ABSTRACT
Not very much is heard these days about fortitude, in contrast to courage. One could suspect that fortitude has gone the way of certain other once-popular virtues – chastity, sobriety and frugality are examples that spring to mind – and dropped out of moral fashion, for now or for good. But appearances may be deceptive here. Fortitude may not be much referred to by name by journalists, politicians, popular novelists or characters in soap operas, but it does not follow that the virtue itself has been forgotten; for fortitude may be present in the public mind de re even if it is not de dicto. Clearly this would be the case if fortitude were simply courage by another, more cumbersome name. 1 But while some writers have treated the terms “fortitude” and “courage” as virtual synonyms, an influential tradition has preferred to think of fortitude as an important species of courage rather than as the whole of it.
