The basis of moral fortitude is the psychological mechanism of "gathering moral forces"

The basis of moral fortitude is the psychological mechanism of "gathering moral forces" - arousing in oneself or in other people additional moral feelings that reinforce the original moral feeling. How does this happen? With the help of moral reasoning, a moral situation is artificially modelled, a purposive rational analysis of objective circumstances is carried out, a person's attention is drawn to different shades and nuances, just as military leaders do in their speech before a battle. The development of moral feeling, its strengthening and consolidation occurs only as a result of reasoning, analysis and planning of possible development of the situation, and in fact - the creation of a new reality, which is inevitably accompanied by the emergence of additional moral feelings and, accordingly, an increase in moral interest and moral fortitude.

This becomes possible due to the coincidence of emotional evaluation (moral interest) and target (humanistic, value) orientations of social activity. Revealing the objective basis of a value (moral ideal), moral reason gathers together disparate moral feelings and accumulates them into a single complex and true feeling, achieves their highest concentration and confidence in the rightness of the cause. Ensuring moral firmness requires activation of the maximum number of nerve cells and their coordinated interaction, which would provide maximum emotional energy to activate the necessary motor centre. This is how the aphorism "Great energy is born only for great purposes" is justified.

The problem of moral fortitude and moral self-coercion is closely related to the problem of will. Will is usually regarded as a psychological mechanism that ensures the stability of human activity in the struggle against obstacles. In the sphere of morality, the will acts on the basis of moral reasoning and allows either to restrain or to excite (generate) a certain feeling. This occurs as follows.

The uncertainty of the situation or the struggle of motives turns on the mechanism of purposive rational analysis of the situation in the system of concepts, which: restrains emotional reactions, "puts on pause", brakes for a while the behaviour of a person; analyses the objective correlation of interests, their relation to the goals of social development; gives forecasts concerning the consequences of egoistic and moral deeds; "tries on" (models) possible emotions as a result of such deeds, naming and denoting them in concepts; makes a choice and decides on the necessary programme of behaviour; connects additional moral feelings, generates a strong feeling that buys unjustified emotions and blocks the action of egoistic motives. Willpower depends on the number of nerve impulses that can be united and directed through a single channel that controls a person's action; it is "the ability of the organism ... to give a set of volitional impulses a certain direction". Thus, moral choice and moral freedom are realised as a mechanism of realising a necessary goal and eliminating other motives: the ability to transform the body into an object (to define it) and to use it in action, to use it, is an important element of a person's personal freedom. Thus, will is a reasoning-based peculiar sense of control over feelings, a conscious experience of freedom of choice in the realisation of action.

Will is the highest feeling, which restrains the direct emotional evaluation of a certain stimulus, paralyses the regulating function of feelings and enables reason to understand the situation, objectively evaluate it, and then make a choice and set a purposeful impulse of the necessary feeling. However, moral reason is capable not only of strengthening moral feeling, but also of correcting, changing and destroying it. This is especially important in the case of erroneous and false moral judgements of a situation. Erroneous moral feelings, such as "false shame", "false guilt", "false camaraderie", "unjustified victimhood", are most often associated with an inadequate assessment of the circumstances and, consequently, with a wrongly chosen standard of justice.

Erroneous moral feelings are destroyed by pointing to the absence of objective grounds for their occurrence, namely by pointing to the inconsistency between the goal and the means, and in most cases by pointing to the absence of their causal connection, which calls into question the chosen norm of behaviour. The destruction of an erroneous or false feeling once again proves the objective nature of moral evaluation, and thus the possibility of practical verification and logical justification of the correctness or incorrectness of moral feelings. Moral reasoning may be required not only for adequate assessment of the situation, resolution of moral conflicts and destruction of false moral feelings, but, what is especially sad, also for "reasoned justification" of unrighteous behaviour, which entails destruction of true moral feeling and, consequently, aggravation of moral conflict. In such cases we are dealing with moral sophisms - substitution of moral meanings in order to "justify" immoral behaviour.

The basis of moral sophistry is the deliberate distortion of the objective situation and its consequences in order to create in oneself (in others) such a combination of moral feelings that would justify the refusal to fulfil a moral duty, justify submission to selfish interest, justify ignoring, up to destruction, of correct moral feelings. Moral sophistry is particularly effective when combined with psychological threats and physical torture of people.