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cultural-historical context, but a far more basic question: are human beings even capable
of humility as such, and how would we know? While early Christian authors (like St.
Benedict and St. Bernard) understood that humility required long and difficult moral
labor, they largely took for granted that humility and pride represented two distinct and
contrasting paths of life. But is this true? Another way to ask this question is this: can
the humble know themselves to be humble without sacrificing the very quality or
meaning of humility? Pervasive doubts about this question have elicited thoughtful, if
also troubled, attention from Luther, Montaigne, Pascal, Spinoza, and Benjamin Franklin,
among others. Michel Montaigne’s existential questioning of man’s capacity for virtue
led him to acknowledge that “you can be humble out of pride.”
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From that rudimentary,
if elusive recognition it became almost impossible for Montaigne, (and for many who
came after him), to mark a stable distinction between the desire to be esteemed as humble
by others and the virtue of humility itself. At a deeper level Montaigne tells us, “Truth
for us nowadays is not what is, but what others can be brought to accept: just as we call
money not only legal tender but any counterfeit coins in circulation.”
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Here Montaigne
gives a moral twist to Gresham’s law (bad money drives out good), to the effect that false
humility drives out the very idea and practice of genuine humility.
What Montaigne impels us to confront is not just the annoying fact of “false”
humility, but rather the more vexing moral question of how to mark a meaningful
distinction between true and counterfeit humility in the first place. Underlying this
question is not just the notorious moral trouble created by the opacity of human intentions
(our own as well as others), but the more difficult question that asks why human beings
should be moral, or humble, and what sources could properly motivate such forms of
Convention