On Intellectual Humility

Screenshot from the video for 'Rise' 

Single by Public Image Ltd. (1986) [1] 

 

  

I. 

 

One of the things that someone who values cognitive closure and certainty above all else will never understand is the concept of intellectual humility [2]. 

 

They regard a change of mind as a sign of moral weakness and confusion, or the kind of philosophical relativism that is (mistakenly) said to characterise postmodern theory [3]. 

 

Fundamentalism - be it religious or ideological in nature - involves a strict adherence to a set of core beliefs which are thought always to be true - no matter how circumstances and times may change. 

 

 

II.  

 

Intellectual humility involves not thinking too highly of oneself or being overearnest; it is the rejection of conceit and the spirit of seriousness [4]. 

 

It also implies a willingness to acknowledge mistakes, a radical openness to new ideas, and the flexibility to change one's views when new evidence comes to light. 

 

In brief, intellectual humility is a virtue rooted in the recognition of individual limits - something D. H. Lawrence insisted upon when he reminded us that each one of us ends at our finger-tips [5].  

 

 

III.

 

Etymologically, the term humility derives from the Latin noun humilitas. Crucially for materialists such as myself, this may be translated as grounded or of the earth, since it derives from the word humus.

 

Thus, humility need have nothing to do with the Christian moral ideal, which Nietzsche thought of as a life-denying vice and a strategy devised by the weak to afford them protection from the strong. 

 

In order to avoid confusion on this point, however, Nietzsche preferred to speak of modesty [Bescheidenheit] rather than humility [Demut]; regarding the former as a pragmatic virtue concerned with behaviour and self-stylisation [6]. 

 

Notes

 

[1] 'Rise', written by John Lydon and Bill Laswell, was released as the first single from PiL's fifth studio LP, Album (Virgin Records, 1986). It reached number 11 in the UK charts. Personally, I can't stand the song and whilst the lyric 'I could be wrong, I could be right' seems to suggest a certain intellectual humility, Rotten is one of the last people on earth I would think of as embodying such a virtue. To watch a short clip from the video for the song (dir. Peter Care) featuring this line on YARN, click here.      

 

[2] I am using the term intellectual humility rather than epistemic humility, even though these concepts are closely related - though not quite synonymous. 

      The latter, referring as it does to the limits of knowledge, is perhaps the more philosophical concept, but it's the former - the way in which the thinking subject is limited by their own cognitive abilities and certain built-in biases, etc. - that most interests me here as someone ultimately more concerned with ethics than epistemology. 

 

[3] Postmodern theory is frequently associated with an extreme form of relativism that looks to many like nihilism. But I think that's a simplistic and false characterisation developed by its critics. For while postmodernists reject the idea of transcendent universal truth and display an incredulity toward grand narratives, such critical scepticism does not mean they are endorsing an anything goes philosophy. 

      The task is to examine how truth-claims function within specific historical and cultural contexts and to deconstruct rigid dogmas or totalising ideologies, not simply replace them with an absolute form of relativism.   

 

[4] L'esprit de sérieux is a phrase used by Sartre in L'Être et le néant (1943) and by which he refers to a form of mauvaise foi via which a person thinks values and meanings are fateful, fixed realities rather than human contingencies. As existential freedom requires a subject to recognise their own role in the creation of values and meanings, Sartre encourages people to engage with life through play and accept the responsibility of their choices.

      Sartre's thinking here reminds one of Nietzsche's insistence on the importance of overcoming the spirit of gravity. Both philosophers are concerned with the manner in which individuals are weighed down and crushed by invented values, meanings, and social identities thought to be either natural or divine in origin. However, while they diagnose the same problem, they suggest different ways of dealing with it. 

      For Sartre, as indicated, overcoming seriousness means viewing life as a game which has agreed upon rules, but those rules are not cosmic laws that can never be questioned or subject to change. For Nietzsche, on the other hand, overcoming der Geist der Schwere requires laughter and dancing. 

 

[5] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Why the Novel Matters', in Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 191-98. 

      Never missing the chance to take a pop at idealist thinkers, Lawrence writes: "These damned philosophers, they talk as if they suddenly went off in steam, and were much more important than they are [...] It is nonsense. Every man, philosopher included, ends in his own finger-tips" (p. 194).

 

[6] Unlike the ideal of humility, which is thought of as an authentic inner state, modesty is performative and of the surface. It might best be understood as a way of speaking, dressing, and acting that avoids drawing attention or showing off. To be modest - from the Latin modestia - means correct conduct within self-acknowledged limits. The dandy is always modest, but never humble in the slavish, Christian moral sense of the term as practiced by the curled-up worm.