Fortitude: The Anti-Fragile Virtue
Fortitude teaches us grittiness and resilience.
Life involves challenges.
There’s no getting around that.
Any attempt to live happily requires us to face up to those challenges. In the classical tradition of ancient and medieval philosophy, the human excellence or virtue by which one rises to meet these difficulties is called fortitude.
The etymology of the word, from Latin, indicates that fortitude (fortitudo) requires strength (fortis): strength of body but also strength of mind and intention. In modern parlance, the virtue of fortitude is similar to grit and resilience: the ability to overcome serious obstacles in our path. Fortitude allows us to live lives with grit and resilience, not perfectly, but with an appropriate ruggedness.
If this virtue were a car, it would be more like a banged up jeep or hummer rather than a corvette or mercedes. It may not be pretty, but it gets the job done.
Fortitude: Getting Stronger Under Pressure
Put another way, fortitude is the virtue that allows us to practice becoming anti-fragile. According to Nassim Nicholas Taleb, an anti-fragile system is one that becomes stronger under pressure. Bones that do not experience pressure under the force of gravity slowly weaken. But more pressure (up to a reasonable point) makes stronger bones. Muscles that are not trained under heavy resistance will eventually deteriorate. But more training makes stronger muscles. An immune system that faces no challenges is vulnerable. But an immune system under attack can get stronger. A mind that does not practice a language learned is going to forget it after enough time. But the stress of learning imprints that information.
The challenges that we face in reaching a goal are opportunities to become stronger, to practice the excellences of fortitude, grit, and resilience. This is not to glorify pain and difficulty, but to realize that these are part of life. We can either let them determine our destiny or respond to them decisively.
Specifically, fortitude takes for its object anything that would withdraw us from the authentic good. One of the most common emotions that prevents us from fulfilling our intentions is fear: the emotion that moves us to shrink away from an apparent evil. Accordingly, fortitude calibrates fear. It also suitably deploys our daring or boldness, the emotion moving us to overcome some obstacle.
The Acts of Fortitude: Attack and Endurance
Every human excellence / good habit / virtue comes to its full flowering in the expression of an action. As I’ve written about before, happiness itself is activity in accord with reason. Fortitude expresses itself through attack and endurance:
Attack: the accomplishment of some goal requires us to remove the obstacles we face. Removing the goal requires: (1) confidence, the preparation of the mind for some great undertaking and (2) magnificence—literally: to do something (facere) great (magnum)—in the execution of the task.
Endurance: more often than not, life requires us simply to endure the challenge in order to get through to the other side. In this respect, one must practice (1) patience in the endurance of the suffering and (2) perseverance in holding fast to the good being sought on the other side of the evil.
The paradigmatic example of the courageous person, and one of the greatest examples of fortitude, is the soldier on the battlefield who accomplishes a great good even in the face of imminent and certain death. Arguably, the soldier who gives his life for his comrades and country is the fullest expression of fortitude.
War films, when done well, without machismo, depict this virtue brilliantly. The soldier attacks the evil, with a mind confidently prepared, executing the task with magnificent deeds of valor. From the exploits of Hector in Homer’s Iliad to modern-day SEALs behind enemy lines, these soldiers demonstrate attack.
Challenges as a Call to Witness
Sometimes life requires us to attack.
But more often than not we need to sustain the challenges facing us.
There is, however, another kind of fortitude. In some religious traditions, the greatest act of fortitude is also perseverance unto death. But this kind of fortitude specializes not in attack but in “bearing up” under evil. We commonly speak of this perseverance unto death as martyrdom. The word comes from the Greek word for witness (martus). To be a martyr is to become a witness.
One could also extend this in a metaphorical manner. To overcome some obstacle in favor of an authentic human good is to display fortitude. It is to become a witness to your commitments. If you wake up for work when you’re tired, for example, you witness to your commitment to that work.
But you can also witness to more significant commitments: your friends and family or even your religious and philosophical commitments. It takes fortitude to overcome the fear of looking silly when you express an unpopular opinion that you think is right. It takes fortitude to overcome the fear of being turned down when you ask forgiveness from your friend or spouse. It even takes fortitude to get on a plane to support a friend at their wedding, given the expenses and inconveniences that this sort of travel often requires.
But the witness is precisely to the good sought after: the importance of truth, even when it is unpopular; the importance of reconciliation, even when it might open you to further embarrassment; the importance of friendship, even when it requires time and expense and energy to carry out.
The Virtue of Suffering Well
When life calls you to endure suffering well, we can keep two things in mind. First, evil is evil. We do not need to pretend that discomfort, embarrassment, or inconvenience is good. We can accept those as facts of life. Thus: patience. This too shall pass. But in the midst of that, we can also contemplate the good that we hold onto. Thus: perseverance. He who has a why can bear any how (Nietzsche). If you can find a meaning or purpose in your suffering, you can bear it more easily.
So, what challenges are you facing in life?
Do you need to attack? Or do you need to endure?
Most importantly: What are you witnessing to in your struggle?