Must Read: Social Research.

Social Research has been published since 1934 by the Graduate Faculty of the New School University. Each issue is devoted to a single theme, and I wanted to flag for your reading the Spring 2004 issue, Courage. What I find wonderful about this serial in particular is its stretch across disciplinary boundaries, on the order of Critical Inquiry, but with a clear social-scientific bent. The articles, all of finest caliber, whose titles alone should seduce, are listed below, after the Editor's Note explaining the issue:

Shortly after September 11, 2002, Susan Sontag was taken to task for arguing in the pages of The New Yorker that the hijackers of 9/11 were not cowards, because they were willing to die for a cause they believed in. A reader of the magazine wrote to remind her of Aristotle's argument in the Nichomachean Ethics that a courageous person is one who faces fearful things as he ought and as reason directs, "for the sake of what is noble."
   It seemed that the time was ripe for some new reflections on what it means to be courageous, hence this special issue of Social Research. Though our starting point was September 11, and our initial considerations included Palestinian suicide bombers and Kamikaze pilots of WWII, the issue quickly expanded to include a host of questions about the nature, forms, and expressions of courage.
   Papers in the issue look at courage as a civic virtue, the classical understanding of courage as a virtue, the need for courage in a democracy. Two papers, those by Fatos Lubonja and Jirina Siklova, look at the demand for courage in repressive societies, and what happens when those societies change and courage is no longer the order of the day. Other papers in the issue look at the nature of moral, physical, and intellectual courage, and the psychological and physiological bases of courage and fearlessness.
   At a time when terrorist threats are everywhere, it behooves us to consider once again what it means to be courageous.

Articles:

• David Pears, "The Anatomy of Courage"
  
• Alan Ryan, "Intellectual Courage"
  
• Marilynne Robinson, "The Tyranny of Petty Coercion"
  
• George Kateb, "Courage as a Virtue"
  
• Ryan K. Balot, "The Dark Side of Democratic Courage"
  
• Gesine Schwan, "Civil Courage and Human Dignity: How to Regain Respect for the Fundamental Values of Western Democracy"
  
• Fatos Lubonja, "Courage and the Terror of Death"
  
• Jirina Šiklová, "Courage, Heroism, and the Postmodern Paradox"
  
• Stanley J. Rachman, "Fear and Courage: A Psychological Perspective"
  
• Andrew Silke, "Courage in Dark Places: Reflections on Terrorist Psychology"