Courage: The Politics of Life and Limb

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“In this engaging book, written with a sharp eye and keen sensibilities, Richard Avramenko traces the multifaceted history of courage from its Homeric manifestations to the modern day. Through creative and subtle readings of important texts, both ancient and modern, Avramenko chronicles the transformation of courage from its association with the manly violence of an Achilles or the Spartan three hundred into a virtue that, while still entailing an ever-essential care for others, sheds its connection with manliness and becomes compatible with the equality that is so much a part of today’s democratic regimes.” —Arlene Saxonhouse, University of Michigan ___________ “In his ambitious book, Richard Avramenko has given us a profound and rigorous treatment of four important phases in the self-understanding of courage. Avramenko has done much more than provide a snapshot of the ‘red badge of courage’; he has taken courage as a prism through which the history of political thought can be viewed. As a consequence, he has also shown that courage is not a onedimensional invocation but a many-faceted virtue whose meaning is inexhaustible. He has mapped the terrain with a mastery that will be difficult to surpass.” —David John Walsh, The Catholic University of America ___________ “Avramenko’s rich and lucid study of the principal modes of courage manifest in Western thought deploys impressive learning in an undertaking that transcends conventional scholarship. Guided by the insight that every human community and thus all truly human existence arises from some fundamental care that must be esteemed beyond mere material existence, the author is able to demonstrate the singular originary quality of the virtue of courage, in all its various manifestations, from Homer through the classical Greeks to Rousseau and Tocqueville. Avramenko understands that this ‘beyond’ can never be fully grasped or mastered by reason, and he proves himself fully aware that one cannot study courage truly without praising and emulating it.” —Ralph C. Hancock, Brigham Young University RICHARD AVRAMENKO is assistant professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is the co-editor, with John von Heyking, of Friendship and Politics: Essays in Political Thought (University of Notre Dame Press, 2008). UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 undpress.nd.edu C E G A R U O COURAGE The Politics of Life and Limb RICHARD AVRAMENKO Courage ...