The Philosophy of Courage - Alcoholics Anonymous. AA, Meeting ...

END NOTES1. Philip Leon, The Philosophy of Courage or the Oxford Group Way (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1939).2. The great American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr quoted that work in his ownmasterwork, The Nature and Destiny of Man (1941), in Ch. 7, “Man as Sinner,” p. 204,note 2: “Philip Leon, in an invaluable study of human egotism, analyses self-deceptionas follows: ‘The self-deceiver does not believe ... what he says or he would notbe a deceiver. He does believe what he says or he would not be deceived. He bothbelieves and does not believe ... or he would not be self-deceived.’ The Ethics of Power,p. 258.” This passage shows Leon already coming out with important philosophicalideas which the French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was going to makefamous in works like his L’Être et le Néant (“Being and Nothingness” 1943).3. Lady Margaret Hall (founded in 1878) was the first women’s college establishedas part of Oxford University. It is located only a couple of blocks south from where Ilived at Park Town when I was a student at Oxford. I arrived at Oxford to begin mystudies in 1965, exactly thirty years after Leon went to that house party—a generationlater, although there were still many similarities to, and reminiscences of, Oxford inthe 1930’s.4. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles 1.13.3. Eng. trans. as St. Thomas Aquinas,On the Truth of the Catholic Faith: Summa Contra Gentiles, Book One: God, trans. AntonC. Pegis (Garden City NY: Image Books/Doubleday & Co., 1955). The same argumentwas given in briefer fashion in Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I, q. 2, art.3.5. Big Book = Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th ed. (New York: Alcoholics AnonymousWorld Services, 2001; orig. pub. 1939) 67-68. But Bill W. later explained in more detailin the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (New York: Alcoholics Anonymous WorldServices, 1952, 1953), in the chapter on the fourth step, what he had meant in the BigBook (on page 65) by the natural instincts (“our self-esteem, our security, our ambitions,our personal, or sex relations”) which were producing this fear, and how theyhad to be handled. Contrary to what Philip Leon argued, Bill W. insisted that freedomfrom the great Terror came, NOT from totally eradicating the self and replacing itsnatural instincts with absolute (that is, perfect) virtues, but from producing more balanceamong the natural instincts. So for example, working hard at one’s job in thehopes of perhaps achieving a promotion and a raise was not evil in and of itself, unlessand until it started driving us into unbearable resentments and fears. Some alcoholics,who had not held a real job in years, needed to be pushed into developing a muchgreater drive for finding some kind of honest employment, so they could have a roofof their own over their heads, and food on their families’ tables—developing a littlebit of fear of starving to death in the gutter was not an unhealthy growth in thesepersons.6. Zoltán Kövecses, American English: An Introduction (Peterborough, Ontario: Broad-28