We know as much about civil courage as we know about other virtues – that it is good to have it. However, it does not belong to the catalogue of features that we particularly strive for in individual and social life, such as justice, honesty, lawfulness, or civic activity. Consequently, the amount of philosophical or sociological reflection devoted to civil courage has been modest. Such reflections usually concern specific people and situations: oppositionists fighting against political regimes, people who are strongly convinced of their arguments and defend them despite widespread disapproval, intellectuals avoiding the beaten paths of thought. In the dissertation opening the ninth issue of State of Affairs, Barbara Misztal outlines the role of civil courage in the contemporary world and the place of the concept in the social sciences. Subsequent texts show the limits of the concept from the perspective of economic justice and connect it with the functioning of the public sphere. Finally, authors show what civil courage can be in the total institution of a concentration camp, as performed by whistleblowers in a democracy, or in a totalitarian state, using the example of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.