Civil war soldiers worried a lot about cowardice in combat, something few historians have been willing to admit. The Introduction explains its importance and sets up how this book will explore the topic by focusing on two civil war regiments accused of cowardice and the lasting effects such allegations had on them. It also discusses what historian Drew Faust calls “war stories” and how constructed celebratory tales of martial glory often hide war’s chaos and horrors.

Civil war soldiers worried a lot about cowardice in combat, something few historians have been willing to admit. The Introduction explains its importance and sets up how this book will explore the topic by focusing on two civil war regiments accused of cowardice and the lasting effects such allegations had on them. It also discusses what historian Drew Faust calls “war stories” and how constructed celebratory tales of martial glory often hide war’s chaos and horrors.

In Either/Or I, the aesthete, A, gives us the following diagnosis of his predicament: “I think I have the courage to doubt everything; I think I have the courage to fight everything. But I do not have the courage to know anything, nor to possess, to own anything.” In this chapter, I explore A’s fascinating claim that knowledge requires courage by way of juxtaposing the aesthetic life with Cartesian skeptical doubt. I show that just as the Cartesian doubter seeks refuge from radical skepticism in the safety of introspective knowledge – what is directly present to consciousness – so the aesthete seeks solace in the moment and what is sensuously present to him. Both methods ultimately prove ineffective and spurious, however: Cartesian introspection imprisons us in a mental cage with no beyond, just as aestheticism holds us captive in a self-spun world where our self dissolves. Consequently, what both the aesthete and the Cartesian need to do is to develop the strength to confront and overcome the anxieties that have motivated the flight from “the outer” (the flight from the world) in the first place.

This final chapter provides words of encouragement and hopefully inspiration.

Socrates here draws on the cyclical and kinship arguments to further explain nearly every claim made earlier in the defense speech (Chapter 3). He provides an interconnected account of virtue, happiness, moral psychology, reincarnation, and soul–body interaction. He first describes how coming to know the divine will ultimately allow the philosopher’s soul to spend the afterlife with the gods, eternally happy. By contrast, non-philosophers reincarnate because their desire for the body-like pulls them into a new body after death. Understanding this mechanism requires clarifying how Socrates thinks of the impurities in non-philosophers’ souls. After examining this, the chapter turns to how the body deceives the soul into desiring things that are not good for it. Socrates develops the account of true courage and temperance from the exchange passage (69a–e) to explain how the philosopher avoids and resists the body’s insidious effects so that the soul can pursue wisdom and so be eternally happy.

The introduction to this volume captures virtue's dizzying variety by explaining its roots in classical ethics, transformation through theological appropriation, and engagement with global wisdom traditions. We propose that the work of Shakespeare patches together virtue's many realizations, active both on the horizontal axis of Aristotelian capacity and dynamism and the vertical axis of Judeo-Christian valuation. Threading together exemplary passages from Shakespeare and previews of the volume's contributions, the introduction proposes that Shakespeare creates virtue ecologies -- worlds that allow for person-affirming capacities to be tested and flourish. Alive to virtue's textual and performative dimensions, we establish a vocabulary and background for the essays that follow.

This chapter argues that As You Like It draws from early modern and classical educational theory to stage the acquisition of virtues such as courage, justice, and sympathy, which are, in turn, central to the romance’s resolution. The play explores a classroom exercise known as ethopoeia (or “character-making”), which frequently asked students to inhabit, write from, and perform from the subject position of other genders. Inhabiting other genders can prime students’ capacities to sympathize across categories of difference, enlarging prosocial other-orientation by cultivating the sense of justice necessary to understand how hardship affects people differently and the courage to give voice to the feelings of others. The analysis closes by considering the value of ethopoeia in contemporary liberal education.

How do we strengthen our underlying character, so that we can practise law without fear? Aristotle insightfully insisted that character (virtue) does not suddenly appear; it does not just arrive one morning (in an email). We develop our character by applying ourselves to that task, usually over years. We can become ‘habituated’ to goodness by reflecting on the good and bad experiences we all have. Let us not forget that as lawyers we are guaranteed to be put under formidable pressure by clients, other lawyers and even police, to do the wrong thing. The key virtues for lawyers are wisdom and knowledge, courage and justice – they are a stable foundation for modern legal ethics. To those who say virtue ethics is too subjective, or paternal or fails to give adequate action guidance when it is needed (compared to Western duty-based frameworks), we say that virtue ethics looks first at the actor and then the act. If the actor is good, so also will be the act. Nevertheless, reflection on the connections between your virtues and various lawyer ‘types’ (the zealous advocate; the responsible lawyer; the moral activist; and the ‘relationship of care’), will strengthen your character further.

It is not too difficult to claim, in a cocktail party type of way, that global governance should be more virtuous, and that those who run our lives and our institutions should be decent human beings. That is the easy part, if only because it makes intuitive sense that what could possibly be useful in some settings (professional sports, for example) is not so appropriate in other settings. We accept ruthlessness in our professional athletes – indeed, to the point that it might be difficult for them to become truly exceptional without a ruthless streak. But we do not think that quite the same applies to judges, or high-ranking civil servants, let alone religious leaders. Not even our statespersons, even if we would want them to serve the national interest (whatever that may be), are expected to display quite the same amount or sort of ruthlessness. Michael Jordan and Cristiano Ronaldo may be single-minded and ruthless; the Dalai Lama or the Pope may not, and neither may Germany’s long-serving prime minister Angela Merkel.

The five widows of the executed conspirators and the five wives whose men were transported leave poignant records of both impoverishment and courage. Before the trials, most couples seem to have been faithful to each other, William Davidson excepted.Left with 26 children to care for between them, the women had no support other than radicals’ charity. Most disappeared miserably from history.But Susan Thistlewood and Arthur’s illegitimate son Julian made good in the long run: Julian became a Parisian painter and fathered a noted impressionist. And Ings the butcher’s letters to his wife Celia suggest a loving marriage, and she lived adequately as a widow.

The unusually rich evidence available on the conspiracy comes from near-daily spy reports to the home office, 350,000 words of question-and-answer evidence in trial reports, and dense newspaper reporting.It invites ‘thick description’ of the ‘real world’ of the conspiracy - that is, of the attitudinal, material, topographical, and domestic elements in the story which historians have hitherto evaded. Until now, both left- and right-wing historians have dismissed the story because it seems at first sight to have failed to advance the onward march of labour or the making of the working class.

Addressing the barriers we put in the way of our writing. The need to be prepared to experiment: all landmark fiction has tried something that hasn’t been tried before. Understanding that ‘failure’ is part of the learning process. Don’t listen to inhibiting inner voices: there is nothing you’re not allowed to write and you can always edit later. Allow yourself substandard drafts – then you have something to build on.

‘Accept the difficulties, expect things to be initially unsatisfactory, and start writing.’

Mailer’s definitions of manhood lie at the center of much of his work; they not only inform the construction of his fictional protagonists, but are also connected to his ideas of existentialism, and are tied to his hopes for the future of America. Mailer’s notions of manhood also often intersect with his theories of violence, and thus threaten to uphold toxic notions of masculine power (which Mailer himself internalized throughout his life, evident in his performance of machismo), though Mailer also confronts the many pressures and vulnerabilities associated with cultural expectations of manhood.

The seventh section of An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals is full of interesting puzzles. Why is courage treated here, among the virtues immediately agreeable to self, when it is useful to both its possessor and others? Why do so many of the virtues listed here seem like vices? And why does Hume linger on those virtues of which he seems the most suspicious? This chapter attempts to answer these questions. First, I outline the structure of the section and explain its oddities in more detail. These oddities reflect Hume’s ambivalence about some of the virtues immediately agreeable to self. Second, I argue for the importance of the aesthetic concept of the sublime for his treatment of these virtues. Appreciating this importance can illuminate some of the oddities. Finally, I argue that, although Hume believes that our attraction to these virtues needs correction, this correction cannot consist merely in judging these virtues against the standard of useful virtues. Instead, the correction requires another virtue immediately agreeable to self – delicacy of taste.

As in Chapter 4, the list of Proverbial virtues produced in Chapter 3 is again compared with Aristotle’s list of moral virtues in order to discover the underlying factors that explain both. Assessing in depth the similarities and differences between the virtue lists of Proverbs and Aristotle, this chapter focuses on their notions of courage, work, speech and friendship. I examine apparent and actual differences in these virtues and discuss the historical, social and doctrinal factors that underlie them. Why, for instance, do Aristotle and Proverbs show marked interest in honor? Or how might Proverbs’ focus on work and Aristotle’s omission of the subject be explained?