We have seen humility grounded in inferiority, and associated with weakness, self-degradation, and self-contempt. We have also seen humility and modesty affiliated with superiority, magnanimity, and arrogance. Any humility grounded in self–other comparison allows only for these two unacceptable options. We have, however, in preceding chapters, also begun to build a picture of the human agent, and of values, that makes it possible for us to define the state more securely, avoiding reliance on self–other comparison but allowing the agent to achieve a perspective on herself nonetheless. Further reflection on the ideas already presented in these earlier chapters will reveal a preferable, and more transcendent, standard in relation to which an agent gains perspective on herself. She will not compare her own value, needs, and desires against those of other persons. Rather, she transcends such comparative-competitive judgments, and instead compares her status as a dependent and corrupt agent in the unavoidable pursuit of self-love against the value of moral principles to which all persons, including herself, are held equally.

What we shall discover as a result of this investigation is that humility is that meta-attitude which constitutes the moral agent's proper perspective on herself as a dependent and corrupt but capable and dignified rational agent. Through her proper appreciation for the role of moral principles in her life, the humble agent clears the static of undue self-love – those pressing questions of value which have the potential to distort the exercise of one's agency – and thus has the value of herself in the proper place in her overall hierarchy of value.