Definition
Courage is one of the four cardinal virtues of Stoicism. It is the strength to do what is right when doing so is difficult, frightening, or costly. Stoic courage is not the absence of fear but the willingness to act well despite it.
The Stoics understood courage broadly. It covers the dramatic forms, facing danger or standing firm under pressure, but also the quieter forms: enduring illness with patience, admitting a mistake, telling an uncomfortable truth, or persisting at a long and unglamorous task.
Why it matters
How it works
For the Stoics, courage rests on correct judgment. Fear arises from the belief that something outside our control, such as pain, loss, or death, is a great evil. When a Stoic recognizes that the only true evil is a corrupted character, the things that prompt fear lose much of their power.
This does not erase the feeling of fear, but it changes what the person does with it. Courage is the trained habit of acting on reason rather than on the impulse to flee. Each time a person faces a smaller difficulty well, the capacity to face a larger one grows.