Admittedly, plenty of issues emerge in the context of battle that have relevance elsewhere, not least the traditional pairing of courage as a masculine virtue with chastity as a feminine virtue. Miller claims he is not a philosopher. Nevertheless, somebody else might have written this as a book about heroes, a series of biographies in which, perhaps, particular stories were strip-searched to find a message of general relevance. This works the other way round. It asks how a virtue that has been generally understood and aspired to in some form in every human community finds its way into particular stories.
Most people have less extreme but similarly pragmatic habits of mind.
They are more likely to decide what they want to do and then work out how to attach labels to present their course of action as virtuous. The idea of first having courage and then putting it to use is a far cry from becoming courageous by describing the course of action you happen to have taken as brave. Miller never settles on a single understanding of valor. He turns the concept through many angles to look at dozens of its faces. But his task is always to try to isolate the meaning of a complex abstract notion.