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views, perspectives, and moral horizons (including basic categories of justice and what
passes for “common sense”) may need to be expanded to be able to deal fairly with
others. Alternatively, democratic humility may show us that our familiar defenses, in the
name of long-held political settlements, may need to be reconceived in the light of new
challenges, or better understood challenges. Without a self-conscious effort to cultivate
such an ethos my fear is that important virtues like toleration and civility may become
empty, formal performances that prematurely close off the possibilities for a mutually
transformative mode of political and ethical engagement across multiple forms of
difference. Here Socrates’ warning against allowing a part to stand in for the whole
strikes me as an appropriate and salutary caution against the self-complacency of any age
or regime that is tempted to identify what is authoritative for a specific constellation of
actors (whether a majority or a minority) with what is inherently or naturally just, true, or
good.
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Secondly, unless and until we are collectively engaged in the task of
understanding the nature and ground of the values and beliefs that others hold, we are not
in a position to critically reconsider how contemporary practices and institutions are often
complicit in their own forms of repression, silencing, exclusion, and humiliation.
Without a cultivated moral and political orientation characterized by humility, citizens
and leaders may have a difficult time appreciating the moral and political significance of
these moments of socio-cultural re-evaluation. Democratic humility should considered as
quality that is central for achieving two important moral/liberal goals: minimizing
injustice and avoiding cruelty and humiliation.
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In contrast to the critical views of
Machiavelli and Nietzsche, who (not unreasonably) viewed humility as a demur prop in a
Convention