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Courage Under Fire: Testing Epictetus's Doctrines in a Laboratory of Human Behavior
Paperback
Series: Hoover Essays, Book 6
PhilosophyMilitary BiographiesSoutheast Asian History
Publisher Price: $9.95
ISBN13: 9780817936921
Publisher: Hoover Institution Press
Published: Dec 1 1993
Pages: 32
Weight: 0.12
Height: 0.09 Width: 6.02 Depth: 9.08
Language: English
In September 1965, US Navy pilot James Bond Stockdale was shot down over North Vietnam and became a prisoner of war. What followed was an eight-year test of ancient Stoic philosophy under the most extreme conditions imaginable.
Courage Under Fire is Stockdale's account of how the teachings of the Greek philosopher Epictetus--a former slave who had known suffering--sustained him as he led his fellow prisoners through systematic torture, years of solitary confinement, and psychological warfare designed to break their will.
Introduced to Stoicism as a graduate student at Stanford University, Stockdale brought its lessons to the Hanoi Hilton and its hundreds of POWs as a manual for survival under extreme pressure. Epictetus taught that although we cannot control external events, we maintain absolute power over our judgments, opinions, and will.
- This rare firsthand account from the highest-ranking officer held in the Hanoi prison system demonstrates leadership in impossible circumstances.
- Stockdale shows how he and his fellow prisoners developed clandestine communications and resistance tactics, and how he convinced men to accept further torture rather than compromise their principles.
- Stockdale provides timeless wisdom on resilience, dignity, and maintaining one's humanity in the face of systematic cruelty.
Written by a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, Courage Under Fire bridges ancient wisdom and modern crisis. Originally delivered in 1993 as a lecture at King's College, London, it remains the definitive account of Stoicism tested in what Stockdale called his laboratory of human behavior.
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