Humility and modesty

Understanding Humility and modesty

Humility and Modesty brings together recognition of one’s limits and proportionate presentation of oneself. Humility makes correction possible; modesty lets a contribution be described without excessive display. Neither requires pretending that an achievement is worthless or giving another person authority over your dignity.

Humility and modesty: finding the balance

A friend notices a leaning handle on the maker’s otherwise useful cup.

Modesty adjusts a claim to what can be seen; it neither inflates the achievement nor requires its disappearance.

Humility and modesty gives…

A proportionate account gives others useful information: what you made, what help you received and what remains uncertain. Recognition of limits also makes collaboration less burdensome. Someone can acknowledge a strength while remaining open to correction.

What Humility and modesty makes possible

Modesty makes correction less costly to receive. A finished piece can be worthwhile and imperfect; another person can notice something its maker missed. Accurate credit gives contributors a place in the account. There is room to take pleasure in an achievement while keeping claims about it open to examination.

Humility and modesty in ordinary life

• Describe an achievement with accurate scope and credit rather than embellishment or self-dismissal.
• When receiving a routine correction, ask about the detail before defending your general competence.
• Acknowledge help that materially contributed to a shared result.

Nearby virtues, different work

Open-Mindedness gives reasons a fair hearing. Integrity concerns ethical consistency. Gratitude appreciates received good. Humility and Modesty concern one’s limits and presentation; they are not synonyms for obedience or low self-esteem.

Open-mindedness · Integrity · Gratitude

Humility and modesty and its counterfeits

Performing self-disparagement in order to collect reassurance is a counterfeit of modesty. So is declining a deserved share of credit while quietly resenting everyone who accepts that account. In the pottery scene, the fitting response is to acknowledge the leaning handle and the friend’s observation, rather than insist on perfection or declare the whole cup worthless.

How to cultivate Humility and modesty

Practice stating both the contribution and its limit plainly. Let a correction concern the relevant detail rather than your entire identity. Credit another person without shrinking your own real work. Give the subject more attention than the size of its display.

Try it today

For one ordinary contribution, prepare a brief accurate account of what you did and what help you received. Say it without exaggeration or apology when the account is useful.

Keep the practice proportionate

Humility does not require humiliation, submission to rank or denial of your abilities. Do not accept harmful treatment as a modest response. Boundaries and accurate self-respect remain legitimate.

A question worth returning to

Which correction concerns the work, and which judgment am I adding about myself?

Quotations and further reading

These historical passages offer different philosophical and literary perspectives. Each note identifies its setting, point of comparison and relevant limits; none supplies an official definition of this strength.

1. All art starts from this simplicity; and the higher the art rises, the greater the simplicity.

   William Morris · Hopes and Fears for Art

   p. 71THE BEAUTY OF LIFE [71]

   Morris links higher art with simplicity. This is a design judgment to consider, rather than a rule that elaboration is always wrong.

2. Yet habit does not, of itself, know, for it does not of itself stop to think, observe or remember.

   John Dewey · Human Nature and Conduct

   I

   Dewey distinguishes habit from the activity of stopping to think, observe or remember. Familiar performance need not include fresh inquiry.

3. A benefactor thinks himself but ill requited, if the person upon whom he has bestowed his good offices, repays them merely from a cold sense of duty, and without any affection to his person.

   Adam Smith · The Theory of Moral Sentiments

   CHAP. IV. In what cases the sense of duty ought to be the sole principle of our conduct; and in what cases it ought to concur with other motives.

   Smith describes how a benefactor may value affection beyond a cold repayment of duty. This historical observation does not entitle a giver to control another person.

4. By forming thyself hourly to freedom conjoined with contentment, simplicity, and modesty.

   Marcus Aurelius · The Thoughts (Meditations)

   BOOK VIII. · George Long; linked edition

   Marcus joins modesty with freedom, contentment and simplicity. Humility can support independent conduct rather than submission.

5. There is, peradventure, no more manifest vanity than to write of it so vainly.

   Michel de Montaigne · Essays

   CHAPTER IX——OF VANITY · Charles Cotton translation, William Carew Hazlitt edition, 1877

   Montaigne includes his writing about vanity within vanity’s reach. Recognizing our own display can make self-examination less self-congratulatory.

6. The Master said, 'He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good.'

   Confucius (Analects, transmitted sayings) · The Analects

   BOOK XIV. HSIEN WAN. · James Legge; transmitted dialogues, attributed speakers identified

   Speaker: Confucius (the Master), in transmitted dialogue

   Confucius connects modest speech with the difficulty of making words good. A modest account leaves commitments that conduct can actually sustain.

7. Humility is more demanded at our moments of triumph than at those of failure.

   John Dewey · Human Nature and Conduct

   I · ,

   Dewey asks for humility at moments of triumph. Success can otherwise make listening to a correction harder.

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