Humility and intellectual humility characterized
A number of authors have been concerned to state necessary and sufficient conditions for the virtues of humility and intellectual humility.1 Completing this kind of project is not necessary for present purposes.
Rather, it will be sufficient to note some features that are characteristic of humility, whether definitional or not, and to note some analogous characteristic features of intellectual humility. We can do this by contrasting the virtue of humility with the vice of pride (or better, pridefulness). Likewise, we may note some characteristic features of intellectual humility by contrasting it with intellectual pride or pridefulness.2In that vein, consider seven (related) characteristics of the vice of pride:
a) Overestimating one's own abilities (or underestimating one's limitations).
b) Overestimating one's own contributions to one's own successes.
c) Underestimating and thus undervaluing the contributions of others to one's successes.
d) Underestimating one's dependence on others.
e) Illusions of self-sufficiency.
f) Ideals of self-sufficiency (with related ideals of control and invulnerability).
g) A notion of autonomy that opposes individual autonomy to dependence on others.
If we contrast humility with pride, the virtue can be characterized in terms of a realistic estimation of one's own abilities, limitations and contributions, a realistic appreciation of the contributions of others and one's dependence on others, and the rejection of self-sufficiency as an ideal. Intellectual pride and intellectual humility can then be understood accordingly, in terms of intellectual abilities, successes, contributions, etc. In particular, the intellectually humble person rejects the ideal of intellectual self-sufficiency, is not obsessed with invulnerability to error, and embraces a notion of autonomy that sees individual autonomy as consistent with dependence on other persons.
23.2