Pride Emotion vs. Humility Emotion

Both Pride and Humility are psychological state of  mind. They are opposites, but, in a contradicting way, their definition is very similar, because they are both based on emotions or on way of thinking.

Pride can be seen as a quality or as a fault depending on your interlocutor. According to some old European philosophers, Pride is a virtue. Both Aristotle and Nietzsche were identifying pride as the number one virtue. They were both saying that a man who’s proud is a man who can see himself worthy of great things. So it defines it as a very important quality. Aristotle was also saying that pride makes people more powerful, and put them more likely in a position of success. This thought is well-founded because it is no secret that people who have a very positive thought about their own abilities or their successful future are more likely to be reach their goals, or at least, to reach higher goals than anybody else. As Nietzsche was saying : “without pride, we will remain subservient”. This is real, but  this point of view is philosophic.

If we think about pride as an emotion, it has a pretty negative connotation. When an emotion, pride means that you have negative thoughts about other people. In this case, it shows a strong sense of superiority and also generates destructive comments about other people.

Also, religious people do not see pride as a quality, but as the sin of sins. And this sin, according to religion is the sin that turned a cherub of God into Lucifer. Whereas humility is defined as a very positive value in religion and spirituality. On a psychological aspect, humility means that one is unpretentious and modest. It very often represents someone who does not think that he or she is better or more important that others.

Both of these emotions or state of mind have positive and negative connotations, depending if you are more spiritual than philosopher.