"I Am Right"

Press hard enough, and many people will act as if certainty is an anathema to a peaceful, tolerant culture.  In many ways, they are right: genuine certainty and toleration of the typical status quo do not coexist easily.  Many do not stop at calling rationalistic proclamations of certainty disruptive, however.  It is common to find counter-proclamations that even legitimate claims of certainty are arrogant and indicate some moral or (ironically!) intellectual deficiency.

Charges of arrogance are often used in an attempt to silence someone whose claims are controversial or urgent, as many people are quite content to wallow in philosophical apathy or ineptitude if that is the norm around them.  When some truth--or an attempt to sincerely, rationally pursue truth--comes to light, it is far easier for the average person to assume that the truth-seeker is simply overestimating their own epistemological capacity or the importance of their claim.

To belittle someone based on unjust or irrational grounds and to think oneself significant on unjust or irrational grounds are both expressions of arrogance, but the recognition and acceptance of logical certainties are not.  Indeed, it would be arrogant to think oneself above reason, as if logic could be dismissed without consequence or as if logic has only a partial reign over reality.  True arrogance is found in denying, ignoring, or trivializing the absolute certainties that logic offers to all thinking beings.  There is never anything arrogant about genuine knowledge.

A rationalist is therefore not only justified in savoring the realization that "I am right," but is also justified in savoring the realization "I am right."  There is no arrogance in discovering, reciting, or deriving pleasure from the absolute certainty provided by logic.  To think of oneself more highly than one should or more highly than one's metaphysical status affords is not arrogant; to celebrate the logical facts that can be known is simply to celebrate one's metaphysical status as it is.