4
In parts I-IV of this paper I confront some of the problems with humility through
a critical investigation of the various roles it has played in the history of moral thought
and practice. I engage this historical terrain in order to reconsider the status of humility
as a virtue and to gain some critical purchase on why it has not been incorporated within
the list of liberal/democratic virtues. There are some good reasons, both moral and
political, for being at least initially circumspect about the nature, status, and
consequences of something like humility as a general disposition or quality of character.
By grappling with these philosophical and historical difficulties, and by engaging those
skeptical of the possibilities for, and value of, humility (including Montaigne, Hume, and
Nietzsche), I outline the specific parameters that will condition the reclamation of
humility as a virtue for late-modern democratic times. It may not be possible to fully
overcome all of the inherent problems of humility, but it is possible to identify these
challenges in a manner that will help us address them. In part V of this paper I develop
an account of democratic or civic humility and seek to show why pluralistic democracies
depend on the cultivation of this virtue, properly construed. By “properly construed” I
mean that humility needs to be reconceived as an active, other-regarding civic virtue and
not as an interior, self-referencing quality indexed to an external standard of the good. If
successful, a cultivated disposition of democratic humility promises a more open,
attentive, and self-critical orientation towards our social and political practices.
The form of humility I will develop here is intended to shape the public use of
practical reason and political judgment in particular ways. With this political limitation
in mind, I defend an idea of democratic humility as a public ethos that entails: first, a
critical recognition of our incompleteness as moral and political selves; second, an
Convention