Dr.West, Courage, What is it? And is courage contagious?
Courage is the great enabling virtue, that allows one to realize other virtues like love and hope and faith. To have courage, is to be willing to look unflinchingly at catastrophic circumstances and master the wheel to overcome the fear. Never to fully erase and eliminate the fear, but overcome the fear so that fear does not have the last world. Or so that fear does not push one into confromity complacency or cowardice. Now, for me, in many way, the opposite of courage is not simply cowardice, but it’s even worse than that it. It is indifference. And indifference to evil is more invidious that evil itself, precisely because indifference to evil is contagious. The Great Abraham Joshua Heschel used to make this point in almost every text apperas and he’s absolutely right. So that courage for me is always a diffcult thing to discern and find as always not enough courageous folk around. There’s too many folks that wanna fit in. There’s too many folks that wanted just go with the grain. There’s too many folks who to simply opt for the seductions and temptations, and become drunk with the wine of the world, and toxicated with the felicities of bourgeois existence. Courage says “No. I’ll think critically. I will love across the board, across race, across gender, across sector orientation, across national boundaries. And I will hope: I will never allow despair to have the last word. But I will recognize that he or she who was never despaired has never lived, but never allow that despair to have the last word.” Courage to think critically, courage to love, courage to hope, that for me sits at the very center of what the Socratic vocation and prophetic witness are all about.
Immanuel Kant says on page 177 of the Critique of Pure Reason:”Examples are the gold card of judgment.” Bad examples, bad judgement. Creat examples, great judgement. Courageous examples, courageous judgements. Courage is contagious. It has a way of oozing from one soul to another soul, one person to another person, if we are influenced by the examples of those persons who exemplify the courage to think critically, the courage to love, the courage to hope. That’s precisely why did the Nelson Mandela’s, and Mahatmas Gandhi’s, and Martin Luther King Junior’s and Fannie Lou Hamer’s and Barragan’s and Abraham Joshua Heschel’s as courageous examples, do in fact inspire all of us when we’re at our best, do in fact forced us to examine our own cowardice, forces to examine our own conformity and complacency. So is courage contagious? Yes, when we have examples of persons who we are willing to take seriously, we are willing to be unsettled by, we are willing to be challenged by, and hence attempt to aspire to the level that they exemplify.

韦斯特博士，是什么勇气？勇气能够传染吗？
勇气是一种能够撬动品格的美德，帮助人实现其他美德，比如爱、希望和信念。拥有勇气，是能够泰山崩于前而色不变，掌控克服恐惧的方向盘。绝不是完全消解恐惧，而是克服恐惧，使恐惧没有最后的决定权。或者说，即便恐惧，也不会陷入从众、自满或怯懦。于我而言，在很多方面，勇气的对立面并非简单的怯懦，而是比怯懦更糟糕的——冷漠。对罪恶熟视无睹比罪恶本身更令人反感，正是因为这种对恶的冷漠会传染。伟大的亚伯拉罕·约书亚·赫舍尔（神学家），在几乎每一篇文章中都提到了这一点，他讲的很对。勇气对我来说一直很难去发现和辨别，因为环顾四周，从来没有多少人有足够的勇气。太多人想融入所谓的主流，太多人只想随波逐流，太多人只愿屈从于日常诱惑，沉醉于世俗的美酒，沉醉于小资产阶级触手可及的小确幸。但勇敢者会说：“我不会这样。我会批判地思考，我会爱所有人，不分种族，不分性别，不分行业，不分国界。我会希望：我永远不会以绝望的方式剧终。但我也要明白，古往今来，未经历过在绝望中寻找希望的生活不值得一过，但绝不允许绝望成为最后的主宰。” 批判性思考的勇气、爱的勇气、希望的勇气，在我看来，这正是问题的症结，正是苏格拉底的使命和先知见证的核心所在。
伊曼努尔·康德在《纯粹理性批判》第 177 页写到：“榜样是影响判断力的王牌。”糟糕的榜样，糟糕的判断力；优秀的榜样，优秀的判断力。勇气的榜样，勇敢的判断力。勇气是会传染的。它通过一种方式从一个灵魂渗透到另一个灵魂，从一个人渗透到另一个人，如果我们被那些榜样所影响，他们勇于批判思考，勇于去爱，勇于去怀抱希望。这就是为什么纳尔逊·曼德拉，圣雄甘地，马丁·路德·金，范尼·卢·哈默，以及巴拉干和亚伯拉罕·约书亚·赫舍尔，这些勇敢的榜样，在我们处于最佳状态时激励着我们，迫使我们审视自己的怯懦，审视自己的从众和自满。那么勇气会传染吗？是的，但是，我们需要榜样，我们要愿意认真对待这些榜样的力量，我们愿意为其所动，不安于现状，我们愿意为其所挑战，并因此尝试去追求他们所代表的人格水平。