Pride

[reasonvemotion]

Arisng_uk

I am acutely aware of when entering the philosophical arena, one has to be thick skinned and such apologies are few and far between. I must admit it "knocked me for a six" hence my delay in responding.

I accept your apology and gladly.

[reasonvemotion]

prof wrote:
The best way to employ the concept 'pride' is, when hearing of someone's accomplishment from the individual who did the achievement, is to say to that person: "I'm proud of you!"

To feel some pride yourself is not so bad, as long as you don't talk about it. If you did talk about it, you would be bragging.

The one who knows his Ethics, and lives it, treasures the quality of Humility, and strives to be humble. If you are congratulated for some reason, just say "Thank you."


WanderingLands wrote:

It's always good to keep humbleness as well as to be genuinely humble. Too many people, unfortunately, brag so much about their accomplishments that they don't realize they they are propping themselves up against everyone else, and that it also lowers their conscience to that of a hypocrite (as in omitting their dark sides and dark deeds in promoting their accomplishments and harshly denouncing others' dark side). As Jesus said, "If you exalt yourself, you will be humbled; if you humble yourself, you will be exalted".

You are both displaying your pride in being humble.

[HexHammer]

Pride can lead to excessive arrogance, narcissism and in general irrational thinking.

[Blaggard]

Pride can lead to excessive arrogance, narcissism and in general irrational thinking.

Coming from you Hex I have to ask if you think you are unnecessarily prideful at times?

[The Voice of Time]

Pride in excess can be regarded as imprudent, an immoral characteristic, or it can be seen as noble and upright. Aristotle considered pride as behavior showing high moral standards, yet both ancient Greek and biblical thought deplored what they referred to as "excessive pride or hubris".

Pride is often mistaken for arrogance, both appear as an inflated sense of self importance

But pride IS NOT an inflated sense of self importance, that's more the characteristic of a Narcissist. Some people have wrongly and maliciously attacked other people's pride to lower their self-esteem and self-importance, and it is a very big problem in some parts of the world that groups, with or without a leader, will do this to essentially, in some degree, dehumanize individuals, by instead belittling them and taking away their human worth and obvious worth in deed or excellence which are products of those individuals' human characteristics (more accurate than dehumanize one might call it "de-unique-ifying", stripping a person of essential unique characteristics in defining them in the public and private consciousness).

It is characteristic of the proud man not to aim at the things commonly held in honour, or the things in which others excel; to be sluggish and to hold back except where great honour or a great work is at stake, and to be a man of few deeds, but of great and notable ones. He must also be open in his hate and in his love (for to conceal one’s feelings, i.e. to care less for truth than for what people will think, is a coward’s part), and must speak and act openly; for he is free of speech because he is contemptuous, and he is given to telling the truth, except when he speaks in irony to the vulgar.
Nicomachean Ethics, Book 4

I don't think proud people are as strictly defined as such, though there are degrees of pride of course, but also silent pride. For instance, you might be proud of yourself in Nazi Germany, but if you were some group that was being prosecuted, you might not want to reveal yourself out of practical concerns. Pride is not a substitution for rationality, in other words, it is not the same as reckless boasting or reckless speech or reckless behaviour. I would think most truly pride people do not need to show off any more than they find reasonable, or would soon be able to find yourself in shame of your stupid actions.

Is pride virtuous because one needs it to live.

Of course, you can never get enough pride, if you have enough virtue to fill it, except when strategic social relations are required, then you might conceal your pride, but you should never let it go if it's justified. Then it's better to fake than to succumb to pressure to make yourself less worth in excellence for yourself (worth in excellence, I might note, is not the same as the Kantian subjective worth of people that make them "ends and not just means", your worth in excellence is an instrumental value and not the Narcissistic inflation of self-end-value, as I mentioned above. Think of it as such, that an excellent craftsman should be excellently proud of himself and not succumb to pressure, as that will hinder his capacity to rightly evaluate his worth compared to others. If he started to suggest that you should use the craftsman next door even though he himself is better, you are loosing for instance because he is directing you towards inferior quality).

Pride is essentially a "male" characteristic, like the peacock.

Where on Earth did you get that idea? There's no reason to believe men are more proud than women. In fact, I would suggest the opposite, that men are more humble than women, who are more polarized in their sense of self-worth. Women are more easily depressed, and they care a lot about their looks, that's no secret, and in Western societies, African and Asian (but not Middle-East and North Africa), women are hugely more obsessed with their looks in general than men. They obsess about making themselves good-looking and successful, and when they succeed, they are very prideful of themselves, whereas men are way more relaxed, as I said they are more humble (don't worry about being "perfect", which is the basis of pride, even when you are prideful of being relatively imperfect), and don't get so much emotionally attached to their position in society and their social relations as women do.

[Bill Wiltrack]

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This is how I picture you now.




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[Sappho de Miranda]

To be confident in oneself and ones abilities is preferable to pride. To be quietly confident however is not preferable to pride as the quietly confident person can be overlooked in preference for one that is expressive of their pride.