Fortitude
Definition and Explanation
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, point 1808: "Fortitude is the moral virtue that ensures firmness in difficulties and constancy in the pursuit of the good."
- Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae, IIaIIae, question 123:
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- Fortitude is the virtue by which man overcomes his will's disinclination to pursue that which is in accord with reason on account of some difficulty.
- Fortitude is the perfection of the irascible appetite, which is the sensitive appetite that overcomes difficulties in choosing good or avoiding evil.
- There is fortitude both of mind and of body, since difficulties must be overcome in pursuing bodily and mental goods.
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- Aristotle's Rhetoric, Book I, Chapter 9:
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- "Courage is the virtue that disposes men to do noble deeds in situations of danger, in accordance with the law and in obedience to its commands."
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Examples from Western History and Literature
Leonidas at Thermopylae
From Herodotus' "Histories:" Because Leonidas perceived that the allies were out of heart and did not desire to face the danger with him to the end, he ordered them to depart, but held that for himself to go away was not honorable, whereas if he remained, a great fame of him would be left behind, and the prosperity of Sparta would not be blotted out... [A]nd the Hellenes with Leonidas, feeling that they were going forth to death, now advanced out much further than at first into the broader part of the defile; for when the fence of the wall was being guarded, they on the former days fought retiring before the enemy into the narrow part of the pass; but now they engaged with them outside the narrows, and very many of the Barbarians fell.... [F]or knowing the death which was about to come upon them by reason of those who were going round the mountain, they displayed upon the Barbarians all the strength which they had, to its greatest extent, disregarding danger and acting as if possessed by a spirit of recklessness…. The Spartan Dienekes is said to have proved himself the best man of all, the same who, as they report, uttered this saying before they engaged battle with the Medes:—being informed by one of the men of Trachis that when the Barbarians discharged their arrows they obscured the light of the sun by the multitude of the arrows, so great was the number of their host, he was not dismayed by this, but making small account of the number of the Medes, he said that their guest from Trachis brought them very good news, for if the Medes obscured the light of the sun, the battle against them would be in the shade and not in the sun...The men were buried were they fell; and for these, as well as for those who were slain before being sent away by Leonidas, there is an inscription which runs thus: “Here is the place that they fought, four thousand from Peloponnesus, And here, on the other side, three hundred ten thousands against.”
Gaius Mucius Scaevola
From Livy's "Ab urbe condita:" [T]he king's guards immediately seized and brought him back standing alone before the king's tribunal; even then, amid such menaces of fortune, more capable of inspiring dread than of feeling it, "I am," says he, "a Roman citizen, my name is Caius Mucius; an enemy, I wished to slay an enemy, nor have I less of resolution to suffer death than I had to inflict it. Both to act and to suffer with fortitude is a Roman's part. Nor have I alone harbored such feelings towards you; there is after me a long train of persons aspiring to the same honor. Therefore, if you choose it, prepare yourself for this peril, to contend for your life every hour; to have the sword and the enemy in the very entrance of your pavilion; this is the war which we the Roman youth declare against you; dread not an army in array, nor a battle; the affair will be to yourself alone and with each of us singly." When the king, highly incensed, and at the same time terrified at the danger, in a menacing manner, commanded fires to be kindled about him, if he did not speedily explain the plots, which, by his threats, he had darkly insinuated against him; Mucius said, "Behold me, that you may be sensible of how little account the body is to those who have great glory in view;" and immediately he thrusts his right hand into the fire that was lighted for the sacrifice. When he continued to broil it as if he had been quite insensible, the king, astonished at this surprising sight, after he had leaped from his throne and commanded the young man to be removed from the altar, says, "Be gone, having acted more like an enemy towards thyself than me. I would encourage thee to persevere in thy valor, if that valor stood on the side of my country. I now dismiss you untouched and unhurt, exempted from the right of war." Then Mucius, as if making a return for the kindness, says, "Since bravery is honored by you, so that you have obtained by kindness that which you could not by threats, three hundred of us, the chief of the Roman youth, have conspired to attack you in this manner. It was my lot first. The rest will follow, each in his turn, according as the lot shall set him forward, unless fortune shall afford an opportunity of you."
Abdiel to the Fallen Angels
From Milton's "Paradise Lost:"
“O alienate from God, O spirit accursed, / Forsaken of all good; I see thy fall /
Determined and thy hapless crew involved /
In this perfidious fraud, contagion spread /
Both of thy crime and punishment… /
That golden scepter which thou didst reject /
Is now an iron rod to bruise and break thy disobedience…” /
So spake the seraph Abdiel, faithful found, /
Among the faithless, faithful only he; /
Among innumerable false, unmoved, /
Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified, /
His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal; /
Nor number nor example with him wrought /
To swerve from truth or change his constant mind /
Though single. From amidst them forth he passed, /
Long way through hostile scorn, which he sustained /
Superior, nor of violence feared aught; /
And with retorted scorn his back he turned /
On those proud towers to swift destruction doomed." ("Paradise Lost" 5.877-907)
Starbuck in "Moby Dick"
“Here, then, was this grey-headed, ungodly old man, chasing with curses a Job’s whale round the world, at the head of a crew, too, chiefly made up of mongrel renegades, and castaways, and cannibals—morally enfeebled also, by the incompetence of mere unaided virtue or right-mindedness in Starbuck, the invulnerable jollity of indifference and recklessness in Stubb, and the pervading mediocrity in Flask. Such a crew, so officered, seemed specially picked and packed by some infernal fatality to help him to his monomaniac revenge" (Chapter 41)