Battlecast

What is Politics?

A translation of Qu’est-ce que la politique?

By: Julien Freund

Translated from the French by Luke Wolf

Part 1 is available here

Introduction: On Political Action

1. The Opposition of Goals

The aim of this study is to define the goal of politics. As the goal of politics is specific to the essence of politics, the goal must remain the same, whatever the community or the country, that is to say, considerations of time and space do not matter, and the goal of politics is independent of contingencies, independent of the dominant ideas of an era as well as doctrines or parties which claim to control political activity. Whether the regime is liberal or socialist, democratic or tyrannical, whether the State is small or large, whether it is a tribe, a city, a State or an Empire, the goals of politics must remain conceptually immutable, in the same way as the presuppositions which condition it. The clear, precise and unambiguous determination of this political goal as well as the specific tools of politics comes up against three difficulties.

The first difficulty originates from the ambiguity of the notion of finality. We have already insisted several times on the plurality and antagonism of political goals. Is the task of political society to establish and preserve freedom or to establish equality or to ensure justice or to guarantee the security of its members? Is it possible to satisfy all these aspirations at the same time? Since freedom is not at all the same thing as equality, since one cannot replace the other, the possibility of conflict is inherent to these final goals and there is a risk of loaded dice, a risk that we will give priority to one over the other goal. Is it not true that the construction of an egalitarian society is generally, if not necessarily, accompanied by a limitation of individual freedom and public freedoms or even a contempt for them? Is an egalitarian society even possible? 

How can we reconcile the imperatives of justice and those of security? Not only do emergencies constantly fuel conflicts, but in themselves, that is to say conceptually, conflicts are constantly causing divergences. In short, it is not true that “the just” is always useful, that utility is always in harmony with moral requirements. Intellectually, of course, there are few difficulties in combining all these goals, confusing the concepts and identifying, for example, the true, the good and the beautiful; at the level of action, on the other hand, we cannot honestly set aside the deviations and necessities, the human passions and ambitions, human impatience and follies. The Olympian attitude can treat all these incidents as “adventures” or deviations from norms, but their repetition and their overall weight delay and often prevent the realization of theoretical projects, when they do not distort the political unit’s goal during the enterprise itself. All politics is, as Alain says, “a game of politics” and therefore it is ridiculous to set politics against politics. 

Translator’s note: In this confusing sentence, Freund is saying it is impossible to not engage in politics. For instance, in Guy de Maupassant’s short story “Two Friends,” the main characters conclude that war will never be abolished until governments are abolished. But in order to maintain harmony within a society and protection from outside threats, government is and always will be necessary. Therefore, De Maupassant, when his characters call for an end to governments, is foolishly setting “politics against politics.” Why? Because in order to abolish governments, you would have to form a stronger government to suppress weaker governments – and maintain the suppression so governments would not form in the future. The idea of anarchy is inherently false, because in order to stop political units from forming, an actor would have to form a stronger unit to suppress the weaker political units, thereby forming a government and undermining anarchy. 

It is a good ruse on the part of a candidate for power to present himself as a non-political man solely concerned with the service and salvation of the country, but what should we think of those who sincerely believe that once in power they will not do no politics, that they will distance themselves from maneuvers, intrigues, negotiations and other equivocations? To desire power, to exercise it, is to engage in politics, in the pejorative and laudatory sense of the word, and all the sophisms and quibbles will never change this concrete, factual situation. There has never existed, there never will exist an absolutely pure, absolutely righteous, absolutely disinterested policy which an actor could utilize and set next to another policy which is irremediably corrupt, dishonest and deplorable. History does not provide examples of a statesman who, in the exercise of his office, stayed away from what we call the political game; there are only those who, by unconsciousness, believe that they escaped it. This does not mean that every politician is inevitably a “politician” or that politics should be reduced to corridor maneuvers, blackmail and privileges, but that on occasion every political actor inevitably lends himself to this game, uses it, without necessarily succumbing to it. The big mistake would be to pass off, as often happens, these maneuvers and bargaining for the goal of politics. Whatever happens, there is a strong chance that this ambiguity will persist despite all the denunciations of this situation. 

Anyone who believes that their vocation consists of devoting themselves to the public cause cannot do otherwise than become a politician, which presupposes a certain political ambition. It is not enough to say: I am the man for the job – so that the doors of power automatically open. On the contrary, any claimant to power inevitably comes up against other candidates or the government in place; he therefore necessarily enters into struggle with competitors, which implies the presence of partisans and militants, propaganda action, maneuvers, duplicity, intrigues – however beautiful the cause which each candidate makes for himself. How can we distinguish in this imbroglio of services, generosity, ambitions, rivalries, ideals and doctrines, the true goal of politics? Does it consist of making an idea or a man triumph, of making a community powerful or happy? Is it a question of transforming society or just of governing, of administering the country well? For example, what did the anarchist militiamen want during the Spanish Civil War War who, in the name of their principles, did not agree to obey the regular leaders of the Republican army and refused to dig trenches under the pretext that such work was a sign of humiliating cowardice? Did they want to save the republic or just make their principles triumph, at least temporarily? Let’s take the example of a governing party: the socialist party. Its goal is first to take power, but also to establish socialism and finally to guarantee the security of the community. In fact all these goals are political, but do they form the goal of politics itself? Non-socialists will not admit that an acceptable goal of politics could consist of the establishment of socialism. For them, it is immoral. Conversely, socialists will not accept that power can be reduced to simple management of public affairs. In the case of the socialists, are we not confusing function and political goal? Moreover, can we reduce the goal to the sum of executive, legislative, judicial, administrative, economic, etc. functions?

In turn, political doctrines, ideologies, parties and the dominant ideas of an era give political activity one or other of the goals that we have just listed – and the list is not exhaustive. Certainly, there are also families of beliefs in politics, and to stick to the contemporary era characterized by the division of groups into those of the right and those of the left, we can say that the right preferably envisages the goal of politics under the aspect of sound and prudent management, competent administration, and maintenance of national security, while the left, inclined towards ideals and the idea of progress, thinks, above all, about transforming society, although leftists never stop arguing about the model they will use to transform society. Overall, the left is as divided on the nature of the ideal and on revolutionary action as the right is on the reforms to be made or not to be made. You have to be a prisoner of your time not to notice that the opposition between the left and the right has nothing specific and that it is, basically, only the ideological translation of what Guillaume Appolinaire calls in The Pretty Eternal Redhead, the long quarrel between tradition and adventure. We could therefore rightly ask ourselves whether the goal of politics is really univocal, or are there really several goals of politics. If this were so, it would obviously no longer be a question of speaking of politics as an essence, but as a pure dialectic of forces, of powers for or against certain ideas.

We also see that politics uses the most disparate means: force, trickery, violence, legality, persuasion, etc. Under these conditions can we speak of a specific tool of politics in the same sense in which mathematics is characterized by a specific method: demonstration, and religion by worship? Even our political vocabulary remains confused and equivocal: is there a difference between the notions of goal, end and objective? And, if there is one, what is it? The terminological inconsistency is perhaps only the reflection of a disorder of the mind, but conversely the precise determination of meanings will perhaps help us understand the things they designate. We will use this method to try and bring some clarity into the very murky area of political goals. 

2. The Poverty of Philosophy of Action

The second series of difficulties regarding understanding politics has its source in the obscurity of concrete action. The concern for an immediate result in a particular enterprise obscures the more distant goal, so that what is only one step in the overall political activity absorbs all our attention and study, thereby eclipsing our understanding of the goal of politics. We regulate our behavior based on circumstances and, in the fever of action, busy as we are with breaking down immediate resistance and fighting on particular points, we forget the initial intention. Like any action, political action also has a primary existential meaning, that is to say, by dint of confronting the changing, contingent and incidental concrete reality, political actions sometimes neglect the essentials. Politicians are rather rare who know how to master details, to resolve the changing situation, not only according to the immediate event and the emergency, but to their true objective. The whole difficulty consists in reconciling the point of view which is capable of taking advantage of the circumstances and still seeing the distance which controls the whole. From this point of view it is correct to say that the author of a new doctrine is not always the one who is best suited to apply it materially. Everyone knows, but everyone also acts as if they don’t know that humans don’t do what we say. There is a disjunction between words and actions. 

Action is not only obscure, but it contains a large element of irrationality which makes understanding and explaining political action hard. Also, like the fox in the Aesop fable who finally disparaged the grapes he could not reach and called them green and distasteful, philosophers tend to justify in the same way their renunciation in the face of the effort involved in analyzing action, saying political action is impossible to analyze simply because they cannot reach the action itself. It is not surprising that, in these conditions, all reflection on political action generally amounts to simple casuistry, clever and unsound reasoning, embellished where necessary with some more profound, but scattered, information.

A few rare times a man of action, such as Napoleon, Lyautey, Lenin or de Gaulle ( someone on the edge of the sword) have randomly given us their own reflections which, unfortunately, supporters inconsiderately transform into dogmatic precepts. However, as interesting as these stories, observations and documents are, they do not constitute a systematic analysis of political action in general. There is no doubt that the Leninist method, for example, when applied intelligently, is fascinating both for its effectiveness and its harshness, but it only ever provides a few elements for a philosophy of action in general, because in itself, it is a meditation on a specific type of action, revolutionary action, in a predetermined perspective, Marxism. Whatever the case, the fact deserves to be underlined: there is no philosophy of action as there are philosophies of knowledge. Epistemology has stifled praxeology. This is not surprising. The man of knowledge is naturally inclined to pay attention to knowledge, while the man of action acts without trying to write down the action. At most certain philosophers, in particular Descartes and Alain, have provided us with precious and penetrating, but scattered, information. In the absence of a philosophy of action in general, much has been written on moral action, less on political action. To heighten the absurdity and hypocrisy, a few rash philosophers who actually studied and analyzed political action, men like Machiavelli, R. Michels, Pareto and certain others, men who had the courage to tackle a positive analysis of political action, are slapped with intellectual shame and accused of immorality by many specialists in political matters – as if men had a horror of knowing how humanity really acts. It’s true, there is a real prejudice against the phenomenological analysis of action in general and political action in particular. To avoid incurring almost unanimous disapproval, the daring person must first cover himself and act in obedience to a religion, a party or an ideological fashion before risking examining such a delicate problem. In short, at all times the intellectualist prejudice of duty to a prescribed religion or ideological justification has been so strong that it has almost always succeeded in ending the attempt to construct a phenomenology of action, even if it means finding all kinds of excuses for those who, whatever the ideological system, have not succeeded in realizing the projects of their pet “beautiful” theory. All the clarity full of contradictions, because existential reality is confusing and hard to understand, could not prevent Proudhon from falling into the common rut and summarizing in a striking way the general opinion: “Action, you need to know, is an idea; and we act sufficiently as soon as we spread the seeds of the future society in the intellectual atmosphere.” Dreams, fictions and sometimes utopias take the place of a theory of action, reducing philosophers to theologians without God – their own words nullify themselves. As for knowing how action tries to concretely realize goals and promises, the philosopher does not care. He washes his hands of it, that is to say he is content to protest or argue. The mind that is only mind is blind; the eye is of the body. 

We have already demonstrated it: the essence of politics is action. This is obviously not the place to discuss the philosophy of action in general; it is only possible to provide the broad outlines. It would first be appropriate to analyze political action, that is to say describe the motivation, the reasons and the intentions, the fundamental relationship of means and the end, examine the problem of effectiveness and consequences which can be predictable and unpredictable and thus raise the question of responsibility that the merely intellectual commitments of scholars in our day has diverted from its true meaning. Secondly, it would be a question of analyzing the course of political action with all the correlations of foresight and chance, of audacity and prudence, spontaneity and experience, assurance and of risk, choice and necessity, judgment and passion, possibility and permissibility, abstracted from words, concepts, ideas and concrete execution. 

We will then see that immediate and spectacular success is very often obtained to the detriment of real effectiveness, that “action discovers the opportunities that inaction would have left hidden,” that the very development of an enterprise reveals possibilities, perspectives and results that we had not thought of and that the act of analyzing politics finds in itself resources capable of strengthening the means given at the start. We can also see that every action implies a reaction, that it constantly raises contradictions from which it then feeds. We will still be able to assess the importance of experience, because one must have acquired experience to understand its value, just as one must have come out of a mistake to be able to reflect on it. From then on we will be able to understand what failure is and what failure means. We will finally understand that an exhilaration of action exists and that success leads to action for action’s own sake, that is to say, that after having accomplished what is necessary and useful, man also wants to do what is harmful, dangerous and useless. Finally, we should analyze the different types of action: moral, economic, political and others.

Once again, the philosophy of action constitutes such a vast theme that the development and explanation of this philosophy would lead to another book to the one we are currently writing, especially since the indications that we have just provided remain fragmentary. Indeed, a detailed analysis would raise still other problems such as those of the existential character of all work, of the confrontation between thought and action and consequently of the man of action and the intellectual, of the insolence of the doctrinaire who, because he is a spectator, believes he knows everything and better, forgetting the words of Saint-Just: “the force of things leads us to results which we have not thought of.” A conflict provokes other conflicts, so that we can speak of a curse which weighs on action: we only obtain in the end what we gave ourselves at the start, but if at the start, either through negligence, haste or greed, we have not become lucidly aware of the real data, we generally obtain a result that contradicts the initial intention. During our analysis of the presuppositions we also noted the need to anticipate the worst outcome which is a determining element of political activity. So we won’t come back to it.

Still, the absence of reflection on action in general and on political action in particular distracts the political scientist from questioning the specific goal and specific things of politics. He prefers to take refuge in the duty to be, in the domain of  goals, sarcastically critical or give judgments that are really advice, believing in good faith to be making a positive analysis. Political analysis requires that we make a true conversion of our natural inclination which leads us to see things essentially from the angle of what we wish were true rather than what is true.

3. Is Politics an Unique Activity?

The third and final difficulty in understanding the goal of politics is not external to the problem like the two previous ones, because it directly concerns the essence of politics: does politics give rise to a sui generis, or unique, activity? It is clear that if politics does not generate a unique activity there would no longer be a goal or specific tools of politics nor, even more generally, an essence of politics. This is especially true today, under the influence of certain socialist currents, of Marxism and anarchism, that the objection has taken shape: the political is only a reflection, a superstructure of the economic, and so the beneficial revolution that will eventually be carried out would mean the withering away and disappearance of politics, because politics would lose all object and all meaning following the disappearance of all struggle. The argument sometimes presents itself in another, less doctrinal form: we cannot conceive of political activity in an abstract way, independently of an economy to be regularized, of finances to be managed, of justice to be rendered, of an army to maintain, of treaties to conclude. In short, there would be no strictly political decision, but only decisions concerning the economy, finances, the army, justice, diplomacy, etc.

It is a waste of time to refute the first objection at length, since from the outset it brackets experience and real history, that is to say it abandons the ground at the moment when the argument has a meaning, to take refuge through the imagination in an indefinite future and to condemn reality in the name of a purely ideal construction, a construction, moreover, which the activists admit has never existed. What should we say to someone who appeals to the non-existent and to fiction against the existing, who rejects in the name of a so-called humanism what man lives and has always lived, who denies history in the name of historicism, science in the name of scientism, economics in the name of economism? This objection is not even based on a critical hypothesis, but on a simple millenarian, a religious, belief. What is the point in opposing what is and has always been to gratuitous assertions concerning what, according to the doctrine, should be? What is the point of noting that the socialist state also has a police force, judges, an army, ministers, a bureaucracy with qualities and defects similar to those of the institutions of other countries, since the true believers will respond with a simple act of faith that this army no longer has to really play the role of an army (except in cases of transitory necessities), but that it is destined to eliminate itself, and so the police, the bureaucracy, etc. will one day, in the distant future, cease to exist. As for the positive elements of this thesis, they only serve to justify a more monistic philosophy, albeit of a dialectical character, that is to say, to affirm that in the final analysis everything is reduced to the economic, which subsumes, in the final analysis, the totality of religion, ethics, psychology, etc.

The second objection, that we cannot conceive of politics in an abstract way, on the face of it, seems more solid. However, it tends to deny the existence of the political domain, that of public autonomy. There is no need to return again to this question dealt with in one of the previous sections. But what should we think of a philosophy of religion which would deny the sui generis, the unique character, of religious life to make it a sum of acts of worship, rites and ceremonies and which would neglect faith, the distinction between the profane and the sacred and the idea of ​​God? What should we think of a philosophy of morality which would reduce it to a pure casuistry of duties towards oneself and others, towards the political and economic community, towards the family and which would neglect the problems of conscience, of freedom, of responsibility and the distinction between good and evil? Now, this objection, which is wrong regarding religion and morality, is likewise wrong regarding politics. Indeed, this interpretation is essentially atomistic. It dissolves the unity of authority of a political community into a scattered and discontinuous multiplicity of decisions or – it ignores the source of authority (the political unit) from which the decisions emanate to only consider the diversity of objects (finance, army diplomacy, justice, economy, etc.) to which they relate. A government has a reality as an institution, it is not just a collection of ministers; Likewise, an administration is not simply a set of services. However, this interpretation only sees the ministers and not the government, the decisions and not the authority, the procedure and not the institution, the political functions and not the goal of politics, the attributes of the State and not the State. In other words, we cannot dissociate politics from the continuity of a community, from its unity embodied in a sovereign State, from the existence of a government, from the relations between friend and enemy or from private and public, without which decisions concerning diplomacy, the army, justice, or the economy would no longer have meaning or consistency.

4. The Decision

At the center of the debate is the question of “the decision.” In general, we study the notion of “the decision” from a psychological and philosophical point of view as one of the moments of the will, the one which eliminates indeterminacy and precedes execution with its series of consequences. Even at this level, it already appears as a manifestation of power, of the fact that it makes itself powerful by breaking with the hesitations of knowledge. To make a decision is to demonstrate authority and not to assert a truth, especially since what seems rationally true is not necessarily practical or reasonably useful. A decision is foreign to any subsumption, a decision does not proceed “under” anything else; it stands alone. That is to say, a decision does not necessarily derive from norms, laws, a program or even previous decisions. “A decision” is entirely within itself and draws its strength from the will that animates the decision. A decision without strength is nothing. Given a certain constitution, we cannot predict what choices will be made by those who will successively hold power. Each decision is independent and sometimes it deviates from the very reasons and justifications which conditioned it, it is a break in the deliberation which would otherwise be endless if a decision did not take place. This irrationality of “the decision” can be understood with rigor; it cannot be explained. Even biased, unsound reasoning cannot explain this. All we can say is that it limits the possibilities through a choice. Napoleon wrote: “You did not write the Napoleonic Decree with an exclusive enough spirit, as something fitting a major operation. This is a fault which you must correct, because the decree is the art of great success and mighty affairs.” It is clear that, in these conditions, there is not and cannot be an absolutely objective decision. Its role is to be timely and effective.

All these remarks apply equally to the political decision, but also to other factors that come into play which make “the decision” an original category. The political decision is obviously also taken by an individual – the one in command – and it can therefore be arbitrary. But the decision targets, or commands, others in its own way, as they form a political community. Personal elements may intervene, elements such as ambition and the desire for glory, this is indisputable, but the essential thing is that it involves not only the individual who takes the decision but the entire political unit which will benefit or not benefit from the consequences – the happy or unhappy consequences that will result from it. Decisions concerning the organization of the army, for example, are not strictly military but political, that is to say they are taken with a view to the security of the community and the public good – which does not prevent them from being, unfortunate, clumsy or disastrous. Politically, the army is not a goal in itself, although it has its own goal: it is always at the service of political power. Nor is it for strictly military reasons that a country decides, for example, to equip its army with a nuclear strike force. In the same sense, we cannot say that a political decision concerning the economy is only an “aspect” of the economy. The political decision also targets the community, as we see by the example of nationalizations and socializations. Decrees to nationalize an industry are far from always responding to economic needs – sometimes they have no other result than to disrupt the economy for a long time – but they are taken for political reasons, because the new wielders of power claim a political ideology and see it as good for the community. It even happens that nations maintain against all odds, by force, therefore artificially, the collectivization of land, despite economic setbacks and successive failures, solely to remain faithful to a political doctrine and its economic program. The reference to the community is therefore decisive for any political decision because it means that there is a domain specific to politics, which conditions a sui generis, or unique, activity. We have said enough on this point in the chapter devoted to the notions of private and public.

Although, as Thucydides said, “the most formidable thing is the perpetual uncertainty of decisions,” there is no reason to cultivate a supernatural belief in the power of the decision. While being a self-justifying action which breaks with the chain of reason we cannot separate the decision from its context and its surrounding situation. It is difficult to see a parliamentary government taking a collectivization decision when Parliament and the country are hostile to it. It is as stupid to make an untimely decision that cannot be carried out, given the conditions, as it is to remain unresolved when the situation demands a choice. Even in a so-called “century of change” where things evolve quickly, there is no need to reform everything, to turn everything upside down. Revolutionaryism, or the hobby of programs, which proposes to make reforms in principle, to the point of wanting to modify by decisions without any reasons the structures of society that are working well, is only another aspect of the cult of action for actions own sake. Pure action is true nihilism, because it means the devaluation of ideas, the disqualification of interests or utility and contempt for man. This is what Max Weber called the “sterile excitement” of man. The intelligentsia which, under the influence of historicism and an alleged qualitative progress of humanity, believes that being born later than others is in itself a sign of superiority. It is possible to improve living conditions, to create better harmony between men and societies, but also to recognize that those who preceded us were not necessarily incompetent, narrow-minded and mediocre. These ideas also imply that we should value experience and tradition if we admit that a reasonable life is the goal of man qua man, the difficulty is to reconcile thought and action, because, in the words of Goethe: “Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, acting according to one’s thoughts is the most difficult thing in the world.”

The decision also involves a question of style and balance, although it is true that indecision is, in certain circumstances, as fatal as an untimely decision. The right measure cannot be deduced from a concept, it is a matter of intuition. Whatever the case, knowing how to decide means taking the initiative. Also, there is something astonishing in every decision: it embarrasses others. Whether Lenin decides to dissolve the Constituent Assembly or Hitler decides to enter Austria or Churchill decides to continue the war or Kennedy decides to blockade Cuba, the advantage is acquired before the adversary has time to regroup. The irreversible nature of a resolution followed by action generally places the adversary in a position of inferiority, not only through surprise, but because he is forced to fight and retaliate on ground that he cannot and he did not choose and sometimes did not even plan for. The important thing is to be aware of the gravity of the consequences and this awareness means that politics must sometimes, in certain conditions, limit itself to preventing a decision from being taken. A decision therefore has no value in itself. A decision requires exploitation, and this requires perseverance, because no problem is ever definitively resolved or free from unforeseen complications and countermeasures. Perfection is an idea. The need to constantly correct the effects of a decision and, more generally, the very continuity of the action itself, means that there is no perfect solution. Utopia consists of believing that there will come a day when man will no longer need to act, either politically or economically, that he will be able to spare himself from deciding and choosing, because things will be resolved by themselves.

In fact, these last remarks belong to a general philosophy of action. However, we can see that where there is no goal, there is no decision either, and where there is no specific goal of politics and therefore no specific political domain, the political decision also loses all meaning. Consequently, political activity cannot be reduced to a simple aspect of economic, religious, cultural or other activity, provided that decisions concerning other activities are taken in the interest of the community. It is only in the event that only one community, absolutely peaceful and egalitarian, exists, that of the entire human race, that the notion of a specific, unique domain and goal of politics would no longer have any meaning, because then the politician would no longer have a goal either. 

5. Courage

To the extent that there is firmness in resolution, the decision is a sign of courage. The error is to understand the decision simply as a choice between various opinions or possible solutions. It is something other than a preference, because it implies an aim, that is to say it sets itself an objective with the desire to achieve it. In other words, it necessarily extends into persevering toward the goal during the action. The decision “enacts” not only in the sense that it takes an initiative, but makes the effort to see the decision through to its conclusion. It is in this sense that it is courageous, so that we can say of it that it is the characteristic virtue of action. To say that courage is the golden mean between the two extremes of default and excess which are cowardice and fear on the one hand, temerity and ardor on the other, is to misunderstand the analysis of Aristotle, by only considering his notion of the golden mean. Not only does Aristotle describe courage as continuing to feed contradictorily on fear and ardor, but he also shows that this virtue consists above all of overcoming this contradiction through an assurance tempered by reason. It is therefore, according to Aristotle’s terms, a virile action which finds persevering in the pursuit of the goal the basis of confidence. The golden mean that courage represents does not therefore mean that it is a balance determined by opposing forces which cancel each other out, but it goes beyond (above!) the extremes of fear and temerity, and even simple preference, by a will stretched by the decision towards an act that must be accomplished. Also, a measure dictated by necessity or under external pressure cannot be called courageous any more than feverish excitement and exhilaration can be called courageous. In courage there is both determination and aspiration, resolution and hope. It brings constancy to the decision and at the same time it has its own energy and dynamism which mean that it is not a happy medium in the ordinary sense. Rather, it is an extension and overcoming of both fear and ardor, utilizing both in a higher purpose, the same way the sex act unifies both male and female. 

If courage is above all the virtue of action, we cannot use this concept, except by analogy,  in the world of thought, to qualify simple audacity in ideas, adherence to grandiose ends, the development of a political doctrine or of a utopia or the phenomenological analysis of a notion, even if it leads to apparently surprising or striking results. Likewise, commitment to a cause does not require valor, unless the supporter runs risks from a political and social point of view and accepts the consequences of his attitude. There is therefore no courage that you can compromise in a regime of freedom, but courage is necessary only when standing for the cause of freedom in an unfree regime. Like the idea of responsibility, political courage relates above all to the often painful choice of consequences, when these consequences clash with our convictions, and to the resolution with which we face the foreseen and unforeseen consequences of our action. In short, it consists of taking responsibility for destiny in the sense in which Luther declared before the Diet of Worms in front of his accusers: “Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.” The simple fact of showing an impassioned attitude constitutes an extraordinary advantage for a decision, because it provokes indecision and perplexity in the adversary. Also, to fully understand courage, it is not enough to analyze the behavior of the person who sets the example; we must also consider its effects: it causes confusion, sometimes rout and panic among the rival. The hesitation, uncertainty and embarrassment it creates help to strengthen courage. The courageous man overcomes fear by provoking it in others.