Pride: The Seven Deadly Sins (New York Public Library Lectures in Humanities) - Softcover

Dyson, Michael Eric

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195312104 ISBN 13: 9780195312102

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2006

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. Dyson also looks at less savory aspects of national pride. Since 9/11, he notes, we 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 our 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 nation's foremost public intellectuals, illuminates this many-sided human emotion, one that can be an indispensable virtue or a deadly sin.

About this title

About the Author

Michael Eric Dyson is Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities, and Professor of Religious Studies and Africana Studies, at the University of Pennsylvania. An ordained Baptist minister, he is the author of twelve books, including the New York Times bestselling Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind? and Mercy, Mercy Me: The Art, Loves, and Demons of Marvin Gaye, as well as Holler If You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur. He is a contributing editor at Christian Century.

From Publishers Weekly

In the final book in a collaborative series between the New York Public Library and Oxford University Press on the seven deadly sins, Dyson examines pride in its many iterations, invoking pop culture icons and events to lend accessibility to a potentially didactic subject. (Francine Prose wrote earlier of gluttony, Wendy Wasserstein of sloth...) "If pride is a sin," Dyson writes, "it is no ordinary sin, to be sure." Indeed, Dyson, a prolific author, professor at the University of Pennsylvania and an ordained Baptist minister, takes his time in explicating the virtues and dangers of pride. Although an initial chapter on the "philosophical and religious roots of pride" proves less than engaging, Dyson's discussions of "personal pride," "white pride," "black pride" and "national pride" are thoughtful and exhibit a fine balance of scholarship and philosophizing. In the black pride section, the book's liveliest, Dyson (Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?) talks about political figures such as Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice and the effects they do and do not have on the black electorate. He analyzes Halle Berry's and Denzel Washington's acceptance speeches at the 2002 Academy Awards, concluding one was "brave," the other "cool." Readers already familiar with the "sins" series will welcome this final volume, as will those interested in issues of race.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0195312104
• ISBN 13: 9780195312102
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160