PRIDE AND MORAL PERFECTION

Contents:

Pride as the key to the pursuit of values
Moral perfection

Main source: “Moral Ambition: Perfection and Pride, Part 1” by Tara Smith

Pride as the key to the pursuit of values

Pride as a virtue

Pride is both a feeling and a virtue. In this sense, it is both descriptive and prescriptive. The virtue of pride involves holding high standards of conduct and — consequently — of character. The feeling of pride is the result of and potentially a fuel for the virtue of pride. The virtue is primary; the feeling of pride without the virtue is vanity.

“The virtue of Pride can best be described by the term: “moral ambitiousness.” “
— The Objectivist Ethics, “The Virtue of Selfishness” by Ayn Rand, page 27

SIDE NOTE: Ayn Rand’s full quote on pride (formatted into points):

The virtue of Pride can best be described by the term: “moral ambitiousness.” It means that one must earn the right to hold oneself as one’s own highest value by achieving one’s own moral perfection — which one achieves

By never accepting any code of irrational virtues impossible to practice and by never failing to practice the virtues one knows to be rational
By never accepting an unearned guilt and never earning any, or, if one has earned it, never leaving it uncorrected
By never resigning oneself passively to any flaws in one’s character
Never placing any concern, wish, fear or mood of the moment above the reality of one’s own self-esteem.

Above all, it means one’s rejection of the role of a sacrificial animal, the rejection of any doctrine that preaches self-immolation as a moral virtue or duty.

Pride is the virtue corresponding to the value of self-esteem. Self-esteem is, in essence, the value for oneself. Combined with reason and purpose, the value of self-esteem is what makes all other values and consequently the pursuit of life possible. Hence, pride means achieving the value for oneself, and thus, the value for one’s own life.

The practice of pride

Hence, we see that pride is not just evaluative of our actions and our self but also aspirational, as it defines the basis for one’s course of actions. But how to practise pride, i.e. act to achieve self-esteem?

By identifying, accepting and striving to fully achieve objectively validated standards of conduct (action) and character (self).
By shaping one’s character based on one’s moral ideal.
NOTE 1: One’s character is shaped by internalised principles of conduct, which present themselves as habits, ambitions, and actions in general.
NOTE 2: Character exceeds wealth in value, because character is what makes the creation of wealth possible, especially long-range.

What pride is not:

Pride is not obstinacy, i.e refusing to change one’s mind or course of action either (1) without good reasons for it, or (2) despite good reasons against it.
Here, it is not pride that is the issue but rather the lack of self-honesty and rationality.
Pride is not derived from others’ opinions of us.
To say it is, is second-handed. Such a view of pride does not result in the achievement of self-esteem. This view of pride is not pride, since pride concerns with:
- One’s own objective evaluation of oneself.
- One’s adherence or actively pursued aspiration to one’s own moral standards.
On a similar note, pride does not derive from comparison with other people, i.e. pride is not based on your judgement of the worth of other people’s conduct and character.
Same reasoning as the last point. Furthermore, requiring comparison with other people on which to base one’s own standard of worthiness betrays one’s lack of objectively derived values, principles and moral ideals. How well a person is living up to his moral standards does not rely on how well other people are living up to their moral standards.
Pride may or may not involve self-congratulatory expression.
Such expression is not essential to pride, and may or may not accompany it.

NOTE: Moral standards are not subjective but contextual, i.e. they are absolute abstract principles applied to the context of your life, capabilities, and situation.

Pride is always possible and desirable

The virtue of pride, i.e. moral ambitiousness, can be practiced by anyone and anytime (and it is always valuable to do so), even with low self-esteem or an immoral past, since pride depends on what you do, strive to do and aim to do (all of these are the building blocks, and without any one, pride dies). Pride is the precondition for and the path to self-esteem, and self-esteem is one of the core values that sustains life long-range. The feeling of pride is a consequence of self-esteem, but the virtue of pride is how you get there. Therefore, pride is a necessity and is always achievable on some level.

Need for the consistent practice of pride

It is important to note that self-esteem is a fundamental value without which we cannot sustain our value for our life in the long-range. It is also important to note that though the virtue of pride is always achievable on some level, and though striving to achieve it (no matter how inconsistent or immoral we have been up to that point) is always desirable (i.e. to our self-interest), it is only the consistent practice of the virtue of pride that can build and maintain self-esteem.

If we act in a way that keeps undermining our self-esteem, though we can always strive to achieve more through the virtue of pride, there is a cost. At worst, we may have acted in a way that diminishes the efficacy in living that we can reach. At best, we would have impeded our progress, thus wasting precious time, energy or resources. There are costs in-between the worst and best cases, but in every case, the value for one’s life requires us to pursue our values and principles (thus practice the virtue of pride) consistently and not intentionally incur costs.

Pride as a key to a life-oriented ethics

To live (as a volitional being) requires a sense of self-value. But a human, whose defining characteristic is a volitional consciousness, has no automatic conscious values, i.e. no automatic values with respect to his existence as a conscious, volitional being. Now, note that life is the objective standard of value, where “life” in this context is the form of existence particular to a volitional being. To value life requires valuing the self, i.e. the entity that is doing the living. As any other conscious value, this value for oneself — self-esteem — is not automatic.

Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your highest value, because your life is the standard of your values. Like all values of a human, this value — self-esteem — has to be earned (i.e. achieved by enacting the right causes). This value is based on a volitional consciousness, so the right causes must also be based on conscious, volitional action. In other words, just as your value for your life must be pursued consciously and volitionally, so must your value for yourself.

Pride recognises the following corollaries:

Of any achievement possible to you, the one that makes all others possible is the creation of your own character, i.e. of your internalised values, habits and code of conduct.
Your character as well as your motivations are the product of the premises you hold — implicitly or explicitly — and the way you act on them.
Just as a human must produce physical values to sustain his life, so he must acquire the values of character, i.e. spiritual values that make his life worth sustaining. In other words, a human is a being of self-made wealth and self-made soul.
To earn self-esteem, one must shape his soul, i.e. his character and conscious experience, in the image of his moral ideal.

If life is the standard of value, then there can be no value placed higher than oneself. The full achievement of this standard and of one’s value for oneself is the egoism that desires the best in all things, in values of matter and spirit. At the base of such egoism is the aim to achieve one’s own moral perfection.

What does pride demand?

Based on the nature and purpose of pride, what are the essentials of pride, and what damages, degrades or destroys this essence? A key essential of pride is objectivity, i.e. the recognition of facts and the conscious use of your mind to integrate them with reason. Another key essential of pride is personal efficacy, i.e. one’s internalised capacity to pursue valuable potential. Now, note that while both are essential to pride, objectivity is essential to personal efficacy, especially long-range.

Hence, if something in your life becomes a blow to your sense of personal efficacy, and if such a blow is well-warranted due to genuine deficiencies and/or faults, then pride demands that you remain objective, acknowledging your deficiencies and/or faults and dealing with them to best of your ability. Hence, pride demands that you take well-warranted blows to your pride with serenity without trying to boost your feeling of pride. Why? Because to pride, the virtue is primary, and the feeling is derivative. Thus, prioritising the feeling over the virtue degrades or even destroys your capacity to feel pride, since the virtue is the source of the feeling and the feeling has no identity apart from the virtue. In summary, to be as proud as you can be, you must be willing to take, accept and work on well-warranted blows to your pride (if they are indeed well-warranted).

It is key to note that a blow to your pride only happens when you either cease to be objective (which is always within your direct control, at least on some level) or when your personal efficacy is contradicted in some way. There are two ways such a contradiction can happen: (1) due to a volitional fault, and (2) due to a non-volitional fault. A volitional fault is the failure to realise a valuable potential that was in your knowledge and capacity, which means it must be dealt with by being aware of your fault and correcting for it.

A non-volitional fault, on the other hand, is due to the lack of knowledge and/or capacity. A non-volitional fault itself can be of two kinds: (a) subjectable to change, and (2) unsubjectable to change. If you can change it and if it is valuable to do so, you must. But if you cannot change it, then, it can only be a blow to your sense of personal efficacy if you had a false view of what you were capable of. In case (b), you must realise that the fault must not be a source of shame, and that pride demands its acceptance, in the name of objectivity.

NOTE: Objectivity is always in your direct control on some level because the basic form of objectivity is one’s choice to focus on reality, and one’s choice to focus is the fundamental capacity of one’s volition.

Hence, a truly proud person would (among other things):

Recognise and admit his faults, if they exist
Accept when he gets a warranted or deserved blow to his feeling of pride
Strive to deal with his faults to the best of his ability
Recognise the primacy of the virtue of pride
Recognise that objectivity is essential to pride

KEY POINT: It is invalid to consider pride as something to be “tempered” by humility or objectivity. Setting aside humility (which I regard as a vice), pride is not tempered by objectivity but caused (at least in large part) by it, i.e. a conscientiously objective approach to life is one of the pillars of pride itself. Hence, in accepting blows to pride that he knows to be well-warranted or deserved, a proud person is not being humble but as proud as he can be. In fact, if a person tries to cover up such blows or protest against them, then he would truly degrade his pride, because while accepting a blow to your pride involves accepting a reduction in the the feeling of pride, the virtue of pride (which is the fundamental aspect of pride) is intact, whereas rejecting what you know to be a well-warranted or deserved blow to your feeling of pride involves a reduction in the virtue of pride, i.e. the core of pride itself.

LEXICAL NOTE: Deserve vs. warrant:

To be warranted is to be based on the facts, whereas to deserve is the be warranted by the fact of one’s volitional faults. Hence, a well-warranted blow to pride need not be a source of regret, whereas a well-deserved blow to pride would be.

The basis of pride and its measurement

Since your pride depends on your own specific standards of value and virtue, i.e. on absolute moral standards applied to your own context, it stands to reason that your pride is not commensurable with the pride of others. Rather, pride can only be compared in relative terms, i.e. in terms of how much each person achieves his own specific standards of value and virtue.

Pride can draw from traits that you have no control over, but it can only do so based on how you value these traits and exercise your volition with respect to them. If you do not have some natural traits that are either not worth achieving in your context or cannot be achieved by you, then their absence is a non-factor; their absence must not be a source of shame and cannot be a blow to pride. It is impossible to compare your pride based on how you are to your pride based on how you could be in some fantasy-world. To re-iterate, if something cannot be (either due to your hierarchy of values or due to practical impossibility), then it must be neither an object of desire nor a source of shame.

Moral perfection

Moral perfection is morality in practice

First, some definitions…

Perfection:

The full, consistent achievement of a standard, as defined in a certain context. Note that a standard defined out of context is not meant to be effective or even possible; it can be effective or possible only by accident. Note, hence, that perfection is contextual, with its only proper benchmark being reality as we know it and not fantasy.

Moral perfection:

The full, consistent achievement of one’s values in the context of one’s life and capacity to live, which includes one’s actuality and potentiality. The standard of moral perfection must be rational, i.e. with regards to what is possible and valuable in the context of one’s life.

Back to the discussion…

Moral perfection is not:

Moral infallibility; no volitional consciousness can be infallible
A fixed state of perfection; life and thus the pursuit of morality (i.e. the code of values with life as the standard) is an active, lifelong commitment
The best possible imaginable

NOTE 1: Moral fallibility simply means the ability to fail to make a moral choice. But moral failure is immoral by its nature. Hence, note that moral perfection does not mean you are unable to make an immoral choice — you are always able — but while moral perfection cannot coexist with moral failure, it can and does coexist with the ability for moral failure. This means, essentially, that volition is always operative in morality.

NOTE 2: Not all failure is moral failure, and failure by itself may have no bearing on morality!

Moral perfection is:

The best possible in reality, i.e. with respect to rational objectives
Based on the context of the individual; involves following interrelated constraints:
- Time available, imposed by the situation or allocated according to one’s hierarchy of values
- Task, with regards to its importance, requirements, etc.
- Doer, with regards to experience, values, capacity (intellectual, psychological and physical), etc.

Morality must be based on reason with its standard being one’s own life (as defined for a volitional being). In this light, to be moral is to be perfectly moral, since any deliberate imperfection is a deliberate deviation from reason and from the moral standard (which is the source of values). When you allow yourself to deviate from reason and thus from life deliberately, you no longer operate with reason as the absolute and life as the standard, because on what basis would you now choose to be rational?

If you were rational, to be rational or not is not an open choice; rationality is the only valid option. Hence, when you allow yourself to deviate from reason deliberately, you adopt an irrational approach to life (insofar as you can live it irrationally), either implicitly or explicitly. In such a case, even when you choose to be rational, it would only be because you feel like it, not because reason is your standard of thought and action. In this way, you subvert the pursuit of your life and plant the seeds of your destruction.

Whatever is anti-reason is anti-mind, and thus, anti-life and thereby immoral.

Reality-based standard of perfection

“The perfect person does not demand of himself the impossible, but he does demand of himself every ounce of the possible.”
— Leonard Peikoff

I would add: every ounce of the possible as per his hierarchy of values.

Purpose of moral perfection

“Moral perfection is not about genuflecting to some deity or to pursue morality as an end in itself. It’s not about keeping a good record in some official bookkeeping. Being perfectly moral is the only path to your values and your happiness.”
— Tara Smith

Hence, note that to be morally perfect is not the goal, but rather, it is the means to the goal of living life. Hence, do not obsess with moral perfection as such (as an end in itself), but rather, focus on life and your ability to live it. Moral imperfection is not a reason by itself to give up hope or value for yourself or your life, but rather, it is evidence of some spiritual need or lacking that must be addressed, and it is morally necessary to do so (note that “spiritual” here refers to consciousness and character).