Yes,
Eomer, I think it is possible that heroes can work without pride. A hero can be motivated by many things other than pride and that can be to the exclusion of pride.
I think, though, that the pride I'm referring to above is self-pride, or that 'inordinate self-esteem' found in the dictionary. It is perhaps, as you suggested,
Eomer, no more than a trick of our language, though, that I make this distinction. I have- unbelievably- just had a look through the King James Version Concordance, and every instance of the word pride or proud etc is negative. As an example:
Quote:
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"God resisteth the proud..." Jas 4:6
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I'm not entirely sure that pride hasn't developed in our language to in fact include aspects it did not originally encompass. For example, pride in one's country is patriotism, not pride. It is a slackness of language today that we have allowed ourselves to simply say it's pride- because it's not.