Fortitude
Fortitude
Definition
Dictionary
Merriam-Webster [^mw]
Lutheranism
Summary
Expanded account with checked references
Contrast with Aquinas
| Topic | Thomas Aquinas | Classical Lutheranism [^luther_justice] | | ——— | ——— | ——— |
Calvinism
Summary
Expanded account with checked references
Contrast with Aquinas
| Topic | Thomas Aquinas | Classical Lutheranism [^luther_prudence] | | ——— | ——— | ——— |
Methodism (Check References)
Summary
Expanded account with checked references
Contrast with Aquinas
| Topic | Thomas Aquinas | Classical Methodism (Wesleyan Tradition) [^methodism] | | ——— | ——— | ——— |
Comparison
| Tradition | Definition Emphasis | Role of Justice | Organizing Principle of Christian Ethics | | ——— | ——————- | —————- | —————————————- |
New Advent Encyclopedia [^nae]
“Fortitude is the virtue of the man who, being confronted with a noble occasion of encountering the danger of death, meets it fearlessly.” It includes endurance in the face of adversity according to Aquinas. 1
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2
CCC 1808
“Fortitude is the moral virtue that ensures firmness in difficulties and constancy in the pursuit of the good. It strengthens the resolve to resist temptations and to overcome obstacles in the moral life. The virtue of fortitude enables one to conquer fear, even fear of death, and to face trials and persecutions. It disposes one even to renounce and sacrifice his life in defense of a just cause. ‘The Lord is my strength and my song.’ ‘In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.’”
This virtue goes beyond physical bravery but represents spiritual courage “rooted in faith that empowers the believer to stand firm for truth, justice, and charity, even at the cost of personal loss,” even life. 2
Josef Pieper [^jpieper]
- Without vulnerability there is no fortitude. p117
- To be brave it doesn’t mean to have no fear. p126
- Fortitude is the readiness to die or, more accurately, readiness to fall, to die, in battle. p117
- The highest achievement of fortitude is martyrdom. (NOTE: martyrdom does not include seeking to die in the name of a good) p117
- It is not about tossing goods away lightly but to let them go for the sake of a higher good. p120
- Man must know what the good is… it is for the sake of the good that the brave man exposes himselfto the danger of death. p122
It is important to know what good is
- Without prudence, without justice, there cannot be fortitude. Only the prudent and just man can be brave. p123
- For the “astute” man, bravery looks foolish. Thus, being astute is a having false prudence. p123
- Prudence, through justice, informs fortitude. p124
- Fortitude presuposes in a certain sense that man is afraide of evil; its essence is not in knowing no fear, but in not allowing oneself to be forced into evil by fear, or to be kept by fear from realization of good.
- Fortitude is tightly related to hope, as one desire to go to heaven will provide the strength to be brave.
Aspects of Fortitude
- Endurance
- Sometimes to endure and suffer are the only alternatives of resistance to some evil.
- It involves a strong activity of the soul, a vigorous graspong of and clinging to the good.
- The same applies to the virtue of patience.
- The patient man is not the one that does not flee from evil, but the one who does not allow himselfto be made inordenately sorrowful thereby. To be patient means to preserve cheerfulness and serenity of mind. p129
- Patience is subordinated to fortitude.
- Attack
- The brave man uses wrath (I would use anger and let wrath mean sinful anger…) for his own act, above all in attack, for it is peculiar to wrath to pounce upon evil.
- Fortitude and wrath work directly upon each other. p130
It takes more to endure than to attack. Christ example of these aspects. On one side, he used righteous anger to drive the money-changers from the temple, and the other he used patience to reply to the one who struck him if I said something wrong, what did I say? and if not, why do you strike me?
Three Levels of Fortitude
- Pre-moral, natural
- Moral, related to ethics, human understanding and teaching
- Supermoral, related to infussed virtue, it is supernatural and related to theological virtue of charity.
Three Degrees of Fortitude (Aquinas)
- Political fortitude, common day-to-day community life fortitude.
- Consists mainly in combating outward resistance in order to help justice to realization.
- Purgatorial purifying fortitude, mystic’s fortitude to endure the mystical life.
- Purified spirit fortitude, supernatural fortitude when the greatest heights of sanctity are acquired on earth.
There is no clear division between them as they are interlocked between each other.
Victory over Vice
“Fortitude may be defined as that virtue, which enables us to face undismayed and fearlessly the difficulties, and dangers which stand in the way of duty and goodness.”
Patience and Fortitude are closely related, like the sides of a coin. Fortitude is active engagement towards danger and difficulties; patience is “passive acceptance of what is hard to bear.” 3
Magisterium AI
Fortitude is the virtue that assures firmness in difficulties and constancy in the pursuit of the good, reaching even to the ability to sacrifice one’s life for a just cause.2
More concretely, fortitude:
- strengthens you to endure evil without despair and to keep doing what reason and conscience require, even when it is hard.4
- is “not so much with audacia as with timor” and “not so much with attack as with endurance”: it focuses on sustaining yourself under terrifying or difficult circumstances.1
- can include, when necessary, the courage to face dangers for an honorable good.5
In the Christian life, fortitude is also linked to the ability to “go beyond” fear by trusting in God for witness to truth and justice, sometimes even through persecution.6
ChatGPT
Holy Family School of Faith [^hfsof]
Fortitude is important.
Ideas
Combining Anger from HFSoF and Fortitude from VoV, anger provides the energy to fuel the fortitude; fortitude would be the appropriate use of that fuel, either to correct an evil or to patiently endure what is beyond one’s control.