The Love of Praise and Dread of Blame Simplified

Praise is different from Praisworthiness, Blame is different from Blameworthiness

⁸ Man naturally desires to be loved and dreads to be hated.

• He wants praise and praiseworthiness, even if he should be praised by nobody
• He dreads blame and blame-worthiness, even if he should be blamed by nobody

⁹ The love of praise-worthiness does not come from the love of praise. Those 2 principles resemble, are connected, and often blended with one another.

• Yet they are distinct and independent in many respects.

Emulation

¹⁰ We naturally love people that we approve of. This love makes us want:

• to be as amiable and admirable as them, and
• to become the objects of similar agreeable feelings.

Emulation is the anxious desire that we ourselves should excel.

• It is originally founded in our admiration of the excellence of others.

We are not satisfied with being merely admired for what other people are admired. We ourselves must be admirable for what they are admirable. To do this, we must:

• become the impartial spectators of our own character and
• view it as other people would.

We are happy if our character appears as how we want them to appear to others.

• Their approbation confirms our own self-approbation.
• Their praise strengthens our own sense of our own praiseworthiness.

In this case, the love of praise-worthiness is not derived from the love of praise. The love of praise thus seems to be derived from the love of praise-worthiness.

¹¹ The most sincere praise gives little pleasure if it is not a proof of praiseworthiness. We will not be satisfied if a man admires us by mistake.

A woman who wears makeup gets compliments for her complexion. We expect that these compliments should mortify her instead, by the contrast between her makeup and her real complexion. Being pleased with such groundless applause is vanity.

• It is a proof of the most superficial levity and weakness.
• It is the foundation of the most ridiculous and contemptible vices of:
  • affectation and
  • common lying.

The following are pleased with the applause that they get:

• the liar who gets admired by adventure stories which never existed,
• the vain man who gives himself airs of rank and distinction.

But their vanity arises from so gross an illusion of the imagination.

It is hard to understand how any rational creature could be imposed on by it.

When they think of the people who they think they have deceived, they give the highest admiration for themselves.

They look on themselves as how they think their companions actually look at them, not as how they know they should appear. Their superficial weakness hinder them:

• from ever looking inwards, or
• from seeing themselves as despicable.

Their own consciences would tell them that they would appear descicable to those who knew the truth.

¹² Groundless praise can give no solid joy.

On the contrary, we feel assured when we know that our conduct deserved praise even if no praise was given We are pleased with praise and with doing what is praise-worthy. We are mortified if we merited the blame of other people even if that feeling should never actually be exerted against us.

The man who knows that his own actions are proper, is satisfied on the propriety of his own behaviour. When he views it in the light viewed by the impartial spectator, he thoroughly enters into all the motives which influenced it. He looks back on every part of it with approbation.

Mankind might never knew what he did. But he sees himself more as how people regard him if they knew, and not how they actually see him. Men have voluntarily thrown away life to acquire a renown which they could no longer enjoy after death. Their imagination anticipated:

• that fame to be bestowed on them,
• those applauses which they would never hear,

• the thoughts of that admiration, whose effects they were never to feel.

These:

• played about their hearts,
• banished the strongest of all natural fears, and
• led them to perform actions almost beyond the reach of human nature.

But in reality, there is no great difference between:

• that approbation which would not be bestowed until we can no longer enjoy it, and
• that approbation which would only be bestowed if the world understood the real circumstances of our behaviour.

If the one often produces such violent effects, we cannot wonder that the other should always be highly regarded. The love of Praise and Praisworthiness, and Dread of Blame and blameworthiness come from Nature

¹³ When Nature formed man for society, she endowed him with:

• an original desire to please, and
• an original aversion to offend his brethren.

She taught him to feel:

• pleasure in their favourable regard, and
• pain in their unfavourable regard.

She rendered:

• their approbation most agreeable to him for its own sake, and
• their disapprobation most offensive.

¹⁴ But this desire of approbation and aversion to disapprobation could not alone have rendered him fit for society. Accordingly, Nature has endowed him with:

• a desire of being approved of, and This desire could only have made him wish to appear to be fit for society. This could only have prompted him to:
• the affectation of virtue, and
• the concealment of vice.
• a desire of being what should be approved of; or of being what he himself approves of in other men.

This desire was necessary to:

• render him anxious to be really fit, and
• inspire him with:
  • the real love of virtue, and
  • the real abhorrence of vice.

In every well-formed mind, this second desire seems to be the strongest of the two. It is only the weakest and most superficial who can be much delighted with that praise which they know they do not deserve. A weak man may sometimes be pleased with it, but a wise man always rejects it. A wise man feels little pleasure from praise where he knows there is no praise-worthiness.

But he often feels the highest pleasure in doing what he knows to be praise-worthy, though he knows that no praise is ever to be bestowed on it. To obtain mankind’s approbation where no approbation is due, can never be important to him. To obtain that approbation where it is really due, may sometimes be not important to him.

But to be that thing which deserves approbation, must always be the most important.

¹⁵ To desire, or even to accept of praise, where no praise is due, can be the effect only of the most contemptible vanity.

To desire it where it is really due, is to desire justice to be done to us. Even a wise man is worthy of the love of just fame, true glory, even for its own sake, independent of any advantage from it.

However, he sometimes neglects and even despises it.

He does not neglect it only when he is perfectly sure of the perfect propriety of his own conduct. In this case, his self-approbation does not need any confirmation from the approbation of other men.

It is sufficient alone, and he is contented with it.

This self-approbation, if not the only, is at least the principal object which he can or should be anxious about.

The love of it, is the love of virtue.