Aristotle from The Nichomachean Ethics
Pride
(Section
3): Pride seems even from its name to be concerned with great things;
what sort of great things, is the first question we must try to answer. It
makes no difference whether we consider the state of character or the man
characterized by it. 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 good-sized body, and little people
may be neat and well-proportioned but cannot be beautiful. On the other
hand, he who thinks himself worthy of great things, being unworthy of
them, is vain; though not every one who thinks himself worthy of more than
he really is worthy of in vain. The man who thinks himself worthy of
worthy of less than he is really worthy of is unduly humble, whether his
deserts be great or moderate, or his deserts be small but his claims yet
smaller. And the man whose deserts are great would seem most unduly
humble; for what would he have done if they had been less? The proud man,
then, is an extreme in respect of the greatness of his claims, but a mean
in respect of the rightness of them; for he claims what is accordance with
his merits, while the others go to excess or fall short. If,
then, he deserves and claims great things, and above all the great things,
he will be concerned with one thing in particular. Desert
is relative to external goods; and the greatest of these, we should say,
is that which we render to the gods, and which people of position most aim
at, and which is the prize appointed for the noblest deeds; and this is
honour; that is surely the greatest of external goods. Honours and
dishonours, therefore, are the objects with respect to which the proud man
is as he should be. And even apart from argument it is with honour that
proud men appear to be concerned; for it is honour that they chiefly
claim, but in accordance with their deserts. The unduly humble man falls
short both in comparison with his own merits and in comparison with the
proud man’s claims. The vain man goes to excess in comparison with his
own merits, but does not exceed the proud man’s claims. Now
the proud man, since he deserves most, must be good in the highest degree;
for the better man always deserves more, and the best man most. Therefore
the truly proud man must be good. And greatness in every virtue would seem
to be characteristic of a proud man. And it would be most unbecoming for a
proud man to fly from danger, swinging his arms by his sides, or to wrong
another; for to what end should he do disgraceful acts, he to whom nothing
is great? If we consider him point by point we shall see the utter
absurdity of a proud man who is not good. Nor, again, would he be worthy
of honour if he were bad; for honour is the prize of virtue, and it is to
the good that it is rendered. 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. It is chiefly with honours and
dishonours, then, that the proud man is concerned; and at honours that are
great and conferred by good men he will be moderately Pleased, thinking
that he is coming by his own or even less than his own; for there can be
no honour that is worthy of perfect virtue, yet he will at any rate accept
it since they have nothing greater to bestow on him; but honour from
casual people and on trifling grounds he will utterly despise, since it is
not this that he deserves, and dishonour too, since in his case it cannot
be just. In the first place, then, as has been said, the proud man is
concerned with honours; yet he will also bear himself with moderation
towards wealth and power and all good or evil fortune, whatever may befall
him, and will be neither over-joyed by good fortune nor over-pained by
evil. For not even towards honour does he bear himself as if it were a
very great thing. Power and wealth are desirable for the sake of honour
(at least those who have them wish to get honour by means of them); and
for him to whom even honour is a little thing the others must be so too.
Hence proud men are thought to be disdainful. The
goods of fortune also are thought to contribute towards pride. For
men who are well-born are thought worthy of honour, and so are those who
enjoy power or wealth; for they are in a superior position, and everything
that has a superiority in something good is held in greater honour. Hence
even such things make men prouder; for they are honoured by some for
having them; but in truth the good man alone is to be honoured; he,
however, who has both advantages is thought the more worthy of honour. But
those who without virtue have such goods are neither justified in making
great claims nor entitled to the name of ‘proud’; for these things
imply perfect virtue. Disdainful
and insolent, however, even those who have such goods become. For without
virtue it is not easy to bear gracefully the goods of fortune; and, being
unable to bear them, and thinking themselves superior to others, they
despise others and themselves do what they please. They imitate the proud
man without being like him, and this they do where they can; so they do
not act virtuously, but they do despise others. For the proud man despises
justly (since he thinks truly), but the many do so at random. He
does not run into trifling dangers, nor is he fond of danger, because he
honours few things; but he will face great dangers, and when he is in
danger he is unsparing of his life, knowing that there are conditions on
which life is not worth having. And he is the sort of man to confer
benefits, but he is ashamed of receiving them; for the one is the mark of
a superior, the other of an inferior. And he is apt to confer greater
benefits in return; for thus the original benefactor besides being paid
will incur a debt to him, and will be the gainer by the transaction. They
seem also to remember any service they have done, but not those they have
received (for he who receives a service is inferior to him who has done
it, but the proud man wishes to be superior), and to hear of the former
with pleasure, of the latter with displeasure; this, it seems, is why
Thetis did not mention to Zeus the services she had done him, and why the
Spartans did not recount their services to the Athenians, but those they
had received. It is a mark of the proud man also to ask for nothing or
scarcely anything, but to give help readily, and to be dignified towards
people who enjoy high position and good fortune, but unassuming towards
those of the middle class; for it is a difficult and lofty thing to be
superior to the former, but easy to be so to the latter, and a lofty
bearing over the former is no mark of ill-breeding, but among humble
people it is as vulgar as a display of strength against the weak. Again,
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. He must be unable to make his life revolve round
another, unless it be a friend; for this is slavish, and for this reason
all flatterers are servile and people lacking in self-respect are
flatterers. Nor is he given to admiration; for nothing to him is great.
Nor is he mindful of wrongs; for it is not the part of a proud man to have
a long memory, especially for wrongs, but rather to overlook them. Nor is
he a gossip; for he will speak neither about himself nor about another,
since he cares not to be praised nor for others to be blamed; nor again is
he given to praise; and for the same reason he is not an evil-speaker,
even about his enemies, except from haughtiness. With regard to necessary
or small matters he is least of all me given to lamentation or the asking
of favours; for it is the part of one who takes such matters seriously to
behave so with respect to them. He is one who will possess beautiful and
profitless things rather than profitable and useful ones; for this is more
proper to a character that suffices to itself. Further,
a slow step is thought proper to the proud man, a deep voice, and a level
utterance; for the man who takes few things seriously is not likely to be
hurried, nor the man who thinks nothing great to be excited, while a
shrill voice and a rapid gait are the results of hurry and excitement. Such,
then, is the proud man; the man who falls short of him is unduly humble,
and the man who goes beyond him is vain. Now even these are not thought to
be bad (for they are not malicious), but only mistaken. For the unduly
humble man, being worthy of good things, robs himself of what he deserves,
and to have something bad about him from the fact that he does not think
himself worthy of good things, and seems also not to know himself; else he
would have desired the things he was worthy of, since these were good. . .
. Vain people, on the other hand, are fools and ignorant of themselves,
and that manifestly; for, not being worthy of them, they attempt
honourable undertakings, and then are found out; and to adorn themselves
with clothing and outward show and such things, and wish their strokes of
good fortune to be made public, and speak about them as if they would be
honoured for them. But undue humility is more opposed to pride than vanity
is; for it is both commoner and worse. Pride,
then, is concerned with honour on the grand scale, as has been said.
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