We need the look of other eyes

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by water, Jun 19, 2004.

  1. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    It's rather strange Rosa for I do not see pride in this way at all.....(re quote and comments)
    For example I say to my partner that I am proud to be her partner for she has shown me her strength of character. In this manner it is a statement of gratitude and a flattery.

    or
    "I am proud of my relationship with my children because so many parent child relationships are so challenged"

    Maybe I am missing something.

    Possibly because I haven't developed my position by overly relying on other view points or rules ( cardinal sins....what are they?) Haviong always attempted to form my own intrinsic ownership of my philosophical POV.
    I remember as a child rejecting the teachings of the Church for just this reason.

    Being told to believe something is different to finding your belief for yourself....sort of thing.

    Maybe this is why I can confuse people because my POV is not is not as much some one elses as it is for most.

    For example I have never read philosophical text, although I did read a little of Ann Rands objectivity, and some text on issues of ethics.

    hmmmmm...I am strange.....
     
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  3. Jenyar Solar flair Valued Senior Member

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    I find it strange that everybody is fighting over what others mean as pride, in stead of defining it and working from there.

    What CS Lewis meant by pride (and the pride condemned by the Bible), is self-assumed superiority. That's different from being satisfied, "proud" of someone, or yourself.
     
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  5. water the sea Registered Senior Member

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    Gendanken,


    Of course I see it!
    I see it through the words of my native language, and here, the situation is very clear. English has a mess though, even German.


    No, I'll go further: It keeps them safe from BEING strong.


    ***

    Invert Nexus,


    Gendanken said: "Because the names have been passed around and around among masses that seek peace and stability.
    They do not wish to go out and cross the Hellespoint or slap Europe accross the face with their boldness; they wish to be born, procreate, grow old and die."

    Pride and arrogance are similar in the context of those who "wish to be born, procreate, grow old and die".


    See, this is where a tiny insignifficant language like Slovene makes clear distinctions.
    Pride, as Gendanken means it, would be "ponos" in my language -- and few, few people I would call "ponosni".
    Pride as in 'arrogance' is "napuh, domišljavost" -- and I would call many many people this way.


    (BTW, all these words are native and have a clear etymology:
    "ponos" literally comes from 'carrying oneself with honour',
    "domišljavost" literally comes from 'having illusions of greatness that isn't there',
    "napuh" literally comes from 'what is blown together'.)
     
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  7. water the sea Registered Senior Member

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    QQ,

    It seems that what you are missing here is that in the phrase "to be proud of someone or something", *proud* has a positive connotation.
    But in the phrase "I am proud (without an object)", *proud* has a negative connotation.

    Makes one wonder why pride once has a positive connotation and some other time a negative connotation.


    I gave a link to the sins in my previous post.

    ***

    Jenyar,

    The point is that he CALLED it *pride*, not vanity, nor vainglory, nor superbia!!
    This way, he gave the word "pride" a new meaning.
     
  8. invert_nexus Ze do caixao Valued Senior Member

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    I find it strange that you do not see that that is exactly what we are doing. You must realize, as Rosa has made clear of her definitions of pride in Slovenian, that English is an ambiguous language and subject to misunderstanding. The very fact that pride is both positive and negative is a prime example. And with christian values, it takes on more negative than positive. And, by the way, I think we actually just about have it pretty much worked out. Pride is not conceit and conceit is not pride.

    What he meant by pride. See? That's where the problem is. He seems to have meant something in particular by the word. But, the word being ambiguous, someone can come along later and misuse it.

    What do you mean self-assumed pride is different than pride in one's self? Where does the pride come from if not self-assumed? Reliant on others telling you how worthy you are? Do you think that no one can be conceited if everyone tells them how cool they are?

    In this, I take it you mean that pride and arrogance are purposefully blended together by the sheep?

    Have you ever read Watership Down? It's a book about rabbits. Rabbits that go on a journey to find a new warren when their old one is ******** by man. Along the way, they find a warren full of fat, sleek rabbits. Proud rabbits (or arrogant), rabbits who understood art and poetry. Rabbits who were sophisticated and yet uterly out of touch with rabbitdom. Turns out their warren was a slipknot. A farmer had come up with an idea on how to have rabbit stew every week. Take the refuse of his fields to the edge of the warren and feed the rabbits. Fat and strong. And when he had a hankering for rabbit stew, he would place a shining wire in their path. The rabbits knew this was going on, but they refused to see it. They were living in a wonderful warren, they were eating good, and the only price they had to pay was an occasional death to the farmer. They lost their rabbit ways because these ways would repudiate their actions.

    I'm not entirely sure what I'm saying with that paragraph. But, I think it applies. Don't you? Care to interpret my thoughts?

    Don't have to wonder too far. We can thank Abraham. Or actually, I wonder if Abraham is to blame. The jews are a proud people. It is said that Moses' sin was the sin of pride, but is this a jewish interpretation or a christian one? It seems that it is the christians who have transported meek and humble to heights of glory while spitting on concepts such as ambition and pride. These very traits which were once the glory of the ancient world reduced to mockery by the rabble. By the pöbel-schwindhunde.
     
    Last edited: Jul 15, 2004
  9. Fenris Wolf Banned Banned

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    The aspect of the word "proud" is modified depending on the attitude of the speaker towards what his object is proud of. If you disagree with the basis on which a man says he is proud, then he becomes to you not proud but arrogant.

    For example, a man might say he is proud to be a christian. To a listener who is another christian, the word would assume a positive aspect - if the listener is an atheist, it becomes unthinking arrogance.
     
  10. Jenyar Solar flair Valued Senior Member

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    Everybody should know that a word is never a meaning. The meaning is derived from convention, and convention can differ from culture to culture; religion is part of culture whether you like its influence or not. CS Lewis was certainly justified to use the word in that sense. We have simply become tuphoo about English as a "world language".

    I just don't think it's fair for anyone to look for a "better" meaning using him (or the Bible) as a frame of reference. Its English usage was first recorded in 1010AD, while its usage in the Bible is, or course, far older and more diverse.
    Hebrew words translated as "pride":
    Ga'ah 1342 (verb): 'to rise up, grow up, be exalted in triumph';
    Zuwd (verb) 'to boil, boil up, seethe, act proudly, act presumptuously, act rebelliously, be presumptuous, be arrogant, be rebelliously proud';
    Gabahh 1361 (verb): 1. to be lofty, take pride (good sense) 2. to be haughty, be arrogant (bad sense);
    Ga'own, Ga`avah, Ge'ah, Gevah, etc. (nouns, mas./fem.):
    1. majesty, exaltation, excellence (good sense) 2. pride, arrogance (bad sense);
    Zadown 2087 (noun masculine): pride, insolence, presumptuousness, arrogance;
    Shachats 7830 (noun masculine): dignity, pride (majestic wild beasts; from an unused root apparently meaning to strut)​
    And in the Greek:
    Kauchaomai (verb):
    1. to glory (whether with reason or without)
    2. to glory on account of a thing
    3. to glory in a thing
    Alazoneia (n feminine):
    1. empty, braggart talk;
    2. an insolent and empty assurance, which trusts in its own power and resources and shamefully despises and violates divine laws and human rights;
    3. an impious and empty presumption which trusts in the stability of earthy things
    Huperephania (n feminine):
    1. pride, haughtiness, arrogance;
    2. the character of one who, with a swollen estimate of his own powers or merits, looks down on others and even treats them with insolence and contempt
    Tuphoo (verb):
    1. to raise a smoke, to wrap in a mist; (metaphorical) to make proud, puff up with pride, render insolent
    2. to blind with pride or conceit, to render foolish or stupid; conceited, beclouded, besotted
    And just for good measure:
     
    Last edited: Jul 15, 2004
  11. water the sea Registered Senior Member

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    Fenris Wolf,

    True. Goes the same in my native language too.

    But the trouble with English is that sentences like
    "I am proud of my work." "I am proud of you."
    carry no negative connotation regarding pride.

    While sentences like
    "Anna is proud." "I am proud."
    have an inherent negative meaning of pride.


    ***

    Invert Nexus,

    We can say so.


    No, so I can't make any comments. But from what you've said -- yes, it would apply to the above said.

    ***

    Jenyar,

    Should.
    Multilinguals have easy talking, they know how translating works. Through that, they get the feeling for meaning.
    But if you are inside of one language, and there alone, it seems that words *are* meanings.

    The thing is that none of us multilinguals knows anymore what it is like to be monolingual. We have meta-knowledge of language (whether we are aware of this meta-knowledge or not), which makes us kinda unnatural users of language.
     
  12. invert_nexus Ze do caixao Valued Senior Member

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    9,686
    Now, the latter sentences may not necessarily carry negative connotations. Many would see it as such, I'll admit. But, regardless, you've made an interesting point. That applying pride directly to an individual might be seen as negative. I.e. the individual is proud of themselves. While it is positive to have pride in external objects, people, and traits.

    Him who? Carroll? Or you mean us being so proud as to dare to redefine ambiguous words ourselves? There is a long tradition of altering the meaning of words you know. The first English usage may go back to 1010 AD, but do you think it has stayed stable all that time? And the rest of the language? Svrlleey thou jokest, good sir. Thy langvage hath altered greatly. Far greater than the example I just gave, as well. It was common practice in the old days to write however the hell you felt like it. There were no agreed upon proper spellings. And the language was far different than altered pronouns as I read in a thread somewhere not so long ago.

    Speaking of Carroll. I found this quoted by Rosa in Gendanken's Bradburyan Nightmare thread. I thought it was rather appropriate for this conversation.

    "When *I* use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
    "The question is," said Alice, "whether you *can* make words mean so many different things."
    "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master -- that's all."


    Very apt, I should say. I think this quote might also fit very well into the discussion in the Kaballah thread. Language is merely a tool and should not be allowed to dictate it's will to us. We are the masters and we should dictate our will to it.

    I believe there was another instance with the mad hatter where Alice used this argument, wasn't there? That she may not have said what she meant but she meant what she said?


    ****

    It does seem that perhaps we should also not speak of arrogance and conceit as synonomous. Perhaps they are different concepts as well. Conceit is false pride. Is arrogance an unseemly pride? Does an arrogant person have something to be proud of? But he takes it too far?

    I also note that the old hebrew was ambiguous about pride as well.

    "Gabahh 1361 (verb): 1. to be lofty, take pride (good sense) 2. to be haughty, be arrogant (bad sense);
    Ga'own, Ga`avah, Ge'ah, Gevah, etc. (nouns, mas./fem.): 1. majesty, exaltation, excellence (good sense) 2. pride, arrogance (bad sense);"


    Most of the others were straight up negative. The above were both positive and negative. The following are positive.

    "Ga'ah 1342 (verb): 'to rise up, grow up, be exalted in triumph';
    Shachats 7830 (noun masculine): dignity, pride (majestic wild beasts; from an unused root apparently meaning to strut)"


    Which relates to God, I wonder? Surely the form relating to god couldn't be ambiguous, could it? Leaving the question of god's arrogance open?

    I also note that in many of the definitions it refers to pride as a definition. Getting a bit circular, don't you think? If pride is ambiguous, then using pride to define another word makes this other word ambiguous as well, wouldn't you say?
     
  13. Fenris Wolf Banned Banned

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    You have an advantage being multilingual , Rosa. I have nothing to compare english with.
    The word itself, is merely an adjective, a descriptive word. Gendanken and Invert circled it before, laying some blame on the abrahamic religious beliefs, and they were right to an extent in seeing where the word has become something different. It comes down to the attitude of the listener towards the speaker.

    Take your words written above : "Anna is proud". Spoken by someone who knows and likes Anna, and agrees with her basis for being proud, it is neutral-positive. Spoken by someone who dislikes Anna and sees pride as a sin, then negative. Further, when you write "Anna is proud", it is entirely neutral until another person reads what you've written and interprets the sentence in the light of their own beliefs, or if the writer projects his own beliefs noto it in the light of further description of anna.

    Let's take another example - Picture Napoleon conquering Europe, and a historian writing that he was a proud man.
    If one's basic philosophy is that pride is negative, then that sentence would describe an almost evil man, and the reader would carry a negative image of Napoleon's pride. Here we can see how in the light of Abrahamic religious belief, a part of the way in which Napoleon himself became an evil man.

    If one's philosphy is that pride is not a sin, then the image of Napoleon standing tall and surveying his work comes to mind - a positive image. He becomes an emperor, a figure to be admired for his conviction.

    Such a simple sentence as "Anna is proud" in English is innocent until we project our selves upon it.
     
  14. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    And yet a sense of self worth is essential to self esteem. Is finding your own self worth a statement of "pride"?
     
  15. gendanken Ruler of All the Lands Valued Senior Member

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    QQ:
    Very much so.
    He, wrote Miss Eliot, was like the cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.
    Describes the monotheistic Jew quite nicely.

    *ding*
    Of course not.
    What pride does suggest, in its silence or loudness, is something far simpler and beautiful: personal liberty.

    Rosa:
    Thank god for the rainbows and rainbows of languages, the Germanic languages tend to be cold and ambiguous.

    The Spanish word for pride is "orgullo", rougly also "alegria". When spoken, the speaker's face lights up with a gleam in his eye: Alegria!.
    Cirque de Soleil, quite frankly a modern testament to the creative powers of humanity even if its only a circus, has a show among others that stands out in fortitude, flavor, and imagination. The title? Alegria.
    In French, pride is fierte- can you not see the word forte in it? Strong in Spanish is fuerte.

    Look how these languages salute the healthy vigor in pride. Man's pride.

    Jenyar:
    Wrong, bubba.

    C.S. Lewis has done what Fenris here has pointed out- projected his servitude and humility into an innocent word PRIDE and muddied it with his Christian shennanigans.
     
  16. invert_nexus Ze do caixao Valued Senior Member

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    Oh shit. I got CS Lewis and Lewis Caroll mixed up earlier. Doh! Jenyar, when you get back I mean Lewis not Caroll. Sorry bout that. Had Caroll on my mind because of earlier readings. CS Lewis was the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe guy wasn't he?
     
  17. Jenyar Solar flair Valued Senior Member

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    Not if he had the Hebew or Greek in mind. Check my post. Those interpretations were pre-existent. He didn't "project" them any more than you are projecting your particular non-translation.

    I was wondering about that, but I got your meaning well enough

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

    Yes, CS Lewis is the subject of Shadowlands.

    It might seem ambiguous if you approach it from the outside, with the layman's blind analytical knife. From my list it's clear the original authors weren't inhibited by the ambiguity of English. The reason why there are so many Hebrew words for it is because the words is secondary to the meaning. Have a look at some of the examples on the site Biblical Hebrew. Some of the links seem to be down, unfortunately, but you'll get an idea of the nuances and difficulties involved with translating meaning and not just words. The letters themselves that make up the words have a history of meaning!

    A good example is the "jealous God" translation: Hebrew root word study: Creator. Check out the different translations of Genesis One on the same site.

    PS. You'll see that I said "Hebrew words translated as pride", hence the apparent circularity.
     
  18. gendanken Ruler of All the Lands Valued Senior Member

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    Jenyar:
    You've given us the Hebrew and the Greek, from Kauchaomai to Tuphoo.
    Lewis was schooled in neither Hebrew nor Greek.
    My point stands- he is projecting things into things as anyone would professing their articles of faith disguised as pwetty stowies for the kiddies.
     
    Last edited: Jul 16, 2004
  19. Jenyar Solar flair Valued Senior Member

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    But the thought Lewis employed was deriveed from the translation and cultural application of those words.
     
  20. gendanken Ruler of All the Lands Valued Senior Member

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    No, the thought was *his* and written in the humble resentment of Pride's connotations.
    You've become an apologist.

    *Edit*
    And define non-translation.
    Insomnia beckons.
     
    Last edited: Jul 16, 2004
  21. water the sea Registered Senior Member

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    Okay, then until we have worked out a definition of pride, we can work with the French terms "fierté" for 'self-respect' and "orgueuil" for 'vanity', or the Spanish "fuerte" and "orgullo".


    And just BTW: One-language dictionaries like we know them today are a relatively new thing. The first dictionaries were bilingual, or multilingual.
    The word "cat", for example, was not explained as 'kind of a small, fur-covered animal that is often kept as a pet'; older dictionaries had such entries:
    English: cat -- German: die Katze -- French: le chat -- Latin: feles, is.

    Explaining, defining the meaning of a word in the same language this word is used in, is eventually impossible; in the same language, we grasp the meaning of a word intuitively, and then work from there into more details.
     
  22. Jenyar Solar flair Valued Senior Member

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    No, the thought was according to cultural connotations, not personal ones. Let's see if CS Lewis was the culprit.

    English proverb: pride will come to a fall.
    Benjamin Franklin: Pride that dines on vanity sups on contempt.
    George Washington: At other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility, instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives.
    Les Miserables: To this celestial tenderness, he opposed pride, which is the fortress of evil in man.
    The Scarlet Letter: This might be pride, but was so like humility, that it produced all the softening influence of the latter quality on the public mind.

    It seems that the positive sense of pride is a politically correct redeployment, such as "gay pride" or "national pride". It's applied in compensation for the opposite, which in this case isn't "humility" but "inferiority". Not that there's anything wrong with redeeming the word, as invert said: language changes. But to ascribe the negative meaning as Christian-imposed is absurd. If you ask me, its stigma comes from the irresponsible generalization and secularization of religious ideas. The first time I heard about the "seven deadly sins" it was from an atheist.

    "Non-translation"... a translation that doesn't rely on the criteria of accurate translation, but rather on the emotional - and acontextual - weight of the (already translated) word. I just invented that. It's a "non-definition".
     
  23. Jenyar Solar flair Valued Senior Member

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    Pride is a scared word in the middle of a two-way street. In one lane it is positive, in the other it is negative.

    I propose we check the direction of the traffic when we talk about it.
     

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