PhronesisMoral cowardice — the systematic failure to speak or act according to one's moral convictions in the face of social cost — is here formally reconceptualized as a wrong attractor W_MC in the landscape of courageous moral standing. The healthy ground state S^0 is defined as courageous standing: the capacity to align visible speech and action with one's moral convictions, proportionately and contextually, despite social discomfort or cost.
W_MC arises when the anticipated social cost of moral action consistently exceeds the displacement cost of silence; silence reinforces itself through rationalization, bystander effect amplification, and gradual moral threshold inversion. Nine formal propositions characterize Milgram's obedience mechanisms, Latane and Darley's bystander diffusion, Bandura's moral disengagement, Morrison and Milliken's organizational silence, the distinction between W_MC and prudent silence, and return paths through graduated exposure, moral conviction activation, and community counter-equilibrium.