In January 1986, NASA engineers knew the Space Shuttle Challenger's O-rings had never been tested in freezing temperatures. They recommended delaying the launch. Managers asked: Could the engineers prove it was unsafe? They couldn't—they could only say the system hadn't been designed for these conditions.

Under pressure, the engineers withdrew their recommendation. The next morning, Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after launch, killing all seven astronauts.

This wasn't a failure of reason. The engineers reasoned correctly about the O-rings. This was a failure of courage—they lacked the strength to stand firm against managerial and political pressure.

No amount of additional rational analysis would have saved them. They needed something the ancient Greeks called andreia: spirited resistance, the capacity to hold ground under pressure. But our inherited philosophical framework can't quite see this distinction, because a Roman translation choice 2,000 years ago collapsed it.

In a previous post, I explored how Greek arete (excellence) became Latin virtus (manliness). But the translation problem enabled a deeper philosophical mistake.

The Greeks maintained a crucial distinction:

A knife's arete is sharpness. An eye's arete is clear vision. But when we ask about human arete, the Greeks recognized we're asking about a composite being with multiple parts, each requiring its own specific excellence.

For Plato, the soul has distinct parts:

These aren't........

© Psychology Today