13
in ourselves, when we look upon ourselves with the last degree of contempt, this
contempt seems to us so fine and right, that we find in it a reason to exalt
ourselves higher than before; … so that this sin rebuilds itself upon its own
ruins.
28
This sense of the paradoxical, self-cannibalizing quality of humility can be found
in other self-consciously critical Christian writers, like Pascal, as well as in the internal
examinations of Benjamin Franklin.
29
While figures like Montaigne, La Placette, and
Pascal speak to the elusiveness of humble acts, other thinkers have pushed a slightly
different point against humility that directs us not only to its subterranean psychological
links to self-love, but to humility’s instrumental role in serving other, darker motives of
the self. On these points, Spinoza and La Rouchefoucauld make parallel arguments that
identify humility as a disguise for pride, ambition, and social domination.
For Spinoza, humility is an emotion, and a painful, melancholy one at that.
Humility is a feeling of pain that we get when we contemplate or experience our own
“weakness of body or mind.”
30
Thus, Spinoza opposes humility to self-complacency,
which is the pleasurable feeling arising from reflections upon our “power of action.” If
self-complacency can generate pride – “thinking too highly of one’s self” – humility can
foster self-abasement, which entails “thinking too meanly of one’s self.”
31
Spinoza is
quick to add, however, that “these emotions, humility and self-abasement, are extremely
rare. For human nature, considered in itself, strives against them as much as it can; hence
those, who are believed to be most self-abased and humble, are generally in reality the
most ambitious and envious.”
32
Convention