Hume on humility and disablement

It should be noted from the outset that Hume makes a clear case against humility being regarded as always and invariably a virtue, and against pride always being thought of as a vice.Vices and virtues themselves are things we can be humbled by or proud of, after all:

There may, perhaps, be some, who being accustom'd to the style of the schools and pulpit...

(2.1.7.8, SBN 297-298)

First, as indicated above, it is important to stress that Hume treats pride and humility as indirect passions rather than outright behavioral dispositions, though it seems clear in what he writes that the tendency to experience such sentiments is expected to give rise to habits of action. Feelings of pride and smugness would be expected to give rise to preening and bragging. Feelings of humility would be expected to give rise to self-effacing or modest behavior. There is a clear difference, of course, between humility considered as an emotional response (to some perceived personal deficit) and as a trait of character. Humility as a virtue in the best, non-religious sense, involves the kind of apprehension of one's own limitations that prevents one's undertaking tasks one isn't suited to perform.A properly humble person acknowledges her fallibility, is unpreten­tious, and does not indulge in wishful thinking when engaging in self-assessment.

An emotion, on the other hand, if we consider the Humean sentiment, is not a behavioral disposition, though it comprehends more than the unanalyzable sensation at the heart of Hume's analysis. These sensations are bracketed by cognitions. First, the indirect passions of pride and humility, even according to a non-cognitivist like Hume, are intentional. They have specific objects that the individual experiencing them will evaluate in particular ways. Both pride and humility have the self as object (T 2.1.3.2, SBN 280).That is, pride and humility are paradig- matically self-directed, the first accompanied by pleasure, the second accompanied by pain.They are about us and our perceived advantages and deficits. Considered as an emotion or passion, humility is the unpleasant sentiment we feel when we contemplate some trait, action, or object affiliated closely with ourselves that we find wanting or defective or flawed:

To begin with the causes of pride and humility we may observe, that their most obvi­ous and remarkable property is the vast variety of subjects, on which they may be plac'd. Every valuable quality of the mind... [can be] the cause of pride; and the opposite of humility Nor are these passions confin'd to the mind, but extend their view to the body likewise. A man may be proud of his beauty, strength, agility. and of his dex­terity in any manual business or manufacture. But this is not all. The passions looking farther, comprehend whatever objects are in the least ally'd or related to us.

(T 2.1.2.5, SBN 278-279)

Humility as a passion involves unpleasant sentiments: shame, mortification, guilt, embarrassment, self-reproach, self-hatred, humiliation. It is the painful emotional apprehension of a personal deficit.The causes (and Hume would say the subjects) of humility are always things associated with the self that are disvalued. Disagreeable objects related to ourselves produce humility (T 2.1.6.1). So one can be embarrassed about a personal failure, a lack of talent or prowess, weak­ness, clumsiness, or ineptitude. One can be ashamed of some previous despicable action, of one's poverty, of the shabbiness of one's car, of the bad behavior of one's child, or of one's prominent ears.These are not all things about which we should feel humble or ashamed, any more that the objects of someone's pride or vanity are always appropriate. Hume is here writing about what people actually feel or are inclined to feel, not what they should feel. He simply expects that most people will be humbled by what they regard as personal deficits most of the time, though he leaves plenty of room to question what might legitimately count as a deficit and how misap­prehension about such things might lead to a pride or a humility that was inappropriate.

Our bodies and our personal appearance are prime targets for pride and humility:

Thus the beauty of our person, of itself, and by its very appearance, gives pleasure, as well as pride; and its deformity, pain as well as humility.... [I] take it for granted at pre­sent... that every cause of pride, by its peculiar qualities, produces a separate pleasure, and of humility a separate uneasiness.

(T 2.1.5.1, SBN 285)

It is important to remember that objects of humility need not be things for which the agent is responsible. Morally charged words like “shame” and “guilt”—the words that signify emotions which are most closely associated with humility—also carry with them a sometimes-inappli- cable connotation of personal responsibility.

For the same reason, that riches cause pleasure and pride, and poverty excites uneasi­ness and humility power must produce the former emotions, and slavery the latter. Power or an authority over others makes us capable of satisfying all our desires; as slavery, by subjecting us to the will of others, exposes us to a thousand wants, and mortifications.

(T 2.1.10.11, SBN 315)

There are a great many self- and situation-deprecating sentiments that fit under the umbrella of humility, just as vanity, smugness, over-confidence, and self-respect fit equally under the aegis of pride. And there are a great many entirely objective reasons for, say, judging one's abilities as being inferior to those of another, or not up to a professional standard.The apprehension of such a deficit or inferiority is never pleasurable. But, more to the point, it often concerns some­thing we couldn't possibly rectify and for which we're not in the least responsible. The case is the same for humility in the case of slavery or poverty. Humility can be a pained awareness that one's circumstances are not good. It should be remembered that Hume is making a plausible psychological observation about our being pained by personal and situational shortfalls of one sort or another, not prescribing distressful feelings about them.

There is room in Hume, moreover, to challenge what should count as a shortfall or deficit in the first place. Socio-cultural standards and customs and norms may promote notions of defi­ciency and inferiority that are false or pernicious, and these can govern our shame and sense of inferiority, just as they can motivate improper pride:

general rules have a great influence upon pride and humility as well as on all the other passions.

(T 2.1.6.8, SBN 293)

So, for instance, I may notice that you have a far nicer home than I do. Objectively, it is better appointed, located in a nicer neighborhood, and equipped with the VR system of my dreams in a basement that has sensors mounted on the walls. I may feel envy (Hume is canny with respect to examples such as these, and classifies envy as an indirect passion as well), but feeling humility, inferiority, or mortification about my own perfectly adequate VR-free home isn't fitting. It sug­gests that I have adopted standards of worth based exclusively on the predilections of the yacht­owning, mansion-acquiring classes. We could probably devise standards for minimal adequacy in homes, but these couldn't be purely comparative. Likewise, there are probably standards that tell us when someone is and is not a competent pianist, but the simple fact that some people play better shouldn't be sufficient, by itself, for the ascription of a defect, or everyone but the best pianist in the world would be justified in feeling mortified. Proper pride and proper humil­ity arise, roughly, from correct ascriptions of one's worth, and of the worth of the things with which one is affiliated. Improper pride and humility occur on account of incorrect ascriptions of worth—incorrect because exaggerated or involving invidious comparisons or simply because they are false.

Hume has a lot to say about pride and shame in physical appearance:

beauty of all kinds gives us a peculiar delight and satisfaction; as deformity produces pain, upon whatever subject it may be plac'd....

(T 2.1.8.1, SBN 298)

Hume doesn't think that one is usually proud of or embarrassed by something true of everybody, since that would not usually count as an advantage or as disadvantage. It would be ridiculous to announce pride or mortification on account of being embodied, for instance, or on account of possessing lungs, unless, of course, one were the happy recipient of a recent transplant. Similarly, the bare fact of having a cold, or of being healthy, isn't sufficient for humility or pride unless such advantages or liabilities were mainly due to one's own endeavors or recklessness. However,

wherever a malady of any kind is so rooted in our constitution, that we no longer entertain any hopes of recovery, from that moment it becomes an object of humility; as is evident in old men, whom nothing mortifies more than the consideration of their age and infirmities.They endeavour, as long as possible, to conceal their blindness and deafness, their rheums and gouts; nor do they ever confess them without reluctance and uneasiness.

(T 2.1.8.8, SBN 302-303)

Here the perceived disadvantage is connected to the inescapability of the condition, to the rec­ollection of its absence, and to the presence of others who are not (at least not as yet) afflicted by it. Again, however, the point isn't that people ought to feel humbled by age, but that they very often do. The same point can be made, perhaps even more emphatically, about disability. Hume would expect the disabled to be humbled by their disability in the same way he expects the elderly to be humbled by geriatric afflictions. One need not infer from this, however, that Hume believes the disabled should be humble, that this is requisite for any acquaintance with something that one regards as a personal limitation. Moreover, while Hume criticizes conceit and vanity and thereby endorses a clearheaded acquaintance with one's own deficiencies, he does manage to suggest that humility is not always what it is cracked up to be, and that all aspects of pride are not necessarily vicious. Each, in other words, can be proper or improper, appropriate or inappropriate.

To the extent that humility represents a realistic awareness of one's limitations, it seems respectable and unproblematic. Indeed, it seems positively beneficial in that it will prevent one from undertakings at which one is bound to fail (#AmericanIdolAudition). The best case for humility, one that most philosophers would cheerfully endorse, is the laudable acknowledge­ment of fallibility. But this carries with it no stigma or negative self-evaluation.The recognition that one isn't omniscient is rather unlikely to prove a source of dejection. Sloppy and illogical thinking are and probably should be causes of embarrassment or dejection, of course, but the acknowledgement of fallibility is not, since everyone is fallible to one degree or another.

Emotional humility would arise from actual mistakes and shame over having made them. An acknowledgement of fallibility is an acknowledgement that one might not always get things right, not that an error has occurred.

As suggested earlier, many attempts to venture an argument in support of humility focus on what humility is not rather than on what it is. The humble will not brag, or exaggerate their accomplishments, or consider themselves superior to everyone else. They will not have such a high opinion of their intellectual prowess that they'll assume themselves capable of any feat. Instead, they will acknowledge their intellectual fallibility. But this simply assumes that the humble individual is not proud in the pejorative sense. Presumably, it is also possible not to be proud (in the sense of conceit and self-aggrandizement), and to acknowledge fallibility as well, without on that account being humble. What is the distinctive thing about humility itself that leads many to consider it a virtue?

We fear that what distinguishes humility from improper pride, and distinguishes it again from the very attractive position of neutrality just now outlined, is pain. Humility, particularly when considered as an affective state rather than a behavioral disposition, is painful.That is, if we regard humility as an emotion, that emotion is an unpleasant one. “Humility and shame deject and discourage us,” according to Hume (T 2.2.10.6, SBN 391). For some cases, it is clear that distressful feelings can quite convincingly be held to be useful or character-improving. Guilt and shame over specific actions may prevent their repetition. Mortification over poor performance might lead to new endeavors and greater striving. It shows a realization of how one has erred and an acknowledgement that one has done so. Embarrassment over some shortfalls might lead to their rectification. Negative reinforcement can stimulate or inspire improvements. If humility involves the unhappy awareness of a personal deficiency, the unhappiness may act as a spur to reformation.

But to the extent that humility must involve feeling bad about the kinds of limitations one can do absolutely nothing about, it seems worse than useless as an adjunct to self- betterment or character-building, especially humility with respect to physical characteristics like age and disability where, provided the neutral stance regarding realistic beliefs about physical limitations is taken, negative emotional experiences are likely to do much more harm than good. Consider the preceding examples where deficit was ascribed solely on the basis of comparison. I am mor­tified by the quality of my house, not because I live in a state of squalor, not because my home has been condemned, but only because yours (and the mayor's, and that of my friend with the VR setup in the basement) is better. It is perfectly possible to acknowledge some houses are bet­ter than mine without generating the kind of humility tied to negative emotion. Indeed, there seems to be something wrong with allowing oneself to be made unhappy on account of such an acknowledgement. One's house isn't defective or flawed simply because others are better.

Being humbled by one's physical condition—being mortified or ashamed of it—when one's personal decisions or conduct aren't the cause of it, and when there is nothing that can be done to ameliorate or alter it, is problematic in a similar way. Having less mobility or less youth than others and acknowledging this need not be regarded as the acknowledgement of a flaw. One can acknowledge physical limitations, even incapacities, without considering them as instances of outright deficiency. The tenor of ageist and ableist thinking in this regard has almost always characterized such bodily conditions as defective and undesirable. Hume's claim that custom can carry us “beyond the just bounds” of passions like humility, and of reason as well, is very much to the point here (T 2.1.6.8, SBN 293).A limitation or incapacity, a lack evident only via comparison, is not always an appropriate subject or cause for an emotional response of humility. Acknowledgements of limitation of this kind very often produce shame and mortification, but there are many circumstances in which they ought not to do so.There are, after all, many cases of unjustified smugness on account of inherited wealth or due to a gross overestimation of one's talents and capacities. People's proud feelings very frequently arise from such causes, but it seems entirely correct to suggest that they ought not to do so either. It is usually a mistake to base one's self-assessment exclusively on the suppositions of others in any case. Socio-cultural beauty standards, attractiveness standards, and wholeness standards have always aroused criticism, and for good reason. Reasoned injunctions against subscribing to such standards wholesale are familiar to us all. No sensible person believes that a physical inability to live up to such standards should arouse a shame or mortification quite likely to prove self-destructive.

More recent investigations into humility can be informed by and expand on Hume's nuanced account, which could serve as a template for further analyses. Humility is not, then, always a virtue, as the case of disability makes especially apparent. It can serve one very ill.And to fail to see that is at the same time to overlook the sometimes subtle but important respects in which humility can (again, sometimes) authentically prove virtuous.

10.2