ABSTRACT
Humility is widely regarded as an important virtue, in large part because it is supposed to be the virtue that opposes the serious vice of arrogance. Yet very few of these accounts discuss humility in relation to what are arguably the most important perspectives on self-worth and the morally appropriate relation to other persons, namely, self-respect and respect for others. And very few of the accounts consider whether in contexts of oppression humility is really a virtue for subordinated people as well as for members of dominant groups. For both Kant and feminists, self-respect and respect for other persons are morally central and enormously powerful both theoretically and motivationally, and shape a distinctive approach to understanding and evaluating humility, an approach that is critical of both contemporary and traditional accounts of humility. The aim of this chapter is to employ insights from Kant’s accounts of humility, arrogance, and self-respect, and from feminist theorizing about moral character and oppression, to explore connections between humility and self-respect and assess claims about the virtuousness of humility. The upshot of Kantian and feminist analyses is two-fold: First, humility is not the virtue opposing arrogance; rather, self-respect is. Second, humility is at best an ancillary, instrumental, contextual virtue and the servant of self-respect; but at worst, it is as serious a vice as arrogance, indeed, an aspect of it.
