The "Virtue" of Humility

by Megan

Christianity has created a number of pseudo-virtues, including piety, chastity and humility. Interestingly, most people who leave religion tend to leave piety and chastity behind them, but they are likely to retain their admiration for humility. Embodying the virtue of humility usually means consciously choosing to understate one’s own abilities and other positive qualities. In the absence of a deity who demands such self-abasement, it really is a strange thing to do, and in fact it can be quite problematic.

Imagine someone who humbly understates her ability to play the piano. When she shares her humble (that is, inaccurate) assessment of herself with others, there are two possibilities: either they will believe her, or they will not. If they believe her, she may miss out on important opportunities for employment or personal satisfaction because other people do not know that she is qualified. If, on the other hand, others do not believe her (perhaps because they have heard her play) and they realize that she is trying to be humble, they will suddenly become forced into praising her in order to compensate for the incorrectness of her own judgment, at which point she will probably continue to insist that she is “not that good,” thereby forcing them to resort to even more lavish (and most likely exaggerated) praise.

Clearly most people who speak humbly of themselves do not actually want to be passed over for opportunities that they deserve. This means, then, that they want their professed negative judgments of themselves to force other people into praising them. This sort of behavior seems incredibly childish and manipulative: instead of honestly stating their abilities, such people put others in the awkward position of feeling obliged to compliment them. Rather than being virtuous behavior, it is actually quite rude.

Of course, a lot of people do have trouble judging themselves objectively. Some people we call humble may actually have inaccurately low assessments of themselves, and there are certainly people who grossly overestimate their own abilities as well. But part of becoming an adult is learning to assess one’s own abilities objectively so that one can see where improvement is needed, and where pride is warranted. Just as it is important to form correct beliefs about other people for the sake of treating them justly, it is important to form correct beliefs about oneself. Failing at the task of judging oneself is a mistake to be corrected rather than a virtue to be celebrated. So, whether humility results from conscious understatement or genuinely incorrect judgment of oneself, it is anything but virtuous.