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Month: April 2021
On Pride and Rules
A proud person creates his or her own rules. It does not mean that a proud person is disregardful of others, or that this person is heedless of the basic principles on which civil society rests. Moreover, while the proud live by their own rules, they are also their own judges – and very severe ones. This means that the proud set very high standards for themselves. Such persons are not shaken by the disapproval of others, although they do care deeply about self-approval.
The real failure is failure not in the eyes of others, but in one’s own eyes. This is an essential mark of pride.
What must be stressed once more, perhaps written in stone: “What matters is what you think of yourself. What others think of you does not, as such, matter at all, if you want to stand among the proud.”
On False Pride
Like many other human virtues, pride can be easily corrupted, and these corruptions are often mistaken for the real thing. Pride, being the justified love of oneself, can easily degenerate into egoism or vanity in a similar way that charity, which was originally thought of as a loving quality of the heart, can degenerate into the donation of money. Or love that can degenerate into possessiveness or indulgence of lust.
If you are a truly proud person you care little about what others may think of you. The true expression of pride does not rely on the approval or applause of others. If you are proud, you care about yourself, and your sense of self-worth does not rest on what name you are called by or your appearance, but on what you actually achieve. The act of achieving excellence is reason to be proud.
In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austin contrasts vanity and pride in the following manner:
“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”
The genuinely proud person, when filled with an inward glow of pride, immeasurably precious, can only be glimpsed by others.
Chhay Lin's Philosophy Musings 