Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Recently, Lapinski et al. (2007) tested humility cues as a potential intervening variable that moderates the relationship between source expertise and the evaluation of the source and message in three countries: the U.S., Singapore, and Japan. Results showed that humility has a main impact on source evaluation across countries, although its interaction with source expertise was statistically insignificant.
This evidence, however, is inconclusive for at least three reasons. First, the induction check items for humility were missing and hence it is uncertain whether it was humility or a similar yet disparate construct (i.e., self-deprecation) that produced the obtained findings. Second, the humility cues were made to induce not only humility but also perception of similarity with the source. Thus, it remains unclear whether the documented findings were due to the induction of humility or perceived similarity. Third, a less rigorous measurement invariance test was performed; different sets of items were used to compare cultural tendencies on a given construct.
This present study replicated the Lapinski et al.’s (2007) experiment by improving on these three potential limitations. Results were inconsistent with the previous findings; the main effect for humility on source evaluation was statistically insignificant. The findings also indicate that the supposed humility cues did induce humility rather than self-deprecation. Importantly, a positive evaluation of source resulted when the source was perceived as humble. Participants rated the source unfavorably when perceived as self-deprecating.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Over the past several decades, scholars of liberal and democratic theory have shown an increasing interest in the role that various virtues might play in promoting the good/free society. Yet within this recent “return” to the virtues, one quality that has been almost entirely left out of the discussion is humility. In this paper I critically address this lacuna and offer a defense of a particular form of humility, what I call democratic humility. Before making my case for democratic humility as an essential virtue for liberal citizenship under conditions of diffuse pluralism, I first explore some of the problems with humility by tracing its intellectual and moral history within the Jewish and Christian traditions. Next, I explore the “hidden” relationship between humility and pride in order to ask, with Hume and Nietzsche, whether humility is any kind of virtue at all. With this moral and historical terrain established, I offer an account of humility that seeks to address some of the historical difficulties with humility while arguing that the idea of humility, recuperated as an ethos of civic attentiveness, may be one of the most important virtues for late-modern societies marked by incommensurable ethical and cultural pluralism.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The small group of men at a large Midwest grain plant underwent a character change during a prolonged economic and managerial crisis in the 1980s. They were compelled to reconnect to their work and with one another. Enabling this was the formation of a culture where pride and humility operate as a balanced resource. Today, the character type is at odds with more common portraits of working class culture. It is a product of post-industrial economics and may be more common than we think.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The events of September 11 2001 have brought Islam and the Muslim world under close scrutiny and examination. As a result of this growing interest, the Koran, the principal authority of Islam, has become an important source for those who seek to learn more about the essence of Islam and its adherents. The violent Islamist groups' consistent reference to the Koranic verses in their propaganda materials and the Palestinian suicide bombers' display of the Koran in their farewell messages have prompted many in the West, particularly in the US, to equate the Koran with Hitler' s Mein Kampf. The association of the Koran with violence has been complemented by the resurrection of the medieval theme of The realm of Islam v the Realm of War. The combination of the ruthlessness of terrorists, the Koran and such historical resonance have alarmed many in the West and have provided ammunition for those who wish to replace the red flag of communism with the green flag of Islam. In contrast to the perceived polemic nature of the Koran, Rumi's Mathnavi is still perceived as a respectable book in the West, a publication, which is viewed by some of its admirers as the Bible of the pacifists. In this paper, I aim to provide an insight into the prevailing notion of power according to the Koran and the means by which it believes mortals can be empowered. This will be followed by a close examination of Rumi' s understanding of power. Having established the inspirational influence of the Koran on Rumi' understanding of power, I will then identify the reasons for referring to Rumi as the best interlocutor for the understanding of the Koran' s notion of power. If one compares the Koran's characterization of believers and unbelievers with the selflessness of Rumi' s mysticism, the commonality of the two becomes more evident. For the Koran, belief is the fundamental factor that determines one's power or weakness and therefore believers are recognised as powerful and unbelievers as powerless. However, the Koran' s notion of power differs from the criteria that mortals might normally attribute to power such as domination and subjection. It is the total submission to the supreme power, God, that would empower the mortals and correspondingly, refusal to submit would bring utter disaster. The power of submission prompted Rumi to say: From myself I am copper through you gold, from myself I am a stone through you a pearl. The Koran and Rumi' s perspectives on power are not confined to their Muslim constituencies but are in fact timely to the current debate on the pros and cons of softpower and hardpower as well as the plausibility for a Kantian world or the reality of a Hobessian world. A part of my paper will address the contribution of the Koran and Rumi to this debate. In the next part of my paper, I will try to answer why the Koran' s command for selflessness and submission to the supreme power have become the driving force of many violent and merciless groups in the Muslim world. To that end, I will draw on the Ancient Greeks' experience during the Peloponnesian war when the accumulating cost of the war, brought to prominence Cleon who ignored the honor of Athens in the hope of preserving its profit and fear, its three self -asserted qualities. I will argue that the continuing sense and state of helplessness and humiliation have suppressed the Pericless of the Muslim world and have elevated the status of its Cleons.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Intuitively, humility as a moral and political stance seems apt to counteract the most egregious injustices entailed by today's global inequalities. Yet humility can also be viewed as keeping the poor and weak in their place, and preventing the rise to positions of authority of those best suited to govern for the good of all. Beyond that, to children of modernity, pride can seem preferable to humility for being unavoidable, more realistic, and ultimately less hypocritical political motive. In this paper I will explore some resources for rehabilitating humility as a social and political virtue offered by Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologiae. While early modern thinkers Spinoza and Hume had dismissed humility as a personally debilitating passion and even a social and civic vice, in Aquinas's thought humility properly understood is theorized as a virtue that checks and guides potentially grasping and domineering passions. Humility's most potent roots and reasons are religious, according to Aquinas, yet he also sees it as an inherently ethical virtue susceptible of appreciation and cultivation in some form by all human beings. While an initial read of Aquinas’s theory of humility might seem to support Hume’s dismissal of humility as at most a “monkish virtue,” I argue that a more thorough and context-sensitive study reveals a cogent case for humility's importance to citizens and statesmen in this world. Humility’s civic import according to Aquinas may be grasped by noting the case he makes for its connections to two critical social and civic virtues: first general or legal justice, justice in the service of a truly common good, and then magnanimity, the greatness of soul required to benefit others on a large scale and in very difficult tasks. It is my argument that a contemporary reappropriation of Aquinas's case for humility stands to assist us as ethical and civic actors, both on the home-front and in the global village.