An excerpt from chapter 8 on Virtue from Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand by Leonard Peikoff.
“Pride” is the commitment to achieve one’s own moral perfection.
“Man,” writes Ayn Rand,
faces two corollary, interdependent fields of action in which a constant exercise of choice and a constant creative process are demanded of him: the world around him and his own soul. … Just as he has to produce the material values he needs to sustain his life, so he has to acquire the values of character that enable him to sustain it and that make his life worth living. … He has to … survive by shaping the world and himself in the image of his values.
The virtue of productiveness is concerned with the former of these requirements; the virtue of pride is concerned with the latter.
A producer must struggle to create the …
Read the rest in Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand.
