Alfano Mark, Lynch Michael P.. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Humility. Routledge,2020. — 514 p.. 2020

Philosophical research on the virtue of humility has blossomed in the last decade or so after years of relative neglect.The history of the philosophical study of humility is also characterised by intermittent interest initiated, at least in the West, by Christian traditions. Humility did not figure prominently in Greek virtue theory (but see Chappell for an account that shows that the true picture is more complex than this). Instead, it came into its own in Thomistic thought and in other religious traditions, before waning, at least in the West, under the pressure of critics such as Nietzsche. More recently, since Julia Driver's (1989, 1999) pioneering work on modesty, interest in humility has intensified and has led to interdisciplinary research, especially with psychology, but also with law, politics and peace study. This volume aims to provide a panoramic overview of the current research on humility, capturing the breadth of this work, and highlighting both its interdisciplinary nature and its social impact.

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CONTENTS

CONTRIBUTORS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

PART 1 Theories of humilit

1 THEORIES OF HUMILITY

An overview

Nancy E. Snow

In 1995, I published an article on humility, and observed that philosophers had neglected that virtue.1

A brief nod to Western history

Contemporary accounts of humility: an overview and discussion17

Modesty: a selective glimpse

Conclusion

2 “I AM SO HUMBLE!”

On the paradoxes of humility

Brian Robinson

Introduction

Paradoxes

Two theories of humility

Resolving the paradoxes

3 HUMILITY IS NOT A VIRTUE

Paul Bloomfield

Introduction

Why humility is not a virtue

Humility as a corrective

Conclusion

PART 2 The ethics of humilit

4 HUMILITY AND HUMAN FLOURISHING

Robert Roberts

Introduction

Narcissism in the DSM-5

The ravages of narcissism

The well-being that unhumility compromises

Final thoughts about humility and human flourishing

5 HUMILITY AND SELF-RESPECT

Kantian and feminist perspectives1

Robin S. Dillon

In a culture increasingly shaped by the conviction that high self-esteem is unquestionably valuable, advocating humility might seem hopelessly old-fashioned and misguided. In an age increasingly dominated by narcissistic self-absorption, egotistic self-promotion, and arrogant disregard of other persons, humility might seem to be precisely what is needed to counteract self-valuing gone awry.

Traditional and contemporary accounts of humility

Kant on the vices of humility

Kant on true humility

6 THE PUZZLE OF HUMILITY AND DISPARITY

Dennis Whitcomb, Heather Battaly, Jason Baehr and Daniel Howard-Snyder

True story: when the female members of a colleague’s research lab learned of his plans to study humility, they remarked: “Humility is exactly what you need more of, if you’re a white male!” Subtext: humility is uncalled for when you’re oppressed. Frederick Douglass observed something similar with respect to the horrific source of oppression that was American slavery:

First lesson: the importance of humility is limited

Second lesson: humility is important, even for those in the right in contexts of disparity

Answering some worries

Future work

7 HUMILITY AND TRUTH IN NIETZSCHE

The humblebrag of the lambs

Nicholas Pappas

When the author of the Letter to the Ephesians addresses slaves and masters, humility is at stake for both.1

Humility as falsehood

The smallness in humility

Humility as mass domestication

The moral rhetoric of the lambs

The metaphor and the riddle

8 THE COMPARATIVE CONCERN IN HUMILITY AND ROMANTIC LOVE

Aaron Ben-Ze,ev

Humility and romantic love are two major positive attitudes toward other people. Humility expresses a general attitude toward all people, while romantic love is a unique attitude toward a specific person (or several people).

Humility

Romantic love

The comparative concern

The suitability and nonrelational scales

Concluding remarks

9 PRIDE AND HUMILITY

Michael S. Brady

Humility is held to be more valuable, more morally praiseworthy, than pride. Some make this point in terms of virtues — that humility counts as virtuous, whilst pride, if not a vice, fails to be a virtue.

Preliminaries

Similarities between pride and humility

Modesty as hedonic indifference, kindness, and inattention

Pride as demanding, humility as permissive

10 ASHAMED OF OUR SELVES

Disabling shame and humility

E.M. Dadlez and Sarah H. Woolwine

Humility, as opposed to pride, is generally accounted a virtue, particularly in Christian religious traditions which label pride one of the seven deadly sins. In today's political climate, humility is often regarded as a worthwhile anodyne to narcissism, overweening vanity, and unwarranted self-confidence.

Hume on humility and disablement

Humility, disablement, and the effects of testimonial injustice

PART 3 The politics of humilit

11 A HUMBLE FORM OF GOVERNMENT

Democracy as the politics of collective experience

Michael A. Neblo and Emily Ann Israelson

Democracy.. is the sole way of living which believes wholeheartedly in the process of experience as end and as means. John Dewey,from Creative Democracy

Introduction

Distinctions

Competitive-elitist democracy

Liberal democracy

Deliberative democracy

Sophyrosyne and deliberative democracy

Humility and political efficacy

Humility and delegative democracy

Conclusion

12 CONVICTION AND HUMILITY

Michael P. Lynch

The problem

Conviction

Intellectual humility

Convictions with humility

The limits of intellectual humility

13 HUMILITY AND THE TOLERATION OF DIVERSE IDEAS

Casey Rebecca Johnson

In an interview with Fox News in December 2016, Donald Trump said, “You know, I'm, like, a smart person.

Humility

Intellectual Humility and Empathy

Intellectual humility and curiosity

Empathy, curiosity, and diverse ideas

14 HUMILITY, FORGIVENESS, AND RESTORATIVE JUSTICE

From the personal to the political

Carl Stauffer

Introduction

Defining the contours and pathways of humility

The forgiveness factor

Defining restorative justice

Restorative Justice: social service, paradigm shift, or social justice movement?3

Humility and oppressive structural power - a critique

Recommendations for future research

15 CAN HUMILITY BE A Liberatory virtue?

Heather Battaly

Humility is an unlikely candidate for Iiberatory virtue.

Liberatory virtue: a sketch

Traditional humility and liberatory humility

Oppressed persons and the virtue of liberatory humility

PART 4 Humility in religious though

16 HUMILITY AMONG THE ANCIENT GREEKS

17 AQUINAS ON HUMILITY AND RELATIONAL GREATNESS

Andrew Charles Pinsent

The orphaned virtue of humility

Humility and pride

Second-person consequences of pride

Relational greatness

The secular transposition

18 FAITH AND HUMILITY

Conflict or concord?

Daniel Howard-Snyder and Daniel J. McKaughan

In some circles, faith is said to be one of three theological virtues, along with hope and agape.

The limitations-owning theory of the virtue of humility

Thomistic faith

Markan faith

Markan faith and humility in the intellectual domain

Thomistic faith, Markan faith, and humility in the domain of personal relationships

Conclusion

19 HUMILITY IN THE ISLAMIC TRADITION

Sophia Vasalou

A commonplace view of how many religions approach the right relationship to self-worth is that the less we have of it, the better off we are.

The ethics of virtue in a scriptural paradigm

Humility as self-assessment

Humility as moral commitment

20 BUDDHIST HUMILITY

Nicolas Bommarito

Buddhism and the context of humility

Buddhist conceptions of pride

Non-self: an interlude

What’s bad about pride?

A distinctive humility

21 HUMILITY IN EARLY CONFUCIANISM

Alexus McLeod

The early Chinese philosophical school most focused on moral self-cultivation, Confucianism,1 reserves an important place for humility.

Early Confucian terms for ‘humility

Communal harmony and the self

Humility and two kinds of self-concern

22 HUMILITY AND THE AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY OF UBUNTU

Thaddeus Metz

Introduction

An analysis of humility

African ethics and humility

African moral epistemology and humility

Conclusion

PART 5 The epistemology of humilit

23 INTELLECTUAL HUMILITY AND CONTEMPORARY EPISTEMOLOGY

A critique of epistemic individualism, evidentialism and internalism

John Greco

Let us say that “epistemic individualism” is the position that a person's epistemic standing (what she knows, what she reasonably believes, etc.) is ultimately up to her, and is in that sense independent of the epistemic standing of other people.

Humility and intellectual humility characterized

Epistemic individualism defined

Evidentialism defined

Internalism defined

The externalist turn in epistemology

An anti-evidentialist turn

Social epistemic dependence

Reductionism and anti-reductionism in the epistemology of testimony

Conclusion

24 HUMILITY AND SELFKNOWLEDGE

Alessandra Tanesini

In this chapter I presuppose that humility, however it is to be characterised, is flanked by at least two vices: arrogance and self-abasement.

Humility as a virtue of ignorance

Humility as a virtue of self-knowledge

Humility as a virtue of low self-focus

Humility as hopeful attitude to self

25 INTELLECTUAL HUMILITY and Epistemic trust

Katherine Dormandy

Intellectual humility has something important in common with trust: both, independently, help secure knowledge. But they also do so in tandem, and this chapter discusses how.

Epistemic trust

Intellectual humility

Intellectual humility and epistemic self-trust

Intellectual humility and epistemic trust in others

Conclusion

26 INTELLECTUAL HUMILITY, TESTIMONY, AND EPISTEMIC INJUSTICE

Ian M. Church

In the typical case, when a person utters or testifies that a given proposition, p, the goal is for someone else to come to believe or know (given that p is true) that p.

How testimonial exchanges can fail

Testimonial injustice

Epistemic injustice and intellectual humility and failures in testimonial exchange

Conclusion

27 FALSE INTELLECTUAL HUMILITY

Allan Hazlett

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “false modesty” as “affected or pretended modesty concealing pride.

An analysis of false intellectual humility

Insincere self-attributions of ignorance

Fallibilism, skepticism, and intellectual humility

False skepticism and false fallibilism

Conclusion

28 INTELLECTUAL HUMILITY AND ARGUMENTATION

Andrew Aberdein

Argumentum ad verecundiam

Principle of charity

Critical thinking dispositions

Deliberative virtues

Virtue theories of argumentation

29 INTELLECTUAL HUMILITY AND ASSERTION

J. Adam Carter and Emma C. Gordon

Introduction

Intellectual humility

Epistemic norms governing assertion

Assertion and humility

Conclusion

30 HUMILITY, CONTINGENCY, AND PLURALISM IN THE SCIENCES

Ian James Kidd

Introduction

Some initial characterisations

Some broad claims

Levels of humility in science

Epistemic humility within the philosophy of science

31 HUMEAN HUMILITY AND ITS CONTEMPORARY ECHOES

James Van Cleve

My source for “Humean Humility” is section 1.4.4 of Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, the section in which he gives his critique of“the modern philosophy.”

Hume’s critique of the modern philosophy

31.2. Russellian Monism

31.3. Ramseyan Humility

Responses to Humean Humility, Russellian Monism, and Ramseyan Humility

Conclusion

PART 6 The psychology of humilit

32 HUMILITY IN PERSONALITY AND POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Peter L. Samuelson and Ian M. Church

Introduction

Intellectual humility as a character trait

Need for cognition

Need for closure

Intellectual humility and personality: The Big 5

Intellectual humility and personality: The Big 2

Both trait and situation in intellectual humility

Conclusion

33 PSYCHOLOGICAL MEASUREMENT OF HUMILITY

Rick H. Hoyle and Elizabeth Krumrei Mancuso

Humility has long been a topic of interest and inquiry for philosophers and theologians, resulting in a deep and rich literature on the virtue.

Themes in the conceptualization of humility as reflected in its measurement

Dimensions on which psychological measures of humility vary

Choosing a measurement approach

Conclusion

34 THE MORAL PSYCHOLOGY OF HUMILITY

Epistemic and ethical alignment as foundational to moral exemplarity

Jennifer Cole Wright

What is humility?

The core of humility: epistemic and ethical alignment

Why humility matters: healthy moral functioning

Why humility matters: Moral exemplarity

Conclusion

35 THE ROLE OF KNOWLEDGE CALIBRATION IN INTELLECTUAL HUMILITY

Nicholas Light and Philip Fernbach

The state of current public discourse is troubling. Groups fail to listen to one another, questions go unanswered, and responses are often incomplete or unhelpful.

Knowledge miscalibration and its origins

The challenge of knowledge miscalibration

Consequences of overconfidence

Benefits of overconfidence

Underconfidence

Efforts to increase intellectual humility

Conclusion

PART 7 Humility Applications to the social worl

36 HUMILITY AND TERRORISM STUDIES

37 ‘KNOWLEDGE IS POWER'

Barriers to intellectual humility in the classroom

Lani Watson

‘Knowledge is power’

Winning by knowing

Answer-oriented education2

Answer-oriented education as a barrier to intellectual humility

Question-oriented education

38 HUMILITY IN LAW1

Amalia Amaya

Introduction

Humility as an adjudicative virtue

Humility and professional organization

Humility and professional practice

Humility and professional development

Enhancing humility in the legal professions

Conclusions

39 EXTENDED COGNITION AND HUMILITY

Duncan Pritchard

Extended cognition

Cognitively extended humility

Cognitively extended intellectual humility

Concluding remarks

40 ARROGANCE AND SERVILITY ONLINE

Humility is not the solution

Neil Levy

It is widely held that the rise of social media has led to a degradation in public debate.

The background: Deeply social epistemology3

Deeply social knowledge and epistemic humility

Whence the virtue?

Epistemic humility and social media

41 HUMILITY IN SOCIAL NETWORKS

Mark Alfano and Emily Sullivan

41.1 Introduction

H-traits and myside bias

H-traits and ourside bias

Rescuing h-traits via the gadfly, curiosity, and solitude

INDEX

Books and textbooks on the discipline Political philosophy:

- Contemporary philosophical research - Fundamentals of philosophy - Logic - Philosophy of Science and Technology - Political philosophy - Social philosophy -

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