- Few concepts [as courage] are as useful for the analysis of the human
situation.
(p.13)
- For the failure to find a definition of courage [in Laches from Plato] as a
virtue among other virtues reveals a basic problem of human existence. It shows
that un understanding of courage presupposes an understanding of man and his
word, its structure and values. Only he who knows this knows what to affirm and
what to negate. The ethical question of the nature of courage leads inescapably
to the ontological question of the nature of being.
(p.14)
- The courage to be is the ethical act in which man affirms his own being in
spite of [underscored by YF] those elements of his existence which conflict
with his essential self
affirmation
(p.15)
- ...in the act of courage the most essential part if our being prevails against
the less essential.
(p.16)
- ... Courage could be defined as the universal knowledge of what is good and
evil, ...
(p.17)
- ... Courage listens to reason and carries out the intentions of the mind.
(p.20)
- ... the Stoic has a social and personal courage which is a real alternative to
Christian courage.
(p.22)
- One event especially gave the Stoics courage lasting power - the death of
Socrates [...] It showed the human situation in the face of fate and death.
It showed a courage which could affirm life because it could affirm death.
(p.22)
- The anxiety of fate and death controls the lives even of those who have lost
the will to live.
(p.23)
- The Stoic courage is, in the ontological as well as the moral sense, «courage
to be». It is based on the control of reason in man.
(p.23)
- The courage to be is the courage to affirm one's own reasonable nature over
against what is accidental in us.
(p.24)
- The decisive difference between both types of humanism [Stoic and Christian]
is the answer to the question whether being is essentially good or not.
(p.29)
- The first assertion about the nature of anxiety is this: anxiety is the state
in which a being is aware of its possible non-being.
(p.44)
- The basic anxiety, the anxiety of a finite being about the threat of non-being,
cannot be eliminated. It belongs to existence itself.
(p.48)
- Extreme situations are not reached frequently and perhaps they are never
reached by some people.
The purpose of an analysis of such a situation [ of despair ] is not to record
ordinary human experiences but to show extreme possibilities in the lights of
which the ordinary situations must be understood. We are not always aware of
our having to die, but in the light of the experience of our having to die our
whole life is experienced differently. In the same way the anxiety which is
despair is not alays present. But the rare occasions in which it is present
determine the interpretation of existence as a whole.
(p.63)
- Neurosis is the way of avoiding non-being by avoiding being.
[ underscored by the author]
(p.71)
- The courage to be is a function of vitality. Diminishing vitality consequently
entails diminishing courage.
(p.83)
(Edition Collins (GB) First published in 1952)
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