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Irwin explains in his introduction that “brave people are appropriately afraid of serious danger, and if the cause is not worth the danger they withdraw; but when the cause justifies their standing firm, their fear is not so strong that they have to struggle against it” (xviii).
When Aristotle claims, then that courage is a state that finds the intermediate mark between two extremes in heroic, mortal situations in battle, he is not attempting to give a formula which is satisfied by all and only courageous actions so much as delineating the extreme or maximal instance of the trait, which is what anyone who was striving to attain the virtue would aim at. This goal then becomes that with respect to which anything is properly judged courageous or not: roughly when someone is aiming to acquire the virtue, his action counts as courageous if it is the sort of thing that he would do in those circumstances, if he were on a path taking him to the ideal of courage. Thus, whenever someone does something in circumstances where fear and boldness come into play, he is potentially performing a courageous sort of action: it is so, if it is the sort of action that would be taken by him if he were on the path to displaying courage in the ideal sense.-Pakaluk
Aristotle doesn't really give us a real definition, instead he gives a few examples of brave actions:
Book III, Chapter 6, Sections 5-10
This example is solely about soldiers in battle.
Book III, Chapter 7, Sections 2-6
Book III, Chapter 9, Sections 1-2
Aristotle, when discussing the aims and ends of bravery, mentions that, “Every activity aims at actions in accord with the state of character. Now to the brave person bravery is fine; hence the end it aims at is also fine, since each thing is defined by its end. The brave person, then, aims at the fine when he stands firm and acts in accord with bravery” (1115b, 20).
We cannot know what a brave action is unless we are first brave.
Book III, Chapter 8
In his book, Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics an introduction, Michael Pakaluk suggests the same; “Aristotle thinks that the aim for which a courageous act is properly done sets it apart from other, spurious forms of courage” (165). It seems then that we need to now identify the aim or goal that is proper to bravery. Once we have the correct goal in mind, we can use it to assess our actions in order to determine whether they coincide with Aristotle’s notion of true courage
Bravery of citizens - Sections 1-3
-Compelled by Superiors - Sections 4-5
Experience - Sections 6-9
Spirit - Sections 10-12
Hope - Sections 13-15
Ignorance - Section 16