Pride is No Sin
“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.”
Guns and Free Will
Steven Pinker observes on Twitter that “The US is not a typical affluent western democracy – we do worse in most measures of human flourishing. Guns, cars, drugs are major causes.”
The US is not a typical affluent western democracy – we do worse in most measures of human flourishing. Guns, cars, drugs are major causes. https://t.co/M6GKqCUUOx
— Steven Pinker (@sapinker) August 1, 2023
The philosopher in me begs to differ
Guns, cars, drugs are not causes, as they are inanimate entities that lack free-will: the choice to think.
A gun used to stop a rapist;
A car driven to a grocery store;
A drug used to fight infection;
– all promote human flourishing.
It is the actions of human beings, with their defining characteristic of free-will, that are the causes, for good or bad. – Mark Da Cunha
Yeonmi Park Interview by Elan Journo
Ayn Rand Institute’s Elan Journo’s interview with Yeonmi Park at closing banquet for OCON 2023. Journo needs his own TV show, and everyone needs to her book While Time Remains: A North Korean Defector’s Search for Freedom in America.
Nikos Sotirakopoulos: Deep Sea Submarine Marine Ethics of the Left
Why is there so little sympathy for the 5 of the Titan submersible who lost their lives in the Atlantic ocean? What does it tell us about the morality motivating the Left? What good is a moral code that can’t be lived by? Nikos explains.
Ben Bayer: “Responsible Sex” Arguments Against Abortion vs. the Right to Pursue Happiness
Writes philosopher Ben Bayer, author of Why the Right to Abortion Is Sacrosanct, in his op-ed “If you value personal responsibility, rethink abortion“:
I agree that one should be willing to live with the consequences of one’s actions. Responsible sex, for instance, means pursuing this value with an eye to one’s health and self-esteem. It means using contraception and protection, and treating sex as a meaningful experience with someone else who feels the same way.
But if opponents of abortion really care about responsibility, why aren’t they outraged by the fact that fifteen of the new state abortion bans, the Texan ban included, contain no exceptions for rape or incest? Victims of rape and incest — like the 10-year-old girl in Ohio who had to flee to Indiana for an abortion — have not been irresponsible. Why don’t the supporters of “responsibility” denounce any ban without rape and incest exceptions?
The answer is that anti-abortion rhetoric about ‘responsibility’ is a cover for attacking the American right to the pursuit of happiness:
Serious abortion opponents think that choosing the joy of sex for its own sake is morally suspect and so “irresponsible.” They believe sex has only one “natural” purpose: reproduction. The only acceptable alternative is celibacy. In their view our “responsibility” is to pursue only those ends assigned to us by some higher power. This is inconsistent with the idea that we should pursue the goals and consequences we are willing to accept in our pursuit of happiness.