Ethics in Practice

Virtues

that it is one indication of the fact that, in the adult world, people are ordinarily seen as having a right to determine what happens to the things they possess: this is part of what it means to say that these things are their things. Asking permission is a practice that makes it possible for Paul to acquire something possessed by someone else without violating that right, which he would be violating ifhe were to simply take it. If he understands this, he can understand the moves in the game he has been taught in the way that adults understand them. By saying "may" rather than "can" he signifies that he is asking that a right be transferred from someone else to him rather than asking for information. By saying "please" and "thank you" he expresses an appreciation for the fact that the thing he is asking for is not already his by right - that it comes to him, if it does, as a gift. The entire activity, then, expresses a respect for the boundaries between "mine" and "yours" - it expresses a respect for the rights of others. 17 If he comes to see and to pursue the activity in this way, he has acquired in some degree the respect for others that I have said underlies decent relations between people.

The kind of training Paul has undergone is a more effective form of moral instruction than the sort to which Peter was subjected. It is possible, on the basis of what I have said, to explain this fact. The rule Peter learned was one of the substantive rules that regulate our relations with others. It was an example of the sort of substantive rule that governs the distribution of things which, independently of these rules, are regarded as good. Rules of this sort always require that we forgo or relinquish such goods. Consequently, they have a certain tendency to make us see others as threats or obstacles to the promotion of our interests. It was precisely what Peter could see in light of his rule that prevented him from grasping what respect is.

In a limited way, Paul's circumstances were like Peter's; they also involved a substantive rule requiring him to forgo or relinquish something antecedently regarded as good. This is the rule prohibiting one from simply taking things which do not belong to oneself. But of course it was not from this rule that Paul learned respect. He learned it from a ceremonial rule

to ask permission (rather the contrary, in fact). This is true even if one knows in advance that the request will probably be refused. These rules make possible an activity which obviously expresses something, and which is quite mysterious to someone in Paul's position because he does not yet understand what it expresses. As such it invites him to try to understand it. We have seen that the practice he is confronted with, and others associated with it, provide him with the materials he needs to succeed. Once he understands it, he also understands substantive rules like the one that prohibits him from simply taking things that do not belong to him: once he comes to see others as having rights, he can appreciate rules that specify what rights others have, and that is what rules like this one do. We have also seen that to understand this practice is, in part, to understand what it is to regard others with respect; it is also clear from what I have said that to come to understand such respect under the influence of a certain sort of authority is, to some extent, to come to possess it.

Conclusion

It is time to stop and review the argument I have laid down so far, to see what it has come to. Early on, I said Nock's argument has certain undesirable consequences because of a rather extreme assumption he makes regarding the sort of autonomy required for virtue. These consequences can be avoided if one replaces this assumption with the much more reasonable one that one must act on principles which one understands. The political means however cannot reliably impart this kind of understanding because of the nature of the class of rules of which the relevant kinds of laws are instances: such rules, in general, place barriers in the way of achieving this sort of understanding. There are certain conventions, however, which do have the capacity to impart this sort of understanding. This capacity is sufficient to deliver us from the difficulties that I said were entailed

by the assumptions behind Milton's familiar criticism of the political means. It shows that not all ways of promoting decent behavior are equal in this respect; there is one that has virtues which compensate to some extent for whatever limitations they might have in common.

What may we conclude concerning the relative merits of these two kinds of rules as instruments of moral education? It is perhaps important to notice the difference here between what follows and what does not. What follows is that, if they are considered separately, one of them has the character of an instrument of education and the other does not: one tends to lead to the required sort of understanding and the other is apt to block it. However, it is obvious that such instruments are not used separately in the world we live in. As far as what I have said is concerned, it is possible that substantive rules can acquire such a character when they work in the context of a whole system of educational means. It is possible that such rules could contribute something worthwhile to such a system, while other parts of the system overcome the bad effects which, as I have claimed, they are likely to produce. Indeed, we have good reason to believe that such a system is possible, because the one we use to raise our children seems to be precisely of this sort: their behavior is held in place by all sorts of substantive rules while other means of moral education do their work. This is how I have described the case of Paul earlier. It is part of the value of the practices having to do with making requests that they enable Paul to understand certain substantive rules such as the one which prohibits him from simply taking what he wants. Presumably, by helping him to grasp the point of such rules it also enables him to follow them with greater alacrity than before.

As I said at the outset, my argument does not imply that the political means ought never to be used. 19 However, it does imply several other things which were not obvious in the beginning. First, even in the context of the sort of system I have just imagined, the political means has a rather peculiar status: if the system works, it is because the other means function as adequate antidotes to the political means. They overcome

On Improving People by Political Means

its ill effects. This in turn suggests a second point. If a legislator is pressing for a new use of the political means, if he is trying to pass a new law to instill a virtue that will improve the way his subjects treat one another, it is not enough for him to claim that the actions enjoined by the proposed law are indeed those which would spring from the neglected virtue itself. The measure he proposes is apt to have effects that run counter to his own purpose and they will be overcome, if at all, by a complex system of beliefs and practices over which he has little control. He must claim the undesirable effects of this measure are not too weighty to be overcome by this system. This is a kind of claim which is obviously capable of being false. It would be false, for instance, if it were made of the rule that I have imagined Mary laying down for Peter. The difficulties involved in making such a claim may not be serious in the parentchild relationship, where it is possible to see all the important effects and easy to change the rule if it does not appear to be a good one. For legislators, who in most states control the behavior of millions of people they can never know, they are much more likely to be formidable. Whether they can be surmounted or not, they should not be ignored.

What I have said here also implies a third and more metaphysical point, one which concerns the relative positions of society and the state in the foundations of the moral life. The Aristotelian paradigm, as I have defined it, depicts the process by which virtue is taught as being fundamentally like the one in which a drill instructor teaches his soldiers to march. I have tried to show that part of the process of acquiring the other-regarding virtues which the law seems most likely to instill is more like learning a language than it is like learning to march or stand at attention, and that ceremonial rules provide the materials for this crucial aspect of moral education. They provide the expressive actions the meaning of which the student must grasp. This suggests that legislators in fact cannot originate such rules. It is impossible for the same reason that it is impossible for the law to originate a new language. The resources of the political means - authoritative commands and punishments - can make people do what

Virtues

the legislator wants them to do, but they cannot make them mean what the legislator wants them to mean by what they do.

To the extent that what people mean is not a product of individual fiat, it seems to arise from social conventions like those which govern the use of language. We do not need to have a theory showing precisely how such rules originate in order to know that they are not made by a specialized social organ which, like the state, imposes its rules on those outside it. They appear to arise somehow from voluntary relations among individuals. In a way, the position I have taken here can be seen as a variant of the theme, which appeared above, that virtue depends on freedom. But it is rather widely different from the variants I considered there. Specifically, I have avoided the assumption that virtue can only arise from purely autonomous individual insight. I have avoided suggesting that the individual must devise his principles himself (by deriving them, perhaps, from the dictates of pure practical reason), or even that he must subject them to critical examination. However, I have supposed that he must understand them, and I have tried to show that here the individual relies on the social background of his actions. On this point, Aristotle, with his insistence that man is a social being (zoon politikon), seems closer to the truth than an extreme individualist like Kant. 2o

Notes

This essay was improved by comments from acquaintances, colleagues, and students too numerous to thank by name, but I should mention that Charles King, John Kekes, Gilbert Harman, Amelie Rorty, Michael Stocker, Morton Winston, and James D. Wallace were good enough to provide comments in writing. An earlier version was presented at the April 1980 Liberty Fund Conference on Virtue and Political Freedom. A fellowship from the Mellon Foundation made writing it much easier than it would have been otherwise.

In Merrill Jensen (ed.), Tracts of the American Revolution (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1977), pp.402-3.

2Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Martin Ostwald (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962), 1103b2-5.

3This is not an essay in Aristotle scholarship, and I do not insist that this is Aristotle's position. It seems attractive enough to be worth discussing on its own merits, even ifhe did not hold it.

4For examples of other possible ways, see Aristotle's Politics, 7, chs. 13-15 and 17. I have argued elsewhere that the criminal law produces an effect of this kind by removing opportunities for vengeful thoughts and feelings on the part of the victims of crime. But this happens by means of a process that bears no resemblance to what I am now calling the political means. See "Punishment, Revenge, and the Minimal Functions of the State," in Understanding Human Emotions, ed. Fred D. Miller, Jr, and Thomas W. Attig (Bowling Green, Ohio: Applied Philosophy Program, 1979).

5All quotations in this paragraph are from his short essay, "On Doing the Right Thing," reprinted as an appendix to his Our Enemy the State (New York: Free Life Editions, 1973), pp.93-9.

6For a more complete account of what social conventions are and how they work, see my "Some Advantages of Social Control: An Individualist Defense," in Public Choice, 36 (1981): 3-16.

7Areopagitica, inJohn Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merrit Y. Hughes (New York: Odyssey, 1957), p. 728.

8Ibid., p. 733.

9Ibid.

10It is worth noticing that, in Mark Twain's story, convention has precisely the effects Milton says the law has. It creates a sort of virtue which is not genuine and is easily corruptible, simply because it works too well in eliminating temptation. The virtue of Hadleyburg is exemplary only because it has never been subjected to a trial, but this means it is only apparent virtue, because it will fail any genuine trial it meets.

IIPerhaps I should point out in passing that the issue dealt with in these remarks of Nock and Milton is distinct from that of "the enforcement of morals" as it is presented in the writings of J. F. Stephen and Patrick Devlin, although the two issues are connected in a way. Someone who believes in the enforcement of morals could conceivably agree with Nock and Milton that the law actually makes us worse - he might think for instance that, if we obey the strictures of morality because it is the law, we are doing it for reasons which are vicious rather than virtuous. Yet he might think that immoral acts are so

James D. Wallace

Economic Generosity

Generosity is concerned with giving, and different kinds of generosity can be distinguished according to the kind of things given. Aristotle said that generosity (eleutheriotes) has to do with giving and taking of things whose value is measured in money.l There is a virtue called generosity, the actions fully characteristic of which are meritorious, which has to do with freely giving things that have a market value - freely giving goods and services of a type that normally are exchanged on the open market. This sort of generosity I call "economic generosity" to distinguish it from other varieties. One can be generous in the judgments one makes about the merits and demerits of others, and one can be generous in forgiving those who trespass against one. "Generous-mindedness" and "generousheartedness," as these other kinds of generosity might be called, do not involve being generous with things whose value is measured in money. These are like economic generosity in certain ways, but they also differ in important respects, as I shall try subsequently to show. Unless otherwise indicated, however, by generosity I mean economic generosity.

A generous person is one who has a certain attitude toward his own things, the value of which is measured in money, and who also has a certain attitude toward other people. Generosity, like other forms of benevolence, in its

primary occurrence, involves as one of its constituents a concern for the happiness and wellbeing of others. The actions fully characteristic of generosity have as their goal promoting someone else's well-being, comfort, happiness, or pleasure - someone else's good. In primary generosity, the agent is concerned directly about the good of another. Thus, an action fully characteristic of generosity might be done to please someone or to help someone, with no further end in view beyond pleasing or helping. "I just wanted to do something nice for them" or "I just wanted her to have it" are typical explanations of generous acts.

That an act fully characteristic of the virtue generosity, is motivated in this way by a direct concern for the good of another is not immediately obvious, because we sometimes call giving "generous" and mean only that the giver is giving more than someone in his situation normally gives. Thus, the host is being generous with the mashed potatoes when he unthinkingly heaps unusually large portions on the plates. Or perhaps he does not do it unthinkingly. It might be that he is giving such generous portions because he wants to use up all the potatoes to prevent them from spoiling. Being generous in

generous person, even if he did so frequently. If we restrict ourselves to the kind of generous action that is fully characteristic of a generous

person, then in every case, the agent's gIVIng will be motivated by a direct concern for the good (in the broad sense) of another. I shall say in such cases that the agent intends to benefit the recipient.

There is a further complication. The virtue generosity, in its primary occurrence, I have said, involves a sort of direct concern for the good of others, as do other forms of benevolence. Someone who is deficient in such concern or who lacks it altogether might admire generous people for their generosity and want as far as he can to be like them. He might then want to do in certain situations what a generous person would do. Acting as a generous person would act because one regards generosity as a virtue, and wants, therefore, to emulate the generous person is meritorious, and it reflects credit upon the agent. It is, however, a secondary sort of generosity. It depends, for its merit, upon the fact that primary generosity is a virtue and is thus a worthy ideal at which to aim. I will concentrate, therefore, upon primary generosity, which does involve a direct concern for the good of another. An account of why this is a virtue is easily extended to explain why a generous person is worthy of emulation.

A certain sort of attitude on the part of the agent toward what he gives is also a feature of actions fully characteristic of the virtue of generosity. In acting generously, one must give something that one values - something that one, therefore, has some reason to keep rather than discard or abandon. If, for example, one is about to throwaway an article of clothing, and on the way to the trash barrel one meets someone who would like to have it, it would not be generous of one to give it to him. What disqualifies such giving from being generous is neither the giver's motive nor the nature of what is given but rather the fact that the giver himself does not value the object enough. Similarly, when we do favors for one another, giving matches or coins for parking meters, often what is given is too insignificant for the giving of it to be generous. One may be being kind in giving things that one does not particularly value, but for the giving to be generous, one must value the thing given for some reason. I may have acquired a particularly repulsive piece

Generosity

of primitive art that I have no desire to keep. Still, I might generously give it to a museum if it were a valuable piece - one I could sell or exchange for something I really want. How generous one is being in giving something generally depends upon how much one values the thing given, how much one is giving up.

Usually, the giver must give in excess of what he is required to give by morality or custom, if his giving is to be generous. Where there exists a generally recognized moral obligation to give, or where giving is customary, then normally one's giving is not generous even though it is prompted by a direct concern for the good of the recipient. If one were certain of a more than ample and continuing supply of food, so that it would clearly be wrong not to give some food to a neighbor who would otherwise go hungry, giving the neighbor a portion of food would not be generous. Similarly, to give a person a gift when one is expected to do so, because it is customary to exchange gifts (for example birthdays, Christmas, weddings, etc.), is normally not a matter of generosity, even though one aims to please the recipient. If one gives more than what is expected in such cases, then the giving might be generous. A generous person is one who exceeds normal expectations in giving, and one who gives no more than what is generally expected in the circumstances is not apt to be cited for generosity.

A special problem arises in cases of the following sort. Although it would clearly be wrong for a certain person not to give, he does not see this. Nevertheless, he does give on a generous impulse. Suppose, for example, that a certain person is a social Darwinist, convinced that it is wrong to give the necessities of life to people in need, because this enables the weak to survive, thus weakening the species. She encounters a starving family, and touched by their plight, she provides food for them, though not without a twinge of social Darwinist guilt. Assuming that what she gives is not insignificant to her, but that it is no more than what the family needs to keep them alive, is her giving generous? On the one hand, she is really doing no more than the minimum required of her by the duty to help people in distress, and this makes one hesitate to say that she is being

Virtues

generous. On the other hand, she does not recognize any moral obligation here, and it is the kind and generous side of her nature that overcomes her cruel principles and leads her to give. This seems to support the view that she is being generous.

An act fully characteristic of generosity will normally have the following features.

The agent, because of his direct concern for the good of the recipient, gives something with the intention of benefiting the recipient.

2The agent gives up something of his that has a market value and that he has some reason to value and, therefore, to keep.

3The agent gives more than one is generally expected, because of moral requirements or custom, to give in such circumstances.

In normal cases, an act that meets these three conditions will be a generous act, and a generous act will have these three features. These are, however, abnormal cases - cases in which the agent has, concerning the circumstances mentioned in the three conditions, a false belief or an unusual or eccentric attitude. The case of the social Darwinist is such a case. She thinks she is morally required not to give, when in fact she is required to give. If one accepts her view of the situation, her act is generous. In fact, however, the third condition is not satisfied. In another sort of abnormal case, the agent values what he gives, but in fact the gift is utterly worthless - it is literally trash. Here it is not clear that the second condition is fulfilled, but from the agent's odd point of view, the act is generous. The very rich often give to charity sums of money that are large in comparison with what others give, and their gifts seem generous. These sums, however, which are substantial, may be relatively insignificant to the donors, and one may wonder whether condition (2) is satisfied in such a case. Does the donor, who has so much, in fact have reason to value and keep what he gives, or is his "gift" analogous to an ordinary person's giving away a book of matches? In a rather different sort of case, someone might be convinced that he is morally required to give away nearly all he has to the

poor. For this reason, he divests himself of a substantial fortune. In such cases, it may be that condition (1) is not satisfied. The agent believes, in effect, that condition (3) is not satisfied, since he believes that he is required to do this. These circumstances will make one hesitate to call his giving generous, although other features of the case incline one toward the view that he is being generous.

In these cases involving unusual beliefs or attitudes, one is pulled simultaneously in two different directions. The way the agent sees the situation and the way one expects him to see the situation diverge. Crucial conditions are satisfied from one way of regarding the case and unsatisfied from the other. It is not surprising that one is reluctant to say simply that the act is (or is not) fully characteristic of the virtue generosity. Any such statement must be qualified, and the actual consequences of the qualification mayor may not be important, depending upon the case. Normally, of course, the agent's beliefs about the features in (1)-(3) will not be grossly mistaken nor will his attitudes toward those things be unusual or eccentric. In such cases, if the three conditions are satisfied, the act is unqualifiedly generous, and vice versa.

A generous person is one who has a tendency to perform actions that meet these conditions. The stronger the tendency, the more generous the person.

Generous-rnindedness

The conditions in the preceding section are meant as an account of actions that are fully characteristic of economic generosity - generosity that involves giving things whose value is measured in money. Another kind of generosity, however, has to do with making judgments about the merits and failings of other people. This too is a virtue, which sometimes is called generous-mindedness. 2 I will try briefly to indicate some similarities and differences between this virtue and economic generosity.

Generous-mindedness is shown by seeing someone else's merit (technical, moral, etc.) in cases where it is difficult to see because the facts of the case admit of other, not unreasonable

interpretations, or because the situation is complex and the merit is not immediately apparent. Generous-mindedness is also shown by seeing that a derogatory judgment is not called for in cases where the facts might not unreasonably be taken to indicate a derogatory judgment. Many of us actually dislike to find that others are as good or better than we are, so that we have some desire to find grounds for derogatory judgments. It is plausible to think that people of otherwise fair judgment are sometimes led to think less of others than they should because they do not want to think well of them or because they want to think ill of them. They do not purposely close their eyes to merit; rather because they do not wish to find it, they do not try hard enough to find it. This may involve a certain amount of self-deception, but I suspect that in many cases the matter is more straightforward. If someone wants to find another inferior to himself in some respect, then where he sees some (prima facie) grounds for such a judgment, he is apt to be quick to seize upon it and regard the matter as settled. A generous-minded person is one who wants to think well of other people, so that in such cases he will look and find the merit that might otherwise go overlooked. Of course, it is possible to be too generous-minded - to overlook demerit because one does not want to find it.

If someone exhibits generous-mindedness in his judgment on a particular occasion, his act of judgment will not fulfill the conditions for an act of economic generosity. It will have features, however, that can be seen as analogous to the features characteristic of economic generosity. If an individual is well-disposed toward other people, then besides wanting to benefit them by giving them things, he will wish them well. He will tend to want their undertakings to succeed and to reflect well on them. If he wants to think well of others, he will be apt to look harder for merit, and he will, therefore, be more likely to find it. Generous-mindedness seems properly

Generosity

regarded as a manifestation of good will toward others that shows a direct concern for the wellbeing of others.

Economic generosity generally involves giving more than is required or customary, and there is a counterpart to this in generousmindedness. The generous-minded person sees merit where a competent evaluator might miss it, where it would be reasonable (though incorrect) to find that there is no such merit. In this way, one might say that generous-mindedness leads a person to go beyond what is required of an evaluator. ...

For generous-mindedness not to distort one's judgment - for it not to lead one to incorrect evaluations - an individual must be a competent evaluator and be conscientious about reaching a correct judgment. Also, it does seem that if one has sufficiently good judgment and is sufficiently concerned to make the right judgment, then this by itself should lead one to see merit when it is present just as well as would the desire to find merit. The strong desire to make favorable judgments, moreover, may distort one's judgment. It may lead one to overlook defects and to find merit where it is not. A strong desire to make the correct evaluation cannot distort one's judgment in this way. Generous-minded- ness should not be regarded as a primary virtue of evaluators. It can counteract an inclination to build oneself up by tearing others down, but so too can a strong desire to evaluate correctly. Generousmindedness is a manifestation of the sort of concern for others that is characteristic of all forms of benevolence. It derives the greatest part of its merit from this concern....

Notes

1Nicomachean Ethics, IV, 1, 1119b21-27.

2I am indebted to David Shwayder for bringing this topic to my attention.

Judith Andre

On the one hand, mistakes are inevitable. On the other hand, they are to be avoided; nothing counts as a mistake unless in some sense we could have done otherwise. This fundamental paradox creates the moral challenge of accepting our fallibility and at the same time struggling against it. I will argue here that humility is crucial to both aspects of this task - a humility not of shame but of compassion toward oneself. At the heart of compassion is simple kindness, an attitude that is essential to clarity about oneself, and to living with imperfection while striving mightily for something better.

In this essay I will explore and defend this conception of humility. I will argue that current philosophical treatments of it are inadequate: they are overly intellectual, tending to reduce the virtue to one of its consequences (understanding the truth about one's relative worth). The key point in my criticism is that self-know- ledge is a different kind of achievement than scientific knowledge is. This paves the way to understanding humility in its fullness, as a moral virtue rather than an intellectual one....

One's attitude toward one's own mistakes is central to the moral life, in a way that is not yet well articulated. That one must admit and take responsibility for one's mistakes is obvious and uncontroversial ... but the moral dimensions of life concern not only choices but also ways of seeing and valuing the world, and the relationships of which one is part, and all of this not

only in relation to others but also to oneself. Growth in these things demands more than instruction and effort. Like other kinds of growth, moral development is more likely in the right environment: one which provides models, mentors, heroes, and antiheroes; support, guidance, correction; relevant experiences; time for healing, reflection, and building.

This picture of a moral life draws from Aristotle, from contemporary virtue theorists, from feminist theory, and from Christianity and Buddhism. In this essay I will not make all of those sources explicit. I hope instead to draw a coherent picture which will have resonance for contemporary readers.... I will focus on one particular virtue, which I will call humility, although that label is problematic in many ways. This character trait is at once a relation to others and to oneself.

Humility: Philosophical and Religious

Treatments

Humility is obviously important in facing and acknowledging one's mistakes. For most readers, perhaps, the word humility calls to mind stories of the arrogant being brought low. But arrogance - the unquestioned assumption of one's own superiority - is only one kind of failure in humility. Because arrogance is so offensive, the experiences that correct it make gratifying stories, and

that may explain our tendency to understand humility simply as humiliation. A morally desirable attitude toward one's fallibility, however, requires more than abandoning arrogance. Being brought low is at most one step, for some people at some points, in the journey. Exploring the deeper, subtler aspects of this virtue is my task in the third section of this essay. As groundwork, in this section I summarize current philosophical discussion of the issue. In large part, and probably not surprisingly, philosophers tend to intellectualize humility, to make it a matter of accurate self-assessment. Their secondary concern has been some apparent paradoxes, again intellectual: how can one honestly recognize one's own excellence and still be humble? Finally, philosophers have looked at the word's religious history, from which they try to extract what can be defended on secular grounds. All of this will be useful for my own project.

As one might expect, some of the problems in making sense out of humility are foreshadowed by David Hume, in his classic discussion of pride:

I believe no one, who has any practice of the world, and can penetrate into the inward sentiments of men, will assert, that the humility, which good-breeding and decency require of us, goes beyond the outside, or that a thorough sincerity in this particular is esteem'd a real part of our duty. On the contrary, we may observe, that a genuine and hearty pride, or self-esteem, if well conceal'd and well founded, is essential to the character of a man of honour. ... 1

The tension between self-respect and the apparent requirements of humility which Hume remarks is still apparent.

The fullest recent philosophical examination of the question, Norvin Richards's Humility manages to balance self-respect and humility quite well. He defines the virtue as "a matter of having oneself in perspective ... [of] understanding oneself and what one has done too clearly to be inclined to exaggeration.,,2 His attempt is reformative: he wants to release the word from its associations with a sense of worthlessness. Toward this end he describes

Humility

humility as clarity about oneself, about one's strengths as well as one's weaknesses; given human psychology, he believes, the more pressing danger is blindness to one's faults, and so it is natural that the word is associated with acknowledging shortcomings rather than with recognizing strengths. Richards's "having oneself in perspective" captures an important aspect of common understanding, but the idea that this includes one's strengths as well as one's weaknesses is foreign to many people. Cognates of the word emphasize that strangeness. The terms "humbled" and "humiliated," for instance, refer solely to facing one's flaws. One cannot say, "I was humbled today. I learned how good my voice really is." What Richards has done, however, is offer us a fuller, more consistent and defensible picture of a morally good attribute of self-assessment. I will follow Richards in keeping the word humility, while recognizing its imperfect fit with ordinary language; I will also follow him in endorsing the moral significance of seeing oneself clearly. I hope to go considerably beyond what he has done, however, in treating that vision as part of a virtue and not just an intellectual attainment.

Others struggling to make moral sense of our intuitions sometimes choose the word modesty rather than humility. This allows them to stay closer to ordinary language, because 'modesty' does not have the problematic association with a sense of inferiority. These philosophical attempts, however, are not fully successful. 'Modesty' turns out to offer a milder version of the problems that 'humility' does: each word seems to preclude a recognition of one's own worth. Can someone recognize her own excellence and yet remain modest? Two writers resolve the paradox by invoking moral equality: however well one can sing, one has no more moral worth than any other human being, and modesty is the recognition of that fact. 3

Some of this is persuasive, some of it suggestive. That clarity and perspective are important seems right. The argument that we honor humility because it displays an understanding of moral equality does not quite convince me. In twentieth-century America we do have a foundational cultural commitment to the idea of