Pride and Authenticity

228 Pages·2016·8.208 MB·English

by  Ulrich Steinvorth (auth.)

Pride and Authenticity
Ulrich Steinvorth
Pride and Authenticity
Ulrich   Steinvorth
Pride and
Authenticity
Ulrich Steinvorth
Hamburg , Germany
ISBN 978-3-319-34116-3 ISBN 978-3-319-34117-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-34117-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016952798
© Th e Editor(s) (if applicable) and Th e Author(s) 2016
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Contents
Part I Proper Pride 1
1 Why Pride? Th eses 3
2 Th e Meaning of the Term Pride 9
3 Pride and Metaphysics 15
4 Augustine on Pride 21
5 Kierkegaard on due Pride 33
Part II History and Its Challenges 39
6 Th e Renaissance: Doing Th ings for Th eir Own Sake 41
7 Intrinsic Goals 49
v
vi Contents
8 Passion and Professionalism 59
9 Th e Bourgeois Revolution and Bourgeois
Authenticity 69
10 Rousseau’s Authenticity 75
11 Marx, Weber and Mere Subjectivity 81
12 Heidegger’s Authenticity 89
13 Authenticity in the Contemporary Discussion 93
14 Authenticity in China 99
15 Rethinking Secularization, Liberalism and Religion 107
Part III Morality and the Self 117
16 What Is Morality and Moral Th eory? 119
17 Shame and Pride 125
18 Korsgaard and Self-Constituters vs. Self- Discoverers 131
19 Kant, Free Will and the Self 141
20 Inheritance Pride, Authenticity and Morality 149
Contents vii
Part IV Prospects of Proper Pride 157
21 Technology and Society 159
22 Problems of the Economy 163
23 Basic Income 169
24 Th e Shrinking of the Nation State 177
25 Data Processing and Privacy 185
26 Data Processing in Novels 195
27 Competitors in Metaphysics 199
28 Kitsch, Tragedy and Power 207
29 Prospects, Bleak and Less Bleak 217
Instead of a Conclusion 221
Select Bibliography 225
Index 237
Part I
Proper Pride
1
Why Pride? Theses
Pride, I claim, is an emotion that we cannot and should not suppress but
instead cultivate in its proper form. Considering parents’ behavior toward
their children, most people agree with this claim because they want their
kids to be proud of, for example, being female if they happen to be born
female, of being black if they happen to be black, of being small among
the tall, stout among the lean. We expect Americans to be proud of being
American and Chinese to be proud of being Chinese. Gays and lesbians
teach gays and lesbians to be proud of being gay or lesbian, and though
it took some time, most people in the West have learned that this is how
it should be.
I t is no less clear that pride can become arrogant, pretentious and
boastful. Th ere is proper and improper pride, and here the problems
start. How can we distinguish proper and improper pride? Is pride evil
when there is too much of it, as we may argue using Aristotle’s claim that
virtue is the middle between the extremes of too much and too little? Or
is pride evil from the outset, as Christianity teaches, ranking pride among
the deadly sins? How then can we want kids to be proud of the properties
that they are born with without their merit? Or do we only want them
not to be ashamed of their innate properties and mistake lack of shame
© Th e Editor(s) (if applicable) and Th e Author(s) 2016 3
U. Steinvorth, Pride and Authenticity,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-34117-0_1
4 Pride and Authenticity
for pride? Yet authenticity is a child of pride, as we need pride in ourselves
to want to be true to ourselves. How can authenticity be the ideal of self-
loyalty if we are only not ashamed of the properties of our self?
Such problems about pride arouse suspicion that the prevailing ideas
of pride are confused when we turn to philosophers. “Th e social bases of
self-esteem” we read in John Rawls’ famous Th eory of Justice , are “primary
social goods” of which we can assume that rational beings “normally pre-
fer more…rather than less.”1 So Rawls, it seems, judges self-esteem as
so good that normally we should prefer more of it rather than less.2 Yet
pride, like the “passions for power and glory,” only moves “a nobility and
lesser aristocracy” who want “to earn their social standing and place in the
sun.” 3 But isn’t self-e steem pride too? Th e philosopher Donald Davidson
in fact dryly remarked, self-esteem is “what is normally called pride.”4 So
Rawls seems to want to reserve the term p ride to mean bad pride and the
term self-esteem to mean proper pride.
Yet is this recommendable? Can’t too much self-respect be bad? Is self-
respect proper in any case? If I am born with a timid nature, should I
respect my timid nature? Are there universally valid criteria of what we
rightly are proud of or should have self-respect for? What do we commit
to in proper pride? What is the self referred to in the term s elf-esteem ?
Th ese are questions worth considering, and considering them led me
to write this book. But I was neither able nor willing to proceed sys-
tematically. I explored the questions like foreign land, without program
and method, but with the thrills of an adventure and the joys of seeing
the familiar in a new light. Th ough pride was homeland for ancient and
medieval philosophers it has become foreign for us. Twenty years ago,
Richard Taylor, the only recent author to write a book on pride, tried
to restore pride as a virtue, but he did not rekindle interest in pride.
Maybe his scope was too narrow. True, philosophers should have a focus,
but pride needs closer consideration of authenticity and authors such as
Augustine and Kierkegaard. Th erefore, I roam into history and morality,
1 Rawls 1999, 123.
2 As did Hoff er 1955, sec. 35 http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eric_Hoff er
3 Rawls 1999, 29n and 47.
4 Davidson 1976, 751.