The secular transposition

For Aquinas, the principal second person to whom we are meant to relate in the life of grace is God, with whom joint attention is made possible thanks to certain divine gifts, and human flourishing is organized around the principle of friendship with God.

The answer, I think, is straightforwardly affirmative. Just as the metaphor of human relation­ships is used to understand the theological principles of the life of grace, so also some of the lessons of flourishing in the theological life of grace can be applied back to human development. In particular, it has been argued that joint attention with other human persons, starting with simple shared actions like pointing, gaze following, and turn-taking games, plays an important role in child development, including the acquisition of language and character formation.¹⁹ Moreover, many parents will also be familiar with moral struggles of their own children, espe­cially when children face a choice between aligning with their parents’ will to do some good thing and their tendency to resist aligning with their parents’ will, as in the familiar case of a child refusing to say sorry after doing something wrong.The drama and appropriate virtues of the relationship with God, played out throughout Scripture, therefore have clear parallels with the more conventional and everyday drama of human development and relationships.

These considerations suggest that humility, although achieving prominence especially in a theological context, is scarcely restricted to relating to God as to a second person, as ‘I’ to ‘you’. On the contrary, the commonsense view that it is proper and good for human persons to relate to other persons as second persons, and the damage to relationships from the species of pride, underline how humility is also valuable in a more general and secular sense.

If a man would make his world large, he must always be making himself small. Even the haughty visions, the tall cities, and the toppling pinnacles are the creations of humil­ity... For towers are not towers unless we look up at them, and giants are not giants unless they are larger than we are.²⁰

Chesterton’s observations, as well as what has been written above, suggest that pride leads at most to a false, narrow, and petty superiority. By contrast, humility strengthens the possibility of true friendship and greatness insofar as it opens us to relate personally with what is greater than ourselves.²¹

Notes

1 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Third Edition, 3rd ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 147.

Timothy Chappell, Knowing What To Do: Imagination, Virtue, and Platonism in Ethics (Oxford; New York: OUP Oxford, 2014), 295.

See, for example, Clement of Rome, Stromata, II, 22; Origen, Against Celsus, VI, 15.

Plato, Laws, IV, 716a-b, trans.Trevor J. Saunders, in Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson, (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997), p. 1402. First published by Penguin Books Ltd., 1970.

The connection between Plato's conception of humility and being a friend of God is also made clear in the subsequent paragraph, Laws IV, 716c-d.“On this principle the moderate man is God's friend, being like him, whereas the immoderate and unjust man is not like him and is his enemy”, ibid.

Citations from Scripture are taken from the Revised Standard Version (RSV) unless marked ‘NRSV', indicating the New Revised Standard Version. For this passage, the NRSV has been used since it trans­lates tapeinos explicitly as ‘humble'.

An influential example of the translation of megalopsychia as ‘pride' is that ofW D. Ross and J. O. Urmson in Jonathan Barnes, Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2:The Revised Oxford Translation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 1173-1776.

I have drawn these definitions, and some of the subsequent analysis, from my earlier work, Andrew Pinsent, “Humility”,in Being Good: Christian Virtuesfor Everyday Life, ed. Michael WAustin and Douglas Geivett (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012), 250-255.

P2 pride, in the context of the goal of salvation, corresponds to the ancient heresy of Pelagianism, that one can gain salvation through one's own efforts; while P3 pride maps onto semipelagianism, that one can merit the grace required for salvation in some way.

“Narcissism, n.”, in OED Online, Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press), accessed June 10, 2019, www.oed.com/view/Entry/125088.

See, for example, Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement (NewYork London Toronto Sydney New Delhi: Atria Books, 2010); Brandon Grey, Narcissistic Relationship: Ultimate Guide to Torture a Narcissist. Recovery from the Epidemic Narcissism, Emotional Abuse and Personality Disorder. The Revenge for Lovers (Also for Parents). (Independently pub­lished, 2019).

I note, in passing, that Rebecca Konyndyk De Young has argued that humility is a disposition to con­sider oneself small in relation to God and magnanimity as a virtue of ‘acknowledged dependence' on God. See Rebecca Konyndyk de Young, “Aquinas's Virtues of Acknowledged Dependence: A New Measure of Greatness”, Faith and Philosophy 21, no. 2 (2004): 219.This solution is consistent with the rejection of P1 and P2 pride, but does not, I believe, fully explain the rejection of P3 and P4 pride, since, for example, the Pharisee in the parable acknowledges dependence on God but still suffers from P4 pride.

Andrew Pinsent, The Second-Person Perspective in Aquinas’s EthicsVirtues and Gifts (NewYork;Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2012), 31-63.

I use the term ‘relatedness' rather than ‘relationship' so as not to exclude short-term and momentary interactions in which one aligns with second persons. I am grateful to advice from Peter Hobson for this practice.

In S T II-II.129.3 arg 5. In his response to this objection, Aquinas claims that such characteristics, with certain qualifications, call not for blame but for very great praise, insofar as they belong to a magnani­mous person. Note that ‘irony' here denotes the Greek eironia, namely dissimulation of one's own good; cf. ST II-II.113.1 arg 1.

ST II-II.129.2 ad 3.

ST II-II.129.6, 7, 8.

Pinsent, The Second-Person Perspective in Aquinas’s Ethics, 82.

See, for example, Peter Hobson, The Cradle of Thought: Exploring the Origins of Thinking (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

Gilbert K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, (London: Bodley Head, 1908), chapter III.

As noted in the text, I have drawn some of the material of this chapter from two earlier publications, namely Pinsent, “Humility”, 242-264.; and Pinsent, The Second-Person Perspective in Aquinas’s Ethics, 77-83. I am especially grateful for feedback and advice from Eleonore Stump for the preparation of these earlier works.

Bibliography

Barnes, Jonathan. Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998.

Chappell,Timothy. Knowing What to Do: Imagination, Virtue, and Platonism in Ethics. Oxford; New York: OUP Oxford, 2014.

Chesterton, Gilbert K. Orthodoxy. London: Bodley Head, 1908.

Eilan, Naomi, Christoph Hoerl, Teresa McCormack, and Johannes Roessler, eds. Joint Attention: Communication and Other Minds: Issues in Philosophy and Psychology. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005.

Grey, Brandon.

Hobson, Peter. The Cradle of Thought: Exploring the Origins of Thinking. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

“Narcissism, n.” In: OED OnlineiVol. Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Accessed June 10, 2019. www.oed.com/view/Entry/125088.

Pinsent,Andrew. “Humility.” In: Being Good: Christian Virtues for Everyday Life, edited by Michael WAustin and Douglas Geivett. Cambridge, UK: Grand Rapids, Michigan, Eerdmans, 2012.

------. The Second-Person Perspective in Aquinas's Ethics: Virtues and Gifts. New York; Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2012.

Twenge, Jean, and W. Keith Campbell. The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement. New York London Toronto Sydney New Delhi:Atria Books, 2010.

Young, Rebecca Konyndyk de. “Aquinas's Virtues of Acknowledged Dependence: A New Measure of Greatness.” Faith and Philosophy 21(2) (2004): 214—227.