There’s what I think is a good perspective on humility somewhere in the writings of C S Lewis[1], which is roughly what ahbwramc describes as “stepping outside of myself”: CSL proposes that we should understand humility as a state of mind in which we think of our own achievements and failures as we would those of some other person.
CSL was of course a Christian writer. I’m not sure to what extent his definition was already well established in the Christian tradition, and to what extent he (1) was committed because of his religion to making “humility” mean something good and (2) was smart enough to see that “thinking ill of yourself” isn’t a good candidate for that, and therefore (3) came up with a better definition. I suspect mostly the latter; at any rate CSL’s definition isn’t simply what intelligent Christians have always meant by “humility”, because e.g. Thomas Aquinas says that humility is a “praiseworthy self-abasement to the lowest place”.
[1] You can find it in ironic mode in the Screwtape Letters, but he says it more straightforwardly somewhere else; I forget where; perhaps in “Mere Christianity”?
The text from Thomas Aquinas refers to a quotation from Isidore, and the quotation itself is giving an etymology. If you read all of what he says about humility, he definitely does not think that it involves believing yourself worse than you are.
He quotes Isidore and endorses what he says. Then (in his reply to obj 2) he says “humility, in so far as it is a virtue, conveys the notion of a praiseworthy self-abasement to the lowest place”.
I agree that Aquinas doesn’t say that humility involves believing yourself worse than you are. But he also doesn’t appear to me to be taking a position that much resembles Lewis’s, which is the point I was making.
There’s what I think is a good perspective on humility somewhere in the writings of C S Lewis[1], which is roughly what ahbwramc describes as “stepping outside of myself”: CSL proposes that we should understand humility as a state of mind in which we think of our own achievements and failures as we would those of some other person.
CSL was of course a Christian writer. I’m not sure to what extent his definition was already well established in the Christian tradition, and to what extent he (1) was committed because of his religion to making “humility” mean something good and (2) was smart enough to see that “thinking ill of yourself” isn’t a good candidate for that, and therefore (3) came up with a better definition. I suspect mostly the latter; at any rate CSL’s definition isn’t simply what intelligent Christians have always meant by “humility”, because e.g. Thomas Aquinas says that humility is a “praiseworthy self-abasement to the lowest place”.
[1] You can find it in ironic mode in the Screwtape Letters, but he says it more straightforwardly somewhere else; I forget where; perhaps in “Mere Christianity”?
The text from Thomas Aquinas refers to a quotation from Isidore, and the quotation itself is giving an etymology. If you read all of what he says about humility, he definitely does not think that it involves believing yourself worse than you are.
He quotes Isidore and endorses what he says. Then (in his reply to obj 2) he says “humility, in so far as it is a virtue, conveys the notion of a praiseworthy self-abasement to the lowest place”.
I agree that Aquinas doesn’t say that humility involves believing yourself worse than you are. But he also doesn’t appear to me to be taking a position that much resembles Lewis’s, which is the point I was making.