How to be brave

What are you afraid of?

I asked a handful of people that question.¹ These are some of the answers they gave:

• Violent crime: being attacked and beaten, raped, stabbed, shot, harmed in other ways, or killed.
• Accidents that result in physical harm: car crashes, falling off a cliff while hiking, drowning in the sea, or wiping out on the ski slope. The particular harm resulting from the accident might be cognitive damage, disfigurement, inability to communicate or to move, or loss of other physical capabilities.
• Harm from natural phenomena such as storms, fires, floods, or earthquakes; deadly toxins from spiders, snakes, jellyfish, plants, or fungi; or attacks by animals such as sharks or bears.
• Illness.
• Humiliation.
• Failure in some task or aim, whether or not anyone else knows about it.
• Death, whatever the cause.

The above list is only a small selection of fears, expressed in general terms. Some people mentioned specific types of illness that they fear (stroke, cancer, dementia) or particular kinds of humiliation (a friendly overture is publicly rebuffed; a past indiscretion comes to light). It is hoped that you seldom or never think about things that frighten you, and that this is because you’re seldom or never afraid.

We want to conquer and control our fears. Even if we’re not constantly in the grip of whatever particular fear we might harbor, it can prevent us from doing things that we want to do. It may be a mere nuisance and not a crippling condition, yet still be a hindrance to action and a handicap to well-being.

Not only is fear mentally and physically stressful, it can carry feelings of disgrace and shame. On the one hand, mental health practitioners and resources offer help with anxiety, obsessive–compulsive disorder, depression, worry, and phobias,² and these conditions are rightly and compassionately regarded as illnesses that can be treated. On the other hand, the stories that we read, watch, and tell still celebrate courage as a virtue and condemn cowardice as a vice. The hero summons up nerve and confronts the threat; the coward runs away – or sneaks away with head down. We expect ourselves, and those whom we love or respect, to be  brave.

In this short essay I’ll explore one view of courage, and suggest ways that we might use those insights for practical purposes.

Anticipated threat  

Fear is the unpleasant feeling caused by the expectation of pain or suffering.³ A persistent or recurrent fear may have been left over from a traumatic experience, or linked to negative associations from childhood, or the person may have no clear idea of where it came from. Depending on the extent to which one’s life is affected, it may be a major or minor problem. It may never before have even been considered as a possibility.

Consider the following three individuals:

• Edna was accustomed to working late and had never given much thought to the possibility of unauthorized visitors in an office building. One evening she surprised a stranger in a meeting room: a thickset man wearing a pair of pants that resembled hairy animal legs. Edna didn’t flee, confront the intruder or try to engage him in conversation. Instead she simply turned around and walked away from him. As soon as she could find a room with a door that would close (it was an open-plan office) and a phone (she had left hers on her desk) she called security. Within five minutes they arrived, found Edna, dealt with the interloper, and that was the end of that. But she no longer stays at work after hours.

• Lucille, a keen hiker, discovered to her surprise and chagrin that having to traverse terrain where there are large rocks underfoot petrifies her. Before this fear emerged, she had never had any mishaps while hiking. Lucille suspects that a head injury suffered in a car accident may have had lingering consequences, months after it had healed and she had returned to her normal activities, including hiking. She finds it deeply distressing to feel so limited in her choice of trails.

• Troy is a good swimmer and has taken a basic course in water rescue. But his reaction to his first time seeing a thrashing person fifty meters from shore is to look around at other beachgoers to assure himself that somebody else would be willing and able. He says to himself: I could try, but if I fail then we’ll both drown. He is ashamed of his own inaction, knowing that it could result in someone’s death, but horrified by the possibility that his inept efforts might have no better result and that he himself might die as well. 

You might feel empathy for any of these people whether or not you or someone you know has had similar experiences. Whether a particular fear is ‘reasonable’ isn’t a useful question: the person subject to fear just wants to get rid of it.

Mental health, moral strength

In the cultural contexts that I know best, severe or recurring fear is likely to be thought of as a health issue rather than as a weakness of character. The aim is to master, mitigate, or manage our fears or to help other people to do the same with theirs, not to condemn or punish them for being afraid. Conduct arising from fear can be blameworthy, but we don’t generally consider the fear itself a moral shortcoming. We try to ‘get over’ or ‘get on top of’ our fears in order to carry out desirable, important, or routine activities. Astute parents try to ensure that their children aren’t saddled with disproportionate or ill-founded fears such as fear of the dark, or fear of bears on every camping trip. And when our adult friends are plagued by dread or oppressed by anxieties, we tend not to regard their problems as having arisen from a character flaw. To be sure, someone may see his or her own issues in that way, but to an observer that viewpoint itself is likely to look like a problem. Instead, we seek knowledge and insight to overcome our fear, whether it’s a dread of air travel, apprehension about public speaking, or a generalized fear of death.

If persistent fear is a mental health problem, then appropriate ways of addressing it might involve clinical intervention, introspection and efforts to learn more, or help from friends and family. We seek to conquer our fears for peace of mind, and to be effective in the tasks and activities that we undertake. But we may also consider that courage will make us better equipped for challenges more broadly. We might even be tempted by the thought that developing a greater capacity for courage would make us a better person, not merely a more effective one.

Cultivating good character

Let us set aside for the moment the specific example of courage and consider character traits that might be thought to make us better people: that is, more admirable in some generally moral sense. These attributes can be called virtues.⁴ A virtue is a particular kind of excellence: one that pertains to moral character. A virtuous person is someone who thinks and acts in ways that exemplify the various virtues.

When we deliberate about what to do in particular circumstances, we may have in mind some general rules of conduct. A person may try to treat others with respect and not as a means to some benefit, or try to ensure that all of her choices will lead to good outcomes,⁵ or refrain from actions that can be justified sometimes but are, generally, morally questionable. On an ordinary day, we tend not to dedicate great swathes of time to ruminating on how to behave. Instead, our decisions are almost automatic as a result of early conditioning and longstanding habit. For example, if someone is asked whether he would be willing to pay someone to keep silent about illegal activities that he knew about, he might say simply, ‘No, that would be wrong.’ If questioned further, he might then say why it would be wrong, not merely illegal.

Resolving to be a better person is a different type of choice from deciding on the right action. It might involve adopting better habits, or trying to ensure that your actions are consistent with your values. Perhaps you’d like to be more tactful when talking with friends about sensitive topics, or maybe you’d like to exercise greater self-discipline in the way you manage your time. Maybe you wish you had the kinds of conversational skills that make people feel comfortable and lead to candid, useful and pleasant chats. Or suppose it’s been drawn to your attention that you’re a bit stingy with your money, and you want to be ready to share without lengthy deliberation every time a contribution is called for. Or there may be a number of character traits that you think it would be a good idea to work on.

With conscious effort, a person can strengthen virtues that he or she may already have, such as tact, generosity or self-discipline. For some people, more practice may be required. Someone who is more reserved than gregarious may not be very good at putting others at ease. As another example, it takes skill to find a balance between modesty⁶ and the kind of ambition that is stimulated by accomplishments. But whether or not these types of values and aims are widely shared, and however difficult we may find their pursuit, the demands they make have this in common: they do not generally pose a threat to the person’s life or bodily safety. In this respect, courage seems to be the outlier.

The virtue of courage

A virtue is a worthy trait of character: a tendency or disposition to act in appropriate ways. As a way of approaching questions about how we should live, virtue ethics centers on the person’s character rather than on the consequences of actions, and rather than a set of principles to guide behavior. The focus is on whether a person possesses the virtues and hence lives as a virtuous person.⁷ Other ways of thinking about one’s ethical framework focus on decisions about the best action to take in certain circumstances (‘what should I do?’) or which rules to follow (‘which moral principles should govern my decision?’); these are quite different from questions about ‘what sort of person should I be?’

A key figure in virtue ethics is Aristotle, who catalogued a medium-sized but densely elaborated list of virtues in his Nicomachean Ethics, presenting an overarching schema in which they are interlinked. This blueprint is central to an understanding of Aristotle’s ethics. As for the practical skills that he enumerates, they are acquired through guided practice, similar to the strengthening of muscles through repeated actions. The person who has developed the virtues through training and habituation – the consistent, repeated, deliberate and guided practice of moral actions – is well equipped to use them throughout life.⁸

Some of the Aristotelian virtues that we could endorse today without too much trouble include temperance (limitations on indulgence in the bodily pleasures); liberality and benevolence (the correct uses of wealth); good temper (appropriate reactions to poor treatment such as insults);⁹ and wit (humor that is appropriately sensitive to people’s feelings).¹⁰ But a prominent place in Aristotle’s ethical scheme is occupied by courage.

Unless he or she is a member of the armed forces, a person of our time who turns to Aristotle for guidance on courage may be taken aback. Bravery, says Aristotle, ‘is not concerned with fear of every sort of danger.’¹¹ ‘It is concerned specifically with the fear of death in war.’¹² This particular peril is the ‘greatest and finest’ danger in Aristotle’s world.

So much for the aspirations of those who do not want to participate in military conflict, yet aspire to courage! But let’s put up with Aristotle’s narrowly military focus, for the moment. After all, it is hardly surprising in a social context in which warfare was ubiquitous. Remembering that fear of death still exerts considerable force on people, what can we learn from Aristotle about the brave person’s state of mind?

‘[T]he brave person is unperturbed, as far as a human being can be. Hence, though he will fear even the sorts of things that are not irresistible, he will stand firm against them, in the right way, as prescribed by reason, for the sake of what is fine, since this is the end aimed at by virtue.’¹³

A brave person is neither too fearless (embracing risk without thought and boasting about it),¹⁴ nor does he have excessive fear of ‘the wrong things, and in the wrong way’.¹⁵ These considerations seem to take into account the objects of fear (is it a thing that it’s reasonable to be frightened of?) and the manner in which one manages the fear (is carrying bear spray a reasonable precaution while avoiding the woods entirely is unreasonable?). The motivations matter, too. Bravery doesn’t arise from shame, a desire for honor, a desire to escape reproach,¹⁶ emotion,¹⁷ naive hope,¹⁸ or ignorance of the circumstances.

Aristotle’s characterization of the state of mind constituting courage is precise and nuanced,¹⁹ and he insists that it should not be confused with related dispositions that miss the mark even ever so slightly. The brave person’s motive is crucial. Brave people are subject to all of the influences that afflict other people, but their choices of actions aim at what is fine – that is, morally admirable – not glory or revenge, or willingness to die because death is not as bad as protracted pain, poverty, or thwarted passion.²⁰

Cultivating courage

All of this may be interesting enough as a tool for reflection. It’s instructive to find out why we may fall short of the virtue of courage despite feeling fearless: for example the soldier who fights because he is compelled by the order of a commanding officer, not because of courage,²¹ or the hopeful person who is confident only because she’s been in some dangerous situations and has never suffered harm.²² But Aristotle’s criteria set a high standard, and setting out the ways in which courage differs from ‘excessive confidence’, rashness, or an impulsive rush to meet danger doesn’t provide much enlightenment on how to move from these states to genuine bravery.  

It must be emphasized that Aristotle’s works are not self-help books. Unless you’ve had the kind of habituation that fosters the development of the virtues, you’ll need to look elsewhere for a how-to manual. And of the virtues, courage imposes particularly tough demands. Even if your early upbringing focused on ‘What kind of person should this child become?’ and resulted in your growing up to be even-tempered, patient, generous, friendly, truthful, modest, fair-minded, temperate in your habits, and even witty,²³ none of these other characteristics carries the expectation that you be willing and able to meet danger without quailing or quitting.²⁴

Aristotelian courage is not easily transferrable to the modern social context, however compelling (or not) we may find the strict and systematic treatment of this virtue and the many ways of not getting it right. Is courage truly essential to good character and a good life? If you know that you lack it, avoidance may be the answer and you may never be tested. If you’re even-tempered, generous, honest, congenial and so forth and have managed to have a successful and happy life without having to be brave very often, then is there any reason you should subject yourself to frightening things?

Yet one of Aristotle’s claims about the relation between virtues is worth taking seriously. He regarded the virtues as linked with one another, inasmuch as each is a manifestation of what he called ‘practical wisdom’ in various spheres of our lives.²⁵ We may not agree with his account of the tightness of that connection, since he supposed that no one is ever completely generous, truthful or witty without being completely courageous as well. It might nonetheless be true that awareness of our competence in the exercise of some virtues empowers us to further develop others where we feel less confidence. Confidence in one’s efforts in other areas, strengthened by everyday successes, builds a sense of agency. Our lives don’t just happen to us: we can exercise some control in how we react to situations. Understanding that the threat posed by creepy lurkers may not warrant an extreme reaction, or that a full-blown and ongoing fear of rocky hiking trails may require a new plan of action, is the first step in exercising the proper degree of caution. The confidence obtained from recognition of our own success in other efforts (say, controlling our tendency to be irritated with lazy people) may help us to better manage our fear – not by avoiding the fearful situations, but by disciplining the fears whose objects or degree may be contrary to practical reason. We can do this because we know that we’ve successfully overcome other vices, such as irritability. The virtues in which we find ourselves lacking can be improved and even substantially boosted ‘with a little help from their friends’ – that is, the other virtues in whose exercise we are more capable.

Avoidance as a strategy

Cultivating courage in the manner just described may seem to be a lot of work, so perhaps it’s no surprise that people often adopt a different strategy. It’s one thing to avoid the things we fear because they are genuinely dangerous. It’s quite another to engage in excessive avoidance strategies, not because we wish to avoid dangers but because we doubt our capacity to adequately cope with the fear we feel about them.

Perhaps you take precautions to minimize your risk of crime, accidents, storms, fires, illness, or bears. Or you may be far more likely to worry about social blunders or failure at work than about external physical threats. Even occurrences and circumstances that are widely shared (such as the ailments associated with advancing age) or inevitable (death) are feared by many, and few people are never afraid of anything.

Two common ways people deal with fear are avoidance of situations that cause it, and for circumstances that they can’t avoid, preventing the feared occurrence from taking place. Recall the three individuals described at the beginning of this essay. Lucille, who is afraid of rocky hiking trails, chooses her routes carefully and declines some invitations. Troy, who has discovered he’s scared to attempt a water rescue, has decided that while he’s on a weekend retreat with colleagues at a seaside resort, he won’t mention that he has a lifesaving certification. Edna tells her story about the man in hairy-animal pants for a laugh, but she is now extremely cautious about going anywhere alone, even in the daytime.

While such strategies may work, they aren’t optimal. Forming a habit of behavior to avert anxiety-producing circumstances invites dependence on the habit and potential anxiety in circumstances when it can’t be performed. Secondly, avoiding risks often entails missing out on new experiences and new skills. Finally, it reinforces your signal to yourself that the situation you’re avoiding is something unpleasant or scary. So each time the situation arises and you react to it, the avoidance becomes further entrenched.²⁶

It’s not unreasonable to fear disease, harm to someone you love, the destruction of treasured objects, or failure. In fearing some things, you aren’t ‘letting yourself down’. Fearing poor management of your fears, however, is different. So even if avoidance strategies were always feasible (and they aren’t, of course), using such strategies to excess in ways that make you unhappy with yourself is undesirable.

From habit to virtue

A person may possess a multitude of virtues, yet fall short on courage. The sticking point is the difficulty of cultivating virtue while subject to fear. Even if the person were to temporarily set aside courage and choose to focus first on other virtues, that task itself may call for … courage. (Suppose the exercise of honesty requires speaking frankly to a person in a position of authority who is not inclined to treat her subordinates kindly.) The goal is to fully internalize the virtue, to the extent that it’s part of one’s temperament.

It’s possible to overturn habits that have been adopted to cope with anxiety, which instead reinforce the pattern of avoidance. A person can start by identifying the behavior, the circumstances that cause it and the strategy that he or she has been using, then focus on changing one type of behavior at a time.²⁷ Performing the scary task over and over until it’s no longer stressful is sometimes all that’s needed; where fears have been exacerbated by one’s  real or perceived inadequacies (for example poor agility or slow reflexes) the person may wish to seek help.²⁸

I’d like to offer an alternative suggestion – not merely in an effort to divert the attention of the person suffering from fear or anxiety, although that is one intended aim.

Right now, many are plagued by worries about the state of their community, their nation and the planet. There’s climate change, genocide, wars of conquest called by other names, people fleeing hardship with no place to go, a whole spectrum of sexual exploitation, and the rapid erosion of norms that we used to take for granted. People still give time and money to organizations dedicated to combating these problems, with varying degrees of confidence about their likelihood of success. But even when we’re alert and alarmed, we may pay less attention, attend events less often and write fewer e-mails because it feels futile. We may be afraid for our local or global communities, but the threats aren’t proximate enough to stir us to act with urgency, especially when only a few others are responding. Responses to prolonged crises such as global warming require more of us than periodic bouts of activism; it’s the periods in between that erode enthusiasm and impede progress. Even looming, immediate dangers that scare the bejeebers out of us do not necessarily prompt us to action. What can we do about an imminent hurricane or a new disease besides batten down the hatches and follow instructions?

I think there is a subtle difference between the kind of impotence and futility felt in the face of such a threat, and the kind that besets us in political contexts. While the damage set in train by a political party and its figurehead or a multinational trend such as the degradation of higher education²⁹ may not scare us with the same kind of immediacy, it is ongoing and calls for unremitting vigilance. But because the damage is neither sudden nor inexorable, it’s easy to ignore the threat or postpone taking action – and therein lies the danger.

Political action is group action, with all of the inherent difficulties of agreeing on goals, priorities, strategies, and what is acceptable in the pursuit of the goal. Even if the group has resolved these matters, the courage required for political struggle is as real and as essential to success as the courage called for in personal, individual efforts, including the maintenance of equanimity in the face of the real and imagined risks of daily life. Getting involved in politics (volunteering with a political group or party, taking part in a demonstration or event, running for office) carries the risk of harms just as grave as those resulting from a skiing accident, heart attack, armed assault, or bear encounter. 

The good news is that it need not be that dangerous for everyone. The more people who become involved in a political effort, the greater your chances of being able to find a role that suits your comfort zone for risk, and to play an active role without being tear-gassed or arrested.

Conclusion

Cultivating collective hope and a sense of collective agency allows us to manage our collective fears, if these are the proper objects of fear. Where people take action to oppose unacceptable states of affairs, forms of governance, or institutions that violate essential principles or norms, it is vital that the opposition is sustained by continued engagement.

Meanwhile, what about the bears?

Fear can make difficult tasks more difficult. It can hang around, lurking by the back door even when there’s no obvious danger, and surface when it’s least expected.  It can interfere with ordinary life, occupying time wondering about the likelihood of horrific scenarios that you’d be powerless to prevent. If asked whether I’m afraid of bears, the answer is no. Bears do not pose a risk to me, my family or most of my friends. Would I be afraid of bears if the chance of encountering one increases? Yes, but I’m not going to skip a trip to Alaska because I anticipate that I’d find a close encounter of the ursine kind frightening. The more I cultivate my capacity for agency – acting in the world, instead of just letting the world happen to me – the more confidence I have in my ability to manage even fear properly.

Being at a political demonstration with hundreds of like-minded people is not just exhilarating but empowering. In that social and political context – the macrocosm – determination and purpose are reinforced when people come together with a common set of aims. You feel that you can do collectively what felt impossible alone. And in the microcosm of internal psychological struggles, courage seems more attainable when other virtues have seen you through daunting situations. (Perhaps you resisted the temptation to quit when challenged; or you told the truth when the truth was potentially embarrassing.) In both the individual and the community, virtue gets by with some help from its friends.

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Photo credits

Danger, cliff edge, by Andrew Martin from Pixabay

Sigourney Weaver in Alien helmet, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation/Photofest

People on a beach, by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay

Richard M. Nixon, 9 July 1972, United States Federal Government, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Belgian Lion, Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. The lion represented the coastal lowland region of northern Europe (now Belgium Luxembourg, and the Netherlands).

Hartz Peak, Tasmania by Dirk Baltzly

A girl and her dog, Ukraine, 2022, by Elena Tita, The Collection of War Photos, Ukraine

UNRWA shelter, Gaza, Palestine, October 2024, by Khalid Kwaik on Unsplash

Black bear, Squamish, British Columbia, Canada, 21 October 2025, from the collection curated by Stuart Beed

Citation

Please cite as: Miller, L. Elaine, ‘How to be Brave’, It Could Be Words (blog), 12 December 2025, https://it-could-be-words.com/how-to-be-brave

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1. They were chiefly Australians, plus a few Americans. It was not a statistically rigorous survey in any way. ↩︎
2. The American Psychological Association defines a phobia as ‘an anxiety disorder characterized by a marked and persistent fear of a specific object, activity, or situation’ and which is ‘excessive or unreasonable’: https://dictionary.apa.org/specific-phobia
   ↩︎
3. Or death, whether or not accompanied by suffering. ↩︎
4. For some, the word ‘virtue’ has old-fashioned connotations. I trust that you, dear reader, will be able to avoid thinking of prim standards of conduct whose anticipated disregard prompts the clutching of pearls.  ↩︎
5. These may be outcomes that are beneficial to one’s local community, to the environment, to a group to which the person feels an affinity or obligation (e.g. fellow citizens of a nation or members of a religious faith), to future generations, or to some other group or entity. ↩︎
6. Or good-natured humility, if you like. ↩︎
7. It may not be easy to see how this is action-guiding, and indeed it may appear circular to someone seeking a decision procedure to apply. But if virtue consists of having formed habits of behavior to fulfill the ‘right desire’ for the ‘right reason’, the decision procedure should emerge fairly smoothly in each set of circumstances for the virtuous person. See Nafsika Athanassoulis, ‘Virtue Ethics’, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ISSN 2161-0002, https://iep.utm.edu/virtue/, 23 October 2025. ↩︎
8. ‘Habituation’, as an element in a person’s development of a moral virtue, is not simply the forming of a habit or a disposition. The person is much more active in his receptiveness to the virtue: see Joe Sachs, ‘Aristotle: Ethics’, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ISSN 2161-0002, https://iep.utm.edu/aristotle-ethics/#H1, 28 October 2025. Nor is virtue simply a kind of knowledge: see Richard Kraut, ‘Aristotle’s Ethics’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2022/entries/aristotle-ethics/, 28 October 2025. ↩︎
9. The benefits of maintaining equanimity are particularly apparent in social contexts, although Aristotle does not provide justifications based on psychological advantages. ↩︎
10. The list also includes some qualities that few laypersons today would recognize as central to good character. These include, for example, ‘magnificence’ and ‘liberality’ (virtues concerned with behavior regarding the giving, taking, spending and sharing of money), ‘proper ambition’ (pride), and ‘greatness of soul’ (an understanding of one’s own excellence that allows and compels one to recognize and claim just what one deserves – no more and no less). While the list is a product of its time, there are intriguing and persuasive arguments for each of Aristotle’s virtues. Whether or not these virtues continue to cast shadows to this day for the person more concerned with practical guidance, they deserve fuller explanations than are possible here. For further investigation, see Rosalind Hursthouse and Glen Pettigrove, ‘Virtue Ethics’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2023 Edition), Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman (eds.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2023/entries/ethics-virtue/. For a detailed treatment of Aristotle’s ethics see Howard J. Curzer, Aristotle and the Virtues, Oxford University Press, 2012, particularly ‘Introduction’ and Chapter 2, ‘Courage and Continence’. ↩︎
11. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin, Hackett Publishing Company, 1985, Chapter 7, 1115a10. ↩︎
12. Nicomachean Ethics,1115a30. ↩︎
13. Nicomachean Ethics, 1115b10. ↩︎
14. Nicomachean Ethics, 1115b30. ↩︎
15. Nicomachean Ethics, 1115b35. ↩︎
16. Nicomachean Ethics, 1116a20. ↩︎
17. Nicomachean Ethics, 1116b25. ↩︎
18. Nicomachean Ethics, 1117a9. ↩︎
19. And far more detailed than my brief treatment permits, even in the Nichomachean Ethics’ very short section on courage. ↩︎
20. See Nicomachean Ethics, 1116a10. ↩︎
21. Nicomachean Ethics, 116a30. ↩︎
22. Nicomachean Ethics, 117a12. ↩︎
23. This is not an exhaustive list of the virtues. ↩︎
24. However, one’s honesty may result in situations calling for courage, or quick thinking and the exercise of wit. ↩︎
25. Phronēsis, sometimes termed ‘intelligence’ to distinguish practical, deliberative reasoning from ‘wisdom’ (sophia), which concerns universal truths: see Terence Irwin’s translation (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Hackett Publishing Company, 1985, Glossary (pp. 411–12 and 432) for a helpful starting point. ↩︎
26. Bridget Flynn Walker, ‘The trap of avoidance and safety behaviors’, Psychology Today, 26 May 2023, https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/anxiety-relief-for-kids-and-teens/202305/the-trap-of-avoidance-and-safety-behaviors. ↩︎
27. Ibid. ↩︎
28. I am uncomfortably aware that such efforts may be limited by circumstances such as income and geographic location, and that ‘seek help’ may sound like a glib suggestion if there’s little help available. ↩︎
29. Centrally, the deliberate defunding of the humanities and propagation of the idea that history, philosophy, politics, languages, and literature and the other arts are not as important as studies directly aimed towards material advancements.  ↩︎