Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics

[1228b] [1] they fall short in daring and exceed in being afraid), it is clear that the middle state of character between daring and cowardice is courage, for this is the best state.

And it seems that the brave man is in general fearless, and the coward liable to fear; and that the latter fears things when they are few in number and small in size as well as when numerous and great, and fears violently, and gets frightened quickly, whereas the former on the contrary either never feels fear at all or only slightly and reluctantly and seldom, and in regard to things of magnitude; and he endures things that are extremely formidable, whereas the other does not endure even those that are slightly formidable. What sort of things, then, does the brave man endure? First, is it the things that are formidable to himself or formidable to somebody else? If the things formidable to somebody else, one would not indeed call it anything remarkable; but if it is those that are formidable to himself, what is formidable to him must be things of great magnitude and number. But formidable things are productive of fear¹ in the particular person to whom they are formidable—that is, if they are very formidable, the fear they produce will be violent, if slightly formidable, it will be weak; so it follows that the brave man's fears are great and many. Yet on the contrary it appeared that courage makes a man fearless, and that fearlessness consists in fearing nothing, or else few things, and those slightly and reluctantly. But perhaps 'formidable' is an ambiguous term, like 'pleasant' and 'good.' Some things are pleasant and good absolutely, [20] whereas others are so to a particular person but absolutely are not so, but on the contrary are bad and unpleasant—all the things that are beneficial for the base, and all those that are pleasant to children qua children. And similarly some things are formidable absolutely and others to a particular person: thus the things that the coward qua coward fears are some of them not formidable to anybody and others only slightly formidable, but things that are formidable to most men, and all that are formidable to human nature, we pronounce to be formidable absolutely. But the brave man is fearless in regard to them, and endures formidable things of this sort, which are formidable to him in one way but in another way are not—they are formidable to him qua human being, but qua brave not formidable except slightly, or not at all. Yet such things really are formidable, for they are formidable to most men. Owing to this the brave man's state of character is praised, because it resembles that of the strong and the healthy. These have those characters not because no labor in the one case or extreme of temperature in the other can crush them, but because they are not affected at all, or only affected slightly, by the things that affect the many or the majority. Therefore whereas the sickly and weak and cowardly are affected also by the afflictions commonly felt, only more quickly and to a greater extent than the mass of men, the healthy, strong and brave, although affected by the very great afflictions, are affected by them more slowly and less than the mass of men,² and moreover they are entirely unaffected or only slightly affected by things that affect the mass.

But the question is raised whether to the brave man nothing is formidable, and whether he would be insensible to fear.