So it’s pride month again and conservatives are complaining as they always do at this time of year. They say pride is a sin, especially Jordan Peterson in his interviews, and most notably last year in his Twitter Ban video after he posted his response to Elliot Page.
Peterson has also said that Pride Month has become a kind of worship of sexuality, making sexual identity the center of a gay person’s life, and that this would lead to disastrous consequences.
There are countless passages in the Bible talking about how God hates those that are proud.
According to St. Thomas Aquinas, a rational Christian, said in his book Summa Theologica,
“Pride [superbia] is so called because a man thereby aims higher [supra] than he is; wherefore Isadore says (Etym.x): ‘A man is said to be proud, because he wishes to appear above (super) what he really is”; for he who wishes to overstep beyond what he is, is proud. Now right reason requires that every man’s will should tend to that which is proportionate to him. Therefore is is evident that pride denotes something opposed to right reason, and this show it to have the character of sin, because according to Dionysisus (Div. Hom. iv, 4), ‘the soul’s evil is to be opposed to reason.’ Therefore it is evident that pride is a sin.”
In other words, pride is a form of arrogance or vanity, and I doubt anyone would see these as virtues since they have purely negative connotations. Aquinas is criticizing how the proud lack self-awareness, they believe themselves to be more than what he/she actually are due to their irrationality, and irrationality is wrong.
From a conservative’s perspective it’s not surprising why they see pride as a sin and Pride Month as a very bad thing. To name a whole month of celebration after what appears to be a vice is not good. If pride is a sin, then perhaps gay people have got off on the wrong foot?
It’s not merely conservatives who are complaining, but even gay people have spoken out against the absurdity of Pride Month. Amir Odom, a popular gay and conservative YouTuber have made similar critiques like how pride is not family friendly.
From my personal experience as a gay person, going to Pride festivals and a Pride parade, I would have to agree with Jordan Peterson and Amor Odin. There are quite a few people that walk half naked in skimpy clothing, showing off parts of their body that is inappropriate, and sometimes perform actions that are questionable. At the pride festival I went to, one of the booths hosted a game where you could throw rings onto dildos to win a prize. Although these things don’t bother me personally, I get a kind of secondhand discomfort knowing that children are there. If I had a son or daughter I wouldn’t take them to Pride, unless they really wanted to, but I’d keep them under my supervision to steer them away from the stuff mentioned above.
But overall, many of the truly crazy stuff at Pride are probably pretty rare? Or are an extremely small portion of what actually happens. In every community, event, or celebration, there will always be that small portion that stands out negatively from the rest. Conservatives online love to jump on, blow up, and spread around crazy stuff on social media to paint gay people as these horrible demons. These videos aren’t an accurate representation. The nature of media is exaggeration and distortion, to present highly edited and refined content to sell a narrative or story.
However, whether what happens is mildly inappropriate or straight-up horrific, there does seem to be something off about Pride considering the backlash its received. Weirdly, I don’t think Pride has anything to do with the actual vice of pride. Based on Aquinas’s definition, I don’t observe arrogance or vanity, people aiming higher than what they actually are; all I see are people celebrating, having fun, and occasionally falling into uninhibited sexual desire. If anything, the deadly sin that reigns is lust. Lust is what should be called out and criticized, not pride. I’m all for sexual freedom among consenting adults. The government does not belong in the bedroom, but what happens in the bedroom stays in the bedroom. And it’s unfortunate because many gay people today truly don’t understand this. Pride Month is very different from what is was like back in the 70’s. If us gays don’t want our rights taken away again, because it wasn’t too long ago when we were mistreated, and we still sometimes are mistreated, we could lose our rights pretty quickly if we don’t shape up. But this article is not about criticizing lust, that’s a whole other topic, so let’s get back to pride.
Again, Jordan Peterson in his Twitter Ban video said that, “pride has classically been seen as a sin for thousands of years,” but he’s wrong about this. Before Christianity, the ancient greeks, most notably Aristotle, saw pride as a virtue. In the Nicomachaen Ethics, Aristotle says,
“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 excellent man is foolish or silly…For he who is worthy of little and thinks himself worthy of little is temperate, but not proud; for pride implies greatness…On the other hand, he who thinks himself worthy of great things, being unworthy of them, is vain.”
In other words, the proud man thinks he’s worthy of things because he actually is, objectively, worthy of them. The foolish and vain, however, are not actually worthy of great things. Their distorted self perception and/or lack of self awareness makes them think they are worthy of more when they clearly don’t.
Interestingly, I think Aristotle and Aquinas are in agreement here. Both of these men value rationality, an accurate understanding of the world. It’s a vice to not know oneself, to believe oneself is worthy of more than what he actually is. But there is an important and nuanced distinction we need to make. While Aristotle agrees with Aquinas that arrogance and vanity are vices, he would disagree with Aquinas, Jordan Peterson, and Christians as a whole, that humility is a virtue. After all, Christians are known for talking about the virtue of humility, especially as an opposition to pride.
As he says in the Nicomachaen ethics,
“The man who thinks himself 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 claim yet smaller…for the unduly humble man, being worthy of good things, robs himself of what he deserves, and seems 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…these people stand back from noble 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 honorable undertakings, and then are found out; and they adorn themselves with clothing and outward show and such things…but the undue humility is more opposed to pride than vanity is; for it is both commoner and worse.
In typical Aristotelian fashion, Aristotle sees virtue as a happy medium between two vices. Pride is not actually a vice to Aristotle, but a virtue, since pride is what resides between the vices of vanity and humility. A truly proud man, or a man that can take pride in himself, sees himself worthy because he genuinely is worthy. A vain person tries to take pride himself but can’t because he’s not actually worthy. And a humble person, doesn’t even try to take pride in themselves because he either knows he isn’t worthy or lacks the self awareness like the vain person. It’s interesting how Aquinas criticized the vain person, but doesn’t make the logical conclusion to criticize the humble person the way Aristotle does. They both come from the same premise that rationality and self-awareness is good. A truly good or excellent man who knows himself should take pride in himself.
What I also find interesting is that Jordan Peterson has criticized humility, or the Christian ethics, without even realizing it. In many videos and clips, he often says that you should be a monster, that there’s no virtue in being nice or harmless. Some of the most evil people, according to Peterson, are weak men. And is a weak man not also a humble man?
Once the sin of arrogant pride has been overcome, it’s pretty easy to be humble since one no longer has to strive or work to be worthy of great things to be proud of. Humility is a kind of excuse for Christians to be weak, to get rewarded for not doing anything, for simply being nice.
Setting pride straight, I mean not gay, I mean as a virtue
It seems to me that our contemporary culture, the politics of the left and right, does not understand what pride actually is. On the left, pride is confused with lust during Pride Month, and on the right, pride is confused with arrogance or vanity. Although the right’s criticism of arrogance is correct, their elevation of humility as a virtue leaves a huge, gaping void in what it genuinely means to be proud.
An important and neglected book Restoring Pride: The Lost Virtue of Our Age by the philosopher Richard Taylor perfectly provides an answer to the confusion of pride today. Pride is a lost virtue and it must be restored. Taylor is a virtue ethicist and virtually unknown, but his book does a great job at reviving the essence and goodness of pride in the Aristotelian tradition.
He mainly points out that we live in a kind of suffocating, egalitarian culture where no one can say or believe themselves to be better than anyone else due to their good character or excellence. No one wants to say it, but the truth is, there are clearly better humans than others. There are people who have greater abilities, wisdom, character, morality, and strength, and these are people that should take pride in themselves. This is the hidden puzzle piece, the key that we are missing.
Going back to Pride Month, I mean Lust Month, there’s no real pride in being gay or letting go of sexual inhibition. Wouldn’t it be pretty weird if straight people took pride in their sexual orientation? The arrogant proudness or the uninhibited lust that conservatives criticize is not the proper response to being victimized as a gay person. If one is ashamed of their sexuality, the proper response is to accept one’s sexuality, embrace one’s sexuality and move on as normal. I’m not really sure that a parade or a celebration is necessary, to be quite honest.
However, a gay person should take pride in themselves in the sense that they have the courage to be who they are despite the culture and everyone around them telling them otherwise. It’s not the act in itself, the gay sex that is prideful, it’s having the sex that one desires that is true pride. It’s a real achievement to acquire the sexual relationships that makes one happy because believe it or not, many people don’t get this far. There are still gay people in the closet who are still ashamed of their sexuality, and instead of accepting it, they project their negative feelings onto other gay people, hurt other gay people. These people cannot take true pride in themselves, at least in terms of their sexual relationships.
Taylor gives examples of people who would be seen as prideful in the contemporary culture, when it couldn’t be further from the truth. For example, a boss who flaunts his title and position and orders his co-workers around him because he likes the power, or an artist that is pretty good, but cares more about the status and name dropping other famous artists that she knows. Or the wealthy man that drives a conspicuous, fancy car and lives in an ostentatious house. These people can’t truly be proud of themselves because they find their worth in externalities, similarly to what Aristotle says about the vain. It’s a kind of overcompensation for a lack of worth in oneself, a lack of character and excellence. These people parade these flashy displays like a peacock fans out his feathers to artificially construct a sense of greatness around their lack of excellence and hollow, empty characters. The truly proud know they are great, and therefore don’t need other people to know they are great. Often, especially in today’s world, true excellence and good character is overlooked so it’s a waste of time trying to convince other people of one’s worth. What’s important is that you know your worth if you have any worth.
Ultimately, Taylor says to do something to be proud of for pride is the justified love of oneself. The reward, the joy we feel for being worthy, for doing something truly noble and excellent, is what we call pride.
Ayn Rand said in the Virtue of Selfishness that pride was “moral ambitiousness,” and for a long time I didn’t fully understand what she meant by that. But I realize now that to in order to have pride in oneself, it requires having self awareness of one’s character and excellence, and if somehow they are falling short on character and excellence, they must put in the work to achieve such things. Many people do good, but don’t feel good for doing good, and sometimes they do good but don’t how they did good. Without pride, people don’t take their morality seriously. Pride is what a person feels knowing they have done good; in other words, pride is a kind of fuel or engine, the virtue of putting power into your other virtues.
It’s very interesting because Aquinas in Summa Theologica said that pride was a kind of sin that perpetuates other sins, while Aristotle similarly said that pride was a kind of crown of the virtues. It seems that pride either unifies a person’s virtues or vices. To make sure we are unifying virtues and not vices, we must make sure to seek and cultivate the good in ourselves that is genuine, true, and authentic.