Courage, Bravery - Considering Nicomachean Ethics

...the end which courage sets before itself would seem to be pleasant, but to be concealed by the attending circumstances, as happens also in athletic contests; for the end at which boxers aim is pleasant—the crown and the honours—but the blows they take are sitressing to flesh and blood, and painful, and so is their whole exertion; and because the blows and the exertions are many the end, which is but small, appears to have nothing pleasant about it. And so, if the case of courage is similar, death and wounds will be painful to the brave man and against his will, but he will face them because it is noble to do so or because it is base not to do so.  And the more he is possessed of virtue in its entirety and the happier he is, the more he will be pained at the thought of death; for life is best worth living for such a man, and he is knowingly losing the greatest goods, and this is painful.

- The Nichomachean Ethics of Aristotle, translated by Sir David Ross

Yet ironically courage makes you willing to die, so courage being the road to happiness cannot mean a happiness that requires still being alive. It must be a happiness that is looking beyond this life.

So the point of courage is to bear the most fearsome and painful things well, and the most frightening thing to us is death, the ultimate thing that courage does for us, so to speak, is to make us still capable in the face of death; to allow us our faculties and wherewithal when we could give up. But then, if its most ultimate use is in the face of nonexistence, so to speak, what is the point of it at all? If it led us to accept death, and we did die, it would in a sense be some horrible, crude joke- a thing promising good but instead bringing nothing at all- even our own annihilation.

So if the goal of life is to live, what is the value of virtue if such a virtue as courage so to speak leads to death? If it is a virtue in the face of pain and ultimately death, what is the point of it? Those who dismiss needing to be virtuous because we all die would then be right- there would be no point to be courageous in the face of death; it would perhaps be more ‘virtuous’, if virtue were the road to the happy life, to avoid death; to live a life of caution and safety, avoidance of ills and pain (which I think we have actually come to).

The irony in this idea that we should avoid evils is that to really have a chance at avoiding illness and pain, it seems we first must bear it; we do not become stronger and more capable of defending ourselves except in going through pain and thus fortifying ourselves against it, like the immune system does, and our bodies do not become stronger and more able to withstand injury and illness except by being put through the very things that cause it pain (though perhaps in a more controlled way). So the way nature works, it seems that courage in the face of pain is rewarded, and those who are Christians believe that courage in the face of death is rewarded. Perhaps this is to come later in Nicomachean Ethics that living here cannot be the reward for the virtuous man, but I don’t know what his answer could be, then, except some belief in the Halls of our Fathers after we die. But I don’t know much about the Greeks’ worldview(s).