By Stephen D’Arcy
Self-righteousness is a special case of being self-satisfied, complacent, smug. But here, the smug complacency refers specifically to a person’s belief that he or she complies, to a higher than normal degree, with the demands of some strict moral standard. This claimed moral superiority in turn is supposed to justify an attitude of scorn or disdain toward others, who supposedly fail to respect this high standard and in this way discredit themselves.
Importantly, self-righteousness differs from simple “righteousness” — the insistence on doing the right thing, simply because it is the right thing — ivice rather than a virtue. Why, though, is self-righteousness a vice, not a virtue?
It is a vice for at least three reasons:
1. First, because the self-righteous person helps himself or herself to a higher standing than his or her peers, and so claims to be superior, almost in the manner of a “saint,” whereas we only accept the standing of moral superior as an honorific status to be conferred on rare individuals by others, not a self-appointed status to be claimed presumptuously and unilaterally for oneself;
2. Second, because the smug complacency implies a confidence that one has little or no work to do to improve one’s own conduct and character, and thereby reveals a lack of concern for self-improvement, a confidence placed in doubt by the very behaviour that embodies it, since that behaviour itself is open to criticism and calls for correction; and
3. Third, because the most common marker or indicator of self-righteousness is the ostentatious stance of self-appointed judge, issuing explicit or implicit decrees of condemnation toward others, for their supposed failings, and this ‘judgmental’ stance reveals a lack of insight about or awareness of the universality of failings and shortcomings that motivate one’s finger-pointing, but on the contrary presumes that such failings are unique to the judged, and have no parallel in the words and deeds of the judge.
Now, it is sometimes said that social-justice-oriented political activists are particularly prone to self-righteousness. I’m not sure whether or not they are unusually quick to indulge in this sort of thing. But I do believe that it is widespread, and certainly no less typical of activists than of others. And that’s a problem, because it obviously undermines what they are trying to achieve, if (as I hope) they are trying to draw in wider circles of people, and to break out of activist subcultures to engage with the larger world. Clearly, a self-righteous attitude will deter engagement, on one’s own part, since one looks down on others and therefore won’t see them as potential comrades and partners in a common struggle; and it will also deter engagement on the part of others, because they will find one’s self-righteousness to be offensive and indicative of some activists’ contempt for ordinary people. Self-righteousness, in short, undermines both the interest of activists in engaging with the wider world, and the willingness of the wider world to be engaged by activists.