Courage (Fortitude)
Courage, (also bravery or valor) is the choice and willingness to confront agony, pain, danger, uncertainty, or intimidation.
Physical courage is bravery in the face of physical pain, hardship, even death or threat of death
Moral courage is the ability to act rightly in the face of popular opposition, shame, scandal, discouragement, or personal loss.
FortitudeThe classical virtue of fortitude (andreia, fortitudo) is also translated as courage but includes the aspects of perseverance and patience.


Characteristics of Courage
Daniel Putman, a philosopher from the University of Wisconsin–Fox Valley, used Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics as the basis for his article, "The Emotions of Courage".

He discussed the relationship between fear and confidence in the emotion of courage and states, "courage involves deliberate choice in the face of painful or fearful circumstances for the sake of a worthy goal".

Putman concludes that "there is a close connection between fear and confidence".

Fear and Confidence in Relation to Courage
Fear and confidence can determine the success of a courageous act or goal. They can be seen as the independent variables in courage, and their relationship can affect how we respond to fear. Self-confidence involves knowing your skills and abilities and being able to determine when to fight fear and when to run away. According to Putman, the ideal in courage is not simply a rigid control of fear or denial of emotion. He states:

"The ideal is to judge a situation, accept the emotion as part of human nature, use well-developed habits to confront the fear, and allow reason to guide our behavior toward a worthwhile goal."

Note:
To understand how fear and confidence play into courage, we need to look back to Aristotle. According to Putman, Aristotle is referring to an appropriate level of fear and confidence in courage. Putman says, "Fear, although it might vary from person to person, is not completely relative and is only appropriate if it matches the danger of the situation". The same goes for confidence in that there are two aspects to self-confidence in a dangerous situation: a real confidence in the worth of a cause that motivates positive action, and knowing your own skills and abilities. The second meaning of appropriate confidence then is a form of self-knowledge.

Possible Distortions of Courage
An excess or deficiency of fear or confidence can distort courage. According to Putman, there are four possibilities:
A higher level of fear than a situation calls for, low level of confidence. Someone like this would be perceived as a coward;
An excessively low level of fear when real fear is an appropriate, excessively high level of confidence. Someone like this would be perceived as foolhardy;
An excessively high level of fear, yet the confidence is also excessively high. The third possibility can occur if someone experienced a traumatic experience that brought about great anxiety for much of their life.
An excessively low level of fear and low level of confidence. This possibility can be seen as hopelessness. Putman says this is similar to a person on a sinking ship. This example describes someone who has lo
w confidence and possibly low self-regard who suddenly loses all fear.

Historical Theories
The Greek philosopher Plato (c. 428–348 BCE) laid the groundwork for how future philosophers would view courage. Plato's early writings found in Laches discuss courage but fail to come to a satisfactory conclusion on what courage is.

A debate among three leaders, including Socrates, mentions three aspects of courage: 1. a man willing to remain at his post and defend himself against the enemy without running away, 2. a sort of endurance of the soul, and 3. knowledge of the grounds of fear and hope.

In the Roman Empire, courage formed part of the universal virtue of virtus. The Roman philosopher and statesman Cicero (106–43 BCE) lists the cardinal virtues:

Virtue may be defined as a habit of mind (animi) in harmony with reason and the order of nature. It has four parts: wisdom (prudentiam), justice, courage, temperance.

Medieval Philosophy

Courage is referred to as fortitude in medieval virtue ethics, championed by Averroes and Thomas Aquinas and Roman Catholicism. According to Thomas Aquinas, among the cardinal virtues, prudence ranks first, justice second, fortitude third, and temperance fourth.

Part of his justification for this hierarchy is that "fortitude without justice is an occasion of injustice; since the stronger, a man is, the more ready he is to oppress the weaker".
On fortitude's general and special nature, Aquinas says we can take the term fortitude in two ways. First, as simply denoting a certain firmness of mind, and in this sense, it is a general virtue, or rather a condition of every virtue, since as the philosopher states, it is requisite for every virtue to act firmly and immovably.

The Tao Te Chingcontends that courage is derived from love (慈故能勇) translated as: "One of courage, with audacity, will die. One of courage, but gentle, spares death. From these two kinds of courage arise harm and benefit".

Lao Tzu stated with regard to the Tao and the question of love:
Embracing Tao, you become embraced. Supple, breathing gently, you become reborn. Clearing your vision, you become clear. Nurturing your beloved, you become impartial. Opening your heart, you become accepted. Accepting the World, you embrace Tao. Bearing and nurturing, Creating but not owning, Giving without demanding, Controlling without authority, This is love.

Western Traditions
In Catholicism and Anglicanism, courage is one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. For Thomas Aquinas, fortitude is the virtue to remove any obstacle that keeps the will from the following reason.

Thomas Aquinas argues that courage is a virtue which, along with the Christian virtues in the Summa Theologica, can only be exemplified with the presence of the Christian virtues: faith, hope, and mercy.

To understand true courage in Christianity it takes someone who displays the virtues of faith, hope, and mercy. Courage is a natural virtue that Saint Augustine did not consider a virtue for Christians

Modern
Pre-19th Century
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), the English philosopher, categorizes the virtues as moral virtues and virtues of men in his work Man and Citizen.

Hobbes outlines moral virtues as virtues in citizens, that is virtues that without exception are beneficial to society as a whole.

These moral virtues are justice (i.e. not violating the law) and charity. Courage, prudence, and temperance are listed as the virtues of men. By this, Hobbes means that these virtues are invested solely in the private good as opposed to the public good of justice and charity.

19th Century Onward
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), the Danish philosopher, opposed courage to angst, while Paul Tillich (1886–1965), the German-American philosopher, opposed an existential courage to be with non-being, fundamentally equating it with religion:

Courage is the self-affirmation of being in spite of the fact of non-being. It is the act of the individual self in taking the anxiety of non-being upon itself by affirming itself ... in the anxiety of guilt and condemnation. ... every courage to have openly or covertly a religious root.

For religion is the state of being grasped by the power of being itself.