Courage Under Fire: Testing Epictetus's Doctrines in a Laboratory of Human Behavior (Hoover Essays)

Admiral James Stockdale is a distinguished military man. This 21 page essay entitled "Courage Under Fire: Testing Epictetus's Doctrines in a Laboratory of Human Behaviour" arouses curiousity. Captured in the Vietnamn war, and in a P.O.W. camp for four years, his reflections are about stoicism in the face of torture and extreme oppression. There is a long association with stoicism and military men (Marus Aurelius) and so we should not suprised to see applied stoicism being directed towards resisting torture, resisting coercion and trying to maintain dignity in such circumstances. However, he is an American, he is a military man. In the short essay, he describes people who did cooperate under torture as sleaze balls and finks which is strongly alienating for this reader, and perhaps underlines my view that this essay is likely to be valued more by the military elite and not the general stoic reader. Curious nevertheless.