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.
