Social Research Volume 71 No. 1 : COURAGE


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	Volume 71 No. 1 (Spring 2003) Arien Mack, Editor

Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors

Ordering information


Editor's Note Shortly after September 11, 2002, Susan Sontag was taken to task for arguing in the pages of The New Yorker that the hijackers of 9/11 were not cowards, because they were willing to die for a cause they believed in. A reader of the magazine wrote to remind her of Aristotle's argument in the Nichomachean Ethics that a courageous person is one who faces fearful things as he ought and as reason directs, "for the sake of what is noble." It seemed that the time was ripe for some new reflections on what it means to be courageous, hence this special issue of Social Research. Though our starting point was September 11, and our initial considerations included Palestinian suicide bombers and Kamikaze pilots of WWII, the issue quickly expanded to include a host of questions about the nature, forms, and expressions of courage. Papers in the issue look at courage as a civic virtue, the classical understanding of courage as a virtue, the need for courage in a democracy. Two papers, those by Fatos Lubonja and Jirina Siklova, look at the demand for courage in repressive societies, and what happens when those societies change and courage is no longer the order of the day. Other papers in the issue look at the nature of moral, physical, and intellectual courage, and the psychological and physiological bases of courage and fearlessness. At a time when terrorist threats are everywhere, it behooves us to consider once again what it means to be courageous. * I am sure you will now have noticed our new look. Though our design has changed, our content and mission have not. We hope you like the new design and will continue to look to Social Research for rigorous and engaging work, on issues both timely and timeless, by leading scholars and writers. *Arien Mack* *Editor*

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Table of Contents

David Pears	The Anatomy of Courage
Alan Ryan	Intellectual Courage
Marilynne Robinson	The Tyranny of Petty Coercion
George Kateb	Courage as a Virtue
Ryan K. Balot	The Dark Side of Democratic Courage
Gesine Schwan	Civil Courage and Human Dignity: How to Regain Respect for the Fundamental Values of Western Democracy
Fatos Lubonja	Courage and the Terror of Death
Jirina Šiklová	Courage, Heroism, and the Postmodern Paradox
Stanley J. Rachman	Fear and Courage: a Psychological Perspective
Andrew Silke	Courage in Dark Places: Reflections on Terrorist Psychology

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Notes on Contributors
(at time of publication)

The Dark Side of Democratic Courage
Ryan K. Balot
Ryan K. Balot is Associate Professor of Classics at Washington University in St. Louis. His publications include Greed and Injustice in Classical Athens (2001) and articles on ancient Greek history and political thought.
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Courage as a Virtue
George Kateb

George Kateb is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics and Director of the Program in Political Philosophy at Princeton University. His books include The Inner Ocean: Individualism and Democratic Culture, winner of the 1994 Spitz Book Prize by the Conference for the Study of Political Thought.
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Courage and the Terror of Death
Fatos Lubonja
Fatos Lubonja is Editor-in-Chief of Perpjekja, in Tirana, Albania, and a human rights activist in Albania. His documentary novel, The Second Sentence, published in Tirana in 1996, describes his trial for “counterrevolutionary organization” while already imprisoned by the communist government for “agitation and propaganda.”
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The Anatomy of Courage
David Pears
David Pears, Philosopher, is Professor Emeritus at Oxford University. He is the author of “The False Prison”: A Study of the Development of Wittgenstein’s Philosophy (1991).
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Fear and Courage: A Psychological Perspective
Stanley J. Rachman
Stanley J. Rachman, Professor of Psychology Emeritus, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, researches anxiety disorders, cognitive-behavior therapy, fear and courage, and obsessions.
His publications include Fear and Courage (1989, 2d ed.) and The Treatment of Obsessions (2003).
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The Tyranny of Petty Coercion
Marilynne Robinson
Marilynne Robinson is a writer and Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Iowa. Her novel Housekeeping (1981) received the PEN/Hemingway award for best first novel and was nominated
for the Pulitzer Prize. Her essays and book reviews have appeared in Harper’s, Paris Review, and The New York Times Book Review..
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Intellectual Courage
Alan Ryan
Alan Ryan is Warden of New College, Oxford University. His publications include John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism (1995) and The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill (1970, 1987).
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Civil Courage and Human Dignity: How to Regain Respect
for the Fundamental Values of Western Democracy
Gesine Schwan
Gesine Schwan is Professor of Political Science at the Free University of Berlin and a member of the Presidium of the Deutsche Vereeniging fur Politische Wissenschaft. She is the author of Politics and Guilt: The Destructive Potential of Science (2001).
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Courage, Heroism, and the Postmodern Paradox
Jirina Siklova
Jirina Siklova is the founder of the Department of Social Work at Charles University and the Gender Studies Library in Prague.
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Courage in Dark Places: Reflections on Terrorist Psychology
Andrew Silke
Andrew Silke is a forensic psychologist who has published extensively on terrorism and the psychology of suicide bombers. His most recent book is Terrorists, Victims and Society (2003). He is a Senior Research Associate with the University of St Andrews and serves on the United Nations Roster of Terrorism Experts.
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