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elements that give democratic humility its normative significance. To be sure, there are
important limits here. An ethos of democratic humility will not provide any specific,
substantive policy directions for liberal societies. But it will indicate the manner in
which a productive and edifying mode of political discourse might be engaged.
Specifically, democratic humility can help us take the views and opinions of others
seriously in circumstances where difficult moral and political choices must be made. It
can do so by encouraging us to recognize the confluence of perspectivism (or
ethical/cultural particularity) and the burdens of judgment for any given political
question. By having before us and by reflecting self-critically upon the dual phenomena
of perspectivism and the burdens of judgment, an ethos of political/civic humility
operates as creative spur to actively attend (morally and cognitively speaking) to others.
In this sense, democratic humility, and the spirit of openness and active listening with
which it operates, serves as a valuable civic conductor, making political-discursive
exchange across multiple forms of difference possible and meaningful. Where such an
ethos is in operation, democratic humility may reduce the likelihood that people who
enter a deliberative public setting will leave with exactly the same or more extreme
versions of the opinions with which they started.
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This educative function is not only
one of the values of the practice of humility, but one of the central virtues of democracy
as well.
If civic humility is taken as a politically consequential recognition of human
incompleteness (in both a cognitive and a moral sense), then the value of humility is that
it may lead to a generous spirit of active mutual listening and understanding. The
democratically humble person recognizes his/her own limitations and partialities and is
Convention