Abstract
One well-known piece of lore about Space Marines in Warhammer fiction is that they “know no fear.” Fans of the Horus Heresy series, in particular, will have read that Space Marines are not “built to feel fear,” that they are “immune to fear,” and that they are without “the capacity for fear.” However, fans will also have read about Space Marines experiencing a “shudder of fear,” being “seized” by fear, and questioning whether or not they are “tasting” fear. (Interestingly, in Galaxy in Flames, author Ben Counter even tells readers it is not literally true that Space Marines know no fear!) These descriptions seem inconsistent. Of course, the Horus Heresy books are not a many-volumed philosophical treatise but a series of science fantasy novels, and so perhaps it is misguided to expect the same kind of rigour of authors describing the lives of Space Marines that one would demand of a philosopher. However, I believe that there is a way of understanding fear and the character of Space Marines that resolves the contradictory descriptions of them and also does justice to the Emperor of Mankind’s declaration that his finest warriors shall know no fear. I will structure my argument by asking three questions. The first is conceptual: What is fear? And what does it mean to know it? The second is descriptive: In what sense do Space Marines know no fear? And the third is normative: should the Space Marines know no fear? The theoretical basis of my argument is the Stoic theory of emotions defended by Cicero (106–43 BCE) in his Tusculan Disputations. In the course of my presentation, I will contend that Space Marines are best understood as “sage-like” warriors who do not experience fear as mortals do but nonetheless experience something functionally similar to it.
Author bio
Michael Szlachta is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Canada. He specializes in philosophy of free will in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries but is also interested in later medieval psychology more generally.
