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Being Unimpressed with Ourselves: Reconceiving Humility

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Abstract

I first sketch an account of humility as a character trait in which we are unimpressed with our good, envied, or admired features, achievements, etc., where these lack significant salience for our image of ourselves, because of the greater prominence of our limitations and flaws. I situate this view among several other recent conceptions of humility (also called modesty), dividing them between the inward-directed and outward-directed, distinguish mine from them, pose problems for each alternative account, and show how my understanding of humility captures truths present but exaggerated in several of them. Responding to some problems for my view, including what I call “Driver’s Paradox”(i.e., the strangeness of someone’s proclaiming ‘I’m humble!’), I suggest that some over-ambitious claims about our moral responsibilities may indicate a lack of proper humility. I discuss the relationship of the character trait of humility both to what humiliates and to what humbles, concluding with consideration of the background assumptions against which, and the circumstances in which, humility may reasonably be classified as a moral virtue.

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Notes

  1. Humility, which I will treat as identical with at least some of the states we also call modesty, thus involves both affective and doxastic states, what someone cares about and also what she concentrates on intellectually. Of modesty, Nuyen insists it is “unhelpful to equate it with humility.” However, he explicitly concedes that “[w]ithout further argument, I take it that humility involves an underestimation of one’s achievements.” (Later, he puts the point more weakly, equating humility only with a “low [not necessarily an under-] estimation of one’s worth with respect to some ideal.” (Nuyen, 1998, pp. 101, 108) Below, I rebut both the account of humility that Nuyen’s article presupposes and the conception of modesty it defends. So, the issue should remain open whether, properly conceived, humility is the same as one of the things we name ‘modesty’.

  2. Driver thinks she finds a similar account in the recent literature. “Recently, G. F. Schueler has suggested that the modest [humble] person is someone who doesn’t care about his or her genuine accomplishments insofar as they are his or her accomplishments.” (Driver, 2001, p. 23) In fact, however, the position Schueler’s text advances is different in a significant way from that Driver imputes to him. He writes, “[M]y suggestion is this: Someone who is genuinely modest ... doesn’t care whether people are impressed with her for her accomplishments. That is, she lacks a certain desire or set of desires, namely, that people be impressed by her for what she has accomplished.” (Schueler, 1997, pp. 478–479) The crucial issue for my account of humility/modesty, in contrast with Schueler’s, is not whether or how much someone cares about others’ view of her, but rather the ways in which she intellectually and affectively attends to herself. This concerns her doxastic and affective states, while Schueler designates his own “a form of desire account.” (Schueler, 1997, p. 481)

    Prof Yang Xiao, now of Kenyon College, has suggested to me in conversation that, at least in Confucian thought, such conduct as someone’s downplaying her achievements lest certain others get insufficient credit for their contributions or others feel ashamed of themselves for lesser achievements, also counts as humility. I think these goals may be internal to some kinds of humility, but the conduct is humble only derivatively.

  3. This grounding will usually comprise both causal maintenance and justification, but it is the motivational connection I have chiefly in mind. I should make it explicit that I do not claim that someone humble about a feature or achievement cannot also be aware of, pleased with, or grateful for it. She just cannot make too much of it in her thinking about herself; it cannot, in general of itself, dominate or be salient there, though there may be reason on particular occasions for her to attend to it.

  4. “Being humble about [some] traits is not necessarily to be a humble person, since we easily overlook our failings and compartmentalize disparate aspects of our lives. In the same person, humility about flaws can easily coexist with arrogance about merits. But arrogance about merits disqualifies you from being considered a humble person.” (Snow, 1995, p. 210)

  5. A humble person need not be humble about everything but if she takes great pride in her own most striking talent, or takes excessive pride in any, she can hardly count as possessing the character trait of humility.

  6. Driver concedes that “humility is closely akin to modesty [because t]he humble person has a tendency to avoid vanity, arrogance, boastfulness, and so on.” (Driver, 2001, p. 114) Nevertheless, she thinks them different because “a humble person, unlike a modest person, can paint an accurate, though perhaps unflattering, picture of herself [while t]he modest person needs to underestimate.” (Driver, 2001, p. 115) Plainly, this way of distinguishing humility from modesty presupposes Driver’s own underestimation account, which is no less problematic when offered explicitly as an account of modesty than it is for humility. It is strange to think modesty a virtue when it requires not simply ignorance but what Driver calls “a dogmatic disposition” to it, which seems to be epistemically vicious.

  7. Driver, 2001, pp. 18, 19.

  8. Driver, 1989, p. 378; compare Flanagan, 1996, p. 174. Also see Anscombe’s interpretation of Sidgwick, to whom she attributes the view that “humility consists of underestimating your own merits.” (Anscombe, 1958) In fact, Sidgwick claims only that this is “generally said” and “the common view,” but rightly holds it “somewhat paradoxical” and “seem[ingly] strange” that this should be a virtue, because in “the opinions we form of ourselves ... as in other opinions we ought to aim at nothing but Truth.” (Sidgwick, 1907, pp. 334, 335) What merit he attributes to what he takes to be this “common view” of humility lies in the good effects he finds in repressing our tendencies both to “self-admiration” and to demanding of others signs of their admiration for us. However, he insists both these effects need to be limited, lest they interfere with self-respect or foster insulting omissions. (Sidgwick, 1907, pp. 335, 336) In its emphasis on the dangers of wanting others’ admiration, Sidgwick’s view of humility resembles those of Schueler and of Roberts and Wood, discussed below. In its concern lest self-admiration prompt us to the kind of “complacency” and “contemplation of our own merits” that thwart our pondering an “ideal ... sufficiently high” (and how far short of it we fall) “as is thought to be indispensable to moral progress,” his view resembles mine.

  9. Flanagan approvingly discusses this account at Flanagan, 1996, p. 176.

  10. Flanagan, 1996, pp. 176, 178.

  11. Richards, 2001, pp. 816–817. He puts the point a little differently earlier. In his book, he took humility to be a kind of self-understanding that consists in “an inclination to keep one’s accomplishments, traits, and so on in unexaggerated perspective, even if stimulated to exaggerate.” (Richards, 1992, p. 8) Snow reasons to a similar conclusion: a person’s “knowledge of [her] limitations is proper to humility. Consequently, humility is a form of self-knowledge.” (Snow, 1995, p. 211; also, at the same place: “To be a humble person is to recognize your limitations.”) However, the conclusion does not follow from the stated premise, as someone may be overly impressed with her own skill, sped, ancestry, or whatever, while also seeing their limits. I can know that many people are or have more F than I do, where F is a feature or achievement I value, while still making too much of, preening over, the extent to which I am or have F. In any case, in what seems to be her canonical account, Snow offers a different view: “Humility can be defined as the disposition to allow the awareness of and concern about your limitations to have a realistic influence on your attitudes and behavior.” (Snow, 1995: p. 210) This latter position has some similarities to my own, though I think it more accurate to say that someone is humble insofar as, because of certain moral commitments, she is disposed not to emphasize her good points in light of her acknowledged limitations, failures, etc.

  12. Hardon, 1985, p. 183.

  13. Roberts and Wood, 2003, p. 261. Also see Schueler: “The modest person is indifferent to how people regard her for her accomplishments (i.e., [entitled to credit] as producer of these accomplishments).... She will, as I said, simply not care whether others are impressed by her for her accomplishments, skills, or whatever.” (Schueler, 1997, p. 480) Again, “A modest person lacks a certain desire (the desire to be evaluated highly for her accomplishments).” (Schueler, 1997, p. 483)

  14. Their final, compound conception of the intellectual virtue of humility seems to be captured in this passage.

    What then is intellectual humility? ... [Our] analysis suggests it is an unusually low dispositional concern for the kind of status that accrues to persons who are viewed by their intellectual communities as intellectually talented, accomplished, and skilled, especially where such concern is muted or sidelined by intrinsic intellectual concerns – in particular the concern for knowledge with its various attributes of truth, justification, warrant, coherence, precision, and significance. It is also a very low concern for intellectual domination in the form of leaving the stamp of one’s mind on disciples, one’s field, and future intellectual generations. As the opposite of intellectual arrogance, humility is a disposition not to make unwarranted intellectual entitlement claims on the basis of (supposed) superiority or excellence. (Roberts & Wood, 2003, p. 271)

    So conceived humility, (a) when it contrasts with arrogance as well as (b) when it contrasts with vanity, is seen as essentially outwardly-directed, consisting in someone’s concern with her claims against others in form (a), and in her concern with own status in comparison with theirs in form (b).

    Note that Roberts and Wood also hold that humility consists in something different insofar as it contrasts with vanity from that in which it consists insofar as it contrasts with arrogance. It is problematic to hold that humility really is irreducibly doubled in the way to which Roberts and Wood appear to be committed. If it is then, notice, there is nothing in which humility consists, only that in which it consists in relation (i.e., in contrast) with one thing or another. This, however, is problematic, raising the question of just what is this ‘it’ that contrasts with both? In a similar way, Hartmann seems to have held more generally that each moral virtue is really a synthesis of opposed values, presenting this as an interpretation of Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean. “Aidos [roughly, humility] is the capacity to be ashamed of oneself, and at the same time it is the limitation of shame, the latter as opposed to the conduct of the bashful, the former to that of the shameless.... Greatness of soul in particular is perhaps the purest example of such a decomposition [of virtue into a synthesis of contrasting traits] in its dual position with regard to smallness of soul and to vanity; in opposition to the former it is justified moral pride, self-respect, in opposition to the latter, [it is] the modest consciousness of one’s own moral being.” (Hartmann, 2003, reading p. 414 as supplemented at p. lvi) Likewise, “the seemingly antinomic relation between humility and pride is therefore easily broken down.... [G]enuine pride and genuine humility evidently belong necessarily together, re-enforce each other, and can exist only in synthesis.... Each by itself is unstable, is without balance.” (Hartmann, 2003, pp. 300, 301)

  15. How is the moral virtue of humility, which is my focus, related to the intellectual virtue of humility, which is the focus of Roberts and Wood? One possibility is that there are two traits, T1 and T2, such that T1 is a moral virtue and T2 is an intellectual virtue. Another is that there is just one trait, T, which is excellent in two different ways, both epistemically and morally. I suspect the latter is more correct, and that the epistemic virtue of humility is just being humble about certain things. If so, then there is more substantive disagreement between their side and mine than is first apparent.

  16. Nuyen, 1998, pp. 106, 108.

  17. Nuyen, 1998, p. 107. While this passage makes mention of the contribution of “favorable circumstances” in addition to that of other people, and this phrase is repeated later on the page with one reference to “luck” as an example, the bulk of Nuyen’s account is that modesty is giving credit to other people and not to any impersonal contributions. More important, because Nuyen follows Aristotle in insisting that equity is a kind of justice, it is inconsistent for him also to hold that modesty can extend to crediting luck and other impersonal factors. For, as modesty is a form of equity and equity a kind of justice, it follows that, since justice deals only with relations among persons, so too must modesty be so restricted.

  18. Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 161, art. 1, 2.

  19. Also see Aquinas, S.T., II-II, q. 161, art 6, on Sts. Benedict (Rule, ch. 7), Anselm, and Matthew.

  20. “And so he [Pelagius] decides, and rightly decides, that humility should rather be ranged on the side of truth, not of falsehood. Whence it follows that he who said [in Scripture at 1 John, 1], ‘If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us,’ must... not be thought to have spoken falsehood for the sake of [maintaining his] humility... . [B]y the addition of ‘the truth is not in us’ he [the Scriptural author] clearly shows... that it is not at all true if we say we have no sin, lest humility, if placed on the side of falsehood, should lose the reward of truth.” (Augustine, Treatise of Nature & Grace, ch. 38 on alternative division: ch. 34) Driver’s underestimation conception of modesty/humility does not quite “range” it with falsehood. However, by making humility a “virtue of ignorance,” it does displace the virtue from “the side of truth” and entails that someone who gains that virtue therein) “lose[s] the reward of truth.”

    Driver leaves it unclear just why humility should be a virtue. Her final view seems to be that “a tendency to rank and estimate [one’s own] worth relative to [that of] others... is destructive [and t]he modest person is one who does not spend a lot of time [in such] ranking... [possessing] a charm similar to that of an unaffected person.” (Driver, 2001, p. 27) However, to make such “charm” the basis for classifying humility as a moral virtue is to proceed down the Humean path where any trait “agreeable to others” suffices and many trivial features of personality and comportment get promoted. Moral virtues are usually thought to be human excellences and, Hume notwithstanding, this requires something more (and different) from what it takes to be a good party guest.

  21. Flanagan makes this point at Flanagan, 1996, p. 176–177; for Driver’s response, see Driver, 2001, p. 28–30.

  22. Driver, 2001, p. 18.

  23. Driver offers a similar counterexample in arguing against Schueler’s position that the humble (“modest”) person does not care for others’ opinions of her. She also suggests that Schueler’s view cannot accommodate the person, perhaps a political leader, who rightly wants to be admired because the success of her good cause depends in part on her own ability to command admiration. (Driver, 2001, p. 23) This example may also cause trouble for the position of Roberts and Wood. (Note, however, that while such a person does make much of her good qualities, insofar as she does so for a special reason and contrary to her inclination, my view does allow her to count as humble.)

    At one point, Schueler says even a “complete misanthrope,” who does not care what people think about anything, would lack humility if she “still cares whether she evaluates herself highly because of her accomplishments,” clarifying that, in the relevant clause of his preferred definition, “[the term] ‘people’ should be read as ‘anyone’, not as ‘others’.” (Schueler, 1997, p. 479, note #23) The narcissist counter-example will not work against this sense of unconcern. Nevertheless, the mark of the humble person is not that she does not care whether she prides herself on her good features, as Schueler thinks, but that she does not so pride herself. Someone who exalts herself in this way is vain, not humble, and that she does not care only makes it worse, not better.

  24. S.T., II-II, q. 161, art. 6, obj. 1, 3, 4.

  25. This applies especially to exaggerated recommendations in Benedict’s “Rule”, such as that one (everyone?) ought “to believe and acknowledge oneself viler than all” and “to think oneself worthless and unprofitable for all purposes.” (Aquinas, S.T., II-II, q. 161, art. 6, obj. 1) Note that, taken literally, the former rule would necessarily enjoin most people to false belief. Presumably, this is also the charitable way to understand such a text as the “Litany of Humility” attributed to the early 20th Century cardinal, Merry del Val. It contains such lines as these: “From the desire[s] of being esteemed, ... consulted, ... From the fear[s] of being humiliated, ... despised, ... ridiculed, Deliver me, Jesus” and “That others may be chosen and I set aside, ... preferred to me in everything, ... [and even] become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.” (Socias (1995), p. 304)

  26. Taylor, 1985, p. 17.

  27. Scheler, 1981, p. 210.

  28. Spiegel, 2003, p. 133.

  29. Snow, 1995, p. 210.

  30. Ridge, 2000, pp. 271, 275, 281.

  31. Ridge, 2000, pp. 273, 277.

  32. I find these criteria of Hume’s highly problematic, for reasons I make clear below.

  33. See Aquinas, S.T., II-II, q. 161, art. 6, obj. 3.

  34. Immediately after stating her “‘underestimation’ account of modesty,” Driver begins her defense with the following claim. “A desired feature of any account of modesty is that it explain the oddity of [the utterance] ... ‘I am modest,’ [which] seems to be oddly self-defeating.” She suggests that her uttering it would make some think she “was joking” and others that she “was being nonsensical.” (Driver, 2001, p. 17)

  35. Flanagan makes the related point that the world’s fastest runner may know her comparative speed, but nonetheless be modest because she thinks this is “less significant than others do” or owing largely to luck. (Flanagan, 1996, p. 176) Notice, however, that this response concerns her knowledge or ignorance of her good features and accomplishments (what Flanagan calls “the weak ignorance condition”) rather than her knowing/not knowing that she is humble/modest. Driver’s paradox, in contrast, has the latter, “strong ignorance condition,” as its focus.

  36. For more considerations against the purported paradox, see Flanagan, 1996, pp. 173–175.

  37. Benjamin Franklin was aware of this problem. He worried that his pride was so great that “even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.” (Franklin, in Hooke, 1999, p. 162–169. I am grateful to Prof. Harper for this quotation.) Could Franklin have been correct? Might someone be proud of her humility? Perhaps so. If, as I think, a humble person is one who is generally humble, sufficiently humble about enough things, then perhaps it could be that her humility is one of the things about which she is not humble (and even proud).

  38. Snow, 1995, pp. 203, 204.

  39. Dillon, 2001, pp. 69–71, 73.

  40. Dillon, 2001, p. 69.

  41. See Kagan (1985, 1989) and Hale (1991). Kant himself makes his theory sound highly demanding, as when he writes that, for any person, “his duty at each instant is to do all the good in his power.” (Religion within the Bounds of Reason, Ak p. 72)

  42. Posner, 2002.

  43. See, e.g., Pettit, 1997.

  44. Note that, while they are non-instrumentally desirable, pace Hurka, virtues cannot be intrinsically good. (Hurka, 2000, ch. 1) That is because anything’s being a virtue depends on and derives from its making its bearer somehow good. (Aristotle, N.E., bk. II, chap. 6)

  45. “Someone who has been humbled... will not necessarily become a humble person.” (Snow, 1995, p. 219)

  46. Snow, 1995, pp. 207–209.

  47. Hartmann, 2003, pp. 299, 300.

  48. Hume, Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, sec. IX, pt. i, p. 111.

  49. See Taylor, 1985, chap 2 (esp., sec. 2) for a fuller discussion of Hume’s position.

  50. Sidgwick, 1907, p. 334; cp. Anscombe, 1958. Wardle, 1963, defends Sidgwick. I discuss Sidgwick’s more complicated view above.

  51. Swanton, 2001, p. 43, citing Driver 1996.

  52. Swanton, 2001, p. 43, citing Driver, 1999.

  53. Swanton, 2001, p. 44.

  54. Snow 1995, pp. 211–212.

  55. See Aristotle, N.E., Bk II, chap. 6, and Aquinas, who says that character traits “are called ... good ... not by some distinct goodness [of their own] ... but because by them something is good ... So also virtue is called good [only] because by it something [i.e., its bearer, which it makes virtuous] is good.” (S.T., I-II, q. 5, art. 4, respondeo)

  56. Nussbaum, 2001, p. 11.

  57. Oppenheimer, 2001, p. 42.

  58. This is quite independent of any transvaluation of values in which vanity is turned into virtue and humility into vice.

  59. See Garcia (1997).

  60. “I have always been exceedingly delighted with the words of Chrysostom, ‘The foundation of our philosophy is humility;’ and still more with those of Augustine ... ”if you ask me with regard to the precepts of the Christian Religion [which is first], I will answer, first, second, and third, Humility.” (Calvin, 1559, Bk 2, ch 2, sec. 11)

  61. “[P]ride ... (as I have so often said and must repeat again and again) has to be guarded against even in things which are rightly done, that is, in the very way of righteousness, lest a man, by regarding as his own what is really God’s, lose what is God’s and be reduced merely to what is His own.” Augustine, Treatise of Nature & Grace, ch. 36 (alternate division: para 32).

  62. Christians have often thought the Christ to be the paradigm of humility, a moral virtue that was first emphasized in that tradition. Gregory of Nyssa writes, “What is more humble than the King of all creation entering into communion with our poor nature?” (Gregory, Oration 1 in beatitudinibus. See also Philippians. 2: 3–6) Some see humility as so central to Christian life that the rest of it can be understood as but forms of humility. One of the most recently canonized saints within Roman Catholicism maintains, “Prayer is the humility of the man who acknowledges his profound wretchedness and the greatness of God. Faith is the humility of the mind which renounces its own judgment and surrenders to the verdict and authority of the Church. Chastity is the humility of flesh, which subjects itself to the spirit.” And so on for obedience, and other religious practices and traits. At the end of the same spiritual manual, the new saint concludes, “I am more convinced every day that authentic humility is the supernatural basis for all virtues.” (Escriva, 1987, secs. 259, 289)

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Acknowledgement

I am grateful to Profs. Lawrence Blum, Victoria Harper, Sally Haslanger, Stephen Nathanson, Jennifer Radden, Ron Sandler, Janet Smith, Jacqueline Taylor, Yang Xiao, and, especially, to Prof. David Wong and members of the Philosophy Departments at Messiah College and St. Olaf College for discussion of these topics and bibliographical leads. An audience at the 2002 Regional Meeting of the Society of Christian Philosophers at Bethel College also contributed. Laura Garcia and Mark Sentesy read an earlier draft and offered many helpful suggestions; Jerome Veith and Jeffrey Witt helped edit the final draft.

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Garcia, J.L.A. Being Unimpressed with Ourselves: Reconceiving Humility. Philosophia 34, 417–435 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-006-9032-x

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