The Power of Pride: Vice or Virtue?
By Nick Gier, Unfiltered 5-15-09
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THE POWER OF PRIDE: VICE OR VIRTUE?
By Nick Gier (ngier@uidaho.edu)
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works
--Matthew 5:15
Our founders were intellectuals who drew moral and political lessons from Greek and Roman philosophy. With regard to pride, our founders would have been aware that Aristotle ranked it as a virtue second only to wisdom.
They would also have known that in the Christian tradition pride was one of the seven deadly sins. The Asian religions generally agree with Christianity on this point.
Our founders seemed unaware of this fundamental tension in the hybrid culture that they developed from pagan and Christian roots. Most Americans today are not aware of this conflict either.
In Sunday School we are taught that boasting is a sin, but the previous Friday or Saturday we were out rooting for our athletic teams with unabashed pride. It is also still common to see the 9/11 bumper sticker “The Power of Pride.”
The Greek philosopher Aristotle said that pride is knowing what we have accomplished and freely acknowledging that we have done it. Aristotle does not respect a person who hides her light under a bushel.
It is clear that pride can be collective as well as individual. We take pride in the accomplishments of our children because we know that we have contributed to their success.
The same is true for national pride. Any number of U.S. achievements could be named, but I think that the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II was one of our greatest efforts.
American exceptionalism—"we are the greatest nation in the world"--is to me false pride. When President Bush boasted that the U.S. had the best health system in the world, he either did not have his facts straight (certainly a possibility) or he was deliberately inflating the nation’s ego.
What sort of national pride can we have after the International Committee of the Red Cross has determined that the Bush administration violated the Geneva Conventions on torture? There is definitely nothing to be proud of in these shameful cases.
National Public Radio inspiring series "This I Believe" has just ended with an essay by Muhammad Ali, and he sounds just like the brash young boxer we knew in the 1960s. Ali says that he is still the greatest and that everyone can succeed just as he did. Although I’m sure he does not know it, Ali was following Aristotle when he once proclaimed “It ain’t bragging if you can do it.”
Normally we would not tolerate people who say that they are the greatest even though they may have accomplished much. Do we give Ali a pass because he is a unique personality or because he now has Parkinson’s disease? Early in his career he was roundly criticized for being a braggart.
Aristotle believes that humility is a vice because the accomplished person (and all of us have achieved something) is not being true to herself or himself. Genuine pride is a mean between the excess of boasting when nothing has been attained and the deficit of failing to acknowledge what has been achieved.
Perhaps the key is to learn how to talk about our accomplishments without bragging about them. This of course is not an easy line to draw.
The phrase "hiding your light under a bushel" comes from the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus also says: "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works" (Matt. 5:15). It would be amazing if the first Christian and Aristotle, usually assumed to be at odds, actually agreed on this and thereby solved our problem.
The fifth chapter of Matthew begins with "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid." Many U.S. presidents have used this passage (sometimes via Puritan John Winthrop) to instill national pride, but this is genuine pride only if we remember to refrain from claiming that we are the greatest.
Nick Gier taught philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years. Read or listen to all of his columns at www.NickGier.com
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Comments
The US is beginning to fall behind other industrialized nations in several development indicators: http://www.aneki.com/comparison.php?country_1=Norway&country_2=United+States
Do you feel better after your rant and hurling insults? Take a deep breath and review your Greek philosophy. Your grasp of Aristotle is pretty shaky.
The Greek word for pride is "megalopsychia" not "hubris." Aristotle discusses hubris in the context of tragedy and defines it as having an unrestrained will (Rhetoric 1378b). For Aristotle's praise of pride (better translated as "having a great and noble soul") you will have to take out your copy of the Nicomachean Ethics (1123a35ff.), which I taught every semester for 23 years. Read this section and then tell me if I got Aristotle right.
For my other work on virtue ethics I refer to you my book "The Virtue of Non-Violence" (State University of New York Press, 2004), especially chapters 5, 6, and 9. When you are finished with your assignments, then we can have a debate about the virtues. Until then you, sir, are just blowing hot air.
I fear that the anti-intellectualism that you display is so ingrained in American society that by the middle of this century the U.S. will have lost its world leadership in education. We have already lost it in K-12, and next week my column will be about how we will soon lose it at the college and university level.
Just one fact to whet your appetite. We used to lead the world in the percentage of our population with a college degree. We are now in tenth place. One thing that this means is that we will be even more reduced to the status of a third world country, sending Asian scrap iron and paper (one of the main exports from the ports of Long Beach and LA) back to Asia so that they can manufacture more goods to send right back to the same ports.
The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.--The Greek poet Archilochus
All my columns and scholarly articles (http://www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/vitanick.html) are easily accessible on the web, so you have no excuse to mischaracterize me.
As a historian of ideas with a very comprehensive range of interests, I'm definitely a fox. Throughout my career I was always fighting the specialists in philosophy, theology, and Asian Studies, and, now and then, let me publish in their journals.
Please take a look at my columns over the last 3.5 years (http://www.roadrunner.com/~nickgier/radio.htm) and then dare call me a hedgehog! I don't care for your patronizing advice about my writing. My columns start as weekly commentaries on Radio Free Moscow and are then published in The Sandpoint Reader, the Idaho State Journal, and the Los Cabos Daily News.
My editors love my pieces and they tell me that their readers want more and more and more. At Christmastime I requested that I go biweekly so that I could finish my book, but there was no way they were going to let me do that.
How dare you tell me that I cannot correct sloppy reasoning and ignorant references, such as yours to Aristotle. I've had great debates with my readers and I've learned from them. I have also acknowledged corrections when necessary and edited the web versions. Letting the article stand as if it were your final inerrant word is arrogant and presumptuous.
Do I have to remind you that I taught at the university level. My students' lack of motivation and preparation and their anti-intellectualism was already well entrenched. Most of the blame should be placed on parents and a culture that does not value knowledge for its own sake.
Can you tell me why it is the case that most of the best students in the world are taught by unionized teachers? (Even 90 percent of private school teachers in Denmark are unionized.) These school systems are also run by central educational bureaucracies?
So don't give me this standard bullshit that unions have ruined our schools. American culture has done it to itself and will pay the price as Asians dominate the 21st Century. This morning my doctor told me that 40 percent of new interns in internal medicine are foreign trained and the majority of them were Indians.
By the way, do I need to tell you that it is extremely bad form to insult people on line. Is this the way you "dialogue" with people in person, or do you, like so many other people, think that no rules of civility rule on the web. If so, I can only feel sorry for you and the vice that you wallow in. The garbage that you have spewed above is not a pretty sight.
By the way, I left out "home" in the link to my columns. It is http://www.home.roadrunner.com/~nickgier/radio.htm
A challenge to Gier: Describe an America that would not raise your hackles. No quotes, no links, no lengthy diatribes; just the ideological skinny.