Come on, let's (re)motivate ourselves ! We roll up our sleeves, we gather our strength, we puff out our chests, we stay the course ! We'll get there ! It's not the first time we've faced difficulties... And fear does not prevent danger. So, there is no reason not to dare. Besides, what do we have to lose, other than an opportunity to be brave, strong, determined, enduring, resilient, valiant... ?
Is this what we call courage ?
On the border between moral value and soft-skill, courage is increasingly valued in the business world. But what exactly does this notion cover? The EVE webmagazine investigated...
From the heart to the work
An extra soul and/or the phantasmagoria of heroism ?
Courage is on the side of the heart. Etymologically, to begin with : it comes from the Latin cor when it is necessary to designate, around the eleventh century, what in Greek antiquity was called " fortitude ", " bravery ", " heroism " or " virility " (andreio), in reference, for example, to the Homeric exploits of Ulysses or to the Platonic dialogues that were not afraid of rhetorical skirmishes.
In Roman Antiquity, on the other hand, what we call courage today would rather be synonymous with " animo ", where we find the idea of a soul that transcends (a spiritual supplement allowing the human to surpass himself, even to get closer — from afar, all the same — to divine power), of a spirit endowed with higher moral and intellectual faculties than the average but also that of making (himself) alive through powerful actions.
There is no doubt that courage is immediately invested by its etymology of a prohibitive valorization of extraordinary souls, those that are instilled in the bodies and hearts of humans apart, as if possessed by the duty to inscribe their lives in prowess, at the same time as they are endowed with the exclusive capacities to achieve ambitious goals.
This is enough to instil confidence in those who vibrate beyond simple physiological breathing and want to work to change the world. This is also enough to feed the megalomania of self-appointed heroes, self-persuaded champions, aspiring giants and other gurus of all kinds.
Giving meaning (or transcendence) to one's existence
But before we are concerned about the undesirable effects of the value of courage when it is misunderstood, let us look at its conception at the dawn of the " time of cathedrals ".
We are in the eleventh century : the Chanson de Roland cites courage, when it extols the merits of those (not yet those) who do not give in to the weaknesses of the all-too-human human (sorry for the anachronism), know how to look into the distance, do not expect a return on investment on their efforts, do not hesitate to sacrifice it for the cause. Whether it is a question of going to war or of pleasing a King or soon a gallant.
Epic, chivalrous and seductive, courage will have to earn its letters of nobility to mobilize the ardor for work of those (not yet those) who will participate in building monumental works whose completion they will never see in their lifetime. It takes constancy and willpower to cut stones and assemble them one by one according to the plans of a building that will not be inaugurated until 2 or 3 centuries later, well after his own death.
Courage goes beyond biological life. He will look for what, much later, we will call the meaning of existence : each stone laid is a consolidation of oneself in the face of the fear of finitude. We are not looking for immediate recognition, but we are committed to the more than collective project of plurisecularity. Courage settles in the belief that we have something to leave to the future, this abstraction of which we know nothing of the realities, whose disasters we refuse to consider (the unthinkable of a nuclear bomb ravaging the living as well as buildings without distinction, the ruin of a cultural heritage by a small number of radicalized individuals, the subjugating fire of a cathedral).
No matter : courage is heart and work. What I give today because I am convinced that it has its greatest necessity and its place in the future is enough for me to devote myself (without counting or almost) to the task. Is it because I put (almost) all my soul into it!! All of Marie Jahoda's work on the latent functions of work attests to this: working is not just about giving one's time for reward. It is also (among other things) investing in something that matters... But it cannot be counted.
Modern courage: a valiant being-self
The Challenge of Courage : Identifying What's Right
The highly esteemed value of courage, that indecipherable value of the devoted soul carrying a sense of sacrifice (or at the very least of putting the individual in the background of the ideal), appropriation of the codes of time as it goes to identify how far to go too far and dynamics of beliefs is inscribed, in the course of history, in an ambiguous relationship to authority. To be courageous, is it to be in the ethics of responsibility or in the ethics of conviction, to paraphrase Rocard paraphrasing Weber ?
Although binary, the distinction has the merit of emphasizing that in the test of reality, courage is not necessarily transgressive. It takes courage, of course, to defy the norm, to disobey authority, to take risks by refusing to submit and/or by defying the prohibition. Perhaps it is also necessary to accept concessions, to set aside one's interests or, on the contrary, to put them ahead of one's values in the name of priorities that seem appropriate (protecting one's children, preserving jobs in one's company) or imperative necessities (escaping danger, for example).
In their book 7 superpowers to develop cooperation (Ed. Fil Rouge 2021) which designates Wonder Woman (the real one, eh, not the one with the Superwoman complex) to carry the cause of courage, Julien Ohana and Charlotte Ringrave write that " courage is guided by what is right ". Referring to Confucius and then Descartes, the authors concede a strong moral dimension to courage... But which would not be enough to designate the courageous by a noble soul, free of contexts and dilemmas, because this noble soul would guarantee the individual who would always stand on the " good " side anyway, without having to think about it again. These " fearless " people of making mistakes are either inactive, dogmatic, or devoid of contact with the world, or all three at the same time
Courage in humility, a paradox ?
In the same chapter of their book, Ohana and Ringrave warn of the risks that the " fearless " pose to themselves and others. He affirms that " Courage does not exist without fear ", a fear that the authors place on the side of positive psychology. In other words, there is a " knowing how to be afraid ", a soft-skill in itself, which is at the crossroads of self-knowledge (one's values, interests, but also one's limits, one's flaws) and the fine perception of one's environment (what context, which protagonists, what issues, what needs ? what other points of view ?).
But then, to access courage, you have to go through humility ? This is perhaps counterintuitive, as courage has been presented to us as a narcissistic heroism, leading us more to megalomaniac temptations than to well-ordered modesty! However, Ohana and Ringrave are categorical : there can be no authentic courage without maintaining a relationship with the world infused with doubt, concern, acceptance of difference (including in terms of defining what is right or wrong), openness to dialogue...
All of us courageous
Finding " his " courage
Ohana and Ringrave's approach invites us to find our courage. Our inner courage, first of all.
Let the values that drive us resonate . Let us listen, without judging ourselves or trying to conform, to what our heart has to tell us about what matters deeply to us: ambition, love, money, autonomy, benevolence, competition, comfort, curiosity, righteousness, empathy, fairness, frankness, generosity, humor, imagination, freedom, loyalty, self-control, Optimism, pleasure, power, prudence, respect, security, spontaneity, tradition, work, etc. ?
No one but oneself needs to know what makes one or the other vibrate. But everyone deserves to be clear about what drives them intimately, whether it seems " politically correct " or not.
Let us then turn our gaze outwards to identify what scares us (because it is normal – or at least cognitively inevitable – that the outside frightens us): the ambition of others that could shade us or undermine our " perimeter ", the emotional expressions that are unfamiliar to us, the behaviors that we do not understand, Convictions that we do not share, difficulties in " identifying " others and/or situations, conditions over which we have no control, loss of bearings, etc. ?
It is certainly not a pivot table or a perfect algorithm, but by comparing what leads us to surpass ourselves and what puts us off balance, we hold the beginning of our personal mapping of courage.
Giving courage to others and maintaining a courageous collective
Having courage for yourself is good. But how can we (re)boost the lives of others ? Because the courageous man or woman likes to lead others into the formidable adventure of the will to act in the direction of what is right.
It is in the pages written by Cynthia Fleury that we find the beginning of an answer : for the philosopher author of an essay with a pessimistic title (but with an optimistic message), La fin du courage (Fayard, 2010), many factors explain " discouragement " : loss of confidence, feeling of anomie, deterioration of motivation associated with a loss of meaning, but also deprivation of autonomy and the right to take risks when authority is too paternalistic, and replacement of the healthy " fear " essential to courage by a dull anxiety that slows down the momentum and desire to act.
The philosopher then invites us to " reinvent courage " : first by teaching it, not only at school, but throughout our lives ; in other words, to make it a continuous and renewed learning process. Secondly, by making it not an individual matter but a resolutely interactional one: courage is nourished by relationships, provided that they are authentic (and not made up of role-playing as it happens, especially in the professional world, that one forces oneself to mask one's being-self in order to indulge in the comedy of falsified appearances and postures). These relationships must also allow the expression of fear and be respectful of values, even in difficult times, especially in times of tension or conflict. Finally, courage calls for solidarity and cooperation, to maintain an inclusive collective, strong from these moments of sharing (of points of view, sense of belonging, common experiences) and thus strengthened when it is necessary to face adversity.
