A brief nod to Western history

Humility does not appear in Aristotle’s list of the virtues, and seems not to have been highly regarded by the Greeks.⁴ In the history ofWestern thought, humility rises to the fore with the advent of the Judeo-Christian tradition and has important roles in the philosophies of religious thinkers such as St.

If this device [humbling oneself before God] is properly understood in its subtlety, it is nothing else but a true knowledge and experience of yourself as you are, a wretch, filth, far worse than nothing.This knowledge and experience is humility.⁶

A similar theme occurs in the writings of St. Bernard of Clairvaux:

if you examine yourself inwardly by the light of truth and without dissimulation, and judge yourself without flattery; no doubt you will be humbled in your own eyes, becoming contemptible in your own sight as a result of this true knowledge of your­self.⁷

Maimonides, too, portrays humility in a negative light:

When a man reflects on these things... He will be filled with fear and trembling, as he becomes conscious of his own lowly condition, poverty, and insignificance. He will then realize he is a vessel full of shame, dishonor, and reproach, empty and deficient.⁸

Given the negativity associated with religious conceptions of humility, it is not surprising that subsequent philosophers either did not regard it as a virtue or did not regard it as a virtue worth having.⁹ Newman quotes Spinoza as stating that “Humility is not a virtue, or does not arise from Reason,” and Hume as claiming that

no one, who has any practice of the world, and can penetrate into the inward senti­ments of men, will assert, that the humility, which good-breeding and decency require of us, goes beyond the outside, or that a thorough sincerity in this particular is esteem'd a real part of our duty.¹⁰

Among several harsh passages critical of Christianity from Nietzsche that Newman quotes, this glaringly conveys the former's disdain for humility:

One despises the cowardly, the anxious, the petty, those who think only in terms of narrow utility; also the distrustful with their unfree glances, those who humble them­selves, the doglike people.¹¹

Sidgwick, too, had a dim view of humility. As Richards quotes him, Sidgwick believed that “humility prescribes low opinion of our merits” and that “it would seem just as irrational to underrate ourselves as to overrate.”¹² Humility, Sidgwick thought, is not properly regulative of the opinions we form of ourselves, for in those opinions, as in others, we should aim at truth.

Other philosophers were more positive. Newman writes: “Kant argues that true humil­ity, humilitas moralis, is accompanied by exaltation and self-esteem.”¹³ As one might expect, Kierkegaard, a Christian philosopher, believed humility to be “necessary for faith and Christian practice.”¹⁴ Finally, Sinha explains that the ideal utilitarian Hastings Rashdall offered a “love- thy-neighbor” account of humility, according to which a humble person avoids “the habitual dwelling with satisfaction” upon her merits.¹⁵ According to Sinha, Rashdall thought we should recognize the capacities for goodness in others, and feel “sorrow and pity” instead of“contempt” or “smug self-complacency” when their capacities are not realized.¹⁶

The foregoing remarks provide only the briefest glimpse into the much larger topic of how humility has been viewed in Western philosophy and religions. I have not gone back to the original historical sources to “mine” this material but, instead, have accessed it from various contemporary discussions of humility.This is deliberate: I have thereby sought to illustrate how influential historical conceptions have been for many contemporary accounts.The themes that occupied our forebears still affect contemporary philosophical thinking.

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