Humility is an attitude which, though it incorporates all judgments and affects implicit in the moral disposition, is most centrally defined by those judgments and affects related to the self as agent. This definition of humility suggests, then, a close connection between our definition of humility (a recognition of one's limits as an agent) and what Stephen Darwall has called “recognition self-respect” (a recognition of one's worth as an agent which leads the agent to constrain her treatment of herself in light of that basic worth). On our definition of humility, based in the maxim of the moral disposition, these two apparently distinct states cannot in fact be understood in isolation from each other, but only as flip sides of the same coin, that is, as different aspects of an overall proper valuing of the self as agent under the auspices of a recognition of the pre-eminent value of moral principles. It seems unusual, though, to suggest that self-respect and humility are only aspects of a single attitude, and this is a claim that needs to be further considered, refined, and defended.

We have already spoken generally of how Kantian virtue involves a strong unity of virtues claim, and have seen more recently, in our definition of humility, that a belief in the equal dignity and shared limits of all persons, and a resulting attitude of respect for persons generally, are necessary conditions of humility. The relationship between humility and recognition self-respect seems even tighter than these connections, though.