Chapter 4: Fortitude (or Courage)
4
Fortitude (or Courage)
(ST II-II, qq. 123–40)
The English word “fortitude” comes from a Latin root that means strong, steadfast, or sturdy. It is related to the English words “fort” and “fortified.” The word “courage” derives from a Latin word that means “heart,” and so it is related to the word “cardiology.” In many cultures, the heart is a symbol for inner strength or determination. We might say, for example, that a young athlete “has a lot of heart,” meaning that he or she is willing to work hard to achieve success. The words “fortitude” and “courage” are synonyms. They both refer to inner strength and steadfastness in the face of difficulties. We will use those words interchangeably here.
The virtue of fortitude is the abiding inclination to overcome obstacles or confront dangers to attain a good. It is the virtue that empowers soldiers, firefighters, and law-enforcement officials to confront the danger of death in order to defend innocent life and to serve the common good. No less courageous are doctors and nurses who volunteer to attend to people who face life-threatening epidemics such as Ebola or those who care for patients in dangerous warzones in faraway places. For Aquinas, it is the danger of losing the most basic good of our natural life—physical life itself—which characterizes fortitude in its most essential meaning. From a Christian perspective, it is the martyr who willingly faces death for the sake of the faith who displays the highest form of courage. In fact, Aquinas devotes an entire question in the ST to martyrdom in relation to courage (II-II, q. 124).
But the virtue of courage is not most often so extraordinary, so notably heroic. Life is full of obstacles, struggles, hardships, and difficulties that must be confronted in order to realize a good. It is a form of courage to give witness to one’s faith by practicing it actively in the face of ridicule or subtle scorn. It is courageous to face difficult and burdensome medical treatments to preserve one’s life, and especially to try to return to health for the sake of one’s family. It takes fortitude to do what is right at work when one is pressured to do otherwise. It is a form of courage, too, to pursue one’s education in face of other responsibilities and the need to work other jobs to pay tuition. It is courageous to keep one’s head held high in the face of poverty and want, to continue to do what can and must be done, while at the same time refusing to let oneself be defeated emotionally and spiritually. In short, true courage is not some rare or necessarily extraordinary virtue. In fact, we need it in our ordinary human lives, which are rarely entirely free of struggle, difficulties, and obstacles.
Courage, says Aquinas, moderates fear. Fear, in itself, is not a bad thing. It is a natural response to the perception that some person, thing, or situation is a threat to us in some way. And so, fear can be a good thing. It is the recognition that we are, in fact, vulnerable and finite. But we must not allow ourselves to be ruled or paralyzed by fear. It’s true that sometimes the prudent response to some danger is caution or retreat—or even running away at top speed. But, at the same time, there are some goods that are worthy of the challenges we must face in order to attain them. The firefighter should experience a prudent fear in the face of a building in flames, but he or she judges that the innocent lives to be saved are worth the risk. A married couple that decides to relocate to seek a better life is taking a risk, facing threat; but they may prudently and courageously decide that it is the best course of action in order to better provide for their children.
The virtue of courage is the sustained ability to recognize and accept our vulnerability to some danger, threat, or obstacle—our fear—but not be paralyzed by it. Courage does not necessarily eliminate fear—nor should it always do so, because there may be real danger worthy of the caution that fear brings. But courage is the ability to not be turned back or overcome by fear.
As a natural moral virtue, fortitude grows one choice after another. We become courageous in situations great and small by confronting one obstacle after another, by refusing to give up one time after another, by sticking with an effort despite its difficulty. Such effort, especially in the face of chronic or serious difficulties, can be aided (or sadly hindered) by those around us. The related words “encourage” and “discourage” point to our ability to help or hinder others in their growth in fortitude. To “en-courage” means literally to put or pour courage into another person. We can support the ability of others to face difficulties and to grow in this virtue by our words, our example, our support. On the other hand, we also have the power to “dis-courage”—literally to take courage away—by disparaging the efforts of others, by nay-saying their hopes, or by deflating their confidence. In justice and love, we owe others encouragement to face the challenges that confront them. And we owe it to others not to be a source of discouragement to them through our words, our example, or lack of the support that we might legitimately be able to give.
As is true for every virtue, fortitude requires a true desire to attain or accomplish an authentic good. It is the good to be attained that gives rise to the strength to face the obstacles that stand in the way. The recognition and appreciation of good calls forth the courage to obtain it. Cowardice, fortitude’s contrary, is as much a failure to fully embrace a good worthy of pursuit as it is a failure to rise above one’s fear. Because courage, like all of the virtues, is directed to the good, the ability to overcome difficulties in order to realize an evil end cannot be courage at all. The person who is willing to face grave danger in order to steal, to seek vengeance, or to harm the innocent is not courageous. Terrorists are not courageous, even if they are willing to blow themselves up. Courage aims at the authentically good—at worthy goals by worthy means.
Fortitude and Other Virtues
Aquinas notes that fortitude is often accompanied and even empowered by a kind of anger—anger in the sense of a felt determination to overcome. He discusses anger itself in relation to the virtue of temperance (II-II, q. 158) where he notes that not all anger is evil. It is in itself a passion, a power, to confront. The person facing cancer with courage is “going to beat it,” “will not let herself be defeated by it,” is willing to “fight it.” A firefighter facing the flames can feel a surge of energy, which is a form of anger at what threatens him or her and the lives of innocent people. Someone who opposes injustice can do so empowered with a righteous indignation at the unjust suffering of others.
The virtues of courage and temperance are especially related to one another in that they regulate and direct our appetites or emotions. Temperance moderates our simple desiring (our “concupiscible” appetite, says Aquinas) for goods like food, drink, and sex—and it moderates our sadness at not having them. Fortitude moderates our desire for what is difficult to attain or our tendency to flee what involves pain or discomfort (our “irascible” appetite). We see the interrelation of these two virtues in a particular way in the moderation of anger. Courage draws on a “righteous anger” to overcome a difficulty to attain a worthy good; but this anger must be moderated by the virtue of temperance to keep it in line with what is reasonable. We must use our good anger but master it, rather than be mastered by it.
Courage, like all of the virtues, requires prudence. As we saw in our discussion of prudence, a lack of proper forethought leads to imprudent decisions; and such imprudence is the source of recklessness which, as we will see, is contrary to the virtue of courage. Although it is temperance that moderates anger, it is prudence that determines what measure and expression of anger is reasonable in a particular situation. Courageous actions, empowered by a measured anger, must be guided by prudence.
Courage depends on the other virtues; and, at the same time, all of the other virtues require some measure of courage to the degree that they are confronted with challenges. To seek justice for others frequently requires the courage to face opposition. To grow in temperance, one must be able to confront challenges to one’s effort to properly order one’s desires. Prudent choices often cannot be made without fortitude. In fact, without the necessary courage to moderate undue fear, truly viable courses of action may be all too quickly dismissed because of their difficulty. In that case, the good to be obtained is undervalued relative to the obstacles to attain it; a lack of courage would thereby obscure the prudent choice.
The Vices Opposed to Fortitude
Vices arise, contrary to fortitude, either by defect or by excess. The absence or the lack of sufficient inner strength to reasonably confront obstacles and to overcome fear is the vice of cowardice or timidity. The abiding inclination to unreasonably deny the reality of threat is the vice of fearlessness. And closely related to the latter is the abiding tendency to confront obstacles or dangers that are too great, which is the vice of recklessness or foolhardiness.
Before we consider these contrary vices, we can also mention that, just as there are false or counterfeit forms of prudence, there are also acts that appear to flow from fortitude but do not. As we will see, the absence of reasonable fear may appear to be courageous, but this may be a false impression. One can lack fear because one is blind to or ignorant of the presence of real dangers. Such lack of knowledge can be innocent, or it could be a lack of prudent consideration, but the experience of fearlessness in such a situation might look like courage, but it is not. In a similar way, someone can confront dangers because of overwhelming passion or anger without thinking about danger. Again, this is not courage, but risky or daring action that is neither prudent nor temperate. There are, on the other hand, situations in which someone can possess skills or experience that can reasonably and safely allow them to confront situations that others would find dangerous. For example, it might be an act of real courage for a bystander to jump into the ocean to save a child who appears to be drowning. The same act by a trained and experienced lifeguard might not be an act of courage at all (though this is not to suggest that lifeguarding in general does not require courage).
Cowardice
Aquinas makes clear that fortitude is not fearlessness. As we have noted, fear in itself is a natural response to something that is perceived as a danger. We ought to fear what truly threatens us. Courage is not fearlessness. It is the refusal to give into fear, the ability to rise above fear in the face of a great good. A soldier going into battle, physicians about to treat people afflicted by life-threatening and infectious disease, and a patient facing the unknowns and possible complications of serious surgery ought to feel some amount of fear. The measure of courage is not the absence of reasonable fear, but rather the worthiness of the good and the ability to move forward despite the fear. Again, virtues bring “ease, smoothness, and promptitude,” and fortitude allows us to confront danger and to experience reasonable fear with, at the same time, a kind of inner equilibrium that may not completely eliminate the fear, but will also not leave us paralyzed by it.
Courage, in fact, requires the recognition of one’s vulnerability, the real possibility of being harmed. Soldiers in tanks do not normally require courage to face unarmed protesters. Bullies do not require courage to confront others who are smaller or weaker than they. It is the reality of real danger that makes for courage. Failing to recognize one’s vulnerability, on the other hand, makes subsequent actions foolhardy, not courageous.
I once saw a television program about world-class professional cliff divers who dive off of platforms built on the edge of cliffs, some fifty-nine to eighty-five feet above the water. Their impact on hitting the water from that height would be sufficient, if not done properly, to kill a person instantly or to leave them severely injured and maimed. For virtually anyone else, this would be a very reckless behavior. But these elite divers have a great deal of experience and skill, and the sport takes whatever precautions are possible. Given the level of danger and the variability of wind and ocean, no amount of experience or skill would eliminate the need for courage to engage in this sport. One of the divers, however, commented that he always experiences some measure of fear each time that he dives. In fact, if he lost that fear entirely, he would have to leave the sport.
The vice of cowardice, then, is not simply the fact that someone experiences fear. To some degree, it is the presence of excessive fear—fear beyond what the actual danger or threat might warrant. But at its heart, cowardice is the inability to overcome fear. It is the inclination to be paralyzed by fear or the tendency not to rise to the challenge of confronting obstacles so that good can be accomplished. As we have seen, it can be a failure to embrace the good that is worthy of our effort.
When we think of courage, we naturally think immediately of the extraordinary or clearly heroic: martyrs and soldiers in battle. But there is, more often, a more ordinary kind of courage that must characterize every authentic human life. We must have the courage to confront the many challenges and struggles that arise in the ups-and-downs of our often ordinary lives. In the same way, when we think of cowardice, our minds might turn immediately to obvious and even extraordinary examples of cowardice in battle (though I suspect that those of us untested in the ugly realities of war would be reluctant to judge any soldier a coward). But again, cowardice can sadly be a more ordinary reality too. There is a kind of moral weakness that we can develop in ourselves that is unwilling or unable to rise to a challenge. It is possible to find ourselves unable to confront obstacles that need and deserve to be faced. There may be, of course, a variety of complex psychological reasons why some people cannot stand up for themselves, why some people seem unable to maintain the energy and focus to get a job done as it should be, or why other people seem immediately to shrink from confronting a problem and give in instead to dejection and depression. (There may, on the other hand, be psychological reasons why some people seem more naturally prone to fortitude.) But, at least when we look into our own hearts, amidst all of the complexity, we can sometimes see some amount of real moral fault—a failure to rise to a challenge that could have or should have been confronted.
Vices, like virtues, are built up over time, one choice after another. Whether we have some emotional propensity to fortitude or to its opposite, we become authentically courageous, one choice after another, one day after another. And we become cowardly—habitually unable to rise to challenges that we could reasonably hope to overcome—one choice after another. Hopefully we will never be confronted with a threat that would require truly heroic and extraordinary courage; but we will most certainly not be able to do so unless we can grow in a more ordinary fortitude. We must possess the virtue to confront threats that can arise suddenly and unexpectedly.
Again, the virtue of courage requires a desire for and a commitment to goodness. Cowardice, for its part, is a failure to adequately see and embrace such goodness. And sometimes we ourselves can be at fault for our failure to see, in front of us, goods that are truly worthy of our efforts. Unless we see the goodness and value of every human life, how could we rise to the courage to pursue justice, not only or even principally for ourselves, but for others? If we don’t see the profound goodness of our own potential, our opportunities, our talents, and our God-given resources and friends, how can we rise to confront the challenges that are preventing us from being what we were meant to be? Unless we can be filled with wonder and gratitude at the gift of faith, how can we confront with courage the obstacles thrown up by our contemporary culture to the true living and growth in that faith?
Fearlessness
Fear, as we have seen, is a natural reaction to threat. Like other animals, we have an instinct for “fight or flight.” The absence of such appropriate fear may be the result of some psychological problem or it may be some moral failing on our part. Just as someone who is experiencing despair or suicidal thoughts might lose a sense of the fundamental value of life for psychological reasons, it may be possible not to value one’s own life sufficiently to experience fear of losing it. Or perhaps we might fail to value sufficiently other goods that are worthy of our pursuit, and so fail to fear their loss. Allowing ourselves to be overcome by sudden, uncontrollable anger or desire for vengeance might empower us to face great obstacles without fear, but such fearlessness is not an exercise of the virtue of courage, but rather a manifestation of the vice of intemperance.
Recklessness
A courageous choice must also be a prudent choice. Some dangers are too great to be met head-on. Sometimes retreat is the right response. The virtue of courage not only moderates fear, it also moderates the urge to be daring and engage in impulsive efforts to confront threats. In this sense, the vice of recklessness or foolhardiness is really a form of imprudence. There are thrill-seekers who understand the risks of what they do and take the necessary, available precautions. They might do what most of us would not—climb sheer cliffs or jump from planes for fun—but they are not necessarily reckless. There can also be people who seem at first glance to be truly brave but who are merely foolhardy. The imprudence of the foolhardy can take many forms: failure to ponder and weigh risks, negligence in taking adequate precautions, or carelessly (or with misplaced pride) overestimating one’s abilities. We might think, for example, of drivers who are familiar with research that demonstrates that texting while driving is dangerous, but who somehow consider themselves immune to such risks. Such imprudence and its resulting recklessness may be accompanied by an absence of fear, but such fearlessness is again imprudent (and unjust to others who are put needlessly at risk), not courageous. It would be a very foolish form of pride to think oneself above the reality of fear, to overestimate one’s abilities, or to underestimate real threats.
Virtues Related to Courage
Aquinas tells us that the virtue of courage has two modes: a posture of attack and a posture of endurance. Perhaps we most often think of courage in its attack mode: the soldier attacks the enemy; the firefighter, the flame; the person with cancer, the disease. But Aquinas tells us that the endurance mode of courage reveals its essence more clearly—not because enduring a difficulty is higher in itself, but because enduring over time manifests more clearly the sustained moral strength that is the essence of true courage. To endure when it is imprudent or impossible to attack reveals the true inner strength required of courage. Enduring is not necessarily passive. While there is no external action of attack, internally there is an inner strength that continues to work.
Magnanimity and magnificence are two virtues related to courage in its attacking mode. Perseverance and patience are two virtues related to courage in its enduring mode. Aquinas’s discussion of these virtues offer us a great deal of insight to ponder.
Magnanimity
“Magnanimity” is not a frequently used term today, and we would probably not think of it as a virtue. It is rare to hear someone called “magnanimous.” In its root, the word means “great-souled.” So, a magnanimous person is someone with a largeness of spirit—a person with a big heart. In normal parlance, magnanimity can mean a general nobility of character. Or, in a more narrow sense, it signifies a person who is generous in forgiving or who quickly overlooks offenses or slights. It is the opposite, then, of petty, mean-spirited, or vindictive. These contemporary senses of the word “magnanimous” are consistent with what Aquinas means by the virtue of magnanimity, but his use is more narrowly focused on a virtue that is related to and promotes the virtue of courage.
Aquinas ties the virtue of magnanimity especially to the facing of difficulties to attain honor. This may at first seem odd, since it sounds like he is suggesting that it is a praiseworthy thing to face danger in order to attain worldly recognition and superficial forms of honor. But by honor, Aquinas is speaking more of a nobility of spirit, a fulfillment of what it means to be truly human, and the living of an authentic human life that gives bold testimony to others about how a human life ought to be lived. Magnanimous people, in Aquinas’s sense of the word, are those who are inclined to confront even great difficulties to attain truly great goods—and, in their pursuit and attainment, to become the kind of men and women who genuinely fulfill what it means to be a fully alive human person. Magnanimity seeks the good not only for oneself, but for others—and honor, not in a superficial sense for self, but as an example of nobility of spirit for others.
We have seen that courage is always aimed at goodness, while cowardice is the inability to embrace goodness worthy of what is required to attain it. Courage, then, is strengthened by a clear-sighted vision of the good. The more clearly the worthiness of the goal is perceived, the more power we can find in ourselves to face what we must to attain it. The virtue of magnanimity is, in a way, the abiding inclination to “think big” or even to “dream big” about our goals. It is the abiding tendency to see the worthiness of a goal, to imagine the goodness of its attainment, and to see the reality of what separates us from the goal in relation to the higher value of its attainment. The magnanimous person is willing and able to undertake worthy but difficult tasks—to endure great hardships because he or she can sustain an image of what must be attained. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and Saint Mother Teresa were magnanimous people.
Magnanimity is most obviously a virtue of dreamers who are able to realize great things. The building up of a large charitable organization from meager beginnings requires magnanimity. The people behind it must be able to keep before their own minds, in a sustained way, the worthiness of their enterprise and the dream of an organization that has the real potential of doing great things for those in need. Such people must be not only dreamers, but people with big dreams who also possess the strength and confidence to stay faithful to the struggle to make those big dreams a reality. We need politicians and leaders of every human community who can be truly magnanimous—who can rise to the challenges and needs of our time, but not for selfish gain or worldly honor. We need their efforts, and we need their example.
But magnanimity can also be far less heroic or seemingly extraordinary. The young single mother who imagines a better life for herself and her children and who finds the sustained strength to work and go to school is really a magnanimous person. She is a big-souled person who can keep a dream before her even as she confronts the challenges it requires, day after day, one after another. Or we can think of a young father confronted by cancer and the treatments necessary to cure it. It can take great courage to confront those obstacles and to fight the course of the disease. It is precisely this man’s ability to keep before his mind’s eye the image of his wife and children who love and need him that sustains his strength to fight on. This is courage, but it is a form of courage born of big dreams, worthy goals, and the resulting sustained strength to keep on fighting.
Magnanimity—as a greatness of soul—is not only about the ability to think big and sustain big effort. It is also a type of self-confidence in one’s ability to attain one’s goals. This is not pride. In fact, it’s not really about self at all. It’s about holding together the dream yet to be accomplished and a confidence in one’s ability to realize it. Both are required for true magnanimity. This virtue includes a generosity with one’s gifts as one pursues goods for one’s own sake and for the sake of others. As people of faith, the element of self-confidence is grounded in a humble—and thus accurate and truthful—acknowledgement of our God-given abilities and our willingness to use them for good. Magnanimity brings with it, then, a kind of tranquility even in the face of great undertakings.
Again, we must recall that every virtue grows one choice at a time. One does not suddenly become courageous or magnanimous when confronted with a challenge or awakened to a dream. Sadly, it is possible to allow oneself to become someone who thinks small. Magnanimity is the opposite of the kind of pessimism, cynicism, a settling for less that can too easily afflict us. A history of disappointment or failure, of having shrunk from a good due to fear, or a lack of confidence can leave one with a sustained inability to see the real potential of attaining good, worthy, and even great things. Magnanimity then requires a kind of hope based on our own abilities, the assistance and support of others, and especially in what God can and will do. Without it, how would individuals ever become part of sustained efforts to bring real change to their own lives and to the world?
Vices Opposed to Magnanimity
It is a sign of the importance of magnanimity that Aquinas not only develops his reflection on it at some length, but that he also devotes time to its opposing vices. By excess, it is opposed by the vices of presumption, ambition, and vainglory. By defect, it is opposed by the vice of faintheartedness or timidity (traditionally called “pusillanimity”).
Presumption is the vice of assuming that one is capable of what actually lies beyond one’s capacities.1 While magnanimity involves the capacity to think big with a healthy sense of self-confidence, it can also prudently assess the obstacles and its own limitations. The capacity to think big alone does not define magnanimity, but also the reasonable assessment of one’s ability to harness one’s skills, knowledge and God-given gifts to attain the desired good. The honor that the magnanimous person pursues—the nobility of spirit which characterizes the person willing to seek out worthy goals—also requires the humility of recognizing the limits of our still frail humanity. Presumption is the vice of thinking big without the reasonable assessment of the actual limitations of one’s abilities to realize one’s dreams.
In contemporary terms, the word “ambition” can have a positive sense of possessing the energy and drive to get things done and to succeed in one’s endeavors. A young person, fresh out of college and starting a promising new job, needs the positive drive that can be called ambition. At the same time, the word “ambition” may also have a negative connotation. For Aquinas, ambition is the desire for honor gone amuck. It seeks a superficial and worldly honor as an end—which is the opposite of the true honor of a magnanimous person. Rather than seeking a great good by confronting great difficulty and thereby attaining the nobility of spirit that others can rightly admire and aspire to imitate, ambition seeks honor for its own sake. As we have seen, there is no virtue when the end sought is evil. And worldly honor is no worthy end in itself. Magnanimity always involves using one’s gifts and abilities to attain goodness in a good way for good motives in regard to others.
Vainglory, as its name suggests, is the pursuit of a vain or superficial glory in the eyes of others. It seeks praise for what is not worthy of praise, seeks it from people who are not in a position to offer valid praise, or seeks it without reference to God, from whom all goodness flows and who empowers every good action. Magnanimity has nothing to do with human praise or superficial glory for its own sake—and certainly not as an end to be sought. The magnanimous person seeks what is truly good, acknowledging that its accomplishment is not simply his or her doing. In the end, vainglory is related to pride.
Aquinas offers one brief but very interesting article to the “offspring” of vainglory. This vice results in boasting in words, the desire to be seen as possessing the latest or the very newest, or putting on a false show of one’s pretended gifts or possessions (“hypocrisy”). Since the vainglorious person does not want to appear inferior to another, the vice may result in obstinacy, holding stubbornly to one’s own opinion or viewpoint. This is often coupled with an unwillingness to give up one’s perspectives, plans, and priorities in collaboration with others (which Aquinas calls “discord”). Vainglory may lead a person to be contentious with others—defending one’s viewpoint in a manner that draws attention to the vainglorious person’s need to be right. The final offspring of vainglory is an unwillingness to be subordinate to the direction or supervision of others. In light of our reflection in the previous chapter, we can see that vainglory’s “offspring” are also often forms of injustice.
Presumption, ambition, and vainglory may mask themselves in action as the virtue of magnanimity, but they are misdirected and excessive in their pursuit of the mere appearance of true honor for self. Faintheartedness (or timidity), on the other hand, is the failure to rise to the pursuit of worthy goals, even though one possesses the ability to overcome the obstacles that stand in the way. The fainthearted or timid person is “small-spirited” and/or lacks both the self-confidence commensurate with his or her actual gifts, as well as the willingness to envision or embrace worthy goals. The quintessential Gospel example is the servant whose master gave him an amount of money with which to make a profit, but who instead buried it in the ground where it did nothing for anyone (Matt 25:14–30; Luke 19:11–27). This may have the appearance of humility, but true humility sees the truth of one’s abilities, neither overestimating them (presumption) nor underestimating them (faintheartedness).
Perhaps even more than the other vices opposed to magnanimity, it is faintheartedness that is the greatest threat to the society around us, whether that society is our nation or culture, or whether it is the society of the family. Faintheartedness (or timidity) is a failure of the person to embrace his or her own gifts. It is a failure to envision and embrace what is truly good. It is a lack of resolve to accomplish the good. Therefore, it is a diminishment of the person. The timid person refuses to rise to what he or she can be and accomplish. This has sad consequences for the world around them. Some great good is left undone. Faintheartedness is passed on to others who might also have the necessary ability, but who are influenced by others whose example they might have reason to respect. They are “dis-couraged.” The collaboration that might arise among those who, together, could accomplish the good is left behind.
We live in a world in great need of good action, positive example, and authentic witness to what it means to be truly human in relationship with others. If we are fainthearted in the use of our strength and skills to overcome injustice and seek peace, to do the right and defend the good, to live and promote the faith, we will diminish ourselves as persons, give sad and sickly example to others, and let evil and indifference have their way.
The Virtue of Magnificence
Aquinas tells us that there is a specific virtue for those who pursue great works—and have the capacity to accomplish them. The word “magnificence” today usually means grand, lavish, splendid, or perhaps garish and showy. But for Aquinas, it is the virtue by which people with ample financial means seek to do great things for their communities or for God. It is, then, the great philanthropist’s virtue. It allows someone to part with a portion of their wealth with relative ease in order to accomplish something that will truly benefit others. Magnificence thereby overcomes excessive reluctance or anxiety about making a donation which a person of means can, in fact, afford. It is this sustained ability to face the obstacle of giving or spending that is its relation to the virtue of fortitude. Magnificence overcomes the inner obstacles that true and significant generosity can require. There are people with great wealth who live in unreasonable fear that some calamity will arise and they will no longer be able to live as they have. It is magnificence that would allow such people to regulate their fear in light of prudent risks in order to contribute generously to a truly worthy enterprise.
The distribution of wealth in society raises larger questions of justice—principles of justice, just economic structures, and the virtue of justice. Without denying the importance of issues of justice, the virtue of magnificence focuses on the character of the person who is blessed with great possessions. And the fact is, in our affluent society, that there are many people with great wealth and thus with the potential to help society and its members in significant ways. What constitutes wealth, of course, is relative. But Aquinas’s reflection on the virtue of magnificence should give people of means pause to think of what they might be able to accomplish for the good of others with a generous—“magnificent”—sharing of their resources.
The fact is that our affluent society also perpetuates consumerism and materialism. It is easy enough for those with material wealth to focus its use on themselves and what their money can buy for themselves: cars, homes, vacations, gadgets, bling. Tax benefits for charitable giving can be a good incentive for the wealthy to give. And that’s a good thing. But it doesn’t necessarily constitute the virtue of magnificence, which is not simply a matter of practical benefits for charitable giving, but an inner, abiding tendency to share what they have to accomplish good things with their resources. It requires, then, a freedom from simple self-seeking. An affluent society needs the virtue of magnificence more than ever.
In the history of the Catholic Church in the United States, the building of its parish and school buildings depended on the hard work and generous donations of ordinary, working-class people. Visiting grand old churches in old city neighborhoods gives witness to what the generosity of many people coming together can accomplish. And yet, many Catholic institutions such as hospitals, colleges, seminaries, and other schools—and more recently, their endowments—have also depended on the large donations of people with both great faith and great resources. The growth and maintenance of such institutions has required the magnanimity of many Catholic donors. Today, it seems that the younger generations are no longer so inclined to support institutions in general and the institutional church in particular. Surely there are many reasons for such a shift, but it is to be lamented to the degree that it is a failure of faith, institutional commitment to the church, and/or the virtue of magnificence.
Magnificence encourages generous giving, but it also moderates it. As a virtue, it seeks the true good, not garish display or self-serving recognition, as its name might seem to imply. It is not foolish or wasteful. Again, magnificence must be guided by prudence. Like magnanimity, it promotes virtue in others through good example. The wealthy who are truly generous—magnificent, in this sense—can be an example and incentive to their financial peers. The community projects pursued by the magnificent can encourage others to rise to the challenge.
The contrary of the virtue of magnificence is meanness or littleness. It is the vice of those who possess great resources but refuse to put them to work for the good of others. They have great wealth, but small goals for the benefit of others. Or they can see the great good that their wealth could accomplish, but they cannot bring themselves to expend what it would take, even though it is prudently within their means. Or, having set out to finance a truly noble project, they then pull back and begin to unnecessarily pinch pennies and thereby prevent the undertaking from becoming what it might have.
Patience
As we have said, for Aquinas, the virtue of fortitude has both an attacking and an enduring mode. The virtues of patience and perseverance are related to its enduring mode. Because undergoing difficulty over time can require the greater strength, these virtues of endurance can often give greater evidence of the true meaning of courage. There are certainly situations and periods in our lives that require these enduring virtues—the sustained ability to hold on, which is not the same as passive resignation or giving up. The people who can endure in the face of hardship, struggle, sickness, and tragedy can truly be among the most courageous.
Patience is the virtue that allows a person to withstand suffering or difficulty without giving into despair, unjustified anger, or overpowering sadness. It is the ability to maintain an inner tranquility of spirit in the face of challenging circumstances. It is not the same thing as an attitude of passivity. Some situations demand action. It is not patience to refuse to act when a good is at stake and one has the power to overcome the evil that threatens it. As always, it is prudence that helps to determine when endurance or attack is the most appropriate response.
Some people may have a natural tendency to the virtue of patience. These people possess a more laid-back attitude, a great natural ability to “roll with the punches,” as we say. It may be less of a challenge for them to be patient in the face of life’s challenges, both great and small. On the other hand, such people may find themselves too easily passive in the face of challenges that really ought to be confronted. Being laid back is not always the best attitude, just as patient endurance must sometimes give way to courageous attack.
People in every age have had to develop the virtue of patience to face life’s inconveniences and challenges. But perhaps it is true that, in our age, patience is a more difficult virtue to form and maintain. We live in a world of instant gratification. We have so many conveniences and devices that have reduced our need to wait. The Internet allows us to gain information almost instantaneously and to order whatever products we might want without leaving our homes (with expedited shipping, if desired). We no longer need to wait for the exchange of paper letters. Today, when we send an email or a text message, we can reasonably expect a quick response—in fact, we may find ourselves irritated if the recipient of our message fails to respond upon receipt. We seem in constant pursuit of better ways to avoid the need to grow in patience.
The virtue of patience is an interior, abiding attitude that provides an inner peace while waiting in line or in traffic, while nearby young parents struggle to quiet their overactive young kids, or until the “next available representative” can handle our call. Certainly, there are situations in which there is no good reason why we should be made to wait, but there are many others in which patience is really the only appropriate response. Patient people know how to maintain their inner calm while waiting, who can confront the challenge that must simply be endured for a time, and who possesses the inner nobility of spirit to carry themselves with due composure as a witness to those around them.
Surely we have all witnessed the person who goes into a rage at the airline ticket agent who is simply trying to reroute one passenger after another when a flight has been canceled or delayed by weather. We have seen the person who starts ranting and raving in a checkout line because an elderly person is taking time to find their wallet or slowly and carefully write out a check. Perhaps we have faced the frustration of a fellow driver who apparently thinks that we are driving too slowly through congested traffic. In fact, maybe, at one time or another, we ourselves have been one or the other of those impatient people. Patience is the virtue that keeps us from being “that” person. It is the virtue that gives us the inner sense that such impatience in the face of such trivial inconveniences is not really fitting to the person that we want to be.
But patience shows its true nobility in the face of greater trials. Illness that cannot be cured or suffering that cannot be alleviated demand a deeper patience. Caring for elderly parents who suffer from dementia or Alzheimer’s disease requires a profound patience. The innocent Jesus, confronted with his undeserved suffering, is a model of patience for those who must endure what cannot be changed. But patience in the face of life’s sometimes great challenges is built up by a patient response to the countless little inconveniences of daily life.
Perseverance
Perseverance, like patience, is a virtue of endurance, but it is more directly related to a goal actively being sought. The good that patience seeks is the tranquility and nobility of spirit that cannot be trampled by hardship; for its part, perseverance prevents giving up on a worthy goal, although its attainment remains at a distance and obstacles remain to be confronted. Perseverance, like all virtues, is directed to the moral good of the person who possesses it, but it is more directly related to an exterior good. The virtue of perseverance is the abiding tendency and ability to persist in the pursuit of good despite delays, the need for prolonged effort, and the multiplication of obstacles. Perseverance resists discouragement and the temptation to give up on a goal which has been perceived and embraced as truly worthy. It reveals the true power of the human spirit to endure. The development of real athletic skill in order to excel at competitive sports, the pursuit of serious scholarship, or getting a college degree while holding down part-time jobs and caring for a family—all of these require perseverance.
Aquinas distinguishes perseverance from constancy, though the difference is a nuance. The former is the persistence that keeps us on course in the face of hardships that arise immediately in the pursuit of a goal. The latter is the persistence that allows us to continue despite obstacles that are external to the effort itself. An older college student is “persevering” in staying the course with his or her studies despite the difficulties and effort that academic goals require (that is, these difficulties arise from the pursuit of the good itself). On the other hand, that same student is “constant” in the face of other problems such as illness, financial setbacks, or the encroachment of other responsibilities that may arise (that is, these are difficulties that are not part of the attainment of the good itself but arise from outside it). Perhaps for our purposes, it is easiest to include both under the titles of perseverance.
Of course, sometimes situations reveal that even our prudent decision to begin could not have foreseen the actual difficulties to be confronted. In such cases, prudence might demand giving up or at least rethinking our realistic hopes and our strategies. Fighting a disease like cancer, for example, can require great fortitude in facing the treatments and their side effects—and simply in the refusal to be paralyzed by fear. It can demand great patience as one waits to see the effectiveness of treatments, the results of tests, and the considered recommendations of physicians as they ponder the next step in a line of treatment. Battling serious disease can require perseverance through multiple treatments and their side effects. Such courage, patience, and perseverance can be truly praiseworthy and reveal the nobility of character of the person who struggles on. It can manifest their love for life and for family, their faith, and their clear-sighted perception of the good. At the same time, each step in such a struggle demands the prudence to reevaluate, rethink, and make new decisions. A point may come at which it becomes clear that perseverance in the fight is no longer the best path. Persistence in faith and patience in the midst of dying becomes instead the most appropriate attitude.
The effort to grow in any virtue often requires perseverance. One must be persistent in the face of temptations to be unchaste, impatient, or imprudent. Living the Christian life itself requires such constancy. Although the perseverance specifically to grow in the Christian life and in the life of prayer requires the infused form of perseverance which comes with grace, this does not deny the importance of perseverance as a natural virtue in every aspect of our lives. One of my brother monks likes to say that being Christian is easy—the hard part is doing it one day after the other. As we likely all know from experience, the effort to grow in the spiritual life and specifically in the life of prayer also requires perseverance, given in grace and acquired by our effort. Steady perseverance in prayer and the development of a true habit of prayer that can remain through inevitable periods of dryness requires great persistence. This is a point made especially by Saint Teresa of Avila, one of the greatest teachers of prayer in the Christian tradition. She insisted that we must begin and continue the life of prayer with a “very determined determination” (una muy determinada determinación). We must never give up on prayer, no matter what happens or how often we might fail or fall into sin. Anyone who has tried to grow in prayer knows how profoundly true this is.
The opposite of perseverance is the vice which we might translate as moral weakness, feebleness, or irresoluteness. It is the vice of those who are unable to remain resolute and determined in the face of difficulties that are not objectively insurmountable in order to attain a worthy good. Perhaps we have all found ourselves unable to rise to the maintenance of our New Year’s resolutions—to stay on a diet, to maintain our fitness regimen, or to persevere in daily prayer. These failures may be the result of starting with an overly idealistic or hazy goal, a lack of real resolve in the beginning, or the absence of workable strategies to get where we want to go. But it is important to see that it is possible to possess a real vice or irresoluteness that makes it difficult for us to rise to virtually any serious challenge. It is one thing to fail on a diet from time to time (or even completely) if the goal is mostly a matter of appearance rather than averting a real health threat. It is quite another to possess an abiding moral weakness that keeps us from staying on course. Growth in all of the moral virtues, in faithful Christian discipleship, and in prayer are just a few examples of important matters that require an ability to stick with a plan.
Perseverance, like all of the natural virtues, grows over time, one decision after another. And perseverance in one area of our life can empower us in others. Aquinas would certainly say that we do not fully or perfectly possess the virtue of perseverance unless and until it empowers us in every area of our life. Still, we can find ourselves persistent in one area but not another. A young person might be determined in pursuing athletic prowess with all of the training that it requires, but remain quite irresolute when it comes to consistently putting the necessary effort into academic studies. We are all capable of such compartmentalizing, but sometimes if we can grow more persistent in one area, it can carry over into others.
The virtue of perseverance also has a counterfeit. There are people who are simply stubborn and obstinate, or who just refuse to seem to fail in what they have resolved to do. Such resolution is at best a false perseverance. It fails in pursuit of a true good—that is, it seeks to “be right” or to appear undefeated. Authentic virtue is not about self-serving goals, and it is always guided by prudence that knows when holding on no longer makes sense. Perseverance is not stubbornness or obstinacy.
The virtue of courage is more necessary for good daily living than we might commonly think. It may be that we need it more than we usually think, or it may be that we possess it in forms that we ourselves would not have thought of as instances of courage. Hopefully, we will not need an attacking mode of courage in the face of extraordinary danger or difficulty. Hopefully, we will never face the threat of physical attack, the need to run into a burning building or jump into a river to save a child, or the reality of persecution or martyrdom for the Christian faith (which is, sadly, still a present reality in the contemporary world). But we won’t be able to muster such extraordinary courage without the daily, ordinary efforts to confront and to endure life’s inevitable little challenges, unless we can “stay the course” in the midst of life’s choppy waters and sudden storms, unless we can be both big-souled and, at the same time, persevere and remain patient.
1. Aquinas also discusses a different kind of presumption in relation to the theological virtue of hope (ST II-II, q. 21). In that context, presumption is a kind of false hope in God’s mercy and goodness—for example, simply expecting God’s gift of eternal life without our repentance and ongoing conversion in this life.