Faith and Philosophy

Volume 34, Issue 4, October 2017

Claire Brown Peterson
Pages 403-424

Humility in the Deficient

Contemporary treatments of humility typically treat humility as a virtue that is reserved for the accomplished. I argue that paradigmatic humility can also be possessed by the deficient, and I provide an extended example of such humility. I further argue that attending to such a case helps us to appreciate the way in which the humble have released both the desire for superiority and the aversion to inferiority. Accordingly, when necessary, the humble will exhibit an extremely low concern with their own status relative to that of others.