Snape and moral courage WAS: Re: The Houses, Finally

[dumbledore11214]

No: HPFGUIDX 184622

Zara:
What does this have to do with Pippin's point? Moral courage is not
doing things because your friends tell you to. You may think Lily is
obviously a font of moral authority, but I see no reason to suppose
that Severus did. (In fact, I see reasons to suppose that he did not,
his apparent perception of a double standard on her part, for one).
However, it seems evident that even while not agreeing with her on 
this
point, he himself felt that it was wrong to call his best friend a
Mudblood. Which is why he apologized to her.


Alla:

I was operating under a little but more general definition of moral 
courage, I went to Wiki and found the one which is close enough to 
the one I had in mind:

"moral courage" is the courage to act rightly in the face of popular 
opposition, shame, scandal, or discouragement.

To me, moral courage is not just not doing things that your friends 
tell you to do. To me moral courage is doing the **right thing** even 
if your friends or family or whoever tell you to do the wrong thing.

So, basically when you (generic you) are not jumping off the cliff, 
when all your friends tell you to, yes, sure, to me you are resisting 
peer pressure and demonstrate courage.

But when you ( generic you) decide to go rob a bank, when all your 
friends tell you - no, don't do it, to me you are not demonstrating 
any sort of courage, but being an idiot.

We can agree, right that joining the DE is not the right thing to do 
in itself regardless of what his friends think and not think?

So to make a long story short when Snape does not reject DE values, 
to me he does not show moral courage, really, I would say quite the 
opposite.

As to whether Lily is the moral authority to me, in general – of 
course not, none of the characters are. But on the question of bad 
values of Snape's friends in school – absolutely, IMO she is, the 
voice of moral authority. Just as any character who thinks that 
Voldemort and his merry gang need to go down would be to me moral 
authority on that issue and those who are not, not.

Now when Snape  later rejects them, sure I would say he shows moral 
courage, but before when he does not stand up to his friends/ DE 
wanna be, I think he shows the act of moral cowardice.

JMO,

Alla