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Trusting Fear

20 Aug 2004 by Matthew Linderman

“People who do not feel easily threatened are generally less threatening.” That’s the view of Gordon Marino, a former boxer and professor of philosophy, in this essay on the philosophy of boxing [via MSNBC]. Along the way, he offers one possible reason why voters are so enamored of candidates with wartime service records: It’s easier to trust someone who has truly experienced fear.

According to Aristotle, courage is a mean between fearlessness and excessive fearfulness. The capacity to tolerate fear is essential to leading a moral life, but it is hard to learn how to keep your moral compass under pressure when you are cosseted from every fear. Boxing gives people practice in being afraid. There are, of course, plenty of brave thugs. Physical courage by no means guarantees the imagination that standing up for a principle might entail. However, in a tight moral spot I would be more inclined to trust someone who has felt like he or she was going under than someone who has experienced danger only vicariously, on the couch watching videos.

6 comments so far (Post a Comment)

20 Aug 2004 | Josh said...

I really liked this article -- I even went so far as to look up some boxing gyms in my area! I suggest this book to everyone, but a great exploration that follows a similar line of thought, though in much greater and more fascinating detail, is The Vehement Passions by Philip Fisher, an English professor at Harvard. It's a great read -- it makes you want to a) read more books and b) fight! One of the best books I've read in a long while.

20 Aug 2004 | Josh Williams said...

There is a lot of truth to that end... Along the same lines, one should take a look at Why Courage Matters by John McCain.

20 Aug 2004 | sloan said...

Courage is such a tough word. It has so many connotations it is difficult to simply say that someone who is courageous is the right person for the job. It all too often has a macho leaning where it is about taking a hit to the face, whether it is a good idea or not. I don't know how many fights anyone here has been in, but if you really need to be in a bad one where someone gets pummeled to understand that sometimes you need to back off on something in order to really win, then I think you need to know more about yourself than anything else. Most of the great fighters do not enjoy the fight, do not look to prove their courage, but are looking to learn more about themselves. But then, I think all athletics does this. It doesn't have to be boxing.

Anything that requires discipline, practice, sacrifice, hard work and involves a bit of competition is going to teach you a lot about yourself. For my sister, running taught her that she had other talents than just book smarts. So suddenly it was okay for her to be smart again and her grades went back to almost straight A's from a 2 year period of serious doubt and D's and F's. Physical fear is not the only thing that triggers the fundamental response of fight or flight. Physical fear is not the only way to test your mettle.

For me, courage is about wisdom of your weaknesses and fears yet still facing them head on. Blind courage does not show determination or resolve, it simply shows rashness and recklessness. I do not think someone has to face a particular fear such as war to have the wisdom to respect its consequences.

21 Aug 2004 | Paperhead said...

37Fight Club?

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