Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 February 2010
Summary
Had [George Washington] been merely humble, he would probably have shrunk back irresolute, afraid of trusting to himself the direction of an enterprise, on which so much depended.
Mary Wollstonecraft (1996, 124)[H]umility … and the whole train of the monkish virtues; for what reason are they everywhere rejected by men of sense, but because they serve to no manner of purpose …? We justly, therefore, transfer them to the opposite column, and place them in the catalogue of vices.
David Hume (1994, 219/270)Lily would have liked to pay him a compliment; you're not humble, Mr. Bankes, she would have liked to have said.
Virginia Woolf (1992)Humility is a curious virtue with a checkered history. There is no dearth of portrayals of it throughout history, in literature, philosophy, theology, and art, yet there is little agreement about what exactly it would mean to be humble, and even less about whether it would be a good thing or not. If there is any general consensus to be found about its status as a virtue, it is its wholesale rejection as suggested in the quotes above. Lack of clarity on a definition for humility and humility's general rejection as a virtue are not, however, unconnected phenomena, for the former encourages the latter. Any defense of the virtue needs, then, to come to terms with confusions about its definition.
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- Kant and the Ethics of HumilityA Story of Dependence, Corruption and Virtue, pp. 1 - 12Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005