42
48
See footnote 16 above.
49
Henry Sidgwick seems to have indicated the pathway here for more contemporary moral philosophers
by observing that: “humility prescribes a low opinion of our merits: but if our merits are comparatively
high, it seems strange to direct us to have a low opinion of them.” Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1907 [1874], p. 334.
50
Thomas Spragens, Civic Liberalism, p. 224.
51
Of course, Spragens goes on to consider a wide range of other civic virtues (deliberative virtues in
particular) that help to compensate for the strictly negative account he provides of democratic humility.
52
Philippa Foot has identified humility as an example of a “corrective virtue.” That is, humility, on Foot’s
reading, is a virtue “only because men tend to think too well of themselves.” Philippa Foot, Virtues and
Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978), p. 9. A related treatment of
humility can be found in Michael Slote, Goods and Virtues (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 61-2.
53
Another important source is presented by the life of Socrates. In a separate essay I develop the argument
that Socrates is an exemplar of “practical humility.” I argue that Socratic moral virtue consisted, at least in
part, in a form of epistemic and moral humility that found political and ethical value in remaining sensitive
to how easily one’s limitations can be forgotten or willfully repressed (a point about which Thuycidides
provides rich historical detail). What Socrates ceaselessly points to are the baleful moral and political
effects of first, acting on the basis of mistaken self-confidence about justice/virtue/righteousness, and
secondly, failing to reopen those beliefs, values, and practices to critical reexamination.
54
Steps of Humility, p. 34.
55
Ibid., p. 42.
56
It is necessary to recognize, however, that there are certain fundamental limits in Bernard’s
understanding of the scope of humility. In this respect, what Romand Coles has argued with respect to the
limitations and contradictions within the Augustinian approach toward caritas is structurally similar to the
boundaries of Bernard’s understanding of humility. Coles argues that while the Augustinian embrace of
caritas is not a vision of social homogeneity, “The problem is that these forms of Christian receiving,
giving, and proliferation are based on an imagination profoundly blind to the possible being and value of
radical alterity in people who live resolutely outside the Christian story.” Rethinking Generosity: Critical
Convention