The human mind is a strange thing. One of its stranger properties is its notions – attractions, even – to abstract ideas. Love, courage, cowardice, happiness, sadness…you get my point.

Naturally, these ideas draw in ideas about those ideas simply by existing in the mind. Philosophers like to answer why these abstractions are there when there might be no base survival need for them, and so they come up with different theories on the subject.

One of these theories is the virtue theory, popularized by the Greek philosopher Aristotle, which assumed that morals – whatever those are – presided over set rules when humans made a decision. Good decisions would let a human achieve eudaimonia, a sort of end result of a well-lived life.

While interesting in retrospect, I have to admit: none of Aristotle’s theories were present in my mind in the slow seconds that I took a bullet for the stranger next to me.