Pride: The Seven Deadly Sins - Softcover

Dyson, Michael Eric

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195312104 ISBN 13: 9780195312102

Publisher: OUP USA, 2007

Synopsis

Oxford and the New York Public Library bring together seven prominent writers and thinkers to pen book-length meditations that illuminate both sin and sinner. Of the Seven Deadly Sins, pride is the only one with a virtuous side. When taken too far, as Michael Eric Dyson shows in "Pride," these virtues become deadly sins. Dyson probes the philosophical and theological roots of pride in examining its transformation in Western culture

About this title

Review:

A highly personal but strikingly honest book. (Paul Crichton, The Times Literary Supplement)

Synopsis:

Of the seven deadly sins, pride is the only one with a virtuous side. It is certainly a good thing to have pride in one's country, in one's community, in oneself. But when taken too far, as Michael Eric Dyson shows in Pride, these virtues become deadly sins. Dyson, named by Ebony magazine as one of the 100 most influential African Americans, here looks at the many dimensions of pride. Ranging from Augustine and Aquinas, MacIntyre and Hauerwas, to Niebuhr and King, Dyson offers a thoughtful, multifaceted look at this "virtuous vice." He probes the philosophical and theological roots of pride in examining its transformation in Western culture. Dyson discusses how black pride keeps blacks from being degraded and excluded by white pride, which can be invisible, unspoken, but nonetheless very powerful. Dyson also offers a moving glimpse into the teachers and books that shaped his personal pride and vocation. He also looks at less savoury aspects of national pride. Since 9/11, Americans have had to close ranks.

But the collective embrace of all things American, to the exclusion of anything else, has taken the place of a much richer, much more enduring, much more profound version of love of country. This unchecked pride asserts the supremacy of America above all others--elevating national beliefs above any moral court in the world--and attacking critics of American foreign policy as unpatriotic and even traitorous. Hubris, temerity, arrogance--the unquestioned presumption that one's way of life defines how everyone else should live--pride has many destructive manifestations. In this engaging and energetic volume, Michael Eric Dyson, one of the America's foremost public intellectuals, illuminates this many-sided human emotion, one that can be an indispensable virtue or a deadly sin.

About this edition

• Publisher: OUP USA
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0195312104
• ISBN 13: 9780195312102
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160