Pride is, depending on the context, either a high
sense of the worth of one's self or one's own or a pleasure taken
in the contemplation of these things. Social psychologists identify
it as linked to a signal of high social status. One definition of
pride in the first sense comes from
St.
Augustine: "the love of one's own excellence." In this sense,
the opposite of pride is
humility.
Pride is sometimes viewed as excessive or as a vice, sometimes as
proper or as a virtue. While some philosophers such as
Aristotle consider pride a profound
virtue, most world
religions
consider it a
sin.
According to the
Concise
Oxford Dictionary,
proud comes from late
Old English prut, probably from
Old French prud "brave, valiant"
(11th century) (which became
preux in French), from
Late Latin term
prodis "useful",
which is compared with the Latin
prodesse "be of use". The
sense of "having a high opinion of oneself", not in French, may
reflect the Anglo-Saxons' opinion of the Norman knights who called
themselves "proud", like the French knights
preux.
When viewed as a virtue, pride in one's appearance and abilities is
known as virtuous pride, greatness of soul or magnanimity, but when
viewed as a vice it is often termed
vanity or
vainglory. Pride can also manifest itself as a high opinion of
one's
nation (national pride) and
ethnicity (ethnic pride).
Philosophical views
Ancient Greek philosophy
Aristotle identified pride
(
megalopsuchia, variously translated as proper pride,
greatness of soul and magnanimity) as the crown of the virtues,
distinguishing it from vanity, temperance, and humility, thus:
- Now the man is thought to be 'proud who thinks
himself worthy of great things, being worthy of them; for he who
does so beyond his deserts is a fool, but no virtuous man is
foolish or silly. The proud man, then, is the man
we have described. For he who is worthy of little
and thinks himself worthy of little is temperate,
but not proud; for pride implies greatness, as beauty implies a
goodsized body, and little people may be neat and well-proportioned
but cannot be beautiful.
He concludes then that
- Pride, then, seems to be a sort of crown of the virtues;
for it makes them greater, and it is not found without them.
Therefore it is hard to be truly proud; for it is impossible
without nobility and goodness of character.
By contrast, Aristotle defined
hubris as
follows:
- to cause shame to the victim, not in order that anything
may happen to you, nor because anything has happened to you, but
merely for your own gratification. Hubris is not the
requital of past injuries; this is revenge. As for the
pleasure in hubris, its cause is this: men think that by
ill-treating others they make their own superiority the
greater.
Thus, although many religions may not recognize the difference, for
Aristotle and many philosophers hubris is altogether an entirely
different thing from pride.
Nietzsche
Nietzsche saw pride as an example of a
previous, master set of morals that had been replaced with slave
moralities. In this,
pride was
good, because it acknowledges the good and the noble, rejecting the
weak and insipid. Without pride, Nietzsche argued, we will remain
subservient.
Psychological views
Pride is "a pleasant, sometimes exhilarating, emotion that results
from a positive self-evaluation" (Lewis, 2002). The standard view
of pride was that it results from satisfaction with meeting the
personal goals set by oneself. Most research on pride attempts to
distinguish the positive aspects of pride and the negative. Pride
involves exhilarated pleasure and a feeling of accomplishment.
Pride is related to "more positive behaviors and outcomes in the
area where the individual is proud" (Weiner, 1985). Pride is
generally associated with positive social behaviors such as helping
others and outward promotion. According to Bagozzi et al., pride
can have the positive benefits of enhancing creativity,
productivity, and altruism.
Gestures that demonstrate pride can involve a lifting of the chin,
smiles, or arms on hips to demonstrate victory. Research shows that
the nonverbal expression of pride conveys a message that is
automatically perceived by others about a person's high social
status in a group. Behaviorally, pride is shown by an expanded
posture in which the head is tilted back and the arms extended out
from the body. This postural display is innate as it is shown in
congenitally blind individuals who lack the opportunity to see it
in others (Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008). There are similarities
between this expression of pride and dominance displays used
establishing status hierarchies in nonhuman primates.
Hubris, by contrast, involves an arrogant
tone and satisfaction in oneself in general. Hubris seems to be
associated with more intra-individual negative outcomes. Hubris is
related to expressions of aggression and hostility (Tangney, 1999).
Hubris is not necessarily associated with high self-esteem, as one
might expect. But with highly fluctuating or variable self-esteem
(Rhodwalt, et al.) Excessive feelings of hubris have a tendency of
creating conflict and sometimes terminating close relationships.
Hubris is considered one of the few emotions without some positive
functions. Though this is easily arguable, Hubris is essentially
self-confidence, and confiding in oneself may not be as 'negative'
as some say. Nevertheless, examples of the evil of hubris are
regularly used to inculcate people with selfless values--"Hitler
had a lot of hubris", etc.
National pride
Germany
In
Germany
, "national pride" ("Nationalstolz") is often
associated with the former Nazi
regime. Strong displays of national pride are therefore
considered poor taste by many Germans. There is an ongoing public
debate about the issue of German
patriotism. The
World Cup in 2006, held in Germany, saw
a wave of patriotism sweep the country in a manner not seen for
many years. Although many were hesitant to show such blatant
support as the hanging of the national flag from windows, as the
team progressed
through the tournament, so too did the level of support across the
nation. By the time the semi-final against
Italy came around, the level of
national pride and unity was at its highest throughout the
tournament, and the hosting of the World Cup is seen to have been a
great success for Germany as a nation. Many Germans still are not
sure about if it is good to find a way to "healthy" pride again
that also exists in other countries or if this would be a negative
development.
Ethnic and racial pride
Asian pride
Asian pride in modern slang refers mostly to those of
East Asian descent, though it can include anyone
of
Asian descent. Asian pride was
originally fragmented, as Asian nations have had long conflicts
with each other, examples are the old Japanese and Chinese
religious beliefs of their individual superiority. Asian pride
emerged prominently during European
colonialism. At one time, Europeans owned 85% of
the world's land through colonialism, resulting anti-Western
feelings among Asian nations. Today, some Asians still look upon
European involvement in their affairs with suspicion. In contrast,
Asian
empires are prominent and are proudly
remembered by adherents to Asian Pride. An example is the
Mongol Empire, which was the largest
contiguous empire in history, occupying most of
Asia and reaching as far as Europe.
Another empire is
Imperial
Japan
, the symbols of which are widespread in modern
culture, especially the Rising Sun
Flag, one of the main symbols of Japanese pride.
Black pride
Black pride is a slogan used primarily in the United States to
raise awareness for a black racial identity. The slogan has been
used by
African Americans
(especially of sub-Saharan African origin) to denote a feeling of
self-respect, celebrating one's heritage, and being proud of one's
personal worth. Black pride as a national movement is closely
linked with the developments of the
American Civil Rights
Movement, during which noted figures such as
Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Malcolm X,
A.
Philip Randolph,
Stokely Carmichael, and others protested
the conditions of the United States' segregated society, and
lobbied for better treatment for people of the Black race.
Roy Innis has sought to enhance and build on the
black pride movement of the mid-1960’s, he and a
Congress of Racial Equality
delegation toured seven African countries in 1971.
Curtis Mayfield's "We're a Winner" became a
virtual anthem of the
black power and
black pride movements.
The concept of
black power See also
permeated into the work of popular musicians at the time.
The Impressions's "
We're a Winner", written by their lead singer
Curtis Mayfield, became a virtual
anthem of the black power and black pride movements, as did
James Brown's "
Say It Loud - I'm Black
and I'm Proud", Collin Carlone's "Life As a 'Boro Black Boy",
and, unwittingly,
Martha
& the Vandellas' "
Dancing
in the Street". In addition to Black America, the Black Pride
Movement was very prevalent in , especially throughout their poorer
population. A local and global recognition of this movement has
been demonstrated throughout Brazilian funk. Brazilian Funk’s
origin reflects Brazilian Black resistance and today appeals to a
larger regional cultural identity. Ethnomusicologist George
Yúdice’s states that youth were engaging black culture mediated by
a U.S. culture industry met with many arguments against their
susceptibility to cultural colonization. Although it borrows some
ingredients from a form of Black American musical resistance hip
hop, its style still remains unique to the Brazil (specifically in
Rio and São Paulo).
White pride
White
pride is a slogan used primarily in the United States
to agitate for a white
European racial identity and is
closely aligned with white
supremacy, white separatism,
and other extreme manifestations of white racism. Organizations advocating white pride
are collectively referred to as
racists. White
pride activists claim that white pride is equivalent to "black
pride" and similar terms that express no more than ethnic
self-affirmation.
In the United States it is more often acceptable to be proud of
one's ancestry as long as they are not "white". See
Whiteness studies#Criticisms
Institutions of higher learning regularly have "Black History" or
some other ethnic group class, while in the past similar "white"
classes/groups have met with protest.
LGBT pride
Gay pride refers to a world wide
movement and philosophy asserting that
lesbian,
gay,
bisexual, and
transgender (
LGBT)
individuals should be proud of their
sexual orientation and
gender identity. It is often shortened to
just
Pride. LGBT pride advocates work for equal "
rights and
benefits"
for LGBT people. The movement has three main premises: that people
should be proud of their
sexual
preference and
gender identity,
that sexual diversity is a gift, and that sexual orientation and
gender identity are inherent and cannot be intentionally
altered.
The word
pride is used in this case an antonym for
shame, which has been used to control
and oppress LGBT persons throughout history.
Pride in this
sense is an affirmation of ones self and the community as a whole.
The modern "pride" movement began after the
Stonewall riots of the late 1960s.
Vanity
In conventional parlance, vanity sometimes is used in a positive
sense to refer to a rational concern for one's personal appearance,
attractiveness and dress and is thus not the same as pride.
However, it also refers to an excessive or irrational belief in
one's own abilities or attractiveness
in the eyes of
others and may in so far be compared to pride. The term Vanity
originates from the Latin word
vanitas meaning
emptiness,
untruthfulness,
futility,
foolishness
and
empty pride. Here
empty pride means a fake
pride, in the sense of vainglory, unjustified by one's own
achievements and actions, but sought by pretense and appeals to
superficial characteristics.
In many religions, vanity is considered a form of self-
idolatry, in which one rejects God for the sake of
one's own
image, and thereby becomes divorced
from the
grace of
God. The stories of
Lucifer and
Narcissus (who gave us the
term
narcissism), and others, attend to a
pernicious aspect of vanity. In Western art, vanity was often
symbolized by a
peacock, and in
Biblical terms, by the
Whore of Babylon. In secular
allegory, vanity was considered one of the minor
vices. During the
Renaissance, vanity
was invariably represented as a naked
woman,
sometimes seated or reclining on a couch. She attends to her hair
with comb and mirror. The mirror is sometimes held by a
demon or a
putto. Other symbols
of vanity include jewels, gold coins, a purse, and often by the
figure of
death himself.
Often we find an inscription on a scroll that reads
Omnia
Vanitas ("All is Vanity"), a quote from the Latin translation
of the Book of
Ecclesiastes. Although
that phrase, itself depicted in a type of still life,
vanitas, originally referred not to obsession with
one's appearance, but to the ultimate fruitlessness of man's
efforts in this world, the phrase summarizes the complete
preoccupation of the subject of the picture.
"The artist invites us to pay lip-service to condemning her,"
writes Edwin Mullins, "while offering us full permission to drool
over her. She admires herself in the glass, while we treat the
picture that purports to incriminate her as another kind of glass—a
window—through which we peer and secretly desire her." The theme of
the recumbent woman often merged artistically with the
non-allegorical one of a reclining
Venus.
In his table of the
Seven Deadly
Sins,
Hieronymus Bosch depicts
a
bourgeois woman admiring herself in a
mirror held up by a devil. Behind her is an open jewelry box.
A painting
attributed to Nicolas Tournier,
which hangs in the Ashmolean Museum
, is An Allegory of Justice and
Vanity. A young woman holds a
balance, symbolizing
justice; she does not look at the mirror or the
skull on the table before her.
Vermeer's famous painting
Girl with a Pearl Earring is
sometimes believed to depict the sin of vanity, as the young girl
has adorned herself before a glass without further positive
allegorical attributes.
[11488] All is Vanity, by
Charles Allan Gilbert (1873-1929),
carries on this theme. An
optical
illusion, the painting depicts what appears to be a large
grinning skull. Upon closer examination, it reveals itself to be a
young woman gazing at her reflection in the mirror.Such artistic
works served to warn viewers of the ephemeral nature of youthful
beauty, as well as the brevity of human life and the inevitability
of
death.
Literary references
The most common literary term for pride is
hubris (sometimes spelled
hybris;
Greek: ὕβρις).
Ancient Greece
In Ancient Greece, instances of pride were termed
hubris
because of the added connotation that pride was a crime against the
gods and would result in fatal retribution. The word was also used
to describe those who considered themselves more important than the
gods themselves. Hubris against the gods is often attributed as a
character flaw of the heroes in
Greek tragedy, and the cause of the
"
nemesis", or destruction, which befalls
these characters. However, this represents only a small proportion
of occurrences of hubris in Greek literature, and for the most part
hubris refers to infractions by mortals against other mortals.
Therefore, it is now generally agreed that the Greeks did not
generally think of hubris as a religious matter, still less that it
was normally punished by the gods. The ancient Greek concept of
hubris extended to what would today be termed
assault and
battery.
Achilles and his treatment of
Hector's corpse in
Homer's
Iliad demonstrates hubris. Similarly,
Creon commits hubris in refusing to bury Polynices in Sophocles'
Antigone. Another example is in the tragedy
Agamemnon, by
Aeschylus.
Agamemnon initially rejects the hubris of walking on the fine
purple tapestry, an act which is suggested by Clytemnestra, in
hopes of bringing his ruin. This act may be seen as a desecration
of a divinely woven tapestry, as a general flouting of the
strictures imposed by the gods, or simply as an act of extreme
pride and lack of humility before the gods, tempting them to
retribution. One other example is that of
Oedipus. In
Sophocles'
Oedipus the King, while on
the road to
Thebes, Oedipus
meets King Laius of Thebes who is unknown to him as his biological
father. Oedipus kills King Laius in a dispute over which of them
has the right of way, thereby fulfilling the prophecy of the oracle
Loxias that Oedipus is destined to murder his own father.
Odysseus' ten year journey home was the result of hubris: after
blinding the Cyclops, he mockingly declared his name to the monster
as he escaped. This allowed the Cyclops to call upon his father
Poseidon for help and curse him.
Modern times
Victor in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein exudes hubris in order to
become a great scientist, but is eventually regretting this
previous desire. Faustus in Christopher Marlowe's play Dr. Faustus
exudes hubris, all the way until his final minutes of life. In his
book
The Hubris Syndrome: Bush, Blair and the
Intoxication of Power the British politician
David Owen argues that President
George W. Bush
and Prime Minister
Tony Blair developed a
Hubristic Syndrome while in power. In particular their handling of
the
Iraq War showed their hubristic
tendencies.
See also
Notes
- Shariff AF, Tracy JL. (2009). Knowing who's boss: implicit
perceptions of status from the nonverbal expression of pride.
Emotion. 9(5):631-9. PMID 19803585
- "Est autem superbia amor proprie excellentie, et fuit initium
peccati superbia."[1]
- Article from Free Online Dictionary, accessed 9 Nov.
2008
- The Nicomachean Ethics By Aristotle, James
Alexander, Kerr Thomson, Hugh Tredennick, Jonathan Barnes
translators
- Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 4.3; also
available here Sacred Texts - Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics; and
here alternate translation at Perseus
- Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 4.3
- Understanding Philosophy for AS Level AQA, by
Christopher Hamilton (Google Books)
- Aristotle
Rhetoric 1378b (Greek text and English translation
available at the Perseus Project).
- Tracy JL, Matsumoto D. (2008). The spontaneous expression of pride and shame:
evidence for biologically innate nonverbal displays. Proc Natl
Acad Sci U S A. Aug 19;105(33):11655-60. PMID 18695237
- Tracy JL, Robins RW. (2007). The prototypical pride expression:
development of a nonverbal behavior coding system. Emotion.
7(4):789-801. PMID 18039048
- Langguth, Gerd. German Foreign Affairs Review. "Dawn of the
'Pacific' Century?" 1996. June 30, 2007. [2]
- Yúdice, George. "The Funkification of Rio." In Microphone
Fiends, 193-220. London: Routledge, 1994. /
- Words Latin-English Dictionary; Perseus Word Lookup
- James Hall, Dictionary of Subjects & Symbols in
Art (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 318.
- Edwin Mullins, The Painted Witch: How Western Artists Have
Viewed the Sexuality of Women (New York: Carroll & Graf
Publishers, Inc., 1985), 62-3.
- MacDowell (1976) p. 22.
References
- Cairns, Douglas L. "Hybris, Dishonour, and Thinking
Big." Journal of Hellenic Studies 116 (1996) 1-32.
- A book-length discussion of the meaning and implications of
hybristic behavior in ancient Greece.
- MacDowell, Douglas. "Hybris in Athens." Greece and
Rome 23 (1976) 14-31.
- Owen, David (2007) The Hubris Syndrome: Bush, Blair and the
Intoxication of Power Politico's, Methuen Publishing
Ltd.
- Essential Vermeer
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