“Pride” is the commitment to achieve one’s own moral perfection” according to philosopher Leonard Peikoff in his book Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand.
Invoking Christian mythology, Jordan Peterson recently made this statement against the virtue of pride.
Enough worship of Pride.
After all, it's the cardinal Luciferian sin.
"They just mean self-esteem"
No they don't. They mean PRIDE. That's why they use the word.
And pride always goes before a fall.
Enough mindless alphabet-brigade hedonism. It's time to grow up.…
— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) May 13, 2024
Peterson gets pride wrong. In the words of Ayn Rand’s famous character John Galt in her novel Atlas Shrugged:
Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man’s values, it has to be earned—that of any achievements open to you, the one that makes all others possible is the creation of your own character—that your character, your actions, your desires, your emotions are the products of the premises held by your mind—that as man must produce the physical values he needs to sustain his life, so he must acquire the values of character that make his life worth sustaining—that as man is a being of self-made wealth, so he is a being of self-made soul—that to live requires a sense of self-value, but man, who has no automatic values, has no automatic sense of self-esteem and must earn it by shaping his soul in the image of his moral ideal, in the image of Man, the rational being he is born able to create, but must create by choice—that the first precondition of self-esteem is that radiant selfishness of soul which desires the best in all things, in values of matter and spirit, a soul that seeks above all else to achieve its own moral perfection, valuing nothing higher than itself—and that the proof of an achieved self-esteem is your soul’s shudder of contempt and rebellion against the role of a sacrificial animal, against the vile impertinence of any creed that proposes to immolate the irreplaceable value which is your consciousness and the incomparable glory which is your existence to the blind evasions and the stagnant decay of others.
The moral amibition of pride is the quest to achieve moral pefection. It is as Aristotle note, the crown of the virtues:
“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.”