Hobbs and Heroes

At the BBC radio 3’s free thinking festival at The Sage in Gateshead Angie Hobbs posed the question do we need heroes? In her discussion Hobbs used a working definition of a hero as “someone who does something of outstanding and recognised benefit to society or culture which most people would find impossible to perform”. The Cambridge online dictionary defines a hero as someone “who is admired for having done something very brave or having achieved something great”, the italics are mine. It would appear Hobbs’ definition and that of the dictionary roughly concur. In this posting I will argue such definitions are incomplete.

 

Hobbs used a thought experiment to tease out our intuitive ideas of who is a hero. She imagined someone standing on a swollen river bank. A child falls into the river and the person jumps in to save the child. She then refined this situation to explore further our intuitive ideas about who counts as a hero. For instance is the potential rescuer a hero if she cannot swim and has only a minimal chance of saving the child? Is she a hero if her desire for heroism means standing around on riverbanks for hours hoping to rescue someone? Or is she a hero if her desire for heroism means she pushes someone who is a much better swimmer out of the way so she can rescue the child? In the light of Hobbs’ examples I want to question if the person standing on the riverbank who rescued the child was Superman whether we would consider his action as heroic. Someone might object that my question is simply a no-brainer arguing because Superman is a superhero it automatically follows his action is heroic. However I would suggest the fact that Superman is regarded as a ‘superhero’ rather than simply as a hero gives us some grounds to question his heroism.

 

Is a superhero just someone who is super at being a hero or someone who differs from normal heroes in a more significant way? It seems to me it is difficult for someone with super powers to be a hero, it's hard for superman to be a hero I now want to argue that Superman’s action in saving the child lacks an essential element needed for his action to be regarded as heroic. Superman when he rescues the child is fully confident he is going to succeed. I would suggest Superman is only doing his duty and that heroes are people who go beyond the call of duty. Let it be assumed I am standing on the side of a pond into which I can wade with no danger to myself. Let it be further assumed this pond is deep enough to drown a small child. Into this pond falls such a child. In this situation I would suggest because someone has a need for my services, the child, services which I could provide at very little cost to myself, getting wet, that intuitively I have a duty to provide these services. Furthermore I would suggest there is something drastically wrong with me as a person if I fail to feel some empathy for the drowning child. If we accept a caring ethic and I fail to save the child because my actions fail to reflect or exhibit or express an absence of empathic concern for the child then I am acting wrongly. I am also failing to do my duty from a consequentialist and deontological viewpoint. For these reasons I would argue in the above situation I should be blamed if I did not rescue the child and that whilst the child’s mother may be grateful for my actions that nonetheless these actions do not merit praise because I only doing my duty. I would further argue superman’s position on the riverbank is analogous to mine on the side of the pond. If superman fails to rescue the child at relatively little cost to himself then intuitively he fails to do his duty. Moreover any failure on his part to rescue the child reflects an absence of empathic concern and also means he fails to do his duty. I would suggest in the light of the above that a more complete definition of a hero is as follows. A hero is someone who chooses to recognisably benefit someone else or society in ways most people could not, in addition her actions must be beyond the call of duty and must involve some real sacrifice on her part. Accepting the above raises some interesting questions. Could the ‘someone’ in the above definitions be a young child be a hero or even some sorts of animals? Clearly very young children or animals cannot knowingly benefit society. However young children and perhaps animals can love someone else. If a child concurs his fears and goes into the street knowing it is dangerous to seek help for his unconscious mother who has fallen down stairs a hero? I would suggest young children can be heroes. Is a sniffer dog who fearfully enters a building only because he loves his handler brave and perhaps a kind of hero? The answer to this question depends on whether love can be a reason to be heroic.

 

Accepting the above definition means we have no reason to regard football stars as heroes even if they are capable of doing things on the football field we would find impossible to perform. In practice it seems we already do this by referring to sportsmen and women as ‘sporting heroes’ rather than simply as heroes. It also follows we have no reason to regard most soldiers fighting in Afghanistan against the Taliban as heroes. These soldiers are brave but it is part of a soldier’s duty to be brave and bravery need not of necessity involve sacrifice. However the question might still be posed must a more meaningful definition of a hero include the fact that she does something brave? It is certainly true that in the ancient world a hero had to be brave because the domain of heroes was restricted to soldiers prepared to sacrifice themselves for their country. However over time the domain of heroes has expanded to include all men, women, and children. Does this expansion mean that a hero must still be brave? I would suggest it does but that the domain of what is a brave action also needs expanding. To be brave someone must be prepared to do something that makes her vulnerable, she must be prepared to sacrifice herself for some commonly perceived good.