The Virtue of Fortitude in Education
What makes a man brave? Something good that he loves and wishes to keep or attain.
That is the simple answer that comes to us from the classical tradition. Fortitude (also called bravery, courage) as a virtue is not the love of display or the enjoyment of pain and suffering. Nor is fortitude the absence of fear. A brave man may fear death and yet be willing to face and endure death for something he holds dear like his friend, his family, or his country.
It was Christ who said that “no greater love has any man than this that he lay down his life for his friend.” Jesus could speak about this personally, as he was going to do just this, willingly lay down his life for those he loved.
Even for Christ, however, it was not an easy thing to will. In fact, he prays, “Father, if it is possible let this cup be taken from me. Nevertheless, not my will but thy will be done.”
About a soldier’s courage, Chesterton (in Orthodoxy) says this:
A man cut off from the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice. He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.
We have often read about his kind of courage in battle or in other dangerous pursuits. Frodo, in Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, is willing to make the dangerous journey to Mordor in an attempt to throw the cursed ring into the flames there to destroy it. “I will bear the ring, though I do not know the way.” And Sam, out of his great love for Frodo, will come too (he insists) and endure great suffering and peril along the way in order to help his friend.
It is often said that men in battle will die not so much for their country as for their brother soldiers that they have come to deeply love.
The ancient Roman soldiers would march for miles carrying not only their weapons and food rations, but also two large wooden pikes (called a sudis). When they camped in the evening each man would remove his pikes which would be pounded into the ground in orderly fashion forming a protective wall and fort. Each solider was trained to be fortis (strong, brave) and through training and discipline acquire the virtue of fortitudo.
Today we not only have the English word fort, but also fortification, and the verb fortify. If we extend fortitude from military matters to all of life, we will find that we regularly need fortitude. If the soldier is willing to endure suffering, even death, for the flag–what other good things are worth suffering for?
Certainly family and friends. I will endure and lay down my life for my family and close friends, at least I pray that I would and could if called to. I pray that I would lay down my life for Christ in martyrdom if called to even though I don’t seek it. We are familiar with the stories of brave soldiers and martyrs. But what about brave students and teachers?
As a cardinal virtue, fortitude is for all of life, and is relevant to all human endeavors. You may know that “cardinal” comes from cardo, cardinalis, meaning “hinge.” The Roman cardinals were called such because in several respects the church “hinges” on their leadership and willingness to sacrifice themselves for the good of the church, for the sheep. Thus they wore red robes, signaling their willingness to die for the church, and reminding us of Christ’s words in John 10: “I lay down my life for the sheep.” The red cardinal (the state bird of Virginia) is named after the red vestments of the Catholic cardinals.
If fortitude is a cardinal virtue, then it also informs the life of a student and teacher. If you have children, you may remember those times when your child exhibited fear as a student. Perhaps they were afraid to go to school at times, afraid to take up a new study, afraid to offer answers they feared were wrong or ask questions they feared exposed their stupidity. Perhaps you can remember when you yourself experienced these same fears. What helps us overcome such fear?
The answer from the tradition is the love of something good. We read in 1 John that perfect love casts out fear. And not love in the abstract, but love for some very good thing. My love for my wife–and my desire to serve, bless, and protect her–will cast out fear should she be threatened in my presence. Not only would I pull out my two stakes to build a fort around her, but I would grasp my Roman spear (pilum) to throw at any threat.
It follows that students, if they are to be brave, must come to love something good that they either want to preserve or attain. It is in this context that the French writer A.G. Sertillanges (in The Intellectual Life) says that “Every intellectual work begins by a moment of ecstasy… Now what is this ecstasy but a flight upwards, away from self, a forgetting to live our own poor life, in order that the object of our delight may live in our thought and in our heart?”
Sertillanges is using the word ecstasy in its prime, literal meaning–a lifting up and out from what holds one foot in place: ek-stasis. When a student is drawn to something beautiful, good, and true, the attractive power causes him to attend, and actually to become a student, for a student (from studium: zeal, eagerness, fondness) will naturally study what he loves. And then he becomes brave.
The brave student, attracted by something lovely presented before his eyes by his teacher, will take a bold step forward, trusting his teacher, even willing to appear foolish. He will ask the questions that reveal his ignorance (moving through the fear of what others may think) for he now is focused on possessing what he has started to love. He will ask the teacher for help.
Maybe you have heard of brave students from the past who have endured great hardship to travel to study with a great master, even students who have begged such a master, saying “Teach me!” It was common in the middle ages for students to travel great distances to study with a great teacher like Aquinas. Even today, graduate students often seek not just to get into a particular school but to study with a particular professor. The prophet Zechariah (8:23) speaks of the day in which “ten people from all languages and nations will take hold of one Jew by the hem of his robe and say, ‘Let us go with you because we have heard that God is with you.’”
And once our student has possessed some element of some good thing, he will hold onto it, and defend himself against thieves. Since learning something good (like Latin or biology) is always an evolving good that keeps progressing, the love-struck student will defend himself against detractors and distractions. Temptations will come his way, various lesser-loves or pseudo-loves, or disordered desires. But loving something truly lovely, he finds an emerging power to resist. He discovers this power by a love of the real that naturally (though gradually) overcomes the love for the fleeting and false.
Love leads all of the virtues. Augustine (in On the Morals of the Catholic Church) believes that Christian love reorients the cardinal virtues such that temperance is “love giving itself entirely to that which is loved and fortitude is love readily bearing all things for the sake of the loved object.” Justice, he says, is “love serving only the loved object” and prudence is “love distinguishing with sagacity between what hinders it and helps it.”
If a student will be brave for the sake of the loved object, who will show him such a lovely object in the first place? Often it is his teacher. And how does a teacher best help the student to see that such things are in fact lovely? There are two ways: First, the teacher must place the lovely object before the eyes of the student, for as Augustine says in another place, “the open display of truth is its own delight.” (On Christian Doctrine) Second, the teacher must model love for the lovely (that is something truly good and real) in the presence of the student. A teacher who truly loves and delights in Latin or biology will kindle love in his students. A teacher who has lost this first love should either regain it or stop teaching, because a teacher without love has ceased to be one.
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