Second-person consequences of pride

The section above considered the harm of pride to oneself, understood in terms of the four species listed by Aquinas, but it is commonly understood that pride has second-person as well as first-person consequences, insofar as it has an impact on relationships with other persons.

As a first example, P1 pride, to ascribe an excellence to oneself that one does not possess, implies a self-admiration that is excessive and beyond reason, corresponding to the diction­ary definition of narcissism.¹⁰ As is well known and is now well documented, persons who are obsessed with themselves in a narcissistic fashion are less likely to be capable of any genuine love of others, and there is an extensive and growing literature on the toxicity of narcissism for relationships.¹¹

P2 pride is also damaging to relationships insofar as it prevents a person from acknowledg­ing that a gift is a gift, or the relationship of the gift with a giver, or the giver as a giver. This failure will scarcely be appreciated by the giver, and is unlikely to be helpful to the relation- ship.Therefore, as in the case of P1 pride, which has the characteristic of self-satisfied closure, P2 pride is also ‘cold' in the sense that it is deleterious to relationships or fails to establish or acknowledge a relationship that should exist.

P3 pride, thinking that some excellence that one has received as a gift is due to one's own merits, which can imply that what one has received is, in effect, owed to oneself because of what one is or what one has done. If one thinks of the relationship in this way, then the gift is received in the manner of a contractual transaction. As a consequence, there is also a kind of ‘coldness' about P3 pride, as in the case of a marriage in which the spouses have been reduced to bickering about the distribution of rights and responsibilities.Although a relationship exists, it lacks the characteristics of genuine love in the sense of friendship, in which the twofold desires for the good of the other and for union with the other are not conditional upon receiving some good from the other, even though some minimal good from the other, namely openness to the friendship, is earnestly desired. P3 pride therefore acknowledges only an inadequate relationship, akin to a contractual relationship rather than friendship.

P4 pride also damages relationships, but principally because the person with P4 pride fails to understand the nature of the gift in the relationship with a giver. Perhaps the clearest illustra­tion of a failure to grasp this point can be seen in one of the parables of Jesus, the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector:

Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself,‘God, I thank thee that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get.' But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!' I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.

(Luke 18:10-14)

In this parable, the Pharisee acknowledges God as the cause of what he has and thanks God for his gifts, but part of his delight is not just that he has these gifts but that others lack them. But given that being right with God is not something that diminishes by being shared with others, the Pharisee's attitude shows that he does not really understand the nature of the divine gifts to which he aspires. Moreover, the fact that the Pharisee secretly takes delight in the apparent rela­tive failure of the tax collector shows that he is not, in fact, aligned with the desire of God that all should be saved, and hence is not in that harmony with God that corresponds to a state of divine friendship. Hence Jesus warns that it is not the Pharisee but the tax collector, who simply begs for God's mercy, who goes home justified.¹²

17.4