Fortitude is one of the cardinal virtues. It is however classically not construed to simply mean any act of courage, especially blind courage. Fortitude is fully dependent on, primarily, prudence as practical wisdom and secondarily, on justice in order to be fulfilled as a virtue. Devoid of these two other cardinal virtues, fortitude becomes a vice, it becomes folly. Aristotle gave a practical example when considering the virtue of courage. He expounds, in his theory of the mean or averages, that what courage means is that one neither hides in the trench when your soldier colleagues up and attack the enemy, nor does it mean that one ups and attacks the enemy alone while one’s colleagues are still in the trench. The first is cowardice bereft of the virtue of justice; the other is a virtuous lack of prudent rationality and qualifies as folly. Real fortitude has to be preceded by both prudence and justice to be a real virtue. In effect, the real concept of fortitude implies the readiness to fall in battle when fighting for an identifiable good one may hold dear! In effect it means foregoing one’s ego in order to preserve a particular good, which can be the common good itself. In the Old Testament Pentateuch, there is a particularly significant phrase which alludes to fortitude and is alarming when first read. It says that “no one can see God and live”! It must of course not be taken literally. It simply means that nobody can stand before God and preserve the ego intact. Before the epitome of perfect goodness, we must let ourselves go, as we rely on His mercy to iron out our imperfections and strive to achieve good in one’s life. This is reflected in the New Testament by Christ who reinforces this when he states that those who seek their life will lose it, but those who lose their life for the good, would find it.
In politics, fortitude is of utmost importance in that our politicians should sacrifice their own interests to work for the common good of the nation and state, at least for a limited period of time during which they occupy any particular office. Political competition should reflect competition for the common good. It is obvious for all to see how far from this ideal the present political situation is today! Politicians enter the fray to see what they can gain personally from being elected to any particular office; supporters are made to hope that they would be chosen when dispensing public monies, contracts and lands. Even worse, the small man sees the big man wallowing in corruption and this serves as an example for the man in the street to do the same.
Virtue is infectious but so is vice! We see before us a situation where political favours are dispensed left, right and centre according to political patronage, while people of different political or of dissenting opinions are set aside even though their contributions are valid and even though they are not directly involved in politics. Contracts of valid civil servants terminated at short notice for no apparent reason other than perceived political colour or the lack of it, tenders awarded according to patronage as are financial bailouts. Government MPs are bought off with large sums of money in order to keep quiet as they earn their €60,000 and €80,000 each brought about by inappropriate extra payments for fictitious or real political board membership! Those who cannot speak are of course worse off. Nascent human life is under attack in the womb and outside. The environment is put on the back-burner as slices of ODZ land are carved up to satisfy this or that questionably meritorious cause; our ecology is in disarray and unprotected as sectors of the population are pandered to, in order to win over particular voter affiliations! Where is the common good in all this? Where is the submission of the ego to the good? Three years of rule by the Labour Party (PL) has subverted the real concepts of political fortitude from virtue into one where what matters is what one gets out of a situation not what one puts in! It is becoming obvious that what matters for the powers that be are money and power for power’s sake! This government has turned the virtuous political aspects of governing into a fine art of vicious gluttony.
We deserve much better as a country! We deserve to see virtuous people in government. We deserve to see things done primarily for fairness and the common good. We deserve to see people being paid fairly for their work rather than given pay hikes for dubious merits other than to satisfy political compliance or to buy one’s silence. We want to see appointments of people based on merit not political affiliation. Ultimately, we want to see a government that is ready to bring the virtue of fortitude in seeking the common good back to government. We want to see more respect for human life in all its stages. We want to see more respect for our environment and ecology. We want to see more respect for the social values we embrace, especially those based on the objective truth not some fictitious subjective existentialism which perverts human reality. We want the return of fair play. Never, in our political history, have we seen such behaviour that has caused so much moral damage by the few now in government in so short a period of time which has touched so many people!
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