Today in Iraq, American soldiers are risking their lives to save our lives at home. But our way of life puts peace, security, and survival ahead of conflict and danger. Thus it seems that the nobility of our soldiers is compromised because it is put in the service of mundane living for the folks back home – which is just what our soldiers gave up. Yet if we try to escape this incoherence by reminding ourselves that our way of life includes sacrifice for our way of life, then it seems we are sacrificing for the sake of sacrifice, endlessly.
This is but a sample of Rabieh’s reasoning. Her book is not a line-by-line commentary on Plato’s texts, but it does follow all the ins and outs of his arguments. If you want to learn about courage, or if you merely want to be impressed with what it takes to learn about courage, or to read Plato, this is the place to go. The toughness of courage is treated: The toughness to reject false hopes and to accept that certain evils are unavoidable. And also the magnificence of courage: the beauty of self-fulfillment that is greater than the nobility of self-denial or self-sacrifice. For self-sacrifice is in your interest if it makes you better. The paradox of sacrifice – for its own sake yet somehow for your own sake – is the theme of this excellent study.
One important distinction Mansfield also makes:
[C]ourage needs guidance from prudence to know when it is reasonable to make this sacrifice. It is noble to face risk, but must the risk not be worthwhile, requiring an exercise of prudence to see when to attack, when to retreat?
That is the question we are now debating. Without prudence, courage can easily become bravado or recklessness.
The Dish 