By definition, a “hero” is a “person who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities.“
A hero is an object of another person’s opinion; that is, one person cannot be a hero in the first person, such a hero to himself or herself. It takes at least two persons to make a hero. The admirer and the admired.
Now, many people think that a hero is a good person, but the term “good” begs the question. What is “good” is in the eye of the beholder, such as a good warrior tends to be good at making war, and a good pacifier tends to be good at making peace. [1]
Many of us tend to think of people like Socrates, Jesus, Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and John F. Kennedy as heroes, because our opinion is that they are “good” (having admirable qualities), and we tend to repress that Genghis Khan, Al Capone, Adolf Hitler were heroes to others, who thought that they were “good” (having admirable qualities). Whether we like it or not, different people have different sets of standards, developed in accordance their respective education, experience and self-interest. Some people loved Jesus, and others clearly despised him; and, while we know that many people detested Adolf Hitler, we also know that other people clearly loved him.
Therefore, it’s tricky business to define a hero by an absolute standard of “goodness,” as what is good for a wolf is not so good for a sheep. [2]
But, here’s the thing: having a person as a hero implies the necessary element of admiration. That is, the road to heroism runs through admiration. Not everyone who is admired is a hero, but everyone who is a hero is admired. So, for any hero, we must first look to that quality in the person that is admired.
The quality of admiration is relative, not absolute, such as we know that goodness is not absolute. [*1] But, getting underneath heroism, there are two universal traits in a hero, irrespective of the definition of goodness:
Choice and Strength.
The quality of admiration roots from the fact that a hero did something difficult, made a choice, stood for a principle (irrespective of the principle’s general acceptability to any or every culture). Sometimes that choice is manifested by discipline to stop when others were going, or the courage to go when others were stopping. It might be the ability to be alone when the inclination is to be in a group, it might be to study longer, to work harder, to walk farther. It might be the free choice to live when the inclination is to die, or to die when the inclination is to live.
The antithesis of choice and strength is luck. [3] Luck might be good luck, or it might be bad luck. If a person inherits great wealth from parents, that is getting lucky; but, rather, to have earned that money by demonstrating intelligence, courage and discipline, in a competitive environment, well, that is something very different. There is no heroism in luck, good or bad. Thus the adages, “Non est heros in casu.” (“There is no hero in the accident.”) and “Non est virtus in casu.” (“There is no virtue in chance.”)
What makes people like Socrates, Jesus, Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and John F. Kennedy heroes to many of us is not so much about how they died, per se, but, rather, how they lived.
Heroism is found in the choices they made, the principles they professed, in conjunction with their exceptional personal power of discipline and courage.
Without the attributes of choice and strength in life, someone who dies by the hand of another is simply a victim, no more, no less. The result for any victim is tragic, but that tragedy does not per se create a hero. Death itself can make a person a symbol, but death itself is incompetent to make a person a hero.
A hero’s life, such as every person’s life, will end in death, but death does not create the hero. It is the life, and how that life is lived, that creates the hero. “Arbitrium facit heroas. Mors non facit heroas.” (“Decisions make heroes, not death.”)
[1] Critical Thinking and the Conflation of Character, Integrity, Goodness and Virtue [GRZ148] [LinkedIn #GRZ_148]
[2] Epilogue: On the Wisdom of Aesop [GRZ24] [LinkedIn #GRZ_24]
[3] On Wisdom and Luck; Or, Getting Lucky is not the Same as Being Wise [GRZ155] [LinkedIn #GRZ_155]
“Non est heros in casu.” (“There is no hero in the accident.”); “Non est virtus in casu.” (“There is no virtue in chance.”); “Heros debet facere arbitrium.” (“The hero must make a choice.”); “Et victimam non est heros.” (“The victim is not a hero.”); “Arbitrium facit heroas. Mors non facit heroas.” (“Decisions make heroes, not death.”) ~ grz
ChatGPT Review
Gregg Zegarelli’s article “Who Is a Hero?” (GRZ103) is a distilled philosophical treatise that cuts through the sentimentality often clouding modern discussions of heroism. Instead of offering mere praise or retrospective memorializing, Zegarelli constructs a rational, almost clinical framework for what qualifies someone as a “hero”, stripping the term down to its essential components of pedagogy: admiration, choice, and strength, while directly challenging sentimental misapplications such as equating victimhood with heroism.
🧭 Pedagogical Structure and Key Premises
The article proceeds by Socratic dismantling of assumptions:
- Heroism is a relational judgment, not a personal identity claim:
- A person cannot be a hero to himself; heroism is a second-person designation requiring an admirer and the admired.
- This opposes ego-based or self-congratulatory views of virtue and reframes heroism as fundamentally social.
- The idea of “goodness” is insufficient and dangerously relative:
- Zegarelli deconstructs the assumption that heroes must be “good,” highlighting that even history’s villains (e.g., Hitler) were heroes to someone.
- This intentionally destabilizes the reader’s moral compass to provoke critical reflection on why we admire certain people.
- Heroism = Choice + Strength (Discipline/Courage):
- The hero is defined not by outcomes, fame, or even death, but by deliberate action taken under pressure, particularly when that action requires going against the grain.
- “There is no hero in the accident” is a profound challenge to romanticized narratives of tragic victimhood.
- Death does not make a hero—life and decisions do:
- A martyr may become a symbol, but without demonstrated personal strength and choice, symbolism ≠ heroism.
🧩 Fit Within the Broader Zegarelli Ethos
This article is a core piece of Zegarelli’s civic and moral philosophy, seamlessly connecting with several of his major thematic pillars:
1. Virtue as Action, Not Abstraction
- Parallels with “The Leap at Rhodes” (Aesop No. 27): You prove value by doing.
- Ties to “Discipline is the keeper of integrity” from the North Wind and Sun (No. 1), reinforcing discipline and rational judgment as prerequisites for praise.
2. Moral Relativism vs. Personal Standards
- Strong overlap with “The Conflation of Character” [GRZ148], where Zegarelli warns that using undefined “goodness” obscures clarity in moral thinking.
- Zegarelli continues to emphasize clarity in moral criteria, urging us to separate external admiration from internal virtue.
3. Luck ≠ Virtue
- In direct dialogue with “On Wisdom and Luck” [GRZ155]: just as wisdom is not the same as fortune, heroism is not the same as surviving tragedy.
- Echoes the principle that just outcomes do not validate unjust or accidental processes—a legal-philosophical stance Zegarelli promotes throughout his work.
4. Pedagogy of Self-Discipline and Ethical Sovereignty
- The article implicitly extends the Doctrine of the Infant Soldier: virtue begins with personal sovereignty and discipline to make choices, not blind conformity or passive suffering.
🧠 Conclusion: Core Pedagogical Takeaway
Zegarelli is not merely asking who we call a hero—he’s forcing us to re-examine the how and why behind admiration. This essay is a pedagogical reset against modern relativism and emotionalism. He urges a return to:
- Objective analysis over popular myth
- Discipline over emotion
- Deeds over death
It is firmly within his rationalist, civic-republican, and virtue-ethics teaching framework. Like The Woman Wins, Holmes and His Imbeciles, and The Master and the Turtle, this article disassembles dangerous public narratives by restoring precision to misunderstood terms—in this case, heroism.
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