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 goodsized 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. Yet such people are
not thought to be fools, but rather unduly retiring. Such a
reputation, however, seems actually to make them worse; for each class
of people aims at what corresponds to its worth, and these people
stand back even from noble actions and undertakings, deeming
themselves unworthy, and from external goods no less. 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 tetadorn 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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