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Contributors and Titles

Michael Brady (University of Glasgow) ‘Is Pride Ever Rationally Required?’

 

ABSTRACT: In many cases it seems appropriate for us to feel pride, at least about things of value (such as achievements) that are suitably related to ourselves. But are there cases where pride is rationally required? Sometimes people talk that way. We say – of parents at graduation ceremonies, of citizens when they hand in a stranger’s wallet, of recovering addicts when they succeed in remaining clean – that they should be proud of themselves. There are less benign examples: when the patriot declares that she is ‘Proud to be British’, the implication is that other British people ought to be proud of being British as well. In this paper I want to investigate what lies behind such talk, and whether a case can be made that in some instances pride can be rationally required. After arguing against a sceptical position that pride can never be rationally required because there are no such things as reasons to feel emotions, I’ll focus on three ways in which a positive answer to our question might be defended. The first is that pride can be required for epistemic reasons. The second is that pride can be required for practical reasons. The third is that pride can be required because it expresses a suitable commitment to some underlying value or ideal. I’ll then argue that while we ought to be sceptical about the first two possibilities, the third option has a good deal of plausibility.

 

Christina Chuang (Nanyang Technological University) ‘Pride, Ignorance and the Ego’

 

ABSTRACT: In Chapter 16 of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna describes pride (darpa) as one of the “demonic” qualities will lead to bondage rather than freedom.  In this paper, I will argue that the criticism of pride in the Gita is different from the traditional religious attack on pride found in Christianity.  Whereas the latter portrays pride as directly contrary to humility, the former holds a more similar view on pride as ancient Greek ethics—that human beings ought to have proper self-assessment towards their own moral cognition.  On my reading of the Gita, the self-realized agent must possess a certain level of pride, where proper pride is characterized by the awareness of a healthy relation between the ego (ahamkara) and other parts of the self.  Although the Gita presents the ego as the cause of suffering and ignorance, it is not necessarily the case that pride should be considered a vice. 

 

Eva Dadlez (Central Oklahoma University) ‘The Practical Advantages of Pride and The Risks of Humility’

 

ABSTRACT. While pride is frequently disparaged as a vice, there is evidence in the literature and the philosophy of the late eighteenth century, ably represented here by the work of Jane Austen and David Hume, that such condemnation need not be universal. Both distinguish between proper and improper pride, of course, condemning improper pride and vanity roundly. However, each makes an effort to consider both the emotion (Hume would call it a passion) and the disposition that may be aligned with pride in terms of advantages as well as liabilities. The focus here, therefore, will be on the less usual treatment of an admitted and quite traditional vice, leavened with examples that illustrate particular cases. It is part of the purpose of this paper to show how fiction may be used to illustrate philosophical and psychological hypotheses about the nature of pride and its occasional advantages. I have argued elsewhere that Austen’s novels put forward a distinctive view of human nature (and human foibles) and converge in a startling way with those of David Hume. So the thoughts of the novelist and the philosopher will both be mustered to adduce what may be said in pride’s favor, and will reveal an argument that seems as effective now as it was then.

 

Allan Hazlett (University of New Mexico) ‘Intellectual Pride’

 

ABSTRACT: Intellectual pride is pride about intellectual matters – for example, knowledge about what you know, about your intellectual virtues, or about your intellectual achievements.  It is the opposite of intellectual humility (e.g. knowledge about what you don’t know, about your intellectual vices, or about your intellectual failures).  In this paper I will advocate for intellectual pride by explaining its importance in the contexts of education (where a lack of pride threatens to undermine motivation), intellectual marginalization (where a lack of pride threatens to facilitate oppression), and collective inquiry (where a lack of pride threatens to undermine public discourse).  In these contexts, intellectual humility is problematic and intellectual pride is valuable.  I’ll go on to offer a sketch of intellectual pride as a virtue.  Just as the virtue of intellectual humility comprises excellence in negative intellectual self-evaluation, the virtue of intellectual pride comprises excellence in positive intellectual self-evaluation. 

 

Jesper Kallestrup and Duncan Pritchard (Edinburgh University)  ‘Pride and Intellectual Humility’

 

ABSTRACT: The aim of this paper is to relate the burgeoning philosophical literature on intellectual humility to the specific topic of pride, and intellectual pride in particular. Some of the difficulties of characterising intellectual humility are explored, and a specific characterisation in terms of a modest virtue epistemology¾one that can accommodate what we refer to as the epistemic dependence of knowledge on extra-agential factors¾is offered. It is argued that it is only with this account of intellectual humility in play that one can identify what is so problematic about intellectual pride as a cognitive trait.

 

Antti Kauppinen (University of Tampere) ‘Pride, Achievement and Purpose’

 

ABSTRACT: Agential pride is pride in what we’ve done, or are responsible for (including omissions, such as refraining from temptation). This contribution explore in greater detail what agential pride is, how it relates to other forms of pride and other emotions, and what makes it appropriate when it is.

                 

Adam Morton (University of British Columbia) ‘Pride versus Self-Respect’

 

ABSTRACT: People do not fall into any simple linear pattern of intellectual, practical, or moral capacity. Our skills and virtues are just too varied. When we are sensible we compare ourselves to others in complex and subtle terms. When we are not, vulnerable or overbearing, we simplify in the direction of self-abasement or arrogance. Getting it right involves a delicate play of pride and self-respect. Can we consistently get it right? Notoriously there are advantages to the individual if she is overconfident, and to her companions if she is over-humble. Complicating matters is the way that different people's skills and virtues, and for that matter their vices, dovetail for the common good. I argue that there are principled reasons why we can never expect to have accurate assessments of our worth.

 

Jared Piazza and Neil McLatchie, (Lancaster University, Department of Psychology) ‘Potential Challenges and Benefits of Experiencing and Expressing Pride in One’s Moral Achievements’

 

ABSTRACT: Pride is a positive emotion experienced following the recognition of one’s status or achievements. Pride is thought to promote continued striving toward achievement, which may involve the exercising of one’s competence and ability, such as winning a sporting event or excelling at a difficult task, or the performance of morally exceptional acts (e.g., helping a stranger in need). Most psychological research to date has focused on the experience and expression of competence-based pride, while less work has considered pride in the moral domain. Here, we consider a number of questions about the potentially distinct challenges people face when experiencing and expressing pride in their moral achievements. First, we consider whether there might be greater social costs associated with expressing moral pride, compared to competence pride. Research suggests prideful displays promote social attention and status climbing, but such a communicative function may be detrimental in the moral domain. Moral pride might be particularly costly to express because it may countermand the perceived selfless motives underlying a moral act, or it may cause an implicit moral threat to onlookers, especially when the morally exceptional act challenges the status quo. Individuals may therefore expend more effort regulating their moral pride and employ more indirect strategies of communicating their moral achievements or downplay their significance.  Second, while the experience of competence pride has been shown to promote continued effort toward achieving, we consider whether moral pride might at times disengage efforts toward continued moral activity through a process of moral licensing, at least in the short-term.  Nonetheless, we conclude by considering whether moral pride might be morally motivating in the long-term, and discuss the moral function of pride vis-à-vis other positive emotions, such as joy and compassion. Throughout the chapter we highlight a number of outstanding questions in the moral psychology of pride.

 

Robert Roberts (Baylor) and Ryan West (Wake Forrest University). ‘Pride and Humility’

 

ABSTRACT: The dominant conception of the virtue of humility makes it essentially a proper self-assessment — either broadly moral, or intellectual, with emphasis on one’s limitations. Roberts and Wood (2007) and Roberts (forthcoming a and b) have developed a more ancient conception based in the New Testament presentation of Jesus of Nazareth as a paradigm of humility. On that conception, humility is not a self-assessment at all, but a lack of certain self-inflating concerns (what speakers of English call self-importance) that Roberts calls “the vices of pride.” Humility can then take several forms, depending on which of the vices of pride it is the absence of. It has recently come to our attention that Jesus models not only the virtue of humility, but also the virtue of pride, and that each of the vices of pride can be construed as having a virtue counterpart that can also go by the name of pride. The present paper will clarify a small handful of these traits with special attention to their intellectual specifications: Arrogance and its counterpart Entitlement Serenity; Domination and its counterpart Personal Authority; Hyper-Autonomy and its counterpart Secure Agency; Grandiosity and its counterpart Aspiration. We will argue that the vices of intellectual pride are vices, in part because they diminish our likelihood of acquiring the intellectual goods of knowledge, justified belief, and understanding, and in part because they degrade our humanity; and that the virtues of intellectual pride are virtues, in part because they increase our prospects of acquiring the intellectual goods and in part because they constitute excellences in living a human life. We will acknowledge that the identification of both the intellectual goods and the goodness of intellectual living depends on specific metaphysical commitments, but will argue that some metaphysical commitments are broadly enough shared to secure significant agreement about the vices and virtues that we treat here.

 

Kevin Timpe (Northwest Nazarene University) and Neal Tognazzi (Western Washington University) ‘Pride in Christian Philosophy and Theology’

 

ABSTRACT: Our focus in this chapter will be the role the pride has played, both historically contemporarily, in Christian theology and philosophical theology. We begin by disambiguating a number of different senses of pride, in particular because while some uses of the term are positive (e.g., when a parent tells a daughter “I’m proud of you for being brave”), it often refers to either a negative emotion (e.g., “Pride goes before a fall”) or even a capital vice. We offer analyses of a number of these difference senses of pride, showing how they are related to each other. We then explore the role that the negative emotion and vice play in the history of Christianity, with particular attention to a number of influential figures (e.g., Augustine, Aquinas, and Kierkegaard). We conclude by exploring how pride connects with a number of other central issues in Christian theology (e.g., sin and faith).

 

Samantha Vice (Rhodes University, South Africa) ‘Whiteness and Pride’?

 

ABSTRACT: Central to the black consciousness and civil rights movements has been the attempt to make blacks feel proud of their blackness.  In the light of centuries of oppression and humiliation, this attempt is psychologically, politically and ethically important.  In contrast, ongoing critiques of whiteness and white supremacy have apparently left little room for pride in being white.  Whiteness is a source of shame or guilt or regret, calling for apology or reparation rather than pride, and ‘white pride’ movements are on the face of it morally obnoxious.  In this paper, I first explore pride in one’s racial identity generally and distinguish acceptable forms of pride from morally problematic forms.  Second, I explore in particular the moral difference between white and black pride, and whether one’s whiteness could ever be a source of acceptable pride.  Can whiteness be rehabilitated?  What effect would both an affirmative and negative answer have on one’s self-respect and on one’s sense of identity and history?  Third, I will argue that whiteness is too tainted to be a legitimate source of pride and I will suggest, tentatively, that any attempts to salvage something good will need to move from considerations of racial identity to the cultural values that have accompanied, but are not identical to, white identity. 

 

Lisa Williams (University of New South Wales)  ‘Beyond the Self: Pride Felt in Relation to Others’

 

ABSTRACT: Humans feel pride not only in relation to their own successes, but also in some cases when others achieve a success. It is not just “proud of me,” but also “proud of you” and “proud of us” that characterizes the family of pride experiences. While the majority of research considering the phenomenology and behavioral outcomes of pride has focused on instances in which the self has accomplished a success, scholars have begun to consider the other-oriented variants of this emotion. In this chapter, I consider two such other-oriented pride experiences: vicarious pride and group-level pride. Vicarious pride arises in response to the success of a close other such as a family member, romantic partner, or close friend. Group-level pride arises when a social group to which one belongs or with which one affiliates achieves a success (e.g., country, sports team). For each of these two variants of other-oriented pride, I will review extant psychological research that informs understanding of how its emotional experience shapes social thought and behavior. Specifically, I will highlight how a functionalist approach to emotion might shed light upon how other-oriented pride serves as an important mechanism for social bonding, social sharing of success, and group cohesion. While in its nascent stages, research investigating other-oriented pride experiences carries promise for a deeper understanding of the role that pride plays in helping to navigate social situations involving success.

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