September: The Conditions of Fortitude

Theme: Fortitude 

Quote: 

"The mirrour is unbroken by storms, as the soul must be steadfast amidst trials." 

— Jean Puget de La Serre, The Mirrour Which Flatters Not

Introduction

Fortitude has always stood at the crossroads of philosophy and faith, recognized as one of the cardinal virtues—those pillars of moral life upon which human flourishing is built. Its history stretches from the dialogues of Plato to the treatises of Aquinas, from the stoic schools of Athens to the councils of the medieval church, and into the shifting moral vocabularies of modernity.

In the Greek tradition, fortitude—andreia—was seen as the courage that enables a person to act rightly in the face of fear. Plato, in The Republic, defined courage as the steadfast preservation of belief about what is truly to be feared or not to be feared: “Courage may be defined as the preservation of the belief which has been inculcated by the law through education about what things and sorts of things are to be feared” (Plato, Republic 430b). Courage, then, was not reckless daring, but endurance rooted in knowledge and discipline.

Aristotle refined this understanding, locating fortitude in the mean between cowardice and rashness. In his Nicomachean Ethics, he wrote: “The brave man is the one who faces and fears the right things and with the right aim, in the right way and at the right time, and who feels confident under the corresponding conditions” (III.7, 1115b). For Aristotle, fortitude was not brute strength or blind daring, but measured endurance—the will to act well in the most testing of circumstances, especially when facing death.

The Stoics expanded fortitude beyond the battlefield to the domain of daily life. For them, adversity itself became the training ground of virtue. Epictetus counseled: “Difficulties are things that show a person what they are” (Discourses I.24). Seneca, likewise, turned hardship into a forge for the soul: “No man is more unhappy than he who never faces adversity. For he is not permitted to prove himself” (On Providence, IV.3). For the Stoics, fortitude was less about conquering external enemies and more about conquering the storms within—the passions, fears, and attachments that threatened reason’s sovereignty.

With the Christian tradition, fortitude was reinterpreted through the lens of faith and martyrdom. Augustine wrote that true fortitude was not simply human willpower but the steadfast clinging to God: “Fortitude is love bearing all things readily for the sake of God” (On the Morals of the Catholic Church, XV). What mattered was not merely enduring for the sake of honor or reputation, but enduring for the sake of love. The Christian martyrs embodied this transformation: their courage was sanctified as witness (martyria) to truth and faith.

The medieval scholastics systematized this virtue within their moral theology. Thomas Aquinas described fortitude as that which enables the soul to stand firm against the gravest fears, especially death: “Fortitude strengthens a man to endure and repel all difficulties, by which the mind is hindered from following the moral good” (Summa Theologica II–II, Q.123, a.2). For Aquinas, fortitude was not only about enduring external dangers but also resisting internal despair, and its highest expression was martyrdom—the refusal to forsake the good, even under the threat of death.

As the centuries passed, the meaning of fortitude shifted with cultural change. In the Renaissance and Enlightenment, it became entwined with ideals of honor, self-discipline, and civic responsibility. Machiavelli praised fortitude (virtù) as a quality of rulers who must navigate fortune’s storms with boldness and resolve. Later, Enlightenment thinkers like Immanuel Kant emphasized fortitude as moral strength in the face of duty: “Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness” (Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 1785). Fortitude here became endurance in obedience to moral law, even against one’s inclinations.

In the modern era, the word has thinned into “resilience” or “grit”—concepts prized in psychology and education. Angela Duckworth defines grit as “perseverance and passion for long-term goals” (Grit, 2016). Viktor Frankl, writing from the crucible of the Holocaust, spoke of fortitude in terms of meaning: “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves” (Man’s Search for Meaning, 1946). Even today, the ancient insight holds: fortitude is not the absence of suffering, but the ability to live through suffering without surrendering to despair.

Through these changing lenses—Greek courage, Stoic endurance, Christian martyrdom, Enlightenment duty, modern resilience—fortitude remains the mirror that does not break in the storm. It is the strength to face fear, loss, and trial with endurance. It is not the virtue that removes suffering, but the one that allows us to survive it, and perhaps even to be changed by it.

Literature Review

Burnout is not simply fatigue. It is the collapse of energy and meaning, the slow erosion of the will to continue. For me, the breaking point came after years of uninterrupted study. I had entered graduate school in 2016, completed my master’s degree, then pressed on into a specialist’s degree, and finally enrolled in my doctorate. By the time I stalled in my dissertation, I had been in school for six straight years. The passion that had carried me forward—my love of learning, of classroom discussion, of discovery—had been ground down into exhaustion.

On October 3, 2022, I wrote these words in my journal:

“Life is full of difficult choices. For several months, I've been struggling with what to do about graduate school. I love being in school. I love going to class, engaging in discussions, and learning about topics that had hitherto been unbeknownst to me. As much as I love being a student, however, I have not been a successful doctoral candidate. My writing has stalled, I can't find my passion, and I haven't made meaningful progress for a long time. Additionally, I no longer can envision myself as an administrator. So, it comes to this, my journey, at least for now, needs to be set aside. I cannot say that I will never pick it up again, but I know that to continue at this junction is futile.”

In that same entry, I tried to soften the wound with gratitude, offering thanks to those who had sustained me through the years: my wife who had read countless drafts, my brother who had provided distractions when I needed them, my parents whose love steadied me, my colleagues who kept me inspired, my friends who forgave my absence. I wrote:

“I do not consider this a failure, as tempting as it sounds to my self-deprecating nature, because when I look back on this journey, I've accomplished so much more than I set out to. I finished a Master's degree, a Specialist's degree, my doctoral student period, and I passed comps. I finished everything but my dissertation and, at least right now, that is enough.”

These words were both true and untrue. They were the truth of a man who could not continue, who needed to lay the burden down. But they were also the protective rationalizations of someone who had not yet found peace with incompletion. At the time, I described myself as “at peace.” In reality, I was exhausted.

Burnout is often described as a threefold collapse: emotional exhaustion, cynicism or detachment, and reduced efficacy. For me, it was the first and the last. I still loved learning, still loved my field, but I had nothing left to give. And what little I did attempt seemed futile, as though the well had run dry. COVID compounded this by shrinking the community around me and amplifying the loneliness of the work. Eventually, the cost of continuing felt heavier than the cost of quitting.

This was the literature of my life at that moment: exhaustion, stalled passion, a waning vision of myself as an administrator, and the temptation to rename withdrawal as peace. I did not yet know that fortitude sometimes requires laying a burden down in order to take it up again later.

Findings

In my dissertation research on Missouri’s alternative education programs, I developed a grounded theory I came to call Conditional Redemption. The theory rests on a simple but profound observation: redemption is never automatic. For students who have fallen behind or been pushed aside by traditional schooling, the chance to graduate, to reclaim dignity, or to find success depends upon a set of fragile but essential conditions—supportive mentors, flexible structures, financial resources, and above all, a community that believes in the possibility of change. Without these conditions, redemption remains out of reach. With them, even the most at-risk student can discover a path forward.

What I did not realize as I was conducting interviews, coding transcripts, and developing categories, was that I myself was living under the same law of Conditional Redemption. My decision to leave the doctorate had left my own story unfinished. For three semesters, I lived in the absence, until finally the silence of incompletion grew heavier than the work itself. Something in me clicked: I had to return.

But the conditions were not simple. The university required me to pay for the semesters I had missed—three thousand dollars that I did not have. As a public school teacher living paycheck to paycheck, that sum was daunting. I went to the bank, refinanced my truck, and wrote the check. It was an act of sacrifice that cleared the way for me to reenter.

Time was another condition. The deadline had not shifted during my absence, and I returned to the same ticking clock. There would be no extensions, no grace period. I accepted this and began again.

Then came the rediscovery of process. On a Tuesday night, I logged into the Dissertation Help Line, where we used the Pomodoro Technique: short bursts of focused writing punctuated by breaks. In that one session, I wrote more than I had in the three previous years. The tap was opened, and words poured forth. The literature review, once a desert, grew into more than one hundred pages. Years of reading and note-taking finally found their voice.

These were the conditions of my redemption: financial sacrifice, structural accountability, new processes of work, and communal support. Without them, I would have remained stuck in burnout. With them, I found momentum and, eventually, completion. By the time I defended, my dissertation had grown to over three hundred pages, culminating in the very theory that had described both my students’ lives and my own: Conditional Redemption.

Discussion

The classical tradition treats fortitude as a virtue that sustains the human soul in the midst of trial. Plato tied it to knowledge, Aristotle to measured courage, the Stoics to endurance, and the Christians to martyrdom. Across all these traditions, one truth stands out: fortitude is not a moment but a posture, not a singular achievement but a way of living. To be steadfast in storms is not to survive one tempest and claim victory, but to endure wave after wave with one’s soul unbroken.

My own experience has led me to see fortitude through the lens of Conditional Redemption. The two are not separate but intertwined. Fortitude, in its classical sense, is the inner strength to continue when quitting feels easier. But fortitude does not grow in isolation. It requires conditions—structures of accountability, communities of support, and even sacrifices that press the soul toward resilience. In this sense, fortitude is both conditional and redemptive: conditional in that it cannot be sustained without context, and redemptive in that it transforms suffering into endurance and incompletion into new beginnings.

This recognition reframes fortitude not as a static possession but as a dynamic process. It is not a medal to be worn but a verb to be lived. Fortitude happens when I refinance a truck to reenter a program I had abandoned. It happens when I log onto a Tuesday night Help Line and write more in an hour than I had written in years. It happens when my brother takes up the task of reading drafts, or when colleagues and participants across Missouri step forward to lend their voices to my study. Fortitude is not the final defense of a dissertation. Fortitude is the Tuesday night, the refinancing, the quiet return.

And this insight mirrors what I found in my grounded theory. Conditional Redemption describes how at-risk students in Missouri’s alternative education programs are not “saved” by entering such programs automatically. Their redemption—finishing high school, reclaiming dignity, stepping into a future—is conditional. It depends on structures, mentors, resources, and resilience. Without these, redemption falters. With them, even those who had once been written off can discover strength they did not know they had.

Is this not the same with fortitude? The Stoics taught that adversity is the forge of the soul. Christians taught that martyrdom was the highest act of endurance. But in my own life, I see how the very conditions that seemed like barriers—financial strain, lost time, burnout—were also the conditions that called forth fortitude. To return after leaving, to endure after breaking, is to embody a virtue that does not erase suffering but transforms it into persistence.

Fortitude, then, is not about success. It is not measured by the letters after one’s name, the trophies in one’s case, or the visible outcomes of labor. Fortitude is about courage—the courage to begin again, the courage to walk forward when the horizon is unclear, the courage to hold fast when meaning seems thin. Fortitude is not the applause at the end of the race; it is the unseen steps along the way. It is, in every sense, a verb.

In that light, Conditional Redemption becomes a way of naming fortitude in action. It is the framework that reveals how we endure—step by step, condition by condition, act by act. It tells us that redemption is never guaranteed, but always possible, if the conditions align and if the will to keep going does not collapse. To live fortitude, then, is to live in the possibility of redemption, to believe that incompletion is not the end, and to accept that what matters most is not the final defense but the daily courage to press forward.

Thus, fortitude is not a static virtue I possess but a way of moving through the world. It is the verb by which I return, by which I endure, by which I am redeemed again and again.

Conclusion

Fortitude has followed me as both an idea and an experience. In the classical world, it was counted among the virtues that sustained the just life. In the Christian tradition, it became sanctified as the strength to hold to the good even under threat of death. In my own life, it revealed itself not in moments of triumph, but in the long process of leaving and returning, breaking and continuing, pausing and beginning again.

My theory of Conditional Redemption gave me language to see this more clearly. Just as students in alternative education programs require certain supports, conditions, and structures to endure, so too did I. I could not have completed my dissertation without the network of people who believed in me—family, friends, colleagues, and faculty. Fortitude was not mine alone; it was ours, a shared resilience made possible through community.

Fortitude, then, is not an ornament of the soul but a way of walking through life. It is not about success or perfection, but about the courage to return, the will to endure, the patience to march forward even when the end seems far away. It is not a possession but a practice. It is, as I have come to see, a verb.

La Serre wrote that “The mirrour is unbroken by storms, as the soul must be steadfast amidst trials.” In my own mirror, I see not an unbroken man, but a man who has been broken and returned. The cracks remain, but the glass still reflects. That is the true shape of fortitude—not a pristine perfection, but a resilience that endures.

As I look forward, I know the storms will come again. But I also know this: the mirror can withstand them. Fortitude will not remove the trials of life, but it will carry me through them. And in that endurance, there is redemption.