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Virtues

Fortitude

Cardinal Virtues

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Origin 375 BCE to 390 CE

Fortitude, in Latin fortitudo, is one of the four Cardinal Virtues: courage and firmness of spirit in the face of danger, hardship, and fear. It is the strength to endure and to persevere in the good even at great cost, and to face death itself rather than abandon what is right. It steadies the soul between the extremes of rashness and cowardice.

Facts
Origins
Origin Period
375 BCE to 390 CE 1Tradition: The four cardinal virtues of Plato's Republic
Place of Origin
Athens: the four are the virtues of Plato's Republic, taken up by Aristotle and the Stoics and given the name cardinal by Ambrose at Milan 1
Origin of the Name
Called cardinal from the Latin cardo, a hinge, because the moral life is held to turn on these four. The term is first found in Ambrose in the late fourth century; the four virtues themselves are Plato's and are named as a group at Wisdom 8:7 1
Attributed Author / Compiler
Plato, in the Republic; the term cardinal is first found in Ambrose, and the classical scholastic treatment is Aquinas's 1
Attributed Author / Compiler
Zeno of Citium, founder of Stoicism, and Chrysippus, who systematized Stoic ethics, in the tradition's own reading of andreia, preserved through later doxography since neither founder's ethical writings survive intact. 2Tradition: Stoicism
Language
Latin 3
Language
Ancient Greek 1
Status
Status Within the Tradition
Standard teaching, not formally defined 4Tradition: Roman Catholicism
Sourced to the subject's own accountOne of the four cardinal virtues as the Catechism enumerates them: prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance. Taught, and not formally defined
Doctrinal Status Detail
In the Stoic account, phronesis, dikaiosyne, sophrosyne and andreia are not four independent excellences but four expressions of one underlying virtue, right reason applied to different subject matter; the Stoics held the virtues could not be possessed separately, so whoever truly has one has all four. Only the sage, a rare or theoretical ideal, possesses virtue in this full sense; everyone else falls equally short of it on the strict Stoic reckoning. 5Tradition: Stoicism
Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting Source
Firmness of mind in danger and difficulty, whose PRINCIPAL act is endurance rather than attack: standing firm against an evil one cannot remove is harder than striking at one that can be overcome. Fearlessness is not itself the virtue 3Tradition: Aquinas, Summa Theologiae
Meaning in the Attesting Source
In Stoic ethics, andreia is knowledge of what is terrible, what is not terrible, and what is neither; the Stoic account holds, notoriously, that the wise man feels no fear at all, since fear is itself a mistaken judgment about an object's value rather than an unavoidable response to danger. 2Tradition: Stoicism
Disputed
Origin Period
Spans several centuries. Named among the four virtues in Plato's Republic in the fourth century BCE, taken up by Aristotle and the Stoics, and given the name cardinal only later, by Ambrose of Milan in the late fourth century CE. Its classical scholastic treatment follows later still, in Aquinas's thirteenth century Summa Theologiae. 1
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Fortitude, the Third Cardinal Virtue

Fortitude, fortitudo, is firmness of mind in the face of danger and difficulty, and Aquinas holds, following Aristotle, that its principal act is endurance rather than attack, since standing firm against an evil one cannot remove is harder than striking at one that can be overcome. Its supreme instance in the Christian tradition is martyrdom. It is the virtue of the mean between cowardice and rashness, and the tradition is careful that fearlessness is not itself a virtue: the courageous person fears what should be feared and acts rightly nonetheless. Its subordinate parts are given as magnanimity, magnificence, patience and perseverance. In the four-cardinal scheme fortitude and temperance govern the passions, the irascible and the concupiscible respectively, while prudence governs the reason and justice the will.

The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, in After Virtue, has discussed this shift from Aristotle to Aquinas as characteristic of a broader Christian transformation of the classical virtues: where Aristotle's model of courage in the Nicomachean Ethics centers on the soldier who attacks danger on the battlefield, Aquinas relocates fortitude's highest expression to the martyr's endurance of suffering inflicted by another, a passive rather than active heroism that would have struck Aristotle as a lesser, more marginal case of the virtue rather than its supreme instance, illustrating how thoroughly the Christian tradition reordered an inherited philosophical scheme around its own distinctive convictions.

Picturing Fortitude: The Column and the Lion

Fortitude's attributes are chosen to say that her work is standing rather than charging. The column, often broken and held in her arms, is the load bearing member of a building: the thing whose whole function is to remain where it is under weight. Where the column is shown broken, the reference is usually to Samson pulling down the temple, and the figure then carries both senses at once, the strength that holds and the strength that ends.

The lion is the other standard attribute and it supplies courage in its more obvious form, sometimes as a skin worn over the shoulders in a borrowing from Hercules. Giotto's fortitude in the Arena Chapel at Padua, painted around 1305, has neither: she stands behind a shield with a club, entirely defensive, arrows stuck in the shield and none of them through it. That is the doctrine drawn exactly. Aquinas, following Aristotle, holds that the principal act of fortitude is endurance rather than attack, because standing firm against an evil one cannot remove is harder than striking at one that can be removed.

The column is therefore the more faithful of the two attributes, and the lion the more popular. Cycles that want fortitude legible at a distance use the lion; cycles that want the argument use the column.

The atlas draws the column. It is the attribute that distinguishes fortitude from mere courage, which is the distinction the tradition is careful about.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Aya, Adinkra Symbols

Aya, the fern, represents endurance and the fortitude to thrive in ground where other plants struggle.

Source The Adinkra Dictionary: A Visual Primer on the Language of AdinkraW. Bruce Willis
Mframadan, Adinkra Symbols

Mframadan, the wind resistant house, represents the fortitude and resilience proven under real, adverse pressure.

Source The Adinkra Dictionary: A Visual Primer on the Language of AdinkraW. Bruce Willis
Pempamsie, Adinkra Symbols

Pempamsie, sew in readiness, represents the steadfastness and hardiness of thorough preparation before a challenge.

Source The Adinkra Dictionary: A Visual Primer on the Language of AdinkraW. Bruce Willis
Wawa Aba, Adinkra Symbols

Wawa Aba, the tough seed of the wawa tree, represents the hardiness required to survive difficult circumstances without breaking.

Source The Adinkra Dictionary: A Visual Primer on the Language of AdinkraW. Bruce Willis

Belongs to Tradition

Christianity, Religions
Source Summa TheologiaeThomas Aquinas
Stoicism, Philosophical Schools
Source Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, ScepticsA. A. Long

Element Of

Roman Catholicism, Denominations

Fortitude is the cardinal virtue Rome defines as the firmness that pursues the good in the face of difficulty and, in the extreme case, renounces life itself.

Source Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd editionHoly Seethe holders' own account

Originates in Language

Ancient Greek, Languages
Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Latin, Languages
Source Summa TheologiaeThomas Aquinas

Part Of

Virtue Ethics, Doctrines
Source Summa TheologiaeThomas Aquinas

Related To

Andreia (Courage), Virtues

Greek term underlying the Latin fortitudo and its English descendant fortitude.

Source Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, ScepticsA. A. Long

Held Differently

Stoicism, Philosophical Schools

The Stoics named this virtue andreia, courage, one of the four generic virtues Zeno and Chrysippus taught as constituents of the single good, wisdom; the later Christian cardinal-virtue scheme adopted the same fourfold structure under the Latin name fortitudo.

Source Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, ScepticsA. A. Long
Sources
1. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005s.v. Cardinal VirtuesView the Source
2. Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics
A. A. Long, University of California Press, 1986View the Source
3. Summa Theologiae
Thomas Aquinas, 1274II-II q.123, on fortitudeView the Source
4. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd edition
Holy See, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997paragraphs 1805-1809, the cardinal virtuesthe holders' own accountView the Source
5. Virtue Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry)
Rosalind Hursthouse and Glen Pettigrove, Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2003View the Source
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