One of Humanity’s Key Character Traits
Fortitude is an attribute that allows person to persist in efforts to accomplish difficult tasks despite obstacles and temptations to avoid the work and pain required.
Fortitude or courage is the third great moral virtue (after justice and temperance) that helps form human character. It’s important to understand what the virtue of fortitude actually means and how it can help people in their daily lives.
Like the other moral virtues, fortitude is a habit formed over time by acting in the right ways even in the face of serious obstacles. A person’s character is shaped in positive, constructive, and productive ways by the cardinal virtue of fortitude.
The Virtue of Fortitude or Courage
Fortitude is a moral attribute that refers to the practice of overcoming obstacles such as pain or fear in order to do something worthy. The classic examples include acts of heroism in combat. However, there are several instances in everyday life when fortitude is necessary. Getting a good education requires fortitude because studying is hard and requires lots of effort, while watching TV is easy and takes little energy.
Fortitude is a mean between foolhardiness or rashness on the one hand and cowardice or timidity on the other. A person who attacks an armed robber with bare hands is foolhardy and is likely to lose his life. Cowardly or timid people have difficulty standing up for or doing the right thing when there is opposition.
How Fortitude Helps Develop Character
The ways that the virtue of fortitude can help people are numerous. Writers know the struggles and tendency toward procrastination that need to be overcome to be productive. Students experience the pain and fatigue that concentrated study can cause.
A good example is cleaning a room or a house. There’s usually neither a monetary nor a psychic reward for cleaning chores. But they should be done and the virtue of fortitude helps people overcome the desire to avoid such tasks. Fortitude is the habit of persisting through the pain and fatigue that confronts people when doing things that take serious effort.
Fortitude is required not only when people are engaged in solitary challenging activities, but it’s also needed frequently in social settings when confronted with pressures to go along with something that is clearly wrong. Even saying no to one’s own children at times requires guts. Assertiveness helps a person to say no in the right way, without aggression, so people should study assertiveness if they lack it.
The possession of the cardinal virtue fortitude provides a person with the character required to do what is necessary to get jobs done when much effort is required, or there is fatigue, or there are temptations to slack off. The huge benefit to a person who develops fortitude is that he or she will be up to almost any challenge in work and life.
Forming the Virtue of Fortitude
Fortitude is cultivated in the same manner that other moral qualities are – through practice — by behaving bravely repeatedly until it becomes a habit. Strong role models or consistent training are needed to help children to develop the virtue, but it is only by eventually forming a firm habit of persisting with efforts and postponing pleasures that the moral virtue of fortitude is at last acquired.
After developing fortitude, it becomes ingrained in a person’s character to persevere despite adversity and impediment until onerous but necessary activities are consistently done. That is the reward of fortitude – having the character to achieve things that are far beyond people who lack this virtue.
The Value of Fortitude
Fortitude is extremely valuable in life because it helps people do the right thing for themselves and for others on many occasions. When there aren’t any immediate rewards, this is even more likely to happen, the effort required is hard, and one is not highly motivated to do what it takes.
Fortitude helps people overcome pain, fear, and fatigue to persist in the effort to achieve something worthwhile. It provides the strength of character to say no to oneself when tempted to take the easy path and to say no to others when it’s the right thing to do. Like justice and temperance, the virtue of fortitude is aimed at helping people to live fruitful and happy lives.
