Growing up, I thought courage was either an extraordinary heroic act like rescuing someone, or being honest in a difficult situation where you put yourself on the line. And neither of these was for me. I did not feel courageous—instead I saw it as prudent and smart to get what I could from people and the world, and be safe. But I did not respect myself, and felt very consciously at times that I was a coward.
Aesthetic Realism sees courage in a completely new and kind way; courage is in behalf of the largest desire of man, to like the world, and it begins with how we think. In his Definitions and Comment; Being a Description of the World, Mr. Siegel defines courage as:
The belief that the way things are is not against oneself, and therefore that these things should not be gone away from.
That means that a man needs to feel, with all the facts present, that the world will do him good. As Mr. Siegel says in the comment to his definition, “Courage is a love of the external.” The study of Aesthetic Realism brought out this desire in me. I had felt the “external” was against me, and while I tried to appear like a nice guy with a smile for everyone, inside I was conniving and ambitious to get ahead.
The most cowardly thing in a man, I learned, is his desire for contempt, which Aesthetic Realism describes as the “disposition in every person to think he will be for himself by making less of the outside world.” Contempt is that in a man that says we better beat other people out before they do so to us. Contempt can make one bluster, but inevitably it makes us narrow, timid and mean.
I will speak about my own life and what I am proud to be learning in classes taught by Chairman of Education, Ellen Reiss. I will also discuss passages of a great novel that says so much about courage: Ivanhoe, written by Sir Walter Scott in 1819. Ivanhoe takes place in 12th century England, a time of intense unrest. This was after the Norman invasion, and the Saxon people were being ransacked by the nobility. Scott portrays valiant knights and brave women; there are terrible villains whom they must fight. I think people have been so stirred by Ivanhoe because it shows both courage and cowardice in people—every character can teach us about ourselves.
Mr. Siegel comprehended Walter Scott’s work and his life beautifully. He said Scott had a “courageous mind,” and in a 1951 lecture titled “The World; or, Walter Scott and Poetry” he said:
Walter Scott is one of the between thirty and forty greatest writers of the world….When I talk of a World Great Writer…I’m very careful about what I’m saying: some person who has taken the variety of the world into himself with grace, also with power….If you look at those novels…the notion of one mind having all this come forth from it, makes you prouder of yourself. It staggers you with respect for man.
Courage Is an Attitude to the Whole World
As a boy in Miami, Florida, I made inaccurate choices about the world different from me. Like many people, I came to feel it was against me and the friendliest place was in myself. In The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known #20, Mr. Siegel wrote:
This is a great and beautiful question, greater and more beautiful than anyone knows: What is the best way a person has of seeing all that which seems to be different from himself? This question we have to answer by being alive.
I learned that how we see our parents—the first representatives of reality we meet–is crucial in how we see the world. I saw my mother and father be affectionate to each other one moment and angry the next, with tension in the air. But I didn’t try to understand what they felt. Instead I used them to feel contemptuously that people’s lives were messy and I better just take care of myself. And I was strategic. When I wanted something, I watched the lay of the land to get on the good side of whichever parent would give me what I wanted.
Years later in an Aesthetic Realism class, Ellen Reiss described accurately and humorously how I had come to see the world when she said: “Bennett Cooperman is a very calculating person about his own happiness—he’s ‘Bennett-what-will-benefit-me.'”
But I always tried to cover it up and act like what Ms. Reiss also described as “The most affable youth Florida ever produced.” I pretended to be interested in people, but inside I knew I was a faker who said what I thought would have people like me, depending on who I was with. My older brother Jeff saw this and I remember the sting of shame when he once asked: “Which one of your faces are you going to wear today?”
One time I did have some courage was when, after almost no one had been in the high school chorus for years because it was not seen as the “in” thing to do, I joined it and sang a solo in front of the entire school. I felt proud because I wasn’t trying to hide and pretend—I wanted to have myself come out and meet the world, and didn’t see it as an adversary I had to fool.
At the beginning of Ivanhoe, we meet Brian de Bois-Guilbert. He is a knight of the Templars, “half a monk, half a soldier,” and stands for a notion of toughness and courage. Before he says a word we see an attitude to the world in the look on his face. Scott writes that he was:
an athletic figure…reduced…to brawn, bones and sinews…His countenance was…calculated to impress a degree of awe, if not fear, upon strangers….The projection of the veins of the forehead, the readiness with which the upper lip and its thick black moustache quivered upon the slightest emotion, plainly intimated that the tempest might be…easily awakened.
That phrase, “the tempest might be…easily awakened” shows a readiness in Bois-Guilbert to feel the world is against him and to fight it. I was very different from this knight, but inside I often was fighting, jousting with everybody in my mind. In Aesthetic Realism consultations, which I am privileged to give with my colleagues, we might ask a man: “Do you think you hope to be angry with people? Would you be glad if something pleased you, or would you itch for something not to like?”
And men learn this tremendous fact: the world can be honestly liked because it has an aesthetic structure. “The world, art, and self explain each other,” Mr. Siegel wrote, “each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites.” Learning what this means gives a person courage because you see the world is not a badly made place you have to fight or fool—it has a structure we can count on. For example, in Scott’s beautiful prose describing a jousting tournament between the Saxons and the nobles at Ashby, we see opposites as one—rest and motion, power and delicacy, lightness and weight. The knights:
presented the appearance of a sea of waving plumage, intermixed with glistening helmets and tall lances, to the extremities of which were…attached small pennons…which, fluttering in the air as the breeze caught them, joined with the restless motion of the feathers….The champions advanced through the lists, restraining their fiery steeds.
“Waving plumage” and “tall lances”, “feathers” and “fiery steeds”—here Scott shows the world as simultaneously delicate, even breezy and then solid and powerful. Isn’t that how we want to be in our lives?
Courage Is a Oneness of Opposites
In the comment to his definition of courage, Mr. Siegel writes:
Courage…is a kind of accuracy. If we meet things knowing that they can do us harm, or are so strong at the time that they will win over us, what we’d have would not be courage, but imprudence, foolhardiness, perhaps stubbornness. Courage, however, quite plainly, is not flight, faint-heartedness, hesitation. So it is an accurate point between faint-heartedness and foolhardiness, hesitation and stubbornness. It is a rhythm.
At Ashby, all of the Saxons fall to the lances of the nobles, and it seems certain they will lose. Just then we meet a mysterious knight in armor whose identity is unknown, “rather slender than strongly made…mounted on a gallant black horse.” This knight has that accurate point, that rhythm between hesitation and stubbornness. He waits until late to enter the match. Perhaps he’s been studying how the nobles fight, waiting until he is sure. Then he strikes with ferocity and precision, single-handedly defeating every noble, one after the other, including Bois-Guilbert. He takes the prize for the Saxons, and when his helmet is removed, to the surprise of all, it is Ivanhoe. He has been wounded, and faints.
In the discussion following his lecture on Walter Scott, Mr. Siegel placed the meaning of a particular aspect of this novel, Scott’s portrayal of Isaac the Jew and his daughter Rebecca, saying “The important thing is it did give a dignity which is necessary to the Jews.” Scott shows the horrible injustice and abuse Jews were made to suffer in the Middle Ages. And he himself had beautiful courage here; Scott saw depth and humanity and had feeling for a people who, even at the time he wrote Ivanhoe—the early 19th century—were looked on with great prejudice.
We see that humanity in Isaac, who Scott presents as a real person, having both courage and also selfishness. Isaac risks his life by secretly taking the wounded Ivanhoe, a Christian, to his home so that he can recover. But in another scene Isaac shows he wants to keep all of his wealth to himself—he hesitates to pay a debt he has. Scott shows the inner debate in Isaac, saying “his avarice was struggling with his better nature.”
I had those two things—avarice and a better nature—in a way that hurt my life very much. I felt to give one drop of my precious self to anything was too much to ask, and I would literally hesitate all the time—to make plans with friends, to answer a question someone asked me, to finish a project at work, to make decisions, even to pay my bills. I got ugly power making people chase me. But the biggest hesitation I had was to have feeling for anything not me, and this made me cowardly and unsure of myself.
I am grateful to Ellen Reiss for what I have learned about this. In one class years ago, I was speaking in a cool manner about a woman I was seeing, and she asked me:
Ellen Reiss: Do you want her to affect you as much as can be?
Bennett Cooperman: I don’t think so—I can feel hesitant.
Ellen Reiss: If something or someone can have an effect on you, and you say “I’m hesitant,” that’s a very nice way of describing something…ugly….You don’t see the contempt in that. It is like the landowners before the French Revolution—”Oh, you say you have rights, too—maybe I’ll grant them.”
And she questioned what had been a major industry in my life when she asked:
Is Bennett Cooperman on this earth to use himself to honor things or to be urged, sought, with him aloof?
I love Ms. Reiss for enabling me to see what made me most ashamed of myself. I thought aloofness was self-preservation, but I was wrong. She explained:
If one loves truly something not oneself, is one loving oneself truly? People lie about it. Aesthetic Realism is the one thing that shows why it is the most selfish thing a person can do. The reason you show true care for yourself by caring for what is not yourself is because the central purpose of every human being is to like the world.
I was learning what it would mean to be courageous, and as a result of discussions like this one that ugly hesitation that made me ashamed changed, making me so much happier!
When Is a Fight Truly Courageous?
In the comment to his definition, Mr. Siegel writes:
Courage is a love of the external, and a belief in it, even when we fight it. For to know that we can fight something beautifully is to love that which enables us to fight beautifully.
This, I believe, describes Rebecca, the daughter of Isaac and the most courageous person in Ivanhoe. Rebecca has tremendous strength, is deeply thoughtful and very beautiful. She is often in great peril and must fight, yet under the greatest duress she believes in the goodness of the world, represented to her by the goodness of God. And does she ever “fight beautifully”!
Bois-Guilbert and his evil cohorts kidnap Rebecca, Isaac, the Saxon landowner Cedric and others, and imprison them in the castle, Torquilstone. Rebecca is locked high up in the turret, and when Bois-Guilbert enters and threatens to take advantage of her, she is so magnificently courageous that he is stunned:
“Stand back,” said Rebecca; “stand back, and hear me ere thou offerest to commit a sin so deadly! My strength thou mayst indeed overpower, for God…trusted [woman’s] defense to man’s generosity. But…God…hath opened an escape to his daughter-even from this abyss of infamy!”
As she spoke, she threw open the latticed window…and in an instant after, stood on the very verge of the parapet…”Remain where thou art, proud Templar, or at thy choice advance!—one foot nearer, and I plunge myself from the precipice…the Jewish maiden will rather trust her soul with God than her honor to the Templar!”
While Rebecca spoke thus, her high and firm resolve…gave to her…a dignity that seemed more than mortal. Her glance quailed not, her cheek blanched not…on the contrary, the thought that she had her fate at her command…gave…yet a more brilliant fire to her eye. Bois-Guilbert…thought he never beheld beauty so animated and so commanding.
Just as the world seems most against Rebecca, when she could understandably be most cowering, she has a “dignity that seemed more than mortal.” I came to love Rebecca; she had me see the depths of women in a new way, and has me value the courage I’ve been fortunate to see firsthand in women I know, including my wife, Meryl.
In the novel, Scott shows, too, that ill-will makes one an inefficient coward, no matter how tough a person is. Mr. Siegel writes that “Courage is an organic like of the facts,” and says “Wherever courage does not have the facts with it, it is unformed, and therefore…headstrong.” This describes the nobles in Torquilstone who hear that Saxon peasants are gathering in the forest to assault the castle and rescue the prisoners. They make contemptuous jokes, saying they will be “besieged by a jester and a swineherd.” They do not want to know the facts and they pay the price—over 500 people storm the castle, free the prisoners, and Torquilstone burns to ashes.
Good Will Is Courageous
When the wounded Ivanhoe is taken to Isaac’s house, Rebecca takes care of him. She has knowledge of medicine, and for her kind efforts in having him get well Ivanhoe offers her a “casque full of crowns.” Rebecca shows a deeply courageous mind when she says she wants only:
One boon in the stead of the silver thou dost promise me….to believe henceforward that a Jew may do good service to a Christian, without desiring other [recompense] than the blessing of the Great Father who made both Jew and Gentile.
Rebecca feels that two things which are different—Christianity and Judaism—are alike because both come from “the Great Father.” Ivanhoe is deeply affected by her largeness of mind and her kindness. He is feeling very low, and when he calls himself an “ill-fated wretch” Rebecca wants him to see that things are not against him, and her logic is quite sound:
‘Nay,’ said Rebecca, ‘thy weakness and thy grief, Sir Knight, make thee miscalculate the purposes of Heaven. Thou hast been restored to thy country when it most needed the assistance of a strong hand and a true heart, and thou hast humbled the pride of thine enemies [at Ashby]…and for the evil which thou hast sustained, seest thou not that Heaven has raised thee a helper and a physician, even among the most despised of the land? Therefore, be of good courage…
Ivanhoe was convinced by the reasoning…In the morning his kind physician found him entirely free from feverish symptoms …
Rebecca’s kindness makes me grateful for the education I am receiving from Aesthetic Realism about love, what it means for a man and woman to have good will for each other. I am proud to know and love Meryl. I need her criticism, her kindness, her humor and what she teaches me about the feelings of women.
At the end of Ivanhoe there is a dramatic occurrence which shows that a notion of courage based on contempt cannot work, and with all the bluster, it undermines one’s life. When the Templar Bois-Guilbert abducts Rebecca, hoping to make her his lover, Rebecca is accused of being a Jewish sorceress who has Bois-Guilbert under her spell, and she is sentenced to die on a burning stake. Her one recourse is to find a knight to joust on her behalf against a knight representing the Templars—if her knight wins, she will live.
Ivanhoe gallops for miles to be Rebecca’s knight. Ironically Bois-Guilbert himself is forced to be the knight for the Templars. He knows that if he wins the jousting match Rebecca will die minutes later, and he is in a terrific battle. Pacing into the lists, “He looked ghastly pale, as if he had not slept for several nights.”
Ivanhoe and Bois-Guilbert charge at each other, and with the lightest touch of Ivanhoe’s lance, Bois-Guilbert falls. His helmet is removed and:
The eyes…were fixed and glazed. The flush passed from his brow, and gave way to the pallid hue of death. Unscathed by the lance of his enemy, he had died a victim to the violence of his own contending passions.
Through the study of Aesthetic Realism, every man can learn about those “contending passions” in himself, and what is more, can learn how to have the best, most courageous thing in him win—his desire to honestly like the world. This is the most liberating, grounded education that has ever been, enabling men to feel new self-respect and pride in their lives, and I am so happy it is reaching people everywhere.