Stoicism, Covid-19 and Fortitude

The pandemic caused by the covid-19 virus raises many ethical concerns. In this posting I won’t consider these concerns directly but instead examine the sort of attitude that we should cultivate in the face of the pandemic. Of course the attitude adopted has some ethical implications. In particular I want to examine whether we should cultivate a stoical attitude. At the outset I would make it plain whilst I have a lot of sympathy for some stoic ideas I am at best only a partial stoic. The virus causes health problems for many and for a few death. At present there is no effective treatment available or vaccine available to treat covid-19. An excellent simple explanation of the effects of covid-19 and some of the ethical implications is provided by Massimo Pigliucci in Medium .

Why should we adopt a stoical attitude to the coronavirus outbreak? A stoic might argue that should adopt such an attitude because fear prevents us from thinking rationally and as a result also prevents us from living as well as we might in the face of the outbreak. A stoic tries to rule herself by reason rather than her emotions. To stoics many emotions are illogical. Anger is pointless because anger can’t change the past and fear of the inevitable is also pointless because someone's fate cannot be changed. Let us accept that being fearful means being in an unpleasant state. It follows if a stoic becomes infected by the virus that she should accept this and only concern herself with the things she can change because her fear serves no useful purpose and is harmful. The things she can change include her attitude to the difficulties she faces and anything she can do to mitigate these difficulties. A stoical attitude similar to acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) in which the client is encouraged to accept her state and commit to changing that which can be changed. The situation is slightly different in the case of a stoic who hasn’t already become infected by the virus. Of course she must accept the fact that she might become infected and not deceive herself by thinking that this is unlikely to happen to her. In this situation is her fear also pointless and should she seek to eliminate it? To say someone might become infected by covid-19 is really to say that there is a probability that she will become infected. Someone might change the probability of contracting cancer by giving up smoking. Similarly someone might change the probability of becoming infected by covid-19 by measures such as effective handwashing, social distancing or self-isolation. If someone becomes paralysed by fear which stops her from taking these measures then she should seek to eliminate her fear. However it might be argued that if fear sometimes helps someone to take these sensible measures then fear is useful and she shouldn’t eliminate it. Fear of lung cancer might help someone give up smoking more effectively than reason alone. Perhaps fear might act as a catalyst. In response a stoic might argue if we eliminate fear rationality alone can give us reason to take these measures.

Let us accept that the stoic is correct in her assertion that being afraid of the inevitable is both harmful and serves no useful purpose. A perfectly rational being shouldn’t fear the inevitable. She might of course consider how she would react to it.  However human beings aren’t perfectly rational creatures. Because of this it might be suggested that a stoic should cultivate courage in order to control her fear. Perhaps, but I will argue that it would be better to cultivate fortitude in response to covid-19 outbreak. Both courage and fortitude are concerned with strength of character. This strength is the ability to face up to dangerous and in some cases difficult situations without becom ing paralysed by fear. However the two aren’t identical. For instance courage is useful to people like soldiers, mountaineers and whistle blowers. Courage is concerned with our actions and is proactive. Fortitude is useful to people facing illness or financial ruin. Fortitude helps people face misfortune and is a reactive rather than a proactive attitude. Someone may also be courageous intermittently but someone can’t be said to have fortitude intermittently. It follows that fortitude is more closely linked to character than courage. How does fortitude help people facing misfortune? If certainly doesn’t simply mean accepting our fate. Exhibiting fatalism isn’t expressing fortitude. Simply accepting our fate is completely compatible with abandoning our values and giving in to sapping self-pity which destroys character. Fortitude is connected to character by helping us hold on to those things we can hold on to and is important in maintaining character. Fortitude helps us to maintain our values, things we can control, and in doing so helps us to maintain value in life. A father who struggles to maintain his family after becoming redundant rather than becoming apathetic would be an example of fortitude. Similarly a mother who continues to care for her family as best she can after becoming infected by covid-19 requires fortitude. Fortitude requires that we keep calm and carry on. Fortitude requires patience and patience might be particularly useful when coming out of lockdown. Easing lockdown too quickly would be imprudent. Fortitude is has similarities to grit a term used by the authentic happiness movement. Grit is described as the tendency to sustain interest in and effort toward very long-standing goals and is often connected to self-control, see authentichappiness.sas.upenn .

Let us accept that fortitude is a useful virtue to cultivate in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. Roughly speaking a stoic seeks to accept the things she can’t change and only concerns herself with the things she can such as her attitude to external events. A stoic seeks to limit her vulnerability. A stoical attitude like one based on fortitude is a reactive attitude rather than proactive one. Moreover I have argued that fortitude is connected to character and we talk of a stoic character. It might appear that a stoic should be able to cultivate the virtue of fortitude with some ease.

However it is important to be clear that even if a stoical person shares some things in common with a fortitudinous person that the two aren’t identical. Central to stoic ideas is accepting our those things we can't change and by doing so limiting our vulnerability. However it is important to be clear accepting our fate isn't the same as as accepting our vulnerability. The stoic ideal is a sage who is impervious to the emotions. This isn’t true of fortitude. A fortitudinous person might see herself as vulnerable but her main drive isn’t to limit to her vulnerability but to accept it whilst moving on. Fortitude is essentially forward looking in helping us maintain our values. It might be objected to the above that stoicism is also forward looking in that a stoic seeks to remain virtuous. I am prepared to accept my objectors point to a certain degree. However I would suggest that whilst a fortitudinous person might look forward to some future event with hope a stoic seeks to avoid hope because by hoping she increases her vulnerability. A stoic seeks to adopt a purely rational approach to future events based on realistic probabilities rather than hopeful ones. However it might be questioned whether a stoic can even value probabilistic outcomes. For a stoic difficulties in assigning values to probabilistic outcomes arise because if she tries to do so she would have to care about some outcomes more than others making herself vulnerable to less favoured outcomes. If we accept that to ‘care about’ is a primitive form of love then a stoic’s reluctance to assign values to probabilistic outcomes damages her capacity to love. Of course Panglossian optimism is harmful but the capacity to hope realistically is needed for the capacity to love and is part of what makes us human, see what do we mean by hope . During the course of the coronavirus pandemic it is inevitable that some of us will feel grief. However to a stoic such as Seneca we should battle grief even if we can’t totally eliminate it. However even for a stoic battling grief is hard. On the death of his brother Cato the younger was overcome by grief and spared no expense on his funeral. I would suggest that when confronted by grief we should seek to control rather than battle it. If we fight or seek to eliminate our grief we are seeking to make ourselves less vulnerable. Unfortunately we become less vulnerable by caring less about the deceased whereby damaging our capacity to love, see grief . Adopting a purely rational attitude, if that is even possible for human beings, damages our capacity to love, to be truly human.

In conclusion I have argued that facing the dangers posed by the covid-19 with fortitude is preferable to facing them stoically. I also suggested that fortitude is connected to character and for that reason is neither quickly nor easily obtained. It follows that if someone doesn’t already possess fortitude it might benefit him to act stoically in the face of the outbreak. However acting stoically is also not easy and carries some dangers outlined above. Some acting stoically must be careful not to become too hard hearted as this will damage his humanity.