Traditional and contemporary accounts of humility

There is a plethora of accounts of the nature and value of humility, forwarded from a range of perspectives, including religious and secular, philosophical and psychological, individual and social, ethical and epistemological.

Let me begin, though, with a peek at the dictionary. The O.E.D. defines humility as “the quality of being humble or having a lowly opinion of oneself; meekness, lowliness, humble­ness: the opposite of pride or haughtiness.” To be humble is to have “a low estimate of one’s importance, worthiness, or merits,” to lack “self-assertion or self-exaltation... [and] pride.”To humble someone is to “to cause [them] to think more lowly of [themselves]; to bring [them] low or abase [them].” The American Heritage Dictionary concurs: to be humble is to be “marked by meekness or modesty in behavior, attitude, or spirit; not arrogant or prideful; low in rank, quality, or station;” to humble someone is “to curtail or destroy the pride of” that person, or “to give a lower condition or station to [them]; to abase [them].”The definitions highlight the etymological root (from L. humilis: low, lowly; from humus: the ground).¹¹

For the ancient Greeks, humility was not a virtue. Indeed, what the dictionaries describe is what Aristotle would have called the vice of “pusillanimity,” underestimating or having too low a regard for one’s worth. But for the early and medieval Christians, a low opinion of one’s worth was precisely the appropriate opinion. From their perspective, humility was a very important virtue, for it combatted what they regarded as the deadliest of the deadly sins, namely, arrogance, which they called superbia, the sin of pride.¹² In the deadly sins tradition, arrogance is making too much of oneself, one’s worth or importance, abilities, or entitlements vis-a-vis God or other people.The virtue of humility involves viewing the self as nothing, worthless, even contemptible in light of the majesty of God; or being oblivious to or even annihilating the self; or restraining one’s ambition for excellence; or declaring one’s inferiority to everybody else.¹³ Self-abasement is thus the essence of humility.

Nor is this view merely a quaint feature of bygone times.A humility that combats arrogance through acknowledging one’s relative unimportance and unworthiness is an important virtue in traditional and contemporary Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, which all agree that only the humble individual has the right view of themselves, which orients them properly to God (or transcendent reality) and other persons and makes right living and other virtues possible.¹⁴

This view, however, strikes many contemporary non-religious thinkers as objectionable: self­abasement cannot be what makes humility a virtue. Kant would agree, since from his perspec­tive, it is false that the self is nothing or worthless; concern for self-worth is of the greatest moral importance; self-abasement is opposed to the moral duty to respect oneself as a being with dignity; all persons are equal in dignity so that none should be valued more highly than others; and we have a moral duty to strive for moral excellence. Feminists would also agree: regarding oneself and one's activity as worthless or unimportant, affirming one's inferiority, and constrain­ing ambition are objectionable because they recapitulate and reinforce subordination.

Contemporary theorists take it for granted that humility is a virtue. But because they eschew theism and reject the assessment of humans as essentially worthless and undeserving of any credit for what we do, they are left with the task of developing a secular account of a virtue that would be appropriate even for, as Richards (1992) puts it,“the rather splendid among us.” Most of the accounts are revisionary, since they either reject the idea that humility is essentially a mat­ter of having a lowly opinion of oneself, or treat lowliness as a distortion or excess of humility.¹⁵

Although there is significant disagreement about how to redefine humility,¹⁶ there is general agreement about its conceptual shape: humility is almost universally regarded as a virtue that is or involves beliefs, attitudes, emotional responses, or stances regarding one's worth or impor­tance, or the worth or significance of one's qualities or deeds.

On contemporary accounts, humility is variously defined as a matter of awareness of the smallness and limitations of the human condition;¹⁸ being ignorant of, underestimating, not overestimating, or having an accurate sense of one's abilities and achievements,¹⁹ or being unconcerned or unimpressed with them or not giving them much thought or attention;²⁰ sharing credit with others for one's accomplishments;²¹ having a realistic view of one's flaws and limitations and owning or being at ease with them;²² restraining one's self-aggrandizing ambitions or claims, or not being concerned with the “ego-exalting potency” of one's entitle­ments;²³ not being enamored with oneself,²⁴ regarding self-worth as unimportant,²⁵ or being unconcerned with others' opinions of one's worth;²⁶ or decentering or transcending the self.²⁷

These accounts have been subjected to much criticism, which I'm not going to rehearse. I want instead to identify what I regard as problematic dimensions of these accounts. Before doing that, however, let me admit to being old-fashioned when it comes to defining humility: I am satisfied that the O.E.D. has it right, that humility is a matter of having a lowly opinion of one's worthiness or importance, or the worthiness of one's qualities, abilities, and accomplishments. Nevertheless, a low self-estimate need not involve regarding oneself or one's deeds as wholly without worth or importance, nor holding oneself inferior to other humans; nor do we have to equate a low self-estimate with the humiliation of being treated as if one were nothing or worse than nothing.

If we accept the idea that the sine qua non of humility is the lowly self-estimate, then one striking feature of the contemporary accounts that reject this idea is that humility is not concep­tually continuous with the cognates “to humble,” “humiliate,” and “humiliation.”²⁸ To be sure, humiliating someone is morally objectionable when it assaults self-respect.²⁹ But the conceptual connection ought not to be denied. It is also striking that few of the contemporary accounts discuss bad forms of humility, such as servility, submissiveness, aquiescence in subordination, obsequiousness, groveling, and self-denigration. These are morally problematic, to be sure, but their close relation to good humility (if there is such a thing) also shouldn't be denied. At the same time, we are owed an explanation of how the putative virtue of humility is distinct from and not liable to degenerate into these other forms.

If the core of humility is lowly self-assessment, then it is hard to see many contemporary accounts as accounts of humility rather than something else. For example, where is the lowli­ness in having an accurate or realistic view of one's worth, good qualities, or accomplishments; or in ignoring, being unconcerned with, or not paying attention to them; or in sharing credit for achievements with other contributors? Of course, having a realistic sense of one's flaws and limitations and owning them could be understood in terms of a low self-estimate. But it is not at all clear why this stance is anything more than, or has moral value other than, honesty and integrity. It is also hard to see anything virtuous about regarding one's real merits or moral worth as unimpressive or unimportant, or viewing the self as less valuable than it is or as something to be unconcerned with, or being at ease with flaws that one might correct.

Furthermore, the claim that humility is the foe of arrogance is puzzling, since humility doesn't preclude arrogance;³⁰ someone can be arrogant about some aspects of themselves and humble about others, or arrogant in some contexts and humble in others, and it makes perfect sense to speak of arrogant humility, as Proust does in mocking the Princesse de Parme (Proust 1934: 1023).

Grenberg (2005) identifies another problem. Once contemporary theorists reject a theistic view in which God's supreme excellence provides the standard for self-assessment, they need to find some other standard. They turn to interpersonal comparison. But their reliance on self-other comparisons “inadvertently give[s] approbation to just those excesses and distor­tions of humility they are trying to avoid” (Grenberg 2005: 112). As we'll see, Kant regards arrogance and humility that are grounded in self-other comparisons as two sides of the same bad penny.

Finally, from a feminist perspective, the prescribing of humility that is part of calling it a virtue is highly problematic. For members of oppressed groups whose life experience is one of constraint and devaluation, humility about their place, merits, abilities, ambitions, entitlements, worth, or importance would seem to reinforce their subordination and undermine possibilities for flourishing. Self-expansion, embracing merits, downplaying limitations, even self-aggran­dizement and arrogance could be more life-enhancing for them.³¹ Humility may be a correc­tive for a tendency, engendered and reinforced in certain social positions, to be possessed by an inflated sense of self, just as a strict diet may be a corrective to pervasive temptations to overeat. But just as not everyone is overweight and many are even starving, so not every human is self­aggrandizing or claims inordinate self-importance, and some have too low a sense of self-worth and importance.

I suspect that what happens with contemporary accounts is that, although they reject one aspect of the traditional account of humility, they accept without question the other three aspects: (1) humility is a virtue, (2) humility is the, i.e., the only, opposite of the vice of arrogance, and (3) the liability to arrogance infects everyone.

The problematic aspects of contemporary accounts raise the following questions.What is the best way to understand what humility is? Since it is possible to be both humble and arrogant, is humility really the cure for arrogance? Is humility genuinely a human virtue, a trait that is good for all persons to have; or is it instead a characteristic that might be useful only for certain people in certain contexts; or, worse, is it, like arrogance, morally objectionable because it is incompatible with respect for ourselves as persons? If humility is indeed compatible with self­respect, how are the two related? If it is indeed a virtue, might at least a part of its value derive from connections to self-respect? Kant provides valuable answers.

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