Cowardice

Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics linked cowardice with a lack of confidence . The opposite of cowardice, an excess of confidence, Aristotle considered recklessness , and the " golden mean ", courage , was characterized by a proper balance of confidence and fear ^[5] . In military affairs, however, the haste associated with recklessness is not considered as a serious flaw as cowardice, since it is easier for the commander to keep the excess of confidence under control, and the soldier who has made the reckless act is likely to die, and the coward will survive and continue to sow panic among others ^{[6 ]} .

Even nonviolent preachers thought cowardice was worse than violence. Gandhi in 1920 said: "When the choice is exclusively between violence and cowardice, I recommend violence." Martin Luther King also notes that cowardice is more evil than violence ^[7] .

In the Bible, cowardice is given little attention, even to such key Old Testament figures as Abraham ^[8] and David ^[9] . In the New Testament, synonyms of cowardice are very rare (a noun - once in 2 Tim. 1: 7 ), and always in a context that invites believers not to be afraid to witness the word of God ^[10] . At the same time, the New Testament describes cases of cowardice, examples are Pilate , frightened by the threats of the Jews (“If you let Him go, you are not a friend of Caesar” ^[11] ), and the apostle Peter , who for fear “forgot” about his meeting with Christ at the time of His arrest ^{[ 12]} . The almost unexpressed - but obvious - negative attitude to cowardice is manifested in biblical phraseological units , for example, Ukrainian. the smalivy yak of the saints Petro (“bold as Saint Peter”, that is, a coward) ^[12] . According to the remark of Yu. V. Shcherbatykh , “cowardice and selfishness do not belong to classical biblical sins, but they did much to ensure that other vices flourish” ^[13] . However, the Revelation of St. John the Evangelist begins the list of those whose fate during the end of the world will be the lake of fire ( Rev. 21: 8 ), with “fearful” ^[14] .

Islam condemns cowardice in battle in the most cruel way ^[15] : “whoever turns the rear to them [the infidels ] that day ... he will incur the wrath of Allah. A refuge for him is hell , and this is a perversion! ” ^[16] .

Buddha forbade men to leave the army even to enter the monastery ^[7] .

Civil and military justice treat cowardice in a diametrically opposite way. In civil law, cowardice is considered so characteristic of a person that it justifies one of the circumstances precluding the crime of an act - an extreme necessity . According to N. S. Tagantsev , one cannot punish a person for not possessing special spiritual strength, heroism, or for the fact that a sense of personal danger suppresses him. Exceptions are made from this rule if a person, by his rank or occupation, or by virtue of a law, was obliged to suffer the threat that threatened him.

All military criminal codes in one form or another, on the contrary, adhere to the general rule: violation of the duties of the service for fear of personal danger is punished as a deliberate act. In addition, a number of different acts are envisaged, the essential sign of which is cowardice - leaving a post in battle, fleeing from the battlefield, voluntary surrender - which are usually regarded as treason .

The US Military Courts Guide defines cowardly behavior as “refusing to perform or not fulfilling duties close to the enemy because of fear” ^[4] .

The influence of cowardice on natural selection has occupied evolutionary biologists , starting with Darwin , who noted that the instinct of self-preservation is very common - many cowards consider themselves brave simply because they have never looked the enemy in the face. The mechanism of evolutionary conservation of cowardice, as a manifestation of one of the most basic instincts , is obvious: avoiding danger increases the likelihood of survival and reproduction, and therefore should be genetically predominant ^[17] . The issue of evolutionary preservation of courage is more complex, since resistance to the face of danger leads to the loss of genetic material. Researchers have proposed several mechanisms for the evolutionary preservation of courage, for example, protecting children and blood relatives can increase the chances of preserving their own genetic material (cf. the work of W. D. Hamilton ).

Darwin proposed another explanation for the loss of genetic material in case of cowardice: a brave tribe can defeat a cowardly one by eliminating or diluting the heredity of the latter. A.V. Gorvits offers ^[17] his explanation: cowardice is a natural property of character, but social norms force men to overcome it, especially in a war ^[17] . P. Rubin ^[18] combines both approaches: “not a single (surviving) society encourages behavior that weakens the possibilities for battles”, in particular, all cultures condemn cowardice among young men. Two examples of tribes are known that do not stigmatize cowardice (and, as a result, are afraid of everything): Bukhids in the Philippines and Semey in Malaysia . C. Walsh notes that the small number of such groups of people emphasizes that cowardice is not the best way to survive ^[19] and notes the work of evolutionary biologists who explain the noisy reactions of many animal species (for example, protein) in case of danger by natural selection - although the noisy behavior of one individuals increase the risk for her, the chances of survival of the group increase ^[20] . Walsh believes that the differentiation in response to danger, noticeable even in aphids , suggests that some species of cowardice and courage are necessary for the survival of the species in its population ^[21] , therefore some kind of balancing selection is in effect in ^[21] .

C. Walsh points to other evolutionary aspects of cowardice:

• experiments show that " indirect reciprocity "(Committing proper actions in anticipation of the same from other members of society) is evolutionarily beneficial in conditions of" sufficiently high visibility ". Shyness is a violation of this principle ^[22] ;
• the fact that cowardice is discussed almost exclusively in the context of the male sex can also be explained by the fact that men are consumables during evolution ( eggs are much more scarce than sperm ) ^[23] .

The concepts of courage and cowardice are not opposites; some philosophers believe that they occupy fundamentally different positions in ethics: the actions of a brave man go beyond what is proper, while cowardice manifests itself in failure to fulfill a duty. People who have not shown courage are by no means necessarily cowards - they can simply do what they should ^[4] . As C. Walsh notes, in everyday speech, the use of the epithet “brave” in relation to a part of people in a group usually excludes the use of “cowardly” in relation to other representatives of the same group and vice versa: in the context of 9/11 attacks, those firefighters and police officers who do not we went to the buildings of the World Trade Center , are not considered cowards, this is what allows us to consider those who went to the towers as brave ^[24] .

Among human shortcomings, cowardice is distinguished by the small attention paid to it by researchers; apparently, there is not a single scientific monograph on this subject or even a detailed scientific article ^[25] . W.I. Miller when trying to complete his trilogy of vices with a volume about cowardice, I was faced with such a shortage of material that the book eventually got the name “ The Mystery of Courage ” ^[25] .

The influence of the concept of cowardice on public consciousness has steadily declined over 200 years: from 1800 to 2000, the frequency of the appearance of the word “cowardice” in English texts decreased fivefold ^[26] . Earlier popular words describing particularly dangerous cowards potroon, dastard are almost obsolete ^[27] .

Since the beginning of the 2000s, the use of the word “cowardice” has seen a certain upsurge, which K. Walsh connects with the 9/11 attacks and the emerging tendency to call terrorists “cowards” ^[26] . The mass consciousness of Americans is so used to the last idea that the agreement from the host of the TV show “ Politically Incorrect ” Bill Mara, with the assertion of the guest of the program that the person directing his plane into the building has many shortcomings, but not cowardly, led to indignation and the speedy withdrawal of the program from the air ^[28] .

• Cowardice // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
• Adams, Joe K. The neglected psychology of cowardice. // Journal of Humanistic Psychology 5.1 (1965): 57-69. (eng.)
• Kuznetsova I.V. Biblical phraseology and language game // Siberian Journal of Philology. - 2013. - No. 2 .
• Allan V. Horwitz. Cowardice and Courage // What's Normal ?: Reconciling Biology and Culture. - Oxford University Press, 2016 .
• Chris Walsh. Cowardice: A Brief History . - Princeton University Press, 2014 .-- 304 p. - ISBN 978-691-17339-9. (eng.)