Spinoza and Courage

For Spinoza, Virtue is Rational conduct, and the most general Virtue is 'Fortitude', which he defines as 'strength of character'. In turn, the two main types of Fortitude are Courage, which aims at the good of the agent, and 'Highmindedness', i. e. Generosity, which aims at the good of others. While the inclusion of Courage among a list of Virtues is not unusual, that Spinoza reduces Temperance to a species of it, is. The cardinality, for him, of Courage can be interpreted as autobiographical, given the threats provoked by a theory coming from a scientific Jew in an era still dominated by Christian dogmatism. However, the primacy of Courage is systematically grounded. For, Spinoza regards Philosophy as, first and foremost, an alternative to Superstition, which he diagnoses as rooted in Fear, i. e. in the uncertainty of indifferent, if not hostile, Nature. Hence, he attempts to demonstrate how each individual is implicated in a divine, rationally necessary, natural system, which, based on the premise that Knowledge eliminates all passions, thereby overcomes Fear. The result secondarily serves as fortification against social authority that demands submission to it insofar as it purports to mediate appeasement of presumably supernatural forces as a response to Fear.