O. Efthimiou

Heroism and Eudaimonia: Sublime Actualization Through the Embodiment of Virtue

The philosophical roots of eudaimonia lie in “Aristotle’s view of the highest human good involving virtue and the realization of one’s potential … It begins with Aristotle’s emphasizing choice and suggesting that virtue, which is central to eudaimonia, involves making the right choices” (Deci and Ryan, J Happiness Stud 9(1):1–11, 2008, pp. 4, 7). Although the Aristotelian meaning of ‘virtue’ is somewhat contested (Keyes & Annas, 2009), its association with heroic action as an ideal state is immediate. Eudaimonic happiness “actively expresses excellency of character or virtue” (Haybron, 2000, p. 3). Heroism and heroes have been considered to be the pinnacle of human excellence and virtue in history. In his reading of Merleau-Ponty’s 1948 address of heroism, Smyth (2010, p. 178) notes that “the hero is someone who ‘lives to the limit … his relation to men and the world’”. Allison and Goethals (2014, p. 167) concur that, “The human tendency to bestow a timeless quality to heroic leadership is the culmination of a pervasive narrative about human greatness [emphasis added] that people have been driven to construct since the advent of language”. This peak state, and the idea of transcendence that is associated with it, go to the basis of the word ‘eudaimonia’, the ‘daemon’, i.e., being taken over by the ‘good spirit’ (Boskovic and Sendula Jengic, 2008; Froh et al, 2009).

Heroism Science: Frameworks for an Emerging Field

This article outlines the conceptual framework for a new science focused on heroism using multiple perspectives to generate a science that is explicitly in service to humanity. The role of heroism as a case study for deviant interdisciplinarity, heroism science as storytelling and story revising, and its impacts for research and communities are considered. The primary concern of the deviant agenda of heroism science is the unity of knowledge and the testability of narrative-driven scientific inquiry. In this agenda, science as “episteme” and heroism are unified in their core epistemic function. Heroism science is posited as a prime candidate for promoting science as enabler for improving the world, based on Hefner’s concept of embodied science, and a nonlinear, open, and participatory model of science. Contemporary heroism research trends across the disciplines are mapped in a preliminary taxonomy of peak, emerging, and low subfields of research activity. Heroism science is defined as a nascent multiple disciplinary field which seeks to reconceptualize heroism and its correlates through a close examination of the origins, types, and processes of these interrelated phenomena.

Framing the women’s AFL: contested spaces and emerging narratives of hope and opportunity for women in sport

Abstract This article explores historical, contemporary and emerging sites of contestation within sports, with a particular focus on women’s Australian Rules football in Australia. Sport played out on the field, in the media, popular culture, governance and legal arenas are positioned in this article as contested public spaces. The increasing presence of women in these spaces is seen as a shift towards a more socially just sporting space. With an emphasis on the contemporary sporting landscape and the historical commencement of the national women’s Australian Football League Women (AFLW) competition in February 2017, the evolution of this sport as a contested space can be understood as it relates to narratives of hope and opportunity for women. With overwhelming public feeling that the first AFLW season was a success, it is time to pause and consider what this development means for elite women’s sport, and women in contemporary Australian society more broadly.

Heroism and wellbeing in the 21st century: Applied and emerging perspectives

There has been significant intellectual fervor over the past two decades on wellbeing and optimal human behaviors. These research trends have been especially reflected in the heightened activity surrounding the study of heroism and heroic leadership over the last decade, spearheaded by world-renowned US psychologist Emeritus Professor Philip Zimbardo. A growing number of leading and emerging researchers across a number of disciplines are discovering the epistemological and empirical value of heroism, giving rise to the nascent field of “heroism science” (Allison, Goethals, and Kramer 2017).

Heroic leadership in The Walking Dead’s postapocalyptic universe: The restoration and regeneration of society as a hero organism: Power, Principles and Processes

Throughout the animal kingdom, sexual behaviors are conducted in the service of reproductive goals that will enhance the survival of the species. In modern developed nations, the urgency of the reproductive goal has been minimized. Our entertainment industry provides a vicarious experience of reproductive urgency in the television series The Walking Dead. This chapter focuses on the heroic self-sacrifice of bringing children into the post-apocalyptic world of lawlessness, hunger, and brutality. The decision to reproduce illustrates heroism and heroic leadership at two different levels of analysis. First, the choice to have children in the post-apocalyptic world reflects heroic self-sacrifice on the part of the individual decision maker. A woman who chooses to have a child in a world with no formal healthcare system risks her own physical wellbeing. Second, the choice to repopulate the broken world of The Walking Dead also reflects a systemwide societal drive toward regeneration and restoration. The decision to reproduce thus reflects the heroic embodiment of human society as an organism intent on surviving and even flourishing.

Heroism and the human experience: Foreword to the special issue

Provenance has always been important to me. Knowing who has handled a set of ideas, and how those ideas were shaped, helps us as scholars to understand the intentions given to those ideas and how best to apply them in future work. Heroism’s relationship to humanistic and existential psychology is not a modern one. Humanistic/existential approaches have their grounding in virtue, based on the ideas of the ancient Greeks; likewise, the word hero itself is Greek, and the ideal of courage and physical perfection extend from the pre-Socratics (Kahn, 1992), to Aristotle and Plato (Hardie, 1978; Kendrick, 2010), to modern philosophy (Roudinesco, 2008). Over time, the meaning of hero changed from focusing on physical prowess and fame to the physical or social expression of virtue ethics. From this perspective, heroism can be seen as the embodiment of actions that hold us to the highest standard of caring for another, even against great personal costs (Franco, Efthimiou, & Zimbardo, 2016).

Heroic ecologies: Embodied heroic leadership and sustainable futures

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate heroism as an embodied system of leadership and well-being. Heroic leadership is presented as a baseline for sustainable futures and global health. Design/methodology/approach This paper presents an embodied reading of heroic leadership and its sustainable development across five stages. It outlines its core functions, its grounding in self-leadership through physical and mental trauma and its holistic benefits, resulting in the development of the Heroic Leadership Embodiment and Sustainable Development (HLESD) model. The efficacy of HLESD is demonstrated in an empirical case study of heroism promotion and education: the Hero Construction Company and the Heroic Imagination Project. Findings Heroic leadership is revealed as an emergent, dynamic and distributed form of sustainable development. Research limitations/implications This paper demonstrates the critical connections between heroism, sustainability, embodied leadership and well-being and how they stand to benefit from each other, individuals and communities at large. Social implications The implementation of HLESD in educational, counselling and broader contexts in consultation with a wide range of professionals stands to offer significant benefits to pedagogies, clinical practice, holistic therapies and twenty-first-century societies, at both the community and policy level. Originality/value The emerging field of heroism science and the use of heroic leadership as an interdisciplinary tool is a novel approach to well-being, which holds immense potential for the imagining and fostering of sustainable personal and collective futures.