usually only after we have first taken care of our own self-centred wants and needs.

I believe that ethics is possible only when we are able to step away from ourselves; to borrow a phrase, when we are willing “to forget about ourselves on purpose”. We must be able to see beyond our self-contained universe or personal concerns. We must be able to become, if only momentarily, more selfless than selfish.

Ethics begins with the recognition that we are not alone or the centre of the universe. “Self” is always in the context of “others”. We must be open to the voice of others. Being ethical begins with having the courage to stand outside the needs of self and to listen to others and act on their behalf.

Without moral courage to propel us forward we become captives of our own needs and desires. Getting free of self, overcoming our natural tendency to become self-absorbed in our interactions with others, is the central problem and paradox of communal existence.

Philosopher Patricia H Werhane warns that the inability to imagine and to be sympathetic to the needs, passions and interests of others is the main cause of moral ineptitudes.

She writes that if I really want to sympathise I need to place myself in another’s situation, “not because of how that situation might affect me but rather if I were that person in that situation”.

Using moral imagination allows us to be self-reflective and step back from our situation so as to see it from another point of view. Werhane calls this “a disengaged view from somewhere”, and within it a number of questions become obligatory:

1. What would a reasonable person judge is the right thing to do?

2.  Could one defend this decision publicly?

3. What kind of precedent does this decision set?

4. Is this decision or action necessary?

5. Is this the least-worst option?

Moral imagination allows us the possibility of reflecting on these questions from a perspective that is both inside and outside the box, that focuses on self and others.

Moral courage requires us to do so—and then gives us the ability to act on the outcome of that reflection.

Prof Al Gini will be delivering this year’s Winter Living Theology programme which begins on May 20.