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Thoughts on Heroism
| Article
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13986 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1988 |
5,288 Words |
| Author
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Larry D. Nachman
Larry D. Nachman is professor of political science at the
College of Staten Island, CUNY, and is a frequent contributor
to Commentary and Salmagundi. He is completing a book on
psychoanalysis and social theory. |
This is no age for heroes. Circumstance and ethos incline us to be suspicious of heroes. For some, there is something cloying and grating about heroism; it has, for them, too much of a martial air to make them comfortable. For others, it appears to be a trait inappropriate and out of tune with modernity. Heroes are, for them, ridiculously apart from the spirit of the age. Irving Howe has observed that "the characteristic figure of twentieth-century urban life... may [be]... the same thing [as] the characteristic 'anti-hero' of twentieth-century literature." To confirm Howe's point, one has but to point to the anonymity of urban life which makes it so difficult to win the glory that was classically an object of heroism. Like so much of our contemporary inflated language, the terms hero and heroism are used so casually and thoughtlessly that it is difficult to know what is meant when we use them. I recently asked a college class to name some contemporary heroes and to explain why they regarded them as such. This was not a scientific poll, of course, but I thought it interesting when I found they could not name any individuals, but merely suggested types of heroic acts such as rushing into a burning building to rescue a child. That the question is difficult to address may be a reflection of a contemporary belief that heroes are no longer relevant to our culture, that they, like coopers and smiths, belong to another time and another place.
A starting point for an inquiry into the heroic may be found in Alasdair Macintyre's recent, probing examination of the state of contemporary moral theory, After Virtue. In this close critique of the various reigning subjectivist theories on the foundations of morals, MacIntyre turns for contrast to the model offered by heroic societies, that is, to societies where heroic examples are used as guides for conducting human life. He writes:
It is not just that [in a heroic society] there is for each status a prescribed set of duties and privileges. There is also a clear understanding of what actions are required to perform these and what actions fall short of what is required. For what are required are actions. A man in heroic society is what he does... To judge a man therefore is to judge his actions.
Actions and Intentions
This comment suggests three reasons why heroism is so dissonant from the contemporary point of view. First, heroism has to do exclusively with actions. Yet today, we dwell in a psychological universe. It is the motive and intention that capture our attention. In our attempts
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