Cynthia Fleury, philosopher and psychoanalyst, clears new avenues of reflection on the courage and the experience of discouragement. As a psychoanalyst, she observes the intimate discouragement of her patients, and observes the perverse effects of the organization of the world of work and of political space on the psyche of individuals. Convening in turn, Victor Hugo, Diogenes, Jankelevitch, Amartya Sen, and Cynthia Fleury question the links between the personal experience of discouragement and society. From the individual register it broadens its reflection to the collective and political domain. One discovers then how courage as a surpassing of self is also a regulating element of democracy, while the philosopher traces in parallel an ethic of courage, an eminently political project. It is at the heart of discouragement that courage arises and that the possibility of anew beginning comes. In a clear and precise language, Cynthia Fleury takes us to the reconquest of courage, to new possibilities.