Pride and Vanity, After Adam Smith

vanity pride just sentiments the proud man

November 27, 2024


In The Theory of Moral Sentiments Adam Smith describes many kinds of men, including the proud man and the vain man. Klein explores Smith's ideas and himself in this essay.

"Smith’s view is that something impels us to learn to command troublesome passions, both solicitous and turbulent, but the commanding necessarily deploys other passions, commanding passions, to command or subdue the troublesome passions. Passions are checked by other passions." 

The difference is shown in the following diagram:

He feels the imperfect success of all his best endeavours, and sees, with grief and affliction, in how many different features the mortal copy falls short of the immortal original: he remembers, with concern and humiliation, how often, from want of attention, from want of judgment, from want of temper, he has, both in words and actions, both in conduct and conversation, violated the exact rules of perfect propriety, and has so far departed from that model, according to which he wished to fashion his own character and conduct. (247–248.25)

He…feels so well his own imperfection, he knows so well the difficulty with which he attained his own distant approximation to rectitude, that he cannot regard with contempt the still greater imperfection of other people…. [H]e views it with the most indulgent commiseration, and, by his advice as well as example, is at all times willing to promote their further advancement. (248.25)

If, in any particular qualification, they happen to be superior to him (for who is so perfect as not to have many superiors in many different qualifications?), far from envying their superiority, he…esteems and honours their excellence, and never fails to bestow upon it the full measure of applause which it deserves. (248.25)

His whole mind, in short, is deeply impressed, his whole behaviour and deportment are distinctly stamped with the character of real modesty; with that of a very moderate estimation of his own merit, and, at the same time, of a full sense of the merit of other people. (248.25)

• “If you appear not to respect him as he respects himself, he is more offended than mortified” (255.35).
• “[H]e disdains to court your esteem: he affects even to despise it” (255.35).
• “He seems to wish not so much to excite your esteem for himself as to mortify that for yourself” (255.35).
• “The proud man…never flatters, and is frequently scarce civil to any body” (257.40).
• “He is full of indignation at the unjust superiority, as he thinks it, which is given to [other people]” (257.41).
• “The proud man does not always feel himself at his ease in the company of his equals, and still less in that of his superiors” (256.39).
• “He has recourse to humbler company, for which he has little respect…—that of his inferiors, his flatterers, and dependants” (256.39).
• The proud man is “careful to preserve his independency, and…studies to be frugal and attentive in all his expenses” (256.38).
• “Pride is always a grave, a sullen, and a severe [passion]” (257.41).
• “[The lies] of pride, whenever it condescends to falsehood, are” more serious than white lies (257.41).
• Pride has its pluses, particularly when some feeling of superiority is warranted: “Where there is this real superiority, pride is frequently attended with many respectable virtues—with truth, with integrity, with a high sense of honour, with cordial and steady friendship, with the most inflexible firmness and resolution” (258.42).
• But the proud man lacks upward vitality: “The proud man is commonly too well contented with himself to think that his character requires any amendment. The man who feels himself all-perfect naturally enough despises all further improvement” (258.45).

• “When you appear to view him… in his proper colours, he is much more mortified than offended” (255.36).
• “Far from despising your esteem, he courts it with the most anxious assiduity” (255–56).
• “Far from wishing to mortify your self-estimation, he is happy to cherish it, in hopes that in return you will cherish his own. He flatters in order to be flattered” (256.36).
• “He studies to please, and endeavours to bribe you into a good opinion of him by politeness and complaisance, and sometimes even by real and essential good offices, though often displayed…with unnecessary ostentation” (256.36).
• “He courts the company of his superiors as much as the proud man shuns it…. He haunts the courts of kings and the levees of ministers, and gives himself the air of being a candidate for fortune and preferment” (257.40).
• “He is fond of being admitted to the tables of the great, and still more fond of magnifying to other people the familiarity with which he is honoured there: he associates himself as much as he can with fashionable people, with those who are supposed to direct the public opinion—with the witty, with the learned, with the popular… With the people to whom he wishes to recommend himself… he employs…unnecessary ostentation, groundless pretensions, constant assentation, frequently flattery” (257.40).
• “[H]e often reduces himself to poverty and distress long before the end of [his life]” (256.37).
• “[H]e shuns the company of his best friends, whenever the very uncertain current of public favour happens to run in any respect against them” (257.40).
• Vanity has its pluses: “Notwithstanding all its groundless pretensions, however, vanity is almost always a sprightly and a gay, and very often a good-natured passion” (257.41)
• “The worst falsehoods of vanity are all what we call white lies” (257.41)
• “[V]anity [is frequently attended with] many amiable [virtues]—with humanity, with politeness, with a desire to oblige in all little matters, and sometimes with a real generosity in great ones—a generosity, however, which it often wishes to display in the most splendid colours that it can” (258.42).
• The vain man often has capacity for upward vitality, especially in youth: “Vanity is very frequently no more than an attempt prematurely to usurp that glory before it is due. Though your son under five-and-twenty years of age should be but a coxcomb, do not upon that account despair of his becoming before he is forty a very wise and worthy man, and a real proficient in all those talents and virtues to which at present he may only be an ostentatious and empty pretender” (259.46)
• (The foregoing bullet points come in Smith’s contrast between the proud man and the vain man, but Smith had earlier (in time, not in location in the final edition of the book) given a description of vanity, TMS 309–310.8, which is then used in distinguishing “three passions” (1) vanity, (2) love of true glory, and (3) love of virtue. On that threefold comparison, see Figure 24 here.)

But the proud man is often vain; and the vain man is often proud… Those two vices being frequently blended in the same character, the characteristics of both are necessarily confounded; and we sometimes find the superficial and impertinent ostentation of vanity joined to the most malignant and derisive insolence of pride. (259.47)

The following figure represents a man who is both proud and vain.

The opinion which we entertain of our own character depends entirely on our judgment concerning our past conduct. It is so disagreeable to think ill of ourselves, that we often purposely turn away our view from those circumstances which might render that judgment unfavourable… Rather than see our own behaviour under so disagreeable an aspect, we…persevere in injustice, merely because we once were unjust, and because we are ashamed and afraid to see that we were so... He is…bold who does not hesitate to pull off the mysterious veil of self-delusion which covers from his view the deformities of his own conduct. (158.4)