Kant on true humility

Not all humility, however, is vicious. Because humility involves a low estimation of one's worth, it necessarily involves a comparative judgment. Interpersonal humility and arrogance take the wrong standard for comparison and wrongly traffic in worth.

The moral worth referred to here is not unconditional dignity but, rather, a conditional, scalar worth that individuals have to earn through goodness of will and can lose through acting wrongly, acting rightly for the wrong reasons, or having a weak or bad character. Given, on the one hand, our ineluctable imperfection and inevitable failings and, on the other, the high stand­ards for conduct and character set by the moral law, it is reasonable to suppose that an accurate assessment of one's moral worth would yield humility.

True humility contrasts not only with servility but also with a form of arrogance that is “a conviction of the greatness of one's moral worth, but only from failure to compare it with the law” (6:435; emphasis mine).³⁷The last part indicates that arrogance is not only a matter of unjustifi­able claims to superiority over others but also of claiming any worth for oneself independently of the moral law. This is not, however, the conceit that results from poor assessment skills; it is the refusal to acknowledge the moral law as the supreme condition of all worth of persons.The arrogance here involves a failure of another kind of self-respect, which I call “agentic recognition self-respect."True humility plays its important moral role in relation to this kind of self-respect.

Whereas interpersonal recognition self-respect is properly acknowledging and valuing one­self as a person among persons, agentic recognition self-respect is properly acknowledging and valuing oneself as a moral agent. Someone who respects herself as a moral agent takes her responsibilities seriously, especially her responsibilities to honor her dignity as a person, to gov­ern herself fittingly, and to make of herself and her life something she can with good reason believe to be good and worthy. For Kant, the most vital of the responsibilities each moral agent has is to actualize one's capacity for moral valuing and autonomous agency by choosing to act through rational motives, i.e., from respect for the moral law. When one acts as one's reason sincerely says it is right to act, rather than doing what one wants regardless of whether it is right or wrong, one acts like the rational being one is and honors one's dignity as a being with the capacity to act on reason.When one acts otherwise, one betrays one's dignity and fails to respect oneself as a moral agent.

The arrogance that claims moral worth independently of the moral law involves just this kind of failure to respect oneself.What makes it morally objectionable is the source of the unjus­tified claiming of great moral worth: one's desires arrogate the moral authority to determine worth, which belongs to reason's moral law alone. As with the arrogance that lords it over oth­ers, this kind of arrogance is motivated by a particular desire: it exchanges honest self-assessment for the more easily obtained enhancement of self-esteem. The arrogant individual wants to think well of himself, but rather than striving to earn moral merit, he arranges his judgments and interpretation of the moral law's demands to declare himself to be admirable. In doing so, he subordinates his rationality to desire and so makes himself a “plaything of the inclinations," debasing his dignity as a rational being and disrespecting his moral agency.

This form of arrogance is the psychological source of all modes of making too much of one­self, all of the vices of pride (and all other vices as well). Kant identifies it as the deepest source of evil in human nature, in which “the mind's attitude is corrupted at its root" (Kant 1996d; 6: 30), because of its denial of the supremacy of the moral law and of reason over mere desires. It must therefore be eliminated to make possible morally justified employment of our agency. Here is where true humility comes in.

True humility is the recognition of the insignificance of our worth that arises inexorably when we honestly and accurately compare ourselves with the exacting standards of the moral law. It curbs the too-high assessment of worth to which we are enticed or pushed by the desire for self-esteem, thus, as Kant says, “confining self-esteem in its legitimate bounds" (27: 636). When we honestly hold ourselves up to the standard of the moral law, we realize that any opinion of our moral worth (or, for that matter, any worth except dignity)³⁸ other than a low opinion is unjustified.When we realize this, our pretentious self-conceit is, as Kant says in the second Critiquefstruck down" as the moral law “unavoidably humiliates" our unjustified claims of moral worthiness (Kant 1996a; 5: 73-4).This humiliation is part of the subjective experience that constitutes the “incentive of pure practical reason," i.e., the effect that the moral law has on our motivational system as soon as we recognize it. The humiliating recognition of unworthi­ness sweeps away the self-importance that otherwise blocks us from directing the abilities and efforts of our agency toward making morally appropriate choices, acting rightly, and improving ourselves morally.

There is a danger here, however. For if humility is all we are left with upon self-evaluation, we are quite liable to lose all moral motivation, sinking into despair,“despondency” and “tim­orousness” (27: 350).When we focus on the inevitably long list of our flaws, deficiencies, inad­equacies, and failures, we can come to “doubt as to man's capacity for ever attaining the moral law,” and so “give up all effort to approach it” (27:611).

Luckily, however, the experience of humiliation and the ensuing appropriately low assess­ment of worth that is true humility are not the only results of comparing ourselves sincerely to the moral law. For at the same time as we recognize our failure to live up to the law, we recognize ourselves as its author and are conscious of our “sublime predisposition” for moral self-governance and virtue.We also understand that it is “only through the noble predisposition to the good in us” that we judge ourselves as lacking worth (6: 441).The result of these realiza­tions is “an exaltation of the highest self-valuation,” which is respect for our dignity as persons (6: 436). In this way, arrogance is replaced by self-respect.The low self-assessment of humility is thus not an independent or defining attitude about self-worth, but only the first stage in a complex response to ourselves and our worth. And Kant's emphasis in discussing this response throughout the ethical works is not on lowly humility, but on the elevated respect for ourselves that proper assessment of worth inevitably produces.³⁹

True humility is the knowledge of one's limitations and deficiencies judged in comparison with self-given moral law. But it is not a Kantian virtue, although it can be part of one.⁴⁰ The virtue lies in dealing properly with this knowledge,⁴¹ which is what agentic recognition self­respect involves.

Like interpersonal recognition self-respect, agentic recognition self-respect is a duty we have to ourselves.

The life-shaping commitment to honor one's dignity as a person involves a commitment to “strive with all one's might” to live up to the standards of the moral law, and so a commitment to moral self-improvement.And that requires honest self-assessment.The judgment of true humil­ity provides important information that helps guide self-improvement. But the central purpose of comparison with the law and accepting its judgment is not to show us how unworthy we are, but rather to remind ourselves of the work yet to be done and to motivate renewed striving to be good and do right. Because what is important to the agentically self-respecting person is not thinking highly of herself, but knowing whether she is living in accord with her moral commit­ments, true humility does not yield despair, nor does it motivate efforts to boost self-esteem by fiddling with her moral score or giving higher weight to scores based on comparative accom­plishments, abilities, or social standing.The self-respecting person puts true humility to work in “a firm determination” to the “tenacious pursuit” of her principles in “dutiful obedience to the law” (27: 610). Humility thus has an important role to play, but its proper place and value is in service to the commitment to respect oneself as a moral agent.

From Kant's perspective, to think that virtuous humility is a matter of being oblivious to, unconcerned about, or unimpressed with self-worth, or of underestimating one's real worth, or of restraining one's ambition for moral excellence, to think that its value lies chiefly in freeing one to pay attention to more important things or in preventing or curing arrogance, is not only to misunderstand what humility is and how it matters morally.

From a feminist perspective, agentic recognition respect is a powerful motivation for liberatory struggle. For it adds to the understanding of the inherent injustice of domination and subordina­tion that interpersonal recognition self-respect involves the further understanding that one morally owes it to oneself, and others just like oneself, to resist unjust attempts to constrict freedom and deny agency. And what effective resistance requires is not discounting one's abilities, acknowledg­ing one's limitations and flaws, constraining one's ambitions, or minimizing one's importance; it requires the kind of commitment to oneself as worthy of freedom, worthy of equality, worthy of agency, which is at the heart of self-respect. But for members of dominant groups whose arrogant assumptions of great personal and interpersonal worth underwrite their false and lying beliefs in the rightness of their superior social position, cultivating true humility and even experiencing appropriate humiliation can be the corrective needed to become self-respecting and just.

Humility thus has an important role to play, but only in service to the commitment to respect oneself as a moral agent and an equal person among persons. Humility that is not anchored in and constrained by interpersonal recognition self-respect and agentic recognition self-respect is liable both to agency-undermining servility and despair and to interpersonal comparisons of self-worth that misvalue the self and lead to arrogance. A humility worth having is at best (a) an ancillary virtue, by which I mean that it is of moral value only when it is subsumed by self-respect; (b) a contextual virtue, good only in some contexts but not in all; and (c) an instru­mental virtue, one that can serve as a corrective for dispositional deficiencies, especially those that can infect members of dominant groups, but not in itself partially constitutive of human excellence or a flourishing life. Self-respect, not humility, is the primary, absolute, and intrinsic virtue of self-valuing.

Notes

1 This chapter draws significantly from Dillon (2015).

2 I take the term “vices of pride” from Roberts and Wood (2003), where humility is defined as the absence of the vices of pride. All of these vices, I have argued, are dimensions of arrogance (Dillon 2003), so I will focus on arrogance.

3 Exceptions include Richards (1992), Grenberg (2005), Louden (2007), and Dillon (2015).

4 Bloomfield (this volume) is one of the few exceptions.

5 Exceptions include Battaly (this volume) and Bloomfield (this volume).

6 Here I disagree with Grenberg (2005), who argues that humility is the core virtue for Kant. I develop this disagreement below.

7 See Dillon (2017).

8 I develop this position in Dillon (2012) and Dillon (in press).

9 See Dillon (in press).

10 See Dillon (2012).

11 To be meek (from an Old Norse word meaning “soft”) is to be “submissive and easily imposed on,” “unresentful under injury or reproach” (O.E.D.). Here we can begin to see why encouraging humility for oppressed people is problematic.

12 See, for example, Gregory (1850).

13 See, for example,Aquinas (1921: II-II); Benedict (1875); Bernard (1929); and Eckhart (1981).

14 See Porter et al. (2017);Weil (2002); Carlson (1944);Warren (2002).

15 Snow (1995) and Driver (2001) are exceptions.

16 The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on “Modesty and Humility” (Bommarito 2018) has an overview of the differences.

17 I say “seems” because the claim is rarely asserted. But the failure even to mention self-respect as appro­priate self-valuing strongly suggests it.

18 See Snow (1005) on “existential humility.”

19 See, for example, Ben-Ze'ev (1993); Driver (2001); Flanagan (1990); Richards (1992).

20 Garcia (2006); Bommarito (2013); Nadelhoffer et al. (2016).

21 Nuyen (1998).

22 Snow (1995); Grenberg (2005);Whitcomb et al. (2017);Andre (2015).

23 Roberts and Wood (2003).

24 Nadelhoffer, et al. (2016).

25 Roberts (2009).

26 Roberts and Wood (2003).

27 Taylor (2006).

28 One exception is Snow (1995), which explicitly connects humility with being humbled.

29 See Margalit (1996).

30 Whitcomb et al. (2017) notes that one can be both humble and arrogant at the same time: humble about limitations, arrogant about strengths.

31 I have argued for this in Dillon (in press).

32 Citations from Kant's texts refer to volume and page numbers in the Akademie edition (Kant 1900). All quotations are from specified volumes of The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant.

33 I borrow the term “recognition respect” from Darwall (1977).

34 I follow Wood (1999) in this reading of the End in Itself formulation.

35 Richards (1992) argues that what he calls humility (“having an accurate sense of oneself, sufficiently firm to resist pressures... to think too much of oneself” (5) and “having oneself in proper perspective” (36)) is not incompatible with self-respect.The discussion makes it clear that he is contrasting servility and interpersonal recognition self-respect, thus vaguely echoing Kant.

36 The literature on self-esteem is vast. But see Rosenberg (1965); Coopersmith (1967); Owens, Stryker, and Goodman (2001); Mruk (2006); and Kernis (2006).

37 See Dillon (2003) for analysis of two kinds of arrogance.

38 I take Kant's assertion that “nothing can have a worth other than that which the [moral] law deter­mines for it” (1996b; 4: 436) to mean every kind of valuing of absolutely everything.

39 In reversing the significance of these two moments of humility and self-respect, Grenberg (2005) mis­represents Kant's views of both the moral value of true humility and its place in the moral life. Here I agree with Louden (2007).

40 In the Lectures Kant says that “proper self-esteem” comprises humility (“for if we compare ourselves with the holy moral law, we discover how remote we are from contiguity with it”) and “true noble pride” (“but in regard to our humanity we should think highly of ourselves”) (27:349). (Kant treats “self-esteem” and “self-respect” as synonyms.)

41 Swanton (2011) distinguishes humility as knowledge and as the disposition to deal appropriately with it.

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