Modesty: a selective glimpse

Driver (1989, 1999, 2001) — Modesty is the dogmatic disposition to underestimate self-worth based on ignorance of one's self-worth. Driver is one of a group of philosophers who uses the term “modesty” interchangeably with “humility.” Her work has stimulated a large body of responses, only some of which can be included here.⁵⁰

Modesty is one of a class of virtues, which, she claims, relies on ignorance.⁵¹ She calls her view the “underestimation” account.

Driver's account is deeply at odds with Western virtue ethical traditions, both in its insist­ence on a class of virtues that requires ignorance, as well as on the claim that modesty (indeed, any virtue) is necessarily involuntary, and that its cultivation would require self-deception. Not surprisingly, the view has generated sustained criticism.⁶¹ We turn now to accounts of modesty developed in response to Driver.

Flanagan (1990) — Modesty is nonoverestimation of one's accomplishments and worth. Flanagan systematically disambiguates several tangled epistemological claims that Driver makes. Central to his argument is defeating what he calls the “strong” and “weak” ignorance claims.The strong claim requires ignorance at the general level of virtue description; the weak “requires ignorance of certain facts or features of the self, others, or the world.”⁶² As for the strong claim, Flanagan quotes Driver as contending,“I can be modest, I cannot know it.”⁶³ He points out that the state­ment “I am modest,” is odd from a performative perspective, but it is not out of place in some contexts, for example, in communications with close friends or a therapist, in which one is brought to see and acknowledge one's modesty, or self-comprehension brought about through self-reflection. Bragging about one's modesty would undermine one's claim to being modest, but uttering the phrase,“I am modest” in contexts such as those mentioned would not.

The weak ignorance claim is that modesty requires the dogmatic disposition to underes­timate one's self-worth. Flanagan criticizes this claim by comparing it with his own account, which he calls the “nonoverestimation account.” On this view, the modest person can have an accurate sense of herself and her accomplishments, but she doesn't overestimate them. Flanagan argues that his view is superior to Driver's on four key points.⁶⁵ First, it avoids Driver's coun­terintuitive notion that there are no modest people who don't dogmatically underestimate their own worth. Flanagan writes:“The truly modest person cannot be so systematically in the dark about her own worth.”⁶⁶ Second, it avoids the paradox, evident on Driver's view, that a person who accurately understands his self-worth can behave modestly (by not bragging, etc.), yet not be modest (by not being dogmatically disposed to ignorance about his self-worth).Third, another feature of Driver's view, avoided by Flanagan's, is that: “[s]ince modesty necessarily involves ignorance, it is also necessarily involuntary in nature.”⁶⁷ As Flanagan rightly observes, if modesty were involuntary, it would not be open to self-cultivation.⁶⁸ He writes:

To me, the twin ideas that the virtues of ignorance are essentially characterized by ignorance at both levels [strong and weak ignorance claims], as well as closed, in prin­ciple, to self-cultivation, are extremely implausible consequences of the underestima­tion account. Indeed, I take them to be a reduction of the account.⁶⁹

Finally, the nonoverestimation account fits nicely with work from empirical psychology on self-serving attributional biases.We dramatically overestimate ourselves and tend to have unre­alistically positive self-evaluations. Modesty, as the tendency not to overestimate one's abilities, accomplishments, and so on, is a useful corrective to these natural, yet erroneous, proclivities.⁷⁰

Schueler (1997) — Modesty is not caring whether people are impressed by one for one’s accomplishments.

(1) that the modest person's beliefs (or her presentation of them) about her own accomplishments must be accurate; (2) that these beliefs (or presentations) must mean that she or her accomplishments rank low on the relevant scale; and (3) that her accomplishments must be genuine.⁷¹

For Schueler, the primary sense of modesty is what he calls “focused” modesty, which is about some specific accomplishment or set of accomplishments (he contrasts this with “global” mod­esty, or modesty simpliciter, which he claims to be focused modesty that takes oneself as its object).⁷² Schueler contends that, since the basic concept is focused modesty “where the stand­ard form is ‘S is modest about (accomplishment) X,'” it's clear that (1)-(3) are irreconcilable.⁷³

A desire-based account can explain modesty by construing the modest person as someone who “lacks a certain desire or set of desires, namely, that people be impressed by her for what she has accomplished.”⁷⁴ This is not the same, he contends, as saying that she doesn't care how her accomplishments appear to people, or how they're evaluated, or what people think of her, but it is to say that she doesn't care that people (including herself) be impressed by her because of them.⁷⁵

Schueler's account has at least some similarities to Roberts and colleagues, who think that humility is the intelligent lack of concern for one's own importance, and Garcia, who thinks that humility is being unimpressed with oneself. Schueler's view has come in for criticism.⁷⁶ For example, as Grenberg rightly notes, Schueler appeals to a secular background worldview intended to serve as a functional equivalent of religious conceptions according to which one's place in a divinely ordained order provides the perspective needed for humility.

We can add a further worry. According to Schueler,

on this account, a genuinely modest person will be not be someone who is trying to be or appear modest. She will, typically, not think of her actions as modest, as those that a modest person would perform, or the like.⁷⁸

Clearly, any theory of modesty (or humility) should disqualify someone who does not care about actually being modest, but only about appearing to be modest. Here again, it seems, Schueler goes too far.As with Driver, he quotes Williams that:“it is a notorious truth that a modest person does not act under the title of modesty.”⁷⁹ Consistently with Flanagan's remarks on Driver, I see no reason why this should always be true.The person whose modesty is ingrained need not consciously think of herself or her actions as modest, but someone engaged in self-reflection could come to consciously recognize that she is modest and, indeed, to extend her modest actions across different domains in her life. Additionally, the person who acknowledges the need to develop in modesty could couple self-reflection with the desire to be modest. Schueler ignores these kinds of cases, as well as others in which we think that trying to be modest does not undermine modesty, for example, those in which someone is committed to sustaining her modesty, perhaps in the face of temptations. Here, too, it seems, trying to be modest is not incompatible with genuine modesty.⁸⁰

Ridge (2000) — Modesty is the disposition to de-emphasize one’s accomplishments and traits taken to entitle one to benefits for the right reasons.

In sum, then, on my account, a person is modest just in case:

(a) She is disposed to de-emphasize her accomplishments and traits that are taken to entitle her to benefits.

(b) She is so disposed at least partially in virtue of not caring too much about whether she gets everything to which she is entitled.

(c) She is so disposed at least partially in virtue of caring enough that people not overestimate her accomplishments and characteristics or her responsibility for them.⁸¹

Several features of this account are interesting. First, there are two elements to the disposition to de-emphasize one's accomplishments:

a disposition to refrain from going out of your way to stress the significance of your accomplishments, and... a disposition to correct others if they have an inflated con­ception of those accomplishments (or an inflated conception of your responsibility for them).⁸²

The disposition to correct others is a new element not previously appearing in analyses of humility or modesty (when used interchangeably with “humility”).

Second, Ridge links traits in particular (but also accomplishments, though his main discus­sion concerns traits), with being entitled to certain benefits, and suggests that not pressing for those benefits, that is, not caring too much whether one always gets them, is part of being mod­est.⁸³ This has been an unrecognized dimension of modesty/humility. For example, a star player could easily be considered immodest if he insists on being a starter in every game, even those in which the rival team can easily be defeated and the game offers an opportunity for less talented athletes to play. Similarly, one could imagine an intelligent but immodest student on a debate team or a chess team who insists on being sent to every match, not giving others a chance to participate.

The extent to which one should care about being entitled to benefits on the basis of one's traits or accomplishments raises the question ofjustice. If we lived in an ideally just world, con­ditions (a) and (b) of Ridge's conception could be adequate. But we do not live in a just world, and because of this, the clauses need to be modified. In particular, both (a) and (b) should be amended, yielding something like:

(a') She is disposed to de-emphasize her accomplishments and traits that are taken to entitle her to benefits, provided that others who possess similar traits and accomplishments are not accorded unfair recognition and entitlements to benefits.

(b') She is so disposed at least partially in virtue of not caring too much about whether she gets everything to which she is entitled, and her not caring too much is based on her experience ofjust distributions of the benefits of entitlements to herself and others.

(a) and (b) need to be amended in this way because of the reality of discrimination and oppres­sion. For example, for most of the history of schooling in the United States, women's athletics were funded at far lower rates than men's.This resulted in the lack of benefits and opportunities to which women athletes would otherwise have been entitled. It would not have been modest of women athletes to de-emphasize their athletic abilities and accomplishments, nor would their not caring too much about getting the benefits to which they were entitled have been modest or praiseworthy.To the contrary, such attitudes and behavior would have displayed a lack of self­respect, the lack of a sense ofjustice, and the possible internalization of subordinating stereotypes about women. Similar comments can be made about other forms of discrimination, for example, on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and disability.

In general, philosophers who write about modesty (and humility) tend to assume that people get what they deserve from others, and that modesty (humility) is good because it counteracts tendencies to exaggerate one's achievements, talents, etc. But humility has been and can be used in the service of oppression.⁸⁴ Does this mean that Ridge's condition (c), that modest people should care enough that people not overestimate their accomplishments and charac­teristics or their responsibility for them, also should be relaxed to take into account conditions of oppression — that the oppressed shouldn't be expected to care whether people overestimate their accomplishments, and so on? I think not. Those who have been oppressed or unfairly treated should be wary about de-emphasizing their accomplishments and traits and should be vigilant about receiving the benefits to which they're entitled.This is to ensure that they receive their due in circumstances in which justice is threatened or denied. The fact that someone has been oppressed or treated unfairly, however, does not excuse her for not caring enough about whether people overestimate her accomplishments, etc. She should get what is due to her from others — just estimation and recognition of her accomplishments and traits, and fairness in the distribution of benefits to which she's entitled — but others' overestimation of her accomplish­ments is not what is due to her as a matter ofjustice. If she corrects such mistaken views, then does she do it out ofjustice, modesty, or something else? With respect to the oppressed, it seems that condition (c) of Ridge's modesty conditions is also a form of justice — in correcting an exaggerated view of her accomplishments, the oppressed person ensures that others have a just opinion of her.The corrected opinion is just because it is true and it is her due. But it seems that anyone, not only the oppressed, has good reason to adhere to condition (c). But, if so, and if we accept (c) as a general condition for being modest, Ridge has identified a respect in which the virtue of modesty overlaps with the concern for justice, as well as with the concern for truth — an interesting and novel implication of his account.

Let me conclude this discussion of modesty by mentioning two recent accounts that push a discussion of that virtue well beyond the debate originating with Driver.

Bommarito (2013) — Modesty as a virtue of attention.As with other accounts, Bommarito begins with an overview and critique of the views of Driver and others who have written about mod- esty.Yet he takes a significant step away from that trajectory by introducing the new idea that modesty is a virtue of attention. Unlike awareness, attention is a matter of consciously focusing on something. Interestingly, modesty is, according to Bommarito, a virtue of both attention and inattention. He writes:

Following Slote (1983, 61), it is necessary to have a good quality to be modest about. Contrary to most contemporary views, it is not necessary to underestimate the good quality nor is it necessary to have an accurate assessment. Instead, what is necessary is to direct one's conscious attention in certain ways — away from the trait or its value or toward the outside causes and conditions that played a role in developing it.⁸⁵

He hastens to note that attending in these ways isn't sufficient for modesty; one must attend for the right reasons. One's pattern of attending must result from one's values and desires.⁸⁶ Moreover,“Modesty does not demand inattention in the sense of a total lack of attention but in the sense that one does not dwell on one's own good qualities.”⁸⁷

Conceptualizing modesty as a virtue of attention opens an entirely new avenue of research on modesty, as well as on other virtues.

Wilson (2014) — Modesty as kindness.Wilson offers another innovative account. He advances the idea that modesty is connected with the more fundamental virtue of kindness. He writes:

To be modest is to be disposed to present your accomplishments/positive attributes in a way that is sensitive to the potential negative impact on the well-being of others, where this disposition stems from a concern for that well-being.⁸⁸

One noteworthy feature of modesty as kindness is that it is consistent with the kinds of epis- temic deficits that characterize Driver's view.⁸⁹ Yet it is also possible to amend the account to include the requirement that the modest person have an accurate self-assessment. This would result in a view that Wilson calls “intellectualised modesty as kindness.”⁹⁰

Wilson's view is that the non-intellectualized virtue of modesty is not doing anything spe­cial or out of the ordinary. The research agenda that he foresees is one in which philosophers examine a range of specific virtues to see whether an examination of non-intellectualized vir­tues, conjoined with a variety of intellectualized amendments, can add to our knowledge of the nature of virtue in general.⁹¹This challenges traditional intellectualized understandings ofvirtue, but also invites philosophers to think in more fine-grained ways about the kinds of intellectual components that specific virtues require.

Before concluding, I wish to make a criticism that applies to Driver, Bommarito, and Wilson. Driver requires that the modest person be ignorant of her accomplishments, Wilson permits ignorance but does not require it, and also allows for inaccuracy in the modest person's assess­ment of her accomplishments, and Bommarito allows for accurate assessments.⁹² Yet, all three hold that modesty is a dependent virtue in the sense that one must have something to be mod­est about. I believe their openness to ignorance and/or error in assessments opens the door to problems for their accounts.

Consider two cases: the braggart and the “blow-hard.” To sharpen the case, imagine that they're your undergraduate philosophy students.The braggart has philosophical talent but either doesn't know about it or inaccurately assesses it. She blows her purported acumen completely out of proportion in thinking about herself and talking with others. She is immodest. Now consider the blow-hard. He has absolutely no philosophical acumen, but mistakenly thinks he does and thinks and acts in exactly the same way as the braggart. Is the blow-hard immodest (in addition to being annoying, clueless, etc.)? Driver, Wilson, and Bommarito would have to deny that the blow-hard is immodest because, even though he thinks he has philosophical abil­ity, he is wrong — he has nothing to be immodest about. If the braggart were to stop thinking and speaking too highly of herself, our theorists would deem her modest. That is because she has something to be modest about. Not so for the blow-hard. Were he to stop thinking and speaking too highly of himself, he would not be regarded as modest because he has nothing to be modest about.

The problem is that requiring or allowing ignorance and inaccuracy in assessment puts the braggart and the blow-hard on the same epistemic footing with respect to different ontological statuses, namely, their possession of an actual talent. If, for whatever reason that is required by the various accounts under discussion, the braggart adjusts her thinking, attention, and so on, she can rightly be said to shift from being immodest to modest.This is because her thought, patterns of attention, etc., track the truth insofar as they relate to an actual talent or ability that she possesses. But the blow-hard's shift in attention would not track the truth, for he never had anything to be modest or immodest about.

One might embrace this analysis as raising no problem for the accounts being discussed (I do not), but there is a deeper problem. Allowing ignorance and inaccuracy obscures, from a first- person perspective, the information that is necessary to ascertain whether one is truly being immodest or modest. If, as on Driver's view and consistently with Wilson's, the braggart either must have no knowledge of her talent or is allowed to have no knowledge, she is in the same epistemic situation as the blow-hard.Thus, she has no way of knowing if she is truly modest or if she is mistaken in the same way as the blow-hard.A similar first-person predicament arises on Bommarito's account, if we take his allowance of the inaccurate assessment of talents to entail being inaccurate about whether one has talent at all, or being so inaccurate in one's assessment that one trumps up a negligible ability into something much greater, and then thinks one is being modest when one is inattentive to the trumped up, yet actually quite minimal, talent. On Bommaritos account, one can imagine the braggart having negligible philosophical ability, yet saying to herself, “I am a major philosophical star,” then deciding not to pay attention to that. Bommarito would have to call her modest. I would call her self-deceived.

Consider, too, that observers are often more readily convinced of evidence of another's faults than are those who possess them. Consistently with Flanagan's critique of Driver, self-serving attributional bias can lead one to believe one has talents when one doesn't, and that one's abili­ties are greater than they are. This kind of bias can be difficult to correct, even in the face of evidence. Thus, I submit that allowing ignorance or inaccuracy in the mental states of agents opens the door to several kinds of problem — (1) those pertaining to whether people actually are modest or immodest, that is, whether their modesty or immodesty tracks the truth with respect to their having actual talents; (2) how people can know whether they are being modest or immodest and make reliable self-attributions of these qualities while in a state of ignorance, or while holding inaccurate beliefs; and (3) the likelihood that allowing ignorance or inaccuracy to shape their beliefs, attitudes, and emotions makes it harder to disabuse them of error because of self-serving bias.

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