The field of mindfulness and the emerging science of heroism have a common interest in the causes and conditions of selfless altruism though up to this point there has been little cross-pollination. However, there is increasing evidence that mindfulness training delivers heroically relevant qualities such as increased attentional functioning, enhanced primary sensory awareness, greater conflict monitoring, increased cognitive control, reduced fear response, and an increase in loving kindness and self-sacrificing behaviors. Predicated on the notion of a “no self,” traditional (...) mindfulness and its focus on enlightenment and selfless service may in fact be ideally suited to the development of the elusive “trait” (predictable) versus “state” (intermittent) heroic character. Interweaving observations and questions drawn from the science of heroism, the article explores the relevant theory, practices, and scientific outcomes of mindfulness. It finds that there is evidence that heroically relevant qualities are trainable with the suite of mindfulness techniques and that an enduring experience of selflessness and service of others (the enlightened hero) may well be within the grasp of the serious practitioner. (shrink)

Such a bewildering and contradictory welter of behaviors and traits are connoted by “honor” and its best equivalents in other languages that analyses of the concept have daunted philosophers, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, historians, and literary scholars for millennia. Is it an external good given — and revoked just as easily — by others? Or does “honor” name an inner good that’s absolutely in our control: our integrity, our very commitment to right conduct? Is honor a central moral virtue — (...) as when we might say that “all was lost, save our honor”? Or is it a good quality that’s not-quite “moral,” or indeed even an antiquated virtue hostile to true morality? Is the honorable man a heroic figure who protects the weak, or one who can be expected to bully the weak, as in the case of “honor killings”? Is honor aristocratic and inegalitarian, and thus a virtue that enables and ennobles what’s essentially oppression? Or is honor a signal virtue of fair-dealing, fair-fighting, and fair competition, as evidenced in sportsmanship? (shrink)

The sacrifices of nurses in hard-hit cities during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic and of family caregivers for people with late-stage Alzheimer’s disease present two puzzles. First, traditional accounts of supererogation cannot allow for the possibility of making enormous sacrifices that make one’s actions supererogatory simply to do what morality requires. These caregivers, however, are doing their moral duty, yet their actions also seem to be paradigmatic cases of supererogation. I argue that Dale Dorsey’s new account of supererogation (...) can solve this puzzle. Second, these caregivers often deny that they are heroic, but standard explanations of these assertions either diminish their sacrifice, say they are confused, or attribute to them a vice. If we want to understand them without diminishing them, we should instead see their denials as a response to what Beth DeVolder calls compulsory heroism. Compulsory heroism occurs when someone is foisted into the role of hero for doing their moral duty as a distraction from the social realities that make doing their duty involve inordinate sacrifice. (shrink)

Humanitarian aid workers typically reject the accolade of hero as both untrue and undesirable. Untrue when they claim not to be acting beyond the call of duty, and undesirable so far as celebrating heroism risks elevating “heroic” choices over safer, and perhaps wiser ones. However, this leaves unresolved a tension between the denial of heroism and a sense in which certain humanitarian acts really appear heroic. And, the concern that in rejecting the aspiration to heroism an opportunity (...) is lost to inspire more and better humanitarian action. Having set out this problem in more detail in Part I, the argument in Part II will suggest that a virtue ethics approach to humanitarian moral obligations can make good sense of our intuitions concerning the role of heroism in humanitarian action. In Part III I will argue that at least “professional” humanitarians, instead of rejecting heroism, should aim to be heroes, in the sense of displaying a virtue of humanity in high-stakes contexts, because this is consistent with the aim of humanitarian action. Finally, some lingering problems of demandingness and motivation are considered. (shrink)

With the emergence of the science of heroism there now exists both theoretical and empirical literature on the characteristics of our everyday hero. We seek to expand this inquiry and ask what could be the causes and conditions of a superhero. To address this we investigate the origins of mindfulness, Buddhist psychology and the assertion that its practitioners who have attained expertise in mindfulness practices can develop supernormal capabilities. Examining first their foundational eight “jhana” states (levels of attention) and (...) the six consequent “abhinnas” (siddhis or special abilities) that arise from such mental mastery, we then explore any evidence that mindfulness practices have unfolded the supernormal potential of its practitioners. We found a growing base of empirical literature suggesting some practitioners exhibit indicators of enhanced functioning including elevated physical health and resistance to disease, increased immunity to aging and improved cognitive processing, greater resilience and fearlessness, more self-less and pro-social behaviors, some control over normally autonomic responses, and possibly some paranormal functionality. These improvements in normal human functioning provide some evidence that there are practices that develop these abilities, and as such we might want to consider adopting them to develop this capability. There are however insufficient studies of expert meditators and more research of adepts is called for that explores the relationship between levels of attentional skill and increases in functionality. We propose in search of the superhero, that if conventional mindfulness training can already augment mental and physical capabilities, a more serious inquiry and translation of its advanced methods into mainstream psychological theory is warranted. (shrink)

In this entry I will introduce two such puzzles that relate to the heroic actions and testimony. I will first introduce the basic idea of supererogation and why some heroic actions give us reason to accept the existence of supererogatory actions. I will then introduce the problem that supererogation raises for moral theory and explain the main responses that have been offered to this problem. I will then explain two related problems that arise from the way that heroes describe their (...) actions and explore how moral philosophers might respond to these problems. (shrink)

It is possible to survey humankind and be proud, even to smile, for we accomplish great things. Art and science are two notable worthy human accomplishments. Consonant with art and science are some of the ways we treat each other. Sacrifice and heroism are two admirable human qualities that pervade human interaction. But, as everyone knows, all this goodness is more than balanced by human depravity. Moral corruption infests our being. Why?

Over the past few decades, scholars have reassessed the role of amour-propre in Rousseau’s thought. While it was once believed that he had an entirely negative valuation of the emotion, it is now widely held that he finds it useful and employs it to strengthen moral attachments, conjugal love, civic virtue and moral heroism. At the same time, scholars are divided as to whether this positive amour-propre is an antidote to the negative or dangerous form. Some scholars are confident (...) that ‘inflamed’ amour-propre can be overcome while others adopt a more fatalistic view. While mindful of Rousseau’s pessimism in his most famous works, this essay seeks to identify a middle position. By contending Rousseau’s discussion of amour-propre is largely concerned with the problems surrounding identity construction in commercial, urban societies, it will be argued that amour-propre can be lessened to manageable levels in more rural societies, that is, agrarian provincial life. (shrink)

The aim of the research is to show the need to defend the prosaic reconfiguration of humanity that we set up every day by using temporary resources. This implies to discuss the overvalued achievements of the philosophies that advocate a direct encounter with our raw reality, or that defend an absolutist project of construction of the being of man that ends by suffocating him instead of offering any kind of salvation. The hypothesis states that the possibility of existence of man, (...) understood as the existence of a sense of the human — and, consequently, of a world with a meaning for man — depends on that prosaic configuration of our home that we have to reenact every morning. The development of meaningful worlds — that exist only as long as man exists, and vice versa — is achieved through symbolic resources, such as the metaphor or the concept. This allows us to replace one thing with another, merrily deferring the direct encounter with our constitutive ontological problematicity. To think man's reality is philosophically bearable only through metaphors and concepts, that is, by spreading a mundane prose that does not, that cannot and that should not come to an end. This in spite of the vocation for epic heroism that characterizes philosophy, and in spite of its temerarious impulse to dive into the depths in order to face what we directly cannot speak of, not without becoming speechless. (shrink)

I wholeheartedly sympathize conceptually with Coeckelbergh’s paper. The dialectical relationship between vulnerability and technology constitutes the core of Hegel’s Master and Slave. Yet, the empirical dimension is underdeveloped and Coeckelbergh’s ideas could profit from exposure to case studies. Building on a movie/novel devoted to vulnerability coping and living with ICT, I challenge the claim that modern heroism entails overcoming vulnerability with the help of enhancement and computers.

Do moral obligations include all the good that can be possibly achieved? Does every instance of the good always entail obligatory performance? Supererogation is a moral concept that tries to address this claim, by pointing out the existence of a category of morally relevant good acts that go beyond the call of duty. Paradigmatic examples of this category of acts are represented by deeds of heroism and sanctity, where the agent is sacrificing herself in order to benefit the others (...) in an exemplary way. However, supererogation is not limited to extreme and utmost cases of generosity, but it has much to do with our everyday life. From a moral point of view, making a small donation to the local children‘s hospital is considered to be morally good, but optional. (shrink)

This article sheds light on moral education from an exemplarist perspective. Following Linda Zagzebski's Exemplarist Virtue Theory, we relate several fundamental exemplarist intuitions to the classical virtue ethical debate over the unity-disunity of the virtues, to endorse a pluralistic exemplar-based approach to moral education ("Empe"). After a few preliminary remarks, we argue that Empe amounts to defending "a prima facie" disunitarist perspective in moral theory, which admits both exemplarity in all respects (moral sainthood) and single-domain exemplarity (moral heroism). Then, (...) we evaluate the effectiveness of heroes and saints for moral education, according to four criteria derived from Empe. This analysis allows us to conclude that moral education should value both kinds of exemplars and, therefore, adopt weaker standards of exemplarity than the unitarist's ones. (shrink)

The developers of Red Hook Studios’ 2016 gothic horror game ‘Darkest Dungeon’ said that they wanted to ‘capture the human response to stress’. This paper analyses how the game does this with its ‘stress’, ‘affliction’ and ‘virtue’ mechanics. With reference to research literature on stress, I show how these mechanics, which could easily have been cheap gimmicks, approach the topic of stress with admirable detail, offering a complex reflection on the various aspects, positive and negative, of several possible human responses (...) to stress. They show how different responses include similar symptoms, how stress impacts the people around the stressed person, and make the case that stress can break people, but also fuel heroism. It is a fantastic example of how video game mechanics can be used to educate people about complex subjects without explicitly saying this is what they’re doing. (shrink)

Presupposing that our consideration of ethical issues can be enriched by examining literary works, this paper focuses on Marsha Norman's play ‘night, Mother. The play describes the last hour and a half in the life of Jessie, a young woman who decides to die by suicide. Before ending her life, Jessie explains to her mother her reasons for her suicide. In the context of the play, these are presented as quite weighty and as, perhaps, justifying her decision. Scholarly research on (...) the play has also treated Jessie's suicide favorably. In this paper I argue that Jessie, and people in similar conditions, are wrong to die by suicide. Among other points, I criticize Jessie's arguments from the impossibility to improve life; the assured termination of suffering; the badness of the world; and the right for suicide. I also criticize arguments in the scholarly literature that view Jessie's suicide favorably, such as the arguments from independence, heroism, authenticity, and emotional closeness. (shrink)

Considers the paradox of demonstrative retreat from public life, as illustrated by scenes like Sen. Ep. 78.20f. and Epict. 3.22.23 with ailing philosophers almost scurrilously eager to display their heroism. Why would a philosopher want to withdraw and, at the same time, make a show of his withdrawal? How can this kind of exemplarity fulfill its therapeutic function? And how is this kind of communication, with one’s back turned to the audience, as it were, supposed to work? Tacitus’ narrative (...) of Thrasea Paetus’ end in the Annales (16.22ff.) is analyzed as illustrating this form of communication and compared with a similar communication strategy of Seneca’s Epistulae morales as a document of exemplary withdrawal. Concentric circles of audiences and interactors are layered around the role model, and he reader is pulled into the center of the circle, into direct contact with the exemplum. The way in which this happens determines the reader’s role in the story and thus the import the role model. (shrink)

My project examines the pedagogical approach of the Stoic Epictetus by focusing on seven vital lessons he imparts. This study will deepen our understanding of his vocation as a Stoic educator striving to free his students from the fears and foolishness that hold happiness hostage. These lessons are (1) how freedom, integrity, self-respect, and happiness interrelate; (2) real versus fake tragedy and real versus fake heroism; (3) the instructive roles that various animals play in Stoic education; (4) athleticism, sport, (...) and game-playing as analogies for striving to live virtuously; (5) place, time, and progress in the journey to self-realization; (6) how to live with death and exit life fearlessly; (7) how teaching wisdom is one of several ways the Stoic sage loves others. (shrink)

The rise of constitutional self-government in early modern Europe, I argue, owes much to a nationalist liberation narrative pioneered by French Huguenot François Hotman in Francogallia (1573). In response to appeals by absolutist thinkers to Ro- man law, which put the power of the king beyond legal or constitutional restraint, Hotman wove together tales of the heroism of ancient Gauls and Franks wresting their native liberties back from the Romans with a theory of constitutionally limited government grounded in the (...) common law of France. This type of narrative was adapted by Dutch and English thinkers who sought to defend constitutionalism in their respective countries. Through this examination of early modern liberation narratives, I argue we can gain insight on the relationship between nationalism and resistance to autocratic governments and the formation of regimes consistent with the principles of constitutional self-government. (shrink)

The review of this anthology of essays shows the lifelessness of the contributors. They systematically misread everyone from Plato to Kierkegaard. The false ratiocination about love is also foregrounded in this review. Earlier this reviewer had the misfortune to review The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Death . Then an American cloistered Benedictine Abbot wrote to this author in an email this: ""Yes, indeed, the book is not very serious. When the authors die some day, they will understand better, (...) as we all shall see". And this same Abbot has written this after reading this review: "Yes, Professor, for some time now, our Western culture, having lost its reference to authentic Christianity, prefers to indulge in the self-pity of a kind of false heroism of resignation in the face of death. There is no sense of immortality, therefore, the modern Hamlet perceives himself as a tragic hero who glories in his empty agnosticism and admires his own resolution in the face of the inevitable. Neither East nor West ever really lived from such a Philosophy: only the decadent Christian or Jew. But the reality is elsewhere. Thanks. " It must be remarked I am just a tenured Assistant Professor but the Abbot does not listen. Further, this book along with that earlier book this author reviewed on the philosophy of death can now be contextualized in the light of the resurgence of Covid 19. Basic epidemiology says its going nowhere soon. Therefore everyone everywhere has experienced death in ways we never imagined. The contributors to this anthology too were too glib in their times. And now, they have experienced death. These books arise from loveless lives which hover around departmental chairs and absurd academic flip-flops to gain brownie points. Perhaps, they were all as prescient as the Abbot. The editor, for reasons known alone to him, has given the meaning of facile in square brackets. (shrink)