Imagine that you are at a meeting and something like the following happens:
One of the participants says, “I take pride in the work I do with my clients. You know, ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle considered pride to be the crowning virtue.”
Some of the other folks at the meeting pause and tilt their heads at that unusual comment. One of those individuals, “Sally” [not her real name], is moved by curiosity to wonder more deeply about this. The next day, that individual sends an email along the following lines to everyone who attended that meeting:
“I was intrigued when ‘Bob’ [not his real name] mentioned that Aristotle considered pride to be the crowning virtue (not a crowing virtue, mind you). So is pride a virtue or a vice? Those brought up religious like me were probably told that pride is bad and ‘pride goeth before a fall.’
But it turns out that in ancient Greek, the word huperephania translates as arrogance, which is an inflated, inaccurate view of oneself or one’s accomplishments. People like that are braggarts. Real pride, according to Aristotle, is the recognition of your actual worth as a morally good person. That is megalopsuchia—being ‘great-souled’—where you have a healthy sense of dignity directly correlated to what you’ve done and what you’re capable of doing. A proud person feels no need to brag. If you don’t OWN that worth, though, you degrade yourself by failing to honor who you are and the hard work you’ve done to be that kind of person.
This concept matters when it comes to making the most of your business. Who wants to do business with someone who doesn’t believe in themselves, who doesn’t take pride in the quality of their services and products? I say be proud of who you are and what you do. Let that light shine! Why blend in when you were born to stand out?”
When my sweetheart, Robert, recounted this story based on real-life events, I found it to be full of wonderful things to wonder about:
(1) I found it wonderful how an unusual idea sparked a person’s curiosity to investigate further. Many people are quick to dismiss what doesn’t fit their prior views. This person was led to change her mind on an empirical basis. How refreshing!
(2) It was also wonderful that this person chose to share her investigation with colleagues. I can only imagine that doing so might have a ripple effect on other people’s curiosity. Let’s do more to make curiosity contagious.
(3) Another wonderful aspect of this story is that this person took the ideas of an ancient philosopher and applied them to a specific context relevant to her and her colleagues: business. It is lovely to see how this connection brings ideas to life in ways that matter to the quality of people’s lives. This brings home the point that ideas matter, so it behooves us to make sure that the ideas we hold—no matter how old or new—are well-founded and serve us well.
Here's something to wonder about: is pride really the crown of the virtues? In his book "Revaluing Ethics: Aristotle's Dialectical Pedagogy", Thomas W. Smith makes a pretty compelling case that Aristotle's discussion of megalopsuchia might be a dead end that leads Aristotle to make one of his famous fresh starts. Consider, for instance, that the great-souled man is described as "inert" (ἄργον), which is the very opposite of the deep activity (ἐνέργεια) that characterizes both arete and eudaimonia. Also, the word commonly rendered as "crown" (κόσμος) can also mean "adornment" or even "bauble". Indeed, i's not even clear to me that "pride" is the best rendering of μεγαλοψυχία. Reading Smith's treatment of the topic certainly set me to wondering...
Here's something to wonder about: is pride really the crown of the virtues? In his book "Revaluing Ethics: Aristotle's Dialectical Pedagogy", Thomas W. Smith makes a pretty compelling case that Aristotle's discussion of megalopsuchia might be a dead end that leads Aristotle to make one of his famous fresh starts. Consider, for instance, that the great-souled man is described as "inert" (ἄργον), which is the very opposite of the deep activity (ἐνέργεια) that characterizes both arete and eudaimonia. Also, the word commonly rendered as "crown" (κόσμος) can also mean "adornment" or even "bauble". Indeed, i's not even clear to me that "pride" is the best rendering of μεγαλοψυχία. Reading Smith's treatment of the topic certainly set me to wondering...