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1. Touhid Kamal
Dr. Patricia Henderson
24 May, 2019
An investigation on understanding Heroism
What embodies a Hero?
For centuries onwards, from myths to legends, heroic accounts have captured the
imagination throughout human history. The concept of heroism—has reinvigorated as a
phoenix in the intellectual and empirical pursuit of in the postmodern times of the
academic community. Not just from the monopoly of myth, fiction and popular culture,
however, the phenomenon of heroism can have a multi perspective lens for active and
rigorous observation. In this paper we will focus on its psychosocial aspect, and contribute
our understanding considering the role of the body and embodiment in the heroic process
and experience.
In terms of contextualizing this agenda, the joint reading of contemporary and
traditional phenomenological embodiment schools of thought, in particular Merleau-
Ponty’s (1962, 1964) address of contemporary heroism and his legacy, along with Allison
and Goethals’ (2014) heroic leadership dynamic, can be used to form an “embodiment of
heroism—where heroism is defined as a distinct state of embodied consciousness accessible
to all human agents in everyday lived experience. The idea rests on the notion of the body
as compatible with, however distinct from traditional biological conceptualizations. The
investigation looks into theories that demonstrate peak states, agency and embodiment—
physical intelligence and flow—resulting in the definition of the heart of heroism as
biopsychosocial resilience and transformation (Efthimiou, 2017) According to Allison and
Goethals (2014), we are all capable of heroism—to uncover the characteristic, we must be
able to develop an understanding of the processes, functions and consequences of the
“heroic embodied mind”. It can be argued in its proposition that all types of heroism
encompass a physiological and embodied basis or aspect of experience.
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2. Heroism as an Embodied State
What is precisely a “body”? This is perhaps the most profound question to delve into
for any embodiment theorist. the reality of embodiment is interwoven from different focal
views; from the cultural, the biological, the spiritual, the psychological and so forth. In
order to understand the heroic experience we need to have a deep appreciation for the
above mentioned question. Smyth (2010) and Moya (2014) illuminates us with some
invigorating interpretations of these core theories, set out by French Phenomenological
philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Particularly, Smyth (2010) elucidates Merleau-Ponty’s
(1964) essay “Man, the Hero” as a critical insight to understand heroism from the
contribution of embodiment theory.
Merleau-Ponty (1964 and 2012, cited in Moya, 2014, p.1) argued that “there is no
hard separation between bodily conduct and intelligent conduct; rather, there is a unity of
behavior that expresses the intentionality and hence the meaning of this conduct”.
Gallagher & Zahavi (2008, p.153) observes the idea as a non-reductionist view of the brain
and the body, moreover an “embodied mind or minded body”. They integrate the idea
with which “transcends the physiological and psychological” (Merleau-Ponty, 1964 and
2012, as cited in Moya, 2014, p.1) and dismantle the mind-body dichotomy.
The concept of a “body” cannot be bounded to the traditional biological
interpretations, rather it is in the embodiment of heroism, which can be interrelated with
the inter-relationship with the minds, environment and metaphysical experiences beyond.
According to Merleau-Ponty (2012, as cited in Moya, 2014, p.2) habit is:
The situated character of the person explains that there is, at the same time,
a “general” existence as well as an existence that is linked with the effectiveness of
action and which we can call “personal”. Being anchored in the world makes the
person renounce a part of his or her protagonism because he or she already
possesses a series of habitualities.
Therefore, we can argue that body appropriates “itself a form of embodied
consciousness” and a foundation for embodied state is established which gives an
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3. expression to the intentionality and a meaning for embodied action. (Merleau-Ponty, 2012,
as cited in Moya, 2014, p.2).
For Merleau-Ponty (1962, as cited in Smyth, 2010, p.177) “the locus of heroic action
is the habitual body”. This habitual body can correspond with Jung’s conceptualization of
archetypes as innate, universal, and preconscious; which has been the focus of a rigorous
debate as deterministic (Goodwyn, 2010). The powerful correlation between the habitual
body, archetypes and their pre-reflexivity lends a credibility to the “hypothesis of shared
generic dimensions of embodiment”, where archetypes are imbibed as an explanation for
the “bodily grounding of our conceptual systems” and “key concepts in language and
symbol systems around the world” which is so prominently featured in hero stories all
around the world (Johnson, 2008, p.162). Moreover, the archetypal habitual heroic body is
firmly embedded in “deep time” (Allison and Goethals, 2014, p.171) and the pre-conscious
that it is impossible to ignore the endurance of its cultural tendencies. Whether the form
may change across contexts, but the heroic body’s conscious domain of lived experience
concentrates the universitality of habituality.
How can we possibly be active participants of our body if our pre-programmed
archetypal bodily scripts has been drilled unto us by evolution? If we consider the
embodied heroic mind and the locus of heroic action, it is by no means a static notion of
the body. Merleau-Ponty (1962, as cited in Smyth, 2010, p.177) argues that there is a
perpetual dialogue between the environment and the subject and an understanding that
both always co-penetrate with each other” (1962, as cited in Moya, 2014,p.2) For Merleau-
Ponty, (1962, as cited in Smyth, 2010, p.177) the localization of heroism in the habitual
body is not a mindless and tragic thrusting of one’s body into a lethal situation, or a
temporal dislocation from our everyday rational faculties. Merleau-Ponty’s (1962, as cited
in Smyth, 2010, p.168) “contemporary hero” always operates in the ever-present dynamic
exchange between the habitual pre-reflexive and the reflexive body. A constant negotiation
of meaning between the instinctual patterns and lived environment takes place; which is
further examined in Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the “lived or own body and of lived
space” (1964 and 2012, as cited in Moya, 2014, p.1). In an embodied state, a heroic actor is
seen “as subject, as experiencer, as agent” (Gallagher & Zahavi, 2008, p.155).
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4. According to Merleau-Ponty (1964), the deification of heroes is a timeless cultural
phenomenon. However Although Merleau-Ponty’s (1964) brief essay on heroism aimed “to
supply experiential evidence attesting to the latent presence of human universality”, he
also notes a profound shift in the history of heroes from a Christian notion of sacrifice and
the transcendental to a everyday individual with Hegel.
Hegel gives birth to the concept of the “everyday hero”, where the core premise give
birth to a “new heroism” which is the characteristic of the “embodied and
embedded” (Gallagher & Zahavi, 2008, p.74) form of human action and civic
engagement. However, these epistemic function of hero stories which lies in their
“transnational” qualities (Allison & Goethals, 2014, p.170), reminds us of the lived body as
a transcendental experience. Everyday grounds us in meanings and immediacy of the word
around us, which cannot be perceived or reduced only to conventional logic.
This notion of “new” and “everyday” heroism can also be understood by
embodiment theories with the notion of personal growth. Heroism can be conceptualized
as skill acquisition, and a behavior that can be trained and instilled in people of all ages.
Initiatives such as The Heroic Imagination Project (http://heroicimagination.org) and The
Hero Construction Company (www.heroconstruction.org) aims at training children on
Campbell’s (1949) hero’s journey, inspiring heroic behavior to combat bullying, social
injustice, civic action, cooperation and an understanding that everyday heroism is not a
fantasy but a skill to be acquired. Stanford Professor and the founder of The Heroic
Imagination Project, Phillip Zimbardo (2015), in his famous video. “What makes a hero?”
calls for a public commitment for heroic action, in embodiment which can be conceived as
a “corporealization of habit” (Moya, 2014, p.3). Any skill that might be once external and
unfamiliar to us, can be fully grasped from a “heroes-in-training” approach from a
“beginner” through to “expert” stages of embodied skill acquisition (Dreyfus & Dreyfus,
1999, p.105-109).
This is contrary to what other might perceive as virtually seamless, even insane or
irrational, as “junction of madness...and reason” in the contemporary hero (Merleau-
Ponty, 1964, p.324f/183)/. Smyth (2010, p.177) describes that, for Merleau-Ponty (1962),
“heroic action precisely instances the coincidence of the actual and the habitual body;
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5. “This is the condition of absolute knowledge, ‘the point at which consciousness finally
becomes equal to its spontaneous life and regains its self-possession’.” Merleau-Ponty (1962
and 1964, as cited in Smyth, 2010, p.178) further states that, “the hero is fully invested in
the realization of freedom, understood in universal terms,” and an “exemplary vivant, or
living person”. This point of unison between the habitual and actual body is where heroic
“operant intentionality” (Merleau-Ponty, 2012, as cited in Moya, 2014, p.1) and sensibility
“meets its maker” at both the conscious and preconscious, embodied form. It acts as a
meaning-making process and understanding of the lived heroic body as always “coming to
be” (Merleau-Ponty, 2012, as cited in Moya, 2014, p.1)
Making a Heroic Body
Johnson (2008) in his five dimensional framework of a generic body; he theorizes the
embodiment of heroism across the biological, the ecological, the social, the cultural and
the phenomenological spheres of experience.
The Heroic Body as Biological
According to Johnson, the dynamic view of the heroic actor is a,
functioning biological organism that can perceive, move within, respond to, and
transform its environment ... It is this whole body, with its various systems working
in marvellous coordination, that makes possible the qualities, images, feelings,
emotions, and thought patterns that constitute the ground of our [heroic] meaning
and understanding. (P.164)
The heroic body is grounder in the “body schema” or the “preconscious capacities” and
“system of sensory motor functions” of the habitual body (Johnson, 2008, p.164). This is
an additional explanation of Allison and Goethals’ (2014, p.170) description of the
epistemic function of hero stories that impart “wisdom by providing mental models, or
scripts” of heroic action and to embodied existence and bodily scripts that predates the
language and construction of these stores in both written and oral form. Embodiment
theorist such as Gallagher and Zahavi (2008) asks such questions if the attainment of
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6. wisdom in the process of heroic action thus provides no exception. Therefore can it be
concluded that all hero’s follow a common, “a set of structural patterns” (Johnson,2008, p.
164)? Do they talk, walk, think, move, perceive, experience the environments in a similar
manner? Are there no differences from the modern manifestations from the ancient ones?
Johnson (2008, p.161) states that, “It is not surprising to find shared dimensions of
bodily experience underlying all aspects of meaning an thought. Indeed, this is exactly
what we would expect, given our animal nature and our bodily capacities for perception
and action.” Moreover, Allison and Goethals (2014, p.171) underlines the significance of
the epistemic function of metaphor: “heroic narratives and their meaningful symbols serve
as metaphors for easing our understanding of complex, mysterious phenomena.”
Metaphor is a central tenet in embodiment literature and Johnson (2008, p.160)
demonstrates that, “how imaginative process like conceptual metaphor make it possible for
us to do all of our most amazing feats of abstract reasoning, from moral deliberation to
politics to logic.” Therefore we can claim that metaphor can be a significant construct to
unravel our understanding of the shared body schemas of the heroic body and its
evolutionary and biological roots.
The Heroic Body as Ecological
Johnson (2008, p.164) acknowledges that a dynamic formation of a heroic identity is
not devoid of the environment and formulates with an intricate web of organismal and
environmental system. Our senses, bodily sensations, our awareness, perceptions, inner
thoughts, physical expressions, languages are are constantly molded and shaped with the
interactive dance with the Ecology. Johnson (2008, p.164) premises on the notion that,
“The body does not, and cannot, therefore, exist independent of its environment.” In this
embodiment of heroism, the hero must come through all spheres of experiences; including
the ecological.
The Heroic Body as Social
This dimension gives premise to the notion that “brain and the entire bodily
organism are being trained up through deep interpersonal transactions” (Johnson, 2008, p.
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7. 165). Zimbardo and Ellsberg (2013) also articulate the powerful effect group dynamics and
social forces can have on fostering heroism. The potential evolutionary origins of heroism
in connection to ancestral warfare and altruism are now being addressed in scientific
literature as well as sociobiological epistemology of heroism (Kelly & Dunbar, 2001, Rusch
et al., 2015). In the twenty-first century, we can observe that, now with the advent of social
media, inspiring heroic accounts are at all spheres of human activity. The universal
character of a hero has transcended and provided a shared ground for meaning across
cultures, religions, race, language and other barriers. Heroism is a social activity and it also
grows us, and parts knowledge among us.
The Heroic Body as Cultural
As Johnson points out the cultural constructions of identity as “gender, race, class
(socioeconomic status), aesthetic values, and various models of bodily posture and
movement” (2008, p.165-166), Allison & Goethals (2014) identifies that we need to speak
of a universal heroic culture that is free from the local nuances. However, Franco et al
(2011) points out this complexity that heroes are both constructed and contested by a
specific cultural setting, time and place of the act, and different historical and cultural
period have given birth to specific type of heroes, which Allison and Goethals’ (2014, p.
178) points out as “need-based origin of heroism”. We must surmise that the sensationalist
tendencies of reporting the events, contribution, and impact of heroes are effervescent in
nature. The political nature often forms a important cultural aspect. In the twenty first
century heroes are spread in different facets—education, health, business, science—which
indicates a truly global and sociocultural phenomenon.
The Heroic Body as Phenomenological
Allison and Goethals (2014, p.170) proposes the phenomenological aspect of the
heroic body as “a spiritual journey marked by encounters with traditional phenomena”.
They also support the function of hero narratives as “far more than simple scripts
prescribing prosocial action, stating “that effective hero stores feature an abundance of
transnational phenomena, which...reveals truths and life patterns that our limited minds
have trouble understanding using our best logic or rational thought”. Smyth (2010, p.187)
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8. argues that, “Merleau-Ponty’s heroic myth in effect marginalizes heroism by confining it to
a transcendental role”. However, it seems that it is not a failing, rather an accurate
description of the inherent energizing and complex property of hero mythologies.
The phenomenological lived heroic body is a recognition and validation of heroic
acts, and it eliminates the necessity for an audience to gain meaning. They carry a meaning
of their own. Allison and Goethals (2014, p.171) describe the phenomena as it “beg to be
understood but cannot be fully known using conventional tools of human reason. Hero
stories help unlock the secrets of the transnational.” The phenomenological account of the
heroic body premises embodiment to look beyond the simple acts of heroism as pro-social
behavior of a moral idea, but also to enhance its appreciation as a personal, multi-sensorial
experience. Similarly Johnson (2008, p.166) also notes that, we must be careful not to fall
into the trap of “deconstructivist accounts of the body as a fabric of textuality..The body
bleeds, feels, suffers, celebrates, desires, grows, and dies before and beyond texts”, all
aspects of the heroic body must be taken into account if we are to recognize the
significance of the embodied nature of the heroic state. It can not be reductionist, and
limited to biology, brain anatomy or genes alone, nor it can’t be understood in terms of
culture and relativism, rather from a deep interpretation in a multitude of discourses, of
our own and others included.
Implications of Deep Embodiment and Heroism as a Process
The lived heroic body is grounded in the deeper sense of ‘embodied knowing’ that
regulates within the physical and the experiential. As Gallagher & Zahavi (2008, p.155)
mentions, the lived heroic “body as subject, as experiencer, as agent”, who also is a leader.
Merleau-Ponty (1962, as cited in Smyth, 2010, p.178) suggested, “the hero is someone who
‘lives to the limit...his relation to men and the world.” We can convey that the heroic
journey is a process of deep embodiment, human performance, activity and agency.
One important function of the narratives of heroism is in the development of
“emotional intelligence” and “physical intelligence” (Allison and Goethals, 2014,p.171).
They propose the embodiment of hero lies in “the Great Eight” behavioral properties of
heroism: “Smart, Strong, and Selfless, Caring, and Charismatic, Resilient, and Reliable
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9. and finally, Inspiring.” On the other hand, Ecological Psychology joins embodiment
literature to battle the mind-body dualist tradition and approaches intelligence as
physically grounded (Turvey & Carello, 2012, p.3). Heroism acts as a process and as an
embodied agency, and operates between the suffering, and the self-organizing quality of
the heroic embodied mind. Steven Kotler draws on embodiment theory from perspective
of optimal human functioning. As a co-founder of the Flow Genome Project
(www.flowgenomeproject.org), he draws on Csikszentmihalyi (1990) and explores the
mechanics of deep embodiment as the concept of ‘flow’ in the most heightened of
manifestations (2014a, 2014b). Moreover, Kotler (2014a, p.97-98) draws on the
implications of embodiment that “ In the world of philanthropy, helper’s high is the term for
an altruism-triggered flow state, literally brought on by the act of helping another.” The
process of personal transformation, like the hero’s journey “is circular and expanding.
Each transformation brings the individual to higher levels of being,” through the
confronting of pain, struggle and reordering of identity (Wade, 1998, p.714), therefore
enhancing our understanding our understanding of heroism as a deeply embodied,
energizing and action-oriented transformative process. Learning to recognize these
opportunities and environments ultimately lies in the “natural purposiveness” (Merleau-Ponty,
1964, as cited in Smyth, 2010, p.179) that is exemplified in the astutely trained habitual
heroic body.
Conclusion
Can Heroism be learned and practiced us? Can we each become our own hero?
Looking at the demonstration of Heroism as embedded and embodied in everyday lives,
and how we can perceive heroism as a distinct state of embodied consciousness it can be
proposed so. However, with the different aspect of embodiment of the heroic body, we
may begin to appreciate the complexity of the architecture. Heroism is a system that is
deeply embodied in the ecology, the cultural, the phenomenological, the biological and the
social; therefore it has the opportunity to both reach and transcend human perspectives.
For Franco et al. (2011,p.112) “the question of what the term “hero” will mean for this
generation is yet to be answered”. Can we actually be able to decode and hack heroism to
achieve peak states in human performance and achieve Merleau-Ponty’s (1962, as cited in
Smyth, 2010) highest end of lived embodied heroism with the absolute self-realization of
humanity and its accession to the universal?
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10. References:
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