Recap with Courage

This chapter reviews arguments with the pairing of courage and fear, and emphasize courage's character as an executive virtue, as distinct from run-of-the-mill virtues like compassion or generosity. It proposes that a morally rectified fear trait is a functionally integrated constituent of the virtue of courage. It also claims that the nature of the virtue of courage is exemplar of courage that employs a morally rectified fear trait to pass the central test of virtue (CTV) for courage. The chapter describes the emotion pole that includes both fear and sympathy, and at the virtue pole that contains compassion and courage, which exhibits significant heterogeneity. It articulates the basic conceptual features of courage as a virtue, emphasizing some crucial respects in which it differs from ordinary virtues.