Conclusion
While there are many theories of what makes a character trait be a virtue, there is agreement among theorists that the virtues are character traits that are excellences of some kind.
It is not possible to reliably do the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, for the right reasons, without manifesting those excellences of character which are the virtues. So, these are traits that manifest behavior which is never inapt. Humility does not fit this model.While humility is vastly important and is not to be underrated for its value in correcting arrogance, in a secular world of interaction between equals, humility’s only value is this corrective function.There are times when it is simply wrong to have or feel humility, in a way that it cannot be wrong to have wisdom, courage, justice, or temperance. It therefore makes more sense to take humility “down a notch” from being considered a virtue to seeing it as a developmental phase, like continence, which one passes through on the way to virtue.Therefore, humility is not a virtue.Notes
1 My thanks go to the following philosophers for helpful comments and suggestions: Julia Annas, Heather Battaly,Anka Finger, Mitch Green, Hanna Gunn, Raja Halwani,Allan Hazlett, Drew Johnson, Brendan Kane, Suzy Killmister, Fred Lee, Hallie Liberto, Nate Sheff, Mark Timmons, and Sam Wheeler. I'm grateful to the editors of this volume for their helpful conversations and comments on the paper, especially Alessandra Tanesini, who gave extensive comments on the paper which greatly improved it. Finally, this publication was made possible through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.
2 In Fanny Burney's novel Evelina, from 1778, a well-born character “thinks it incumbent upon her to support the dignity of her ancestry.
Fortunately for the world in general, she has taken it into her head, that condescension is the most distinguishing virtue of high life; so that the same pride of family which renders others imperious, is with her the motive of affability”.3 My use of the word “corrective” is different from that of Philippa Foot (2002, pp. 8—12), who argues that all the virtues are “correctives”, referencing Aristotle's thought that the virtues are about what is naturally difficult for people. But all agree that practicing continence does not leave one in a virtuous state, even if it gets a person to do what a truly virtuous (temperate) person would do in those circumstances. Continence is a stop-gap measure, which is far from the self-regulation of desire required for temperance.
4 The psychologist L.A. Pervin understands a character trait roughly as “a disposition to behave expressing itself in consistent patterns of functioning across a range of situations” (1994, p. 108).There are good reasons, however, to follow Christian Miller (2014, chapter 1) and normatively narrow the range of personality traits that will count as character traits. On such a view, character traits are those personality traits for which a person is responsible, and which also open a person to normative assessment.
Alessandra Tanesini (2016) refers to humility as an “attitude”, using this term as it figures in psychological literature. Since “attitude” already has such an extensive use in moral philosophy, I prescind from following that terminology here. Still, despite how Tanesini refers to humility as a virtue, and as an attitude, the present account is in many ways similar to hers in spirit.
5 My thanks to Smit and Timmons (2015) for this quote.
6 Thus, I am in sympathy with Nancy Snow's (1995) discussion of “existential humility".This is reminiscent of Iris Murdoch's (1970) claim that “[h]umility is ‘selfless respect for reality'”.The degree to which she conceives of it as a corrective to the “fat relentless ego” is the degree to which she agrees with the present account.
One might also wonder whether we should always feel humility since we may always compare ourselves with people more virtuous than we are, or compared to the ideal of virtuous perfection, thereby always being reminded of our faults. Here, I follow Aristotle (1941), saying that the right thing to feel is “emulation”:
Emulation is pain caused by seeing the presence, in persons whose nature is like our own, of good things that are highly valued and are possible for ourselves to acquire; but it is felt not because others have these goods, but because we have not got them ourselves. It is therefore a good feeling felt by good persons, whereas envy is a bad feeling felt by bad persons. Emulation makes us take steps to secure the good things in question, envy makes us take steps to stop our neighbor having them (Rhetoric, Bk. II, 11,30-8).
I learned of this helpful distinction between emulation and envy, in contexts such as these, from Smit and Timmons (2015).
7 For ease of exposition, I elide the differences between “having humility” and “being humble” in order to use the adjective “humble”, since “humility” has no adjectival nor adverbial form. In fact, being humble and having humility are quite different: a person can act reliably humble in front of others and yet be quietly confident or even arrogant in his or her heart.
8 If Tank Man’s action seems even possibly humble to you, please substitute in some other act of civil disobedience which is impossible to read this way. Perhaps the mass suicide of Jews at Masada in the year 73 ce will suffice. Or perhaps the way Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their black-gloved fists when they won Olympic medals in Mexico, 16 October 1968. Or think of the famous picture, taken 9 July 2016, of Ieshia Evans as she stood in a flowing sundress in front of police wearing riot gear outside the Baton Rouge Police Department, following the killing of Alton Sterling. For the picture of Smith and Carlos see, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Olympics_Black_Power_salute; and for the picture of Evans, www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-police-ieshiaevans/nurse-in-u-s-protest-phot o-says-she-felt-she-had-to-face-police-idUSKCN0ZV1YJ.
9 Whitcomb, Battaly, Baehr, and Howard-Snyder (this volume) try to escape the sort of problem which the reductio presents by saying that humility is sometimes a virtue and sometimes is not, and to “limit its importance”.This is in effect a denial of premise 1, or the idea that traits which are virtues have “fields of action” in which they are guaranteed to yield correct action. But if humility is sometimes not a virtue, then we cannot count on the trait of humility to tell us when to be humble or not. Humility itself can no longer give us normative guidance. I take up these themes about “virtues in excess”, discussing and criticizing Gary Watson's (1984) response to the problem in my paper “Virtues are Excellences” (manuscript).
10 The idea that we are naturally partial to ourselves is, of course, not new. See for example, Plato (1993) and Butler's “Sermon on Self-Deceit” (1900).
11 To this degree, I agree with Richards (1988) and Roberts and Wood (2007), all of whom claim that humility is antagonistic to arrogance, vanity, etc. Our disagreement, however, is over whether or not humility is a virtue.
12 For a heterodox view, see Stohr (2003).
13 For more on temperance, see chapter 3 of Bloomfield (2014) and my “Temperance, Continence, Weakness, Compulsion” (manuscript).
14 For discussion, see Dillon (2004) and (2015).While I follow (Dillon on) Kant in his understanding of arrogance, I do not follow him in his view of humility, which seems to me to have too many theistic connotations. Still, I am in broad sympathy with much of Dillon’s understanding of humility.
15 For further discussion, see Bloomfield (2011), (2014), and (forthcoming).
16 In a footnote labeled “(b)” in section 8 of Butler’s “Sermon on Self-Deceit” (1900), he notes that not everyone tends toward self-partiality in this way: we can deceive ourselves into thinking we deserve less respect than we are due as well. For more on this idea, and the “imposter syndrome”, see Kolligian and Sternberg (1990).
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