Pride derives from ‘prodesse’, Latin for ‘be useful’. Like embarrassment, shame, and guilt, pride is a self-conscious emotion that is strongly influenced by sociocultural norms and values.

Pride as a vice

On the one hand, pride is seen as a vice, and, on the other, as a virtue.

Pride as a vice is close to hubris or vanity. In Ancient Greece, hubris meant to defile or denigrate the gods, or to place oneself above them, and led to destruction or nemesis. Today, hubris denotes an inflated sense of one’s status, abilities, or accomplishments, especially if accompanied by haughtiness or arrogance. By definition, hubris is out of touch with reality, promoting conflict, enmity, and prejudice against out-group members.

Vanity is similar to hubris, but refers to an inflated sense of one’s image or appeal in the eyes of others. Vanity derives from ‘vanitas’, Latin for ‘emptiness’, ‘falseness’, ‘futility’, or ‘foolishness’. In the Book of Ecclesiastes, the phrase ‘vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas’ is usually rendered as ‘vanity of vanities; all is vanity’, and refers not to vanity as such but to the transience and futility of earthly goods and pursuits and, by extension, of life itself. In the arts, a vanitas, often a painting with prominent symbols of mortality such as a skull, burning candles, or wilting flowers, invites us to reflect on our mortality and live with a greater sense of perspective. Vainglory is an archaic synonym for vanity, but originally meant ‘to boast in vain’, that is, groundlessly.

Many religions look upon pride, hubris, or vanity as self-idolatry. In the Christian tradition, pride is one of the seven deadly sins. More than that, it is the original and most unforgivable sin, for it is from pride that the angel Lucifer fell out of Heaven and became Satan. Pride is the sin most hated by God because it gives rise to all the other sins, because it blinds us to truth and reason, and because it removes us from God and religion. Just as in the Greek tradition, pride leads to destruction. ‘Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall’ (Proverbs 16:18). Thus, in art, pride is sometimes symbolized by a figure of death—or else by Narcissus, a peacock, or a naked woman attending to her hair with comb and mirror.

Pride as a virtue

As a virtue, pride is, in the words of St Augustine, ‘the love of one’s own excellence’. More prosaically, pride is the satisfaction or pleasure or exhilaration or vindication that arises from the egosyntonic choices or actions of the self or another, or of a whole group of people—as, for example, with national pride or gay pride. By ‘egosyntonic’ I mean that the choices or actions must be consistent with the person’s self-image and needs and goals. Because the success or status belongs to the self or is associated with the self, it leads to pride rather than admiration, tolerance, indifference, or envy. If pride is ‘the love of one’s own excellence’, the opposite of pride is shame. Just as shame can in itself be shameful, so pride can in itself be a source of pride.

‘Shame’ derives from ‘to cover’, and often manifests itself as a covering gesture over the brow and eyes, a downcast gaze, and a slack posture. In contrast, pride manifests itself as an expanded or inflated posture with arms raised or rested on the hips, together with a lifted chin and small smile. This stance has even been observed in congenitally blind individuals, suggesting that it is innate rather than learned or copied. Pride and its accompanying stance serve as a signal of acceptance, belonging, ownership, or status. But aside from functioning as a social signal, pride promotes more of the same kind of choices and actions that led to it, and is associated with greater self-respect, self-confidence, productivity, creativity, and altruism.

Proper pride vs. false pride

So, on the one hand, pride is associated with falseness, blindness, conceit, and arrogance, while on the other it is associated with elation, self-confidence, productivity, creativity, and altruism. Proper pride is clearly adaptive, but what can explain false or hubristic pride? People prone to false pride often lack in self-esteem. Lacking in self-esteem, hubris may be the only kind of pride that they can express, with the aim of deceiving others and themselves that they too are worthy of respect and admiration. Yes, their ‘pride’ is a con or a shortcut, but it makes them feel better and it pulls them through—if only for now.

Aristotle on proper pride

Aristotle wrote most insightfully on proper pride, or ‘greatness of soul’ (megalopsuchia). In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle tells us that a person is proud if he both is and thinks himself to be worthy of great things.

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.

If he is and thinks himself to be worthy of small things he is not proud but temperate.

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 goodsized body, and little people may be neat and well-proportioned but cannot be beautiful.

On the other hand, if he thinks himself worthy of great things when he is unworthy of them, he is hubristic or vain; and if he thinks himself worthy of less than he is worthy of, he is pusillanimous. Hubris and pusillanimity are vices, whereas pride and temperance are virtues because (by definition) they reflect the truth about a person’s state and potentials. In Aristotelian speak, whereas the proud person is an extreme in respect of the greatness of his claims, he is a mean in respect of their truthfulness, and therefore virtuous. So, for Aristotle, it is not just an excess of pride that is a vice, but also a deficiency of pride.

Aristotle goes on to paint a very flattering picture of the proud person. He says that a proud person is avid of his just deserts and particularly of honor, ‘the prize of virtue and the greatest of external goods’. A proud person is moderately pleased to accept great honors conferred by good people, but utterly despises honors from casual people and on trifling grounds. As a person who deserves more is better, the truly proud person is good, and as he is good, he is also rare. In sum, says Aristotle, pride is a crown of the virtues; it is not found without them, and it makes them greater.

True, the proud person is liable to disdain and to despise, but as he thinks rightly, he does so justly, whereas the many disdain and despise at random (or, I would say, to meet their ego or emotional needs). The proud person may be supercilious towards the great and the good, but he is always unassuming towards the middle classes; 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 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 honor, or the things in which others excel; to be sluggish and to hold back except where great honor 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, that is, 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.

In conclusion, proper pride and false pride may look like each other, but one is a crown of the virtues and the other the mother of sin. The trouble is, of course, distinguishing between them.