Pride, or arrogance, is simply thinking of oneself more highly than one's metaphysical, epistemological, and moral status entails, making it one of the most misunderstood attitudes the Bible denounces. It is not arrogant to think that one person is fundamentally superior to another within the context of a certain philosophy, such as the moral framework contained within Biblical Christianity, as long as moral superiority is the basis for elevating one person above another. C.S. Lewis failed to recognize this, as Mere Christianity evidences:
"I now come to that part of Christian morals where they differ most sharply from all other morals. There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine they are guilty themselves . . .
The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility." (121)
It is fallacious and even false to say that everyone in the world is tainted by arrogance, as there is no particular sin that anyone cannot avoid or simply never even have a desire to commit. It is also outright false to say that no one guilty of arrogance can escape it. Even if someone is a Christian, they might be or become free or pride! The fact that Lewis emphasizes pride as the allegedly most significant sin or root of all sin (as he goes on to say) shows his asinine virtue ethics flare up once again. No attitude can be worse than sins like rape or many kinds of physical abuse that show heinous disregard for the beings made in God's image or for other living things God made. Saying that one attitude other than an aversion to rationality motivates all moral errors is deeply asinine.
Lewis goes on to express more confusion about what pride is:
"Now what you want to get clear is that Pride is essentially competitive--is competitive by its very nature--while the other vices are competitive only, so to speak, by accident. Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man." (122)
Suppose that a person lived alone, isolated from all other people. Whether they have been alone for so long that they forgot or do not think of others or there are no other people alive does not affect this hypothetical situation. Is it logically possible for such a person to be prideful? Of course! Pride is about thinking of yourself more highly than you are/should, meaning it may or may not involve a comparison to some other person or being. Someone could be arrogant by only forgetting or overlooking their own nature and assuming that they have some higher nature they do not truly possess.
As if Lewis has not already made enough irrational statements about pride, he literally credits nearly all human sin with originating from pride:
"Nearly all those evils in the world which people put down to greed or selfishness are really far more the result of Pride.
Take it with money. Greed will certainly make a man want money, for the sake of a better house, better holidays, better things to eat and drink. But only up to a point. What is it that makes a man with £10,000 a year anxious to get £20,000 a year? £10,000 will give all the luxuries that any man can really enjoy. It is Pride--the wish to be richer than some other man, and (still more) the wish for power." (123)
Stupidity is behind far more sin than pride, and belief that one has a higher nature than is the case is a clear example of stupidity. Thus, pride cannot be the one thing that nearly all evils in the world are driven by. Irrationality is the sin at the heart of almost all other sin, if not all of it. Even people without access to the evidence for Christianity who still realize the lack of evidence or internal contradictions of other prominent religions would avoid many sins if they dedicated their time to contemplating moral skepticism and epistemology more than they did to pursuing whatever random, potentially destructive whims they might have.
Even with Lewis' example of how a desire for more money can express pride, though, he misses the point even further by pretending like there is some point past which pride must be the motivator rather greed (not that wanting wealth is greed on its own). Again, it is also possible to want more wealth out of greed without any reference point other than one's current wealth. Other people might have nothing to do with it, which Lewis denies to uphold his assumptions.
Stupidity is behind far more sin than pride, and belief that one has a higher nature than is the case is a clear example of stupidity. Thus, pride cannot be the one thing that nearly all evils in the world are driven by. Irrationality is the sin at the heart of almost all other sin, if not all of it. Even people without access to the evidence for Christianity who still realize the lack of evidence or internal contradictions of other prominent religions would avoid many sins if they dedicated their time to contemplating moral skepticism and epistemology more than they did to pursuing whatever random, potentially destructive whims they might have.
Even with Lewis' example of how a desire for more money can express pride, though, he misses the point even further by pretending like there is some point past which pride must be the motivator rather greed (not that wanting wealth is greed on its own). Again, it is also possible to want more wealth out of greed without any reference point other than one's current wealth. Other people might have nothing to do with it, which Lewis denies to uphold his assumptions.
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