Introduction
There are a few concepts of folk psychology which have confounded us so much over the centuries that they have undergone significant evolutions of meaning and application.1 Which of shame and guilt is public and which is private? “Sympathy” had different meanings for Hume and Smith.
Dignity was once only for the noble classes, but when egalitarianism emerged in the Enlightenment, it was found that everyone had it (Waldron, 2012). More radically,“condescen- sion” has gone through an inversion of meaning, as it was first a virtue implying, in Samuel Johnsons words, “a voluntary submission to equality with inferiors”, but has since turned into a negative trait implying contempt for those “beneath” one (Appiah, 2018).2 “Humility” is also a word with roots involving socio-economic class, and it has undergone a similar inversion of meaning, though in the opposite direction: humility has changed from being thought of as a negative trait to being a virtue. In the West, humility began to be commonly thought of as a virtue at the start of the Common Era, and it has been commonplace to think of it in that way since.Augustine even hailed humility as “the foundation of all the other virtues”.Consider, however, that while it may have been just and wise for a leader of a long-oppressed people, as Jesus was, to preach humility as a virtue to everyone who would listen (especially Romans), this does not imply that it is always equally just and wise to preach humility as virtue. It is, for example, insidiously pernicious and evil for oppressors to preach humility as a virtue to those whom they oppress: “Work sets you free”, it said over the gate at Auschwitz. Or, as Frederick Douglass notes:
I have met, at the south, many good, religious colored people who were under the delusion that God required them to submit to slavery and to wear their chains with meekness and humility.
I could entertain no such nonsense as this.(1892, p. 105)
Humility can be a tool of moral improvement, but it can also be an instrument of subjugation, a means of social control to maintain an unjust status quo. Humility is always politically conservative. Rebellion, however well-justified, is almost impossible in a climate too rich in humility. Feeling humility is related to feeling humiliation, a horrible feeling with which oppressed people are all too familiar. Humility is indeed the overriding characteristic of the servile: they willingly accept less than their fair share, habitually defer to others, and fail to stand up for themselves.This is the worst case, but there are more frequently times when it is wrong to show humility, wrong to be deferential. Speaking truth to power, or engaging in civil disobedience more generally, should be done respectfully, but people who have the clear moral high ground have no need of moral humility, at least on that point.When speaking truth to power, one ought to look power in the eye.When Martin Luther King, Jr. (1963) responded to white, moderate clergymen by saying,“I cannot sit idly by...” and “Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere”, he did so without humility, but rather as a clarion call and with well-founded rectitude. It is hard to see humility in a thoroughly positive light given how morally inappropriate it can be. Morality does not defer to power. Were it not so,Yogi Berra couldn't have quipped,“It ain't the heat, it's the humility”. Humility is often far from what is noble and fine (to kalon) and because it can lead us morally astray, it is wrong to think of it as a virtue.
It is cliche to point out that power corrupts and success breeds contempt. Nevertheless, this is true, and humility is needed to bring the powerful and successful back to earth, to remind people that we all began as helpless babies, that we are never more nor less than human, all too human. Compared to what is possible, we are all highly fallible, puny creatures.Almost certainly, there is too little humility in the world and everyone would be better off if there were a great deal more of it.
Importantly: arguing that humility is not a virtue is not to argue that it has no moral value or that it is always bad or a vice. On the contrary, even among peers, humility is often of great value: it is the pin in the balloon of our egos, the deflation of our pomposity. And, in fact, many of us are in far greater need of it than we like to think or hope. But despite this paean, and however much humility may be in short supply, we ought to follow Bishop Butler's advice and see it for what it is and not another thing (1900, p. 18).In pursuit of the thesis that humility is not a virtue, what follows is a negative program and a positive one. The negative will explain why humility is not a virtue, while the positive thesis defends an alternative account of the trait, set within a broader virtue theory, wherein humility naturally does the same sort of work as continence, which is not a virtue in the classical tradition. Thus: as continence is to incontinence, humility is to arrogance.And as temperance is the virtue toward which continence is merely an intermediary step, justice is the virtue toward which humility leads the arrogant. On this view, humility is “a corrective”, something to be prescribed only to those who have already moved away from the virtue ofjustice and are already engaged in arrogance to one degree or another.3
3.2