Harry Potter and Philosophy: If Aristotle Ran Hogwarts Read online

  “Harry Potter is valiant and bold!” (CS, p. 16)

  At the end of book four, headmaster Dumbledore says to Harry, simply this:

  “You have shown bravery beyond anything I could have expected of you.” (GF, p. 695)

  Coming from a man of great wisdom and discernment who customarily expects the best of nearly everyone, this is high praise indeed.

  Harry’s Recipe for Courage

  What allows a quivering, fear-prone, and often terrified boy to face up to some of the greatest dangers of his time and prevail? It will be important to reflect for a moment on what courage is, and then look at how it is attained by such a sensitive soul as Harry.

  Courage is doing what’s right, not what’s easy. It’s doing what seems morally required, rather than what seems physically safe or socially expected. It’s doing what’s best, overall, rather than necessarily what’s best for you. A courageous person properly perceives when there is danger and then overcomes the natural urge for self-preservation, self-protection, comfort, personal gain, or even the solicitude for guarding the feelings of others that might counsel avoidance of that threat.

  The great philosopher Aristotle teaches us that courage is a midpoint between two extremes in our reaction to danger: the extreme of too little, which he characterizes as cowardice, and the extreme of too much, which he labels as rashness. We typically think of courage as the opposite of cowardice, but it’s just as different from rashness. A courageous action is not the deed of a person insensible to danger, unaware of its presence, or reckless in the face of it. It is a motivated and measured response to perceived danger by a person who is willing to face that potential harm for the sake of securing or promoting a greater good. It’s generated by a person’s values, and the depth and intensity with which they are held, and it’s to be displayed in a way that is proportionate to the needs of the situation.

  Courage is a fundamental virtue, or strength, without which none of the other virtues could be exhibited properly in circumstances of perceived personal risk. An honest person, for example, has to have the courage of his convictions in circumstances where there is pressure to cover up and hide the truth. And you can’t reliably show the virtue of persistence in a difficult and risky task if you let your courage falter.

  It’s fairly simple to come to at least a basic understanding of courage as a virtue, as well as to see that it is somehow relatively fundamental among the virtues. What’s often harder is to grasp how it’s to be cultivated and attained in difficult situations—the situations in which it is precisely most needed. But on this question, Harry Potter can teach us much. When we examine his many experiences of danger and fear, we can isolate several things that seem to be responsible for helping give him courage. We actually can find in Harry’s encounters with danger five strategies for summoning the courage we need in difficult and even terribly frightening situations. It will be useful to list them first, and then see how they worked for Harry.

  Harry Potter’s Recipe for Courage

  1. Prepare for the challenge

  2. Surround yourself with support

  3. Engage in positive self-talk

  4. Focus on what’s at stake

  5. Take appropriate action

  (1) Prepare yourself for the challenge. Nothing builds confidence and supports courage for a difficult undertaking like preparation. Listen to soldiers before a military action or athletes before a big game. You’ll hear things like “We’ve worked hard to prepare for this, and we’re just going to go in there now and do what we’ve been trained to do.” Preparation is the first ingredient for confident and courageous action. Harry undergoes extensive preparation and practice for all his Quidditch matches. And it pays off. Before the final of three Triwizard Tournament Challenges that Harry has to face in the fourth book, he steadies his nerves and readies himself for action by remembering his preparation:

  He felt more confident about this task than either of the others. Difficult and dangerous though it would undoubtedly be, Moody was right: Harry had managed to find his way past monstrous creatures and enchanted barriers before now, and this time he had some notice, some chance to prepare himself for what lay ahead. (GF, p. 608)

  And then again:

  Harry’s nerves mounted as June the twenty-fourth drew closer, but they were not as bad as those he had felt before the first and second tasks. For one thing, he was confident that, this time, he had done everything in his power to prepare for the task. (GF, p. 610)

  Preparation can inspire confidence and support courageous action.

  Something should be said briefly about the relationship between courage and confidence, since they both have just been spoken about together, and Harry often displays them together. They are different, but closely related qualities.

  Courage is a virtue. Confidence is an attitude. Courage is the fundamental disposition to act in support of great value, even in the face of great risk. Confidence is an attitude of positive expectation that a desired outcome will result from our actions. It’s possible to be very confident in a situation where courage isn’t even called for, and it’s possible to be courageous in a situation where you can’t be very confident at all that you’ll prevail. So they are different qualities. But they are mutually supportive. Courageous action requires some level of confidence that the action chosen in response to a danger is the best one available, as well as that it has some reasonable chance of success. And the confidence needed for accessing your full potential for effective action is generated more easily in the life of a courageous person—one who is not overwhelmed by obstacles and threats. It is important to understand this connection because Harry often strengthens his courage by building his self-confidence in a situation. Preparation builds self-confidence more than anything else, and thereby enhances rational courage. Many things in Harry’s life have prepared the way for his courageous deeds. And the same thing can be true in our lives. If you want to be courageous, be prepared.

  (2) Surround yourself with support. The best preparation can ready us for almost any task at the level of skill, but that’s sometimes not enough to elicit fully the feeling of confidence, and the disposition of courage, by itself. It’s always hard to go it alone, especially in circumstances of great uncertainty or threat. If we have friends and associates who believe in us, and who express that belief to us, they can encourage and support us when we need it like nothing else can. This sort of support can then strengthen us in the courage we need when things are particularly difficult.

  The best way to get supportive cheerleaders into our lives is to be a cheerleader for others. Harry supports his friends when they need him. Then, when he needs it, they are also there for him. Let me give a simple example. Before his first Quidditch match, Harry had a bad case of nerves.

  Harry felt terrible. (SS, p. 184)

  As he walked out of the locker room to go on to the field, he found himself “hoping his knees weren’t going to give way” (SS, p. 185). It was that bad. But then he saw something his friends had done to encourage him, and it had an immediate effect:

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw the fluttering banner high above, flashing Potter for President over the crowd. His heart skipped. He felt braver. (SS, p. 185)

  At a later match, the Gryffindor team captain Oliver Wood gives his teammates a locker room pep talk, engaging their emotions and reminding them of their high level of preparation and competence (CS, p. 167). It has its intended effect. They win the match.

  If we take an active role in encouraging other people around us when we see they need it, we will be preparing them to do the same for us when we are in need. Harry’s friends mean a lot to him. He encourages them. And they encourage him. They also give him important forms of help. It’s easier to be courageous and confident when we know we have the assistance of others. In fact, one of the most important themes of the Harry Potter stories is the great value of friendship. 1 Everything Harry is able to accomplish is rooted in the collabo
rative efforts of many. His friends help him. Some of the teachers help him. And the great Dumbledore often gives crucial assistance as well.

  Just having other people helping out inspires more confidence and courage when we need it. But it’s especially nice when they affirm their belief in us, thereby helping us to believe in ourselves. Before the second of three very dangerous challenges Harry must confront in Goblet of Fire, his huge, strong friend Hagrid speaks to him:

  “Yeh’re goin’ ter win,” Hagrid growled, patting Harry’s shoulder again, so that Harry actually felt himself sink a couple of inches into the soft ground. “I know it. I can feel it. Yeh’re goin’ ter win, Harry.” (GF, p. 485)

  But the best intentions and wishes of others, along with their most heartfelt cheerleading, sometimes just doesn’t convince us that we’re up to the task of whatever challenge we are facing.

  The common room emptied slowly around Harry. People kept wishing him luck for the next morning in cheery, confident tones like Hagrid’s, all of them apparently convinced that he was about to pull off another stunning performance like the one he had managed in the first task. Harry couldn’t answer them, he just nodded, feeling as though there were a golfball stuck in his throat. (GF, p. 488)

  We often need something more. It’s not enough for others to express their belief in us. We need to convince ourselves that we’re up to the task.

  (3) Engage in positive self-talk. Sometimes, Harry tries to build other people’s confidence by what he says, and at other times, he talks to his friends in a way that is actually aimed at building up his own inner courage as well. Having to leave Ron in a difficult situation and walk into a worse one, with fairly compelling evidence that he might not get out alive, Harry speaks to his friend, and in doing so, actually conveys a positive message to himself as well:

  “See you in a bit,” said Harry, trying to inject some confidence into his shaking voice. (CS, p. 304)

  We are occasionally privy to Harry’s inner thoughts. And in them, he sometimes seems to be working on beefing up his courage:

  Did they think he couldn’t look after himself? He’d escaped Lord Voldemort three times; he wasn’t completely useless… . (PA, p. 68)

  Later, in his room alone at the Leaky Cauldron Inn, he uses the power of positive self-talk not just inwardly, but outwardly:

  “I’m not going to be murdered,” Harry said out loud. “That’s the spirit, dear,” said his mirror sleepily. (PA, p. 68)

  It matters what we tell ourselves in the privacy of our own minds, and in the solitude of our own rooms. Do we build ourselves up or tear ourselves down? Do we engage in persistently negative thinking, or do we employ positive self-affirmations to prepare ourselves to use our talents in the best possible ways? Positive thinking and positive self-talk cannot replace talent and preparation, but they can alter our psychology in such a way as to unlock our true potential when we engage in them carefully and appropriately. When Harry says “See you in a bit” or “I’m not going to be murdered,” he need not be taken to be predicting the future, against whatever evidence to the contrary might exist, but he can rather be taken to be focusing his intentions, and mustering everything within him to move forward in a positive direction, refusing to allow himself to be held back by debilitating fear.

  (4) Focus on what’s at stake. The more important a situation is to us, the braver we tend to be in our response to danger, in order to protect, preserve, or promote what we consider to be of great and irreplaceable value. Harry will do incredibly courageous things to save the life of a friend. In one situation, he discovers a passageway, a large pipe that opens into an underground area where a huge snake has taken a young girl, the sister of his best friend. Despite the grave danger involved and the likelihood of harm and even death, Harry is prepared to go down the pipe:

  He couldn’t not go, not now that they had found the entrance to the chamber, not if there was even the faintest, slimmest, wildest chance that Ginny might be alive. (CS, p. 301)

  He has no hesitation in deciding how to deal with the situation:

  “I’m going down there,” he said. (CS, p. 301)

  Great values cast out fear.

  In the second challenge of three that Harry has to face at the Triwizard Tournament in his fourth year, he works hard to save his friends from a potential underwater grave without even thinking of fear. By focusing on what’s at stake, he has no time to be delayed or detained by negative emotions. He just immediately takes the action he sees as necessary.

  Some of the most courageous people in human history have later reported that they didn’t feel particularly brave at the time of their great accomplishments, but that they just knew what they had to do and then did it. They were motivated to action by knowing what was at stake. Their convictions overcame their fear. They acted despite being scared, or else claim that they were just too busy to feel either scared or brave, in responding to the needs of the situation.

  In some circumstances, preparation, the support of others, positive thinking, and considering the values that are at stake don’t together generate any feeling of bravery at all. But the truly brave person doesn’t wait for that to change before taking action. Courage is sometimes manifested only when the courageous action is already underway. The fifth strategy to produce and enhance courage is our last one, and sometimes the only one that works.

  (5) Take appropriate action. Harry shows on many occasions the power of action. In one classroom situation, a large snake unexpectedly appears from the end of a wizard’s wand, and moves toward one of Harry’s fellow students, prepared to strike. Fear envelops the room.

  Harry wasn’t sure what made him do it. He wasn’t even aware of deciding to do it. All he knew was that his legs were carrying him forward as though he was on casters and that he had shouted stupidly at the snake, “Leave him alone!” And miraculously—inexplicably—the snake slumped to the floor, docile as a thick, black garden hose, its eyes now on Harry. Harry felt the fear drain out of him. (CS, p. 194)

  When Harry and Ron first show up at the train station to catch the Hogwarts Express, the train to school, they are told the only way they can get to the proper departure point, platform nine and three-quarters, is to walk straight into what appears to be a solid brick wall. But appearances can be misleading. Sometimes our misgivings over a situation can be dispelled only when we take action. Ron’s mother, Mrs. Weasley, gives this advice to the obviously anxious Harry:

  “Not to worry,” she said. “All you have to do is walk straight at the barrier between platforms nine and ten. Don’t stop and don’t be scared you’ll crash into it, that’s very important. Best do it at a bit of a run if you’re nervous. Go on, go now before Ron.” (SS, p. 93)

  A positive attitude is important, but it’s getting into action that’s most important of all.

  Harry’s Big Step of Faith

  There is one sequence of events in Harry’s very eventful life where we can see clearly the importance of both focusing on what’s at stake in a dangerous situation and taking action before having any realistic assurance that it will be efficacious, or even that you yourself will emerge safe in the end. It’s Harry’s big step of faith.

  He is in the third challenge of the Triwizard Tournament, making his way through a huge maze where many fearful dangers may stand between him and the ultimate goal. He sees a golden mist up ahead, across his path. He hesitates, not knowing what to expect of the mist, unsure whether it holds a powerful enchantment that could endanger him, and puzzled over how to proceed. He considers doubling back and trying another path. But then he hears a girl’s scream from nearby, up ahead. He calls out the name of the female contestant and there is no response.

  There was silence. He stared all around him. What had happened to her? Her scream seemed to come from somewhere ahead. He took a deep breath and ran through the enchanted mist. (GF, p. 624)

  But what happens as a result could never have been predicted.

  The world turne
d upside down. Harry was hanging from the ground, with his hair on end, his glasses dangling off his nose, threatening to fall into the bottomless sky. He clutched them to the end of his nose and hung there, terrified. It felt as though his feet were glued to the grass, which had now become the ceiling. Below him, the dark, star-spangled heavens stretched endlessly. He felt as though if he tried to move one of his feet, he would fall away from the earth completely.

  Think, he told himself, as all the blood rushed to his head, think… . (GF, p. 624)

  The situation looks bad. It is completely disorienting and very scary. It seems likely to Harry that any action on his part could make the situation much worse. But inaction would mean giving up any possibility of helping the girl who screamed. Harry does what he has to do—he steps out beyond the available evidence, in the manner of all heroes, and acts in courageous faith. The result is as startling as what had already happened: