Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [82]
Pharisaism
The gravest case, therefore, is that of the Pharisee, who boasts of his piety and of his being “a just man” before the Lord. He would feed his self-infatuation with the highest values, and pass for glorious not merely in the judgment of his fellow men and of himself but in that of God. His motto is, “O God, I give Thee thanks that I am not as the rest of men” (Luke 18:11). This type of pride, again, is a specifically malignant one, though not in the same degree as satanic pride. The Pharisee, too, is hardened, and incapable of loving kindness and self-surrender.
Self-righteousness
Compared with him, a person who is merely self-righteous in the narrower sense of the term seems less vicious. Though equal to the Pharisee in that he, too, advertises his moral accomplishments, he at least does not abuse the very highest values—sanctity and justness (in the Old Testament sense)—but contents himself with the values of natural morality. He rejoices not in his stature before God, but in his self-respect and in the social figure he cuts: the respect he supposes others pay him. Men of this kind also take pleasure in contemplating the defects of others, against which their own superiority stands out more glowingly. In them, too, there lives an evil resentment, not against value as such, to be sure, but against the virtues of others, which they experience as a threat to their self-glory. Although, as has been said, the merely self-righteous person is by one degree less execrable than the Pharisee, his attitude is still one of the prototypes of all morally damnable conduct and it insults God, Although Satanism as well as Pharisaism proper remain excluded, self-righteousness makes a person obdurate and void of love to the extent that it takes hold of him.
Lesser forms of self-complacency
Self-complacency centered on intellectual values, however, is incomparably more harmless. A man who glories in his erudition, his acumen, or his genius, a man whose ambition it is to be deemed remarkable, presents at any rate a much milder case of moral aberration.
Again, he whose pride is related to his wealth, his title of nobility, or the public honors awarded to him, is tainted with even less malice. The lower a value, the more stupid it is to be conceited on its account and to derive from it a consciousness of counting for much or a feeling of self-glory—the more stupid, but at the same time the less evil.
This ostensible paradox finds its explanation in the law of ethics stating that the moral evil inherent in the abuse of values is directly proportionate to the height of the value.
Why some forms of self-complacency are more harmless than others
Similarly, the less we may claim a value as representing a merit on our part—in other words, the less we, as free beings, are responsible for its possession—the more stupid it will be on our part to exhibit conceit on its score; yet, the more harmless from a moral point of view will be the pride involved in that conceit. The more we are proud of a value which (as is true of moral values) requires our active participation and effort to be realized, the more reprehensible our pride will be.
This second paradox is accounted for by the fact that our attribution of value to ourselves means a glorification of self in a much stricter and deeper sense whenever the values in question presuppose our free and active—as it were, creative—participation.
Here God has called on us to cooperate with Him; here He has elevated us to the uppermost plane. To abuse this high gift and requite it with a warped response is what makes our pride guilty of a more particular degree of malice.
It must be considered, in