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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4237359" data-attributes="member: 4937">Compared to Pemerton?  Probably not very well.I know how it is commonly defined.  Doing something courageously is of no credit to you if the thing you believe to be correct is not in fact correct.  There is no reason to celebrate boldly doing evil.  Self-sacrifice is not inherently virtuous either.  People have great value.  If you sacrifice yourself for a wicked cause, not only have you perpetrated a great wickedness, but you've deprived the world of yourself.  Only sacrificing for a good cause is virtuous.A great deal of evil has been done with great courage.  I have a hard time imagining you can't think of cases were it would have been better were a people less brave and less willing to put themselves at great personal risk.  That evil was done with great courage did not make it less evil.  Courage to do good is a good thing.  Courage to do evil is not.  To admire courage as a thing in and of itself would render some of the most despicable of people admirable.  Courage makes the list of attributes of the worst sorts of sociopathy.I'm reminded of the often misattributed and sometimes bantered slogan, "Dissent is the highest form of Patriotism."  That phrase contains the same sort of mistake.  Just because it sometimes takes courage to dissent doesn't render dissent a virtue.  Whether dissent is a virtue or a vice depends on whether you are advocating right or dissenting from right.I think before you can claim something as a virtue it must by its nature distinguish the virtuous from the depraved.  There is nothing wrong with having a virtue based view of the world, but I do think the trick is discerning what is truly virtuous from the merely celebrated.</blockquote>

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