Elsevier

New Ideas in Psychology

Volume 25, Issue 3, December 2007, Pages 233-252
New Ideas in Psychology

Wittgenstein and the grammar of pride: The relevance of philosophy to studies of self-evaluative emotions

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.newideapsych.2007.03.003Get rights and content

Abstract

In this paper, Wittgenstein's philosophical approach and remarks are used to highlight features of pride that are not represented in contemporary psychological theories. Wittgenstein's scattered philosophical and autobiographical remarks on pride are arranged in order to engage with aspects of pride (e.g., as a self-conscious emotion) that can appear to have only empirical answers. Important themes to emerge in the resulting surview include the temptation to talk of pride as having or being a structure, the role of personal context in understanding intense emotions, the difficulty of finding a referent for proud feelings, choices of words to convey or capture feelings, the possibility of further descriptions of one's inner experiences, bodily and immediate features of the experience of pride, and the need to reconcile occasional immediate bodily and behavioural manifestations of pride with the popular view of pride as a “thoughtful” emotion. The results suggest that new perspectives can emerge through assembling reminders of the everyday use of a concept and engaging with existing research.

Introduction

In giving all these examples I am not aiming at some kind of completeness, some classification of psychological concepts. They are meant only to enable the reader to shift for himself when he encounters conceptual difficulties. (Wittgenstein, 1958, p. 206e)

The subject of pride might appear, at first glance, to have few connexions with Wittgenstein's philosophy (Wittgenstein (1958), Wittgenstein (1961), Wittgenstein (1980a), Wittgenstein (1980b), Wittgenstein (1980c)). Proud feelings could be regarded as a topic which is now very much the domain of psychologists (when viewed through the general lens of high or low self-esteem) and less of an issue for religious and spiritual counsel. Such perspectives, however, ignore the everyday nature of pride as an experience in many western and non-western cultures. While pride can be mundane it can also be of extraordinary interest to any person who has “acted out of pride,” experienced the thrill of a personal victory, or received a personal sleight. Moreover, any person who has read Iris Murdoch's The Philosopher's Pupil, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, watched the Hal 9000 computer in Kubrick's 2001: A space odyssey or seen Bart Simpson proclaim (on a children's poster) “Underachiever and proud of it!” would have, at some point and on some level, understood, used and perhaps even refined their view of pride. If we include the issue of national pride, it appears that the newspapers of many western countries constantly flag pride as an issue of local, national and international identity in many banal and not necessarily emotional and patriotic ways (i.e., pride is not just created at “peak” moments around gold medals and international triumphs; see Billig, 1995).

Philosophers and psychologists have contributed to our understanding of pride. David Hume (1967), for example, analysed pride in manner which seemed to anticipate contemporary cognitive theories in philosophy and psychology. Rousseau (1984) wrote about pride as an emotion that occurred in humans only recently when they began to compare themselves with other humans. More recently, pride has been explored in relation to humility (Rorty, 1990) and as a sin which is intimately connected with shame (Pattison, 2000). Pride has also been examined as an example of specific functions of positive emotions (i.e., to broaden an individual's momentary thought-action repertoire and to build physical, intellectual and social resources; Fredrickson, 1998). Psychologists such as Lewis (1999) and Tangney (1999) have explored pride from a variety of theoretical and empirical perspectives. For example, Lewis (1999) presented an account of pride in which cognitive appraisals—individual comparisons of one's behaviour with an internalised standard, rule or goal—are the primary causal determinants of subsequent proud behaviour. In addition, experiments have focused on the expressive features of pride and examined correlates or what might be called symptoms of pride such as elevated heart-rate, raised head, upright posture (e.g., in such activities as playing a computer game; van Reekum et al., 2004).

Other accounts attempt to place it within general theories such as Tracy and Robin's (2004a) treatment of pride in terms of the development of self-conscious emotions. From this perspective, pride is regarded as having a similar basis to the emotions of embarrassment, guilt and shame in that it appears to be a late developing emotion (rather than basic or innate) which requires, developmentally and perhaps logically, a self to be the subject and object of a judgment or evaluation. The description of pride as an emotion of self-evaluation indicates a focus that has been explored generally as the social psychology topic of reflexivity and emotions (Rosenberg, 1990). This approach generally views emotions as internal states that are subject to a variety of indirect self-directed social, cognitive and physiological processes by which individuals control, limit or exacerbate particular emotional reactions. Other sociological research and theorizing also tend to emphasise features of self-referentiality (Rosenberg, 1990) but connect this with identity formation and construction (Britt & Heise, 2000), social norms and relationships between individuals and large groups such as nations and cultures. Occasionally, this work is presented in paradoxical terms. For example, Scheff (1990) has argued that pride and shame are ubiquitous but rarely expressed in social interactions.

Given this range of relevant sociological, social psychological, and psychological work, exploring Wittgenstein's limited remarks on pride and the related philosophical method might not seem to contribute something new. However, exploration of specific features of pride often in isolation from others (or without consideration for connexions between these different foci) has led to a plethora of contradictory pictures. Such fragmentation, I will argue, describes the field of contemporary studies of pride and indicates the extent to which both philosophical theories and psychological theorizing and experimentation have misrepresented the social and personal meaning of pride. Moreover, in contrast to the aim of producing a complete multidisciplinary account of pride, Wittgenstein's (1958) remarks towards the end of the Philosophical Investigations indicate that such “completion” falsifies the very phenomena we set out to investigate (in this case, the notion of “expert judgment” about the genuineness of expressions of feeling; p. 227e). Wittgenstein implies that a conceptual survey can lead to an improved ability to recognise and discriminate one's judgment about emotions in contrast to the effects of a narrowly defined investigation. Moreover, while Wittgenstein offers general remarks about particular psychological concepts and the circumstances of their use, these remarks are still very different from the general theories and specific hypotheses explored in psychology.

The case for a Wittgensteinian perspective on the subject of pride will be argued in the following manner. First, an account of Wittgenstein and pride will be presented which engages with the notion of philosophy as a grammatical and therapeutic form of investigation for philosophers, psychologists and others. This section introduces some of Wittgenstein's remarks on pride and sets up the subsequent sections, including first person and third person accounts of pride as well as related notions of proto-conversation and context. Second, examples of theories and studies of pride from psychology and related disciplines will be explored from the perspective of a grammatical approach. The arguments here address specific features of pride, which have been singled out for attention in psychological work—to the detriment of what Wittgenstein called a surview of the concept. Issues which can be examined within a Wittgensteinian framework include the role of pride in a person's life, issues of duration and experience, the “thoughtful” nature of pride, and expressive and proto-conversational features of pride. Third, a summary will bring together these themes and reiterate the Wittgensteinian admonition to attend closely to concept use as well as for philosophers and psychologists to have a rich diet of examples.

Section snippets

Wittgenstein's philosophy of grammatical description and pride

In Culture and Value, Wittgenstein (1980a) noted that “the edifice of your pride has to be dismantled. And that means frightful work” (p. 30e). The first example is interesting because Wittgenstein himself connects personal aims and experiences with the point of philosophy as a practise. In effect, Wittgenstein raises the question “what is there for a philosopher to be proud of?” Two further things are remarkable. First, Wittgenstein demonstrated the personal features of a self-critical stance

Pride in the context of one's life

Pride may be a large or small part of a person's life. As an example of the former, Wittgenstein's examination of his own pride is consistent with his ethical preoccupation with leading a good life and his remarks also demonstrate how difficult it is to represent pride clearly. According to Monk (1990):

…though he regarded ethics as a realm in which nothing was sayable, Wittgenstein did indeed think and say a great deal about moral problems. In fact, his life might be said to have been dominated

Pride and personal features

However, Kafka's literary example might still seem to confirm the picture, which informs mainstream psychological accounts of individuals immersed in their own private, emotional experiences:

Although people may appear to be referring to the same experiences when they use emotional terms, ultimately such internal experiences are unique and incommunicable. Just as there is no way to know whether my experience of thirst or pain or colour is the same as yours, so there is no way of knowing whether

Conversational and bodily features of pride

The importance of according with convention does not stop psychologists from arguing that there is a crucial cognitive process that connects emotional expression and identification. In contrast to talk about language-games and the potential to add revealing detail to a description of a recent or past experience, psychologists do not merely want to describe a language-game: they want to say something more specific about the ability that supposedly allows us to make the transition from private

Pride as a potentially “thoughtful” and “immediate” emotion

One of the more complicated problems when dealing with pride and its embodied features is the nature of ostensibly related cognitive processes. An important general point about cognition made by Harré and Gillett (1994) is worth repeating before beginning the more specific project of examining “thoughtful” and “immediate” aspects of pride: “The word cognition has come to be the generic term for all kinds of higher level activities, many of which could not reasonably be identified as “thought”

Conclusion

Although Wittgenstein's remarks on pride are scattered and do not appear to target a specific philosophical or psychological theory, when placed within the context of his later philosophy they do indicate how Wittgenstein might engage with the work of contemporary theorists. Moreover, Wittgenstein's autobiographical examples and analyses indicate the types of complexities that need to be addressed in any sufficiently rich and nuanced account of pride. The fact that a variety of psychology

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank an anonymous reviewer and Terri Sullivan for useful suggestions on the manuscript. Completion of this article was supported by an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship and the Free University Berlin.

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