Great IdeasLiving well
Ambition and pride
The drive to be great, and how it can lift a person up or bring them down.
The question
Is the wish to be great a good thing or a danger? When does ambition lift a person up, and when does pride bring them down?
How the books answer
Oldest first. Each stop is our own short summary of what the author argued; follow the link to the rung for the whole lesson.
c. 750 BC (from older oral poetry)
Homer, The Iliad
The Iliad begins with wounded pride. King Agamemnon takes Achilles' prize, and Achilles, insulted, refuses to fight, so many of his friends die. Homer shows honor as a real good worth wanting, and pride as a force that can ruin the very people who prize honor most.
“Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans.”
c. 441–401 BC
Sophocles, Oedipus the King
Oedipus saved Thebes by solving the Sphinx's riddle, and he trusts his own cleverness completely. He rushes to find a murderer and angrily rejects warnings, only to learn the truth about himself. Sophocles ends with a warning about great fortune.
“What citizen did not gaze on his fortune with envy?”
c. AD 100–120
Plutarch, The Lives: Romulus, Coriolanus, the Gracchi, Cicero, Caesar, Antony and the other Romans
Plutarch's Julius Caesar is a man of huge ambition and talent. Passing a poor village, Caesar jokes that he would rather be first there than second in Rome. Plutarch admires his gifts but shows how his drive for first place helped bring civil war and his own murder.
“To which Cæsar made answer seriously, “For my part, I had rather be the first man among these fellows, than the second man in Rome.””
AD 413–426
Augustine of Hippo, The City of God
Augustine sees pride, the love of self above God, as the root of the earthly city. Rome's love of glory, he grants, produced real achievements. But he holds that humility, not glory, is the way to the heavenly city.
“Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self.”
c. 1308–1321
Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Purgatorio
On the first terrace of Dante's mountain of Purgatory, the proud walk bent under heavy stones, learning humility. Dante meets a famous artist of painted books who admits that his fame has already passed to another. Dante, aware of his own pride as a poet, walks bent alongside them for a while.
c. 1606
William Shakespeare, Macbeth
Macbeth is a brave soldier until witches tell him he will be king. His ambition, urged on by his wife, leads him to murder, and one crime leads to another. He admits that nothing drives him but ambition itself.
“I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself And falls on th' other—”
1667
John Milton, Paradise Lost
Milton's Satan refuses to bow to God's Son and leads a rebellion in heaven. Cast out, he still insists he can make his own heaven by force of mind. Milton gives Satan grand speeches, so readers feel the pull of pride, and then shows where it leads.
“The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.”
1851
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
Captain Ahab lost his leg to the white whale and wants revenge more than anything. He will not turn back, even when Starbuck begs him to think of their families. His proud will drives the whole crew toward disaster.
1925
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Jay Gatsby rises from a poor farm boy to a rich man with a mansion, all to win back the woman he loves. His dream is huge and hopeful, but it rests on wealth, show and a past he cannot bring back. Fitzgerald leaves readers torn between admiring Gatsby and pitying him.
For young readers
It is good to want to do great things, like win a race, write a book or help people. That wish is called ambition. Being proud of hard work you did well is good too.
But pride can turn bad when it makes us think we are better than others or that we can never be wrong. In many great stories, a hero's bad pride makes them stop listening, and that leads to a fall. Think of someone who brags so much that they stop practicing and lose the game.
Talk about it
- What is the difference between being proud of your work and being too proud?
- Macbeth and Ahab would not listen to warnings. Why is it hard to listen when we're proud?
- Caesar wanted to be first. Is it bad to want to be the best?
- Can you think of a story where someone learned humility?
- Milton makes Satan sound impressive. Why might a writer make a bad character sound grand?
Where else on the site
Every rung tagged with this idea:
These pages are our own short synthesis, written for families. They were inspired by Mortimer J. Adler's Syntopicon, the index of great ideas in volumes 1 and 2 of Great Books of the Western World, but the questions, summaries and groupings are ours, not the Syntopicon's. Short excerpts come from public-domain translations, credited where they appear.