Pride
Pride
Ulrich Steinvorth
1 Why pride? What’s pride?
Pride should puzzle the humanities because we are ambivalent about it. We hate and love it. We hate the arrogant, mock the braggers; and if we remember that Christianity considered pride a vice, even the first among the deadly sins, we’ll probably approve. But we also want our kids to be proud of their achievements, proud at least of the acts we applaud. We even want them to be proud of their natural and social endowment that they neither struggled nor asked for. We want them to be proud of being a girl if they happen to be born as a girl, proud of being black if they happen to be black, proud of being small among the tall, stout among the lean. We expect people to be proud of being an American as well as of being a Chinese, depending on the accident of birth. Gays and lesbians teach gays and lesbians to be proud of being gay or lesbian. And everywhere people find the emblem of the life they emulate in animals that stand for pride: in the lion and the eagle, the bear and the dragon.
Can’t we solve the puzzles by distinguishing between good and bad forms of pride? We cherish the good pride of self-esteem and despise the bad pride of arrogance and vanity, and that’s it. But some problems remain. How can we be proud of the accidental properties we happen to be born with? If we have the nature of a worm or a pig rather than the nature of a lion or eagle, can we be proud of being a pig or a worm? Are there universally valid standards of what we rightly are proud of?
Imagine you have been living for some time in a non-Western country, say Japan or Tunisia. You wonder what these people are proud of. Of their families, ancestors, traditions and other things they are not responsible for. How can they be proud of that? Then you come back to the US. How different they look, your folks! So little concerned about their size and obesity! Don’t they have any pride, to move around with such bulks of abundant body! Or is
Ulrich Steinvorth
1 Why pride? What’s pride?
Pride should puzzle the humanities because we are ambivalent about it. We hate and love it. We hate the arrogant, mock the braggers; and if we remember that Christianity considered pride a vice, even the first among the deadly sins, we’ll probably approve. But we also want our kids to be proud of their achievements, proud at least of the acts we applaud. We even want them to be proud of their natural and social endowment that they neither struggled nor asked for. We want them to be proud of being a girl if they happen to be born as a girl, proud of being black if they happen to be black, proud of being small among the tall, stout among the lean. We expect people to be proud of being an American as well as of being a Chinese, depending on the accident of birth. Gays and lesbians teach gays and lesbians to be proud of being gay or lesbian. And everywhere people find the emblem of the life they emulate in animals that stand for pride: in the lion and the eagle, the bear and the dragon.
Can’t we solve the puzzles by distinguishing between good and bad forms of pride? We cherish the good pride of self-esteem and despise the bad pride of arrogance and vanity, and that’s it. But some problems remain. How can we be proud of the accidental properties we happen to be born with? If we have the nature of a worm or a pig rather than the nature of a lion or eagle, can we be proud of being a pig or a worm? Are there universally valid standards of what we rightly are proud of?
Imagine you have been living for some time in a non-Western country, say Japan or Tunisia. You wonder what these people are proud of. Of their families, ancestors, traditions and other things they are not responsible for. How can they be proud of that? Then you come back to the US. How different they look, your folks! So little concerned about their size and obesity! Don’t they have any pride, to move around with such bulks of abundant body! Or is