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Gesine Schwan Civil Courage and Human Dignity: How to Regain Respect for the Fundamental Values of Western Democracy i. AN ESSAY REFLECTING ON COURAGE— OR MORE SPECIFICALLY, CIVIL courage—might be thought to be a timeless effort. Yet these reflec­ tions are stimulated by current experiences that challenge us and call for reassuring thoughts. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, I led a semi­ nar, along with Joachim Gauck, the director of the Stasi document center, on civil courage. Our hope was to understand the reasons some people collaborated with the Stasi, the security arm of the former East Germany, and why other people resisted. It seemed natural to compare the situation in East Germany with that which existed in Germany itself under National Socialism to determine what motivated people to resist collaboration with the National Socialist regime and what strengthened those people who helped to protect and hide Jews from persecution. They, we pointed out, practiced civil courage. At that time, however, we would not have thought to ask if suicide terrorist attacks were proof of courage, let alone civil courage. Yet the argument is now social research Vol 71 : No 1 : Spring 2004 107 often put forward that one can recognize the moral seriousness of such actors by the fact that they offer their own lives for their ideals—that this is evidence of courage, possibly even of civil courage. But are they? To determine whether suicide attacks can be inter­ preted as a form of civil courage, we will first discuss a few definitions of courage in general and civil courage specifically to learn what are possible opposites to these concepts and what are neighboring phenom­ ena. We will then try to apply our concepts and definitions to empiri­ cal historical and psychological findings from Germany under National Socialism as well as life in East Germany in order to draw out some conclusions for the evaluation of suicide terrorism. II. Since ancient times, courage has ranked among the most honored virtues. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle, the great philosopher of virtue, reflects at length on the importance and contribution of virtue to what we would call a “good life”—that is, to the successful fulfill­ ment of human potential in general—and on the meaning of courage in particular. Aristotle places the virtues between two false extremes: for example, courage ranges between cowardice and carelessness, generosity between waste and avarice. But the position in which the virtues should be placed should come from an analysis that avoids an exaggerated polarity. To find the correct middle between the extremes we should, still following Aristotle, listen to our feelings regarding lust. As we all tend to enjoy lust, Aristotle advises us to seek the peek between the two false extremes by distancing ourselves from our interest in lust. This, ofcourse, indicates a fundamental philosophical, anthropological, and psychologi­ cal position of distrust of our natural inclinations that is balanced by Aristotle’s “socialization” theory of attitudes acquired by custom. The practice of virtue is embedded in a life-long acquired attitude through which we develop the ability to find the right middle position in specific cases based on prior good practice. In that sense, our socialized incli­ nations are not to be automatically distrusted: in fact, they help us distance ourselves from the original natural lust inclinations and lead us nearly 108 social research spontaneously to the middle position between the extremes. This socializa­ tion is possible because we have also from the beginning the potential to choose the virtues—we have the potential for a virtuous life. Unlike courage, “civil courage” is a much more modern term. “Civil” points to the obverse of “m ilitary” and to the Latin word cives, which is connected to an idea o f “civitas,” or civil community. Astonishingly enough, it was probably Bismarck who introduced the word Zivilcourage into the German language. He noted that courage in war situations when one followed orders was a form of obedience and thus counted for less. It did, however, happen more often than cour­ age in normal civil life because there it depended on the decision of the individual and required an independent mind. We...

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