Brandon Yip (Singapore Management University), "Intellectual Humility without Limits: Magnanimous humility, disagreement, and the epistemology of resistance"

Philosophy & Phenomenological Research, 2024

By Brandon Yip

Intellectual Humility: Self-accepting and Magnanimous

In the fall of 2011, Matthew Stevenson invited Derek Black to a weekly Shabbat dinner at his apartment. At the time, Black was a prominent young leader in the white nationalist movement and had started his own radio program to promote white nationalist ideas (including holocaust denial and racial IQ differences). Stevenson, on the other hand, was an Orthodox Jew. As the dinners continued and Black engaged in conversation with a diverse group of individuals, he was led to finally renounce his white nationalism.

What can we learn from this surprising outcome of reconciliation? Of the many virtues exemplified by both, humility seems to stand out. However, the two parties displayed different kinds of humility. Black’s humility lay in acknowledging his mistakes and accepting correction, while Stevenson’s humility was manifested in his willingness did not seem to involve recognising limitations, but in lowly and gentle engagement.

The most influential contemporary formulations of intellectual humility today focus on the kind of humility that Black displayed. For example, on Whitcomb and his colleagues influential account (2017), intellectual humility consists in proper attentiveness to, and owning of, one’s intellectual limitations. Following Alessandra Tanesini (2018), let’s call this self-accepting humility.

This approach to humility has a long tradition. Aquinas (1920, ST II-II Q. 161) claims that humility serves “to temper and restrain the mind lest it tend to high things immoderately”, and the humble person “considering his own failings, assumes the lowest place according to his mode”. Secular formulations of humility appear to primarily have excavated the virtue from its theological context.

Self-accepting humility is important. However, I suggest that another kind of humility also deserves attention. Interestingly, this virtue also holds a prominent place in Christianity. Thus, St. Paul:

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves …

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:3-8)

Notice the awkwardness of understanding Christ’s humility as a form of self-acceptance. What limitations does the Son of God own here? Surely the beauty of the incarnation and crucifixion must be a product of the fact that the Son of God had no relevant failings that would require him to subject himself to humiliation. Rather his humility presupposed his exalted status.

The early church father, John Chrysostom, comments on this passage:

If a King subjects himself to his own officer, he is humble, for he descends from his high estate; but if an officer does so, he will not be lowly minded; for how? He has not humbled himself from any high estate. It is not possible to show humble-mindedness except it be in our power to do otherwise. (Chrysostom 1889)

The form of humility here involves the choice to lower oneself in refraining from exercising one’s legitimate prerogatives. I suggest that we christen this magnanimous humility. In contrast to self-accepting humility’s focus on limitations, magnanimous humility is a virtue that can only be displayed in contexts where one agent possesses superior status.

Calling this humility magnanimous connects it to the Aristotelian virtue of magnanimity. As Aristotle noted, possession of the virtue of magnanimity is only possible for the person who is “worthy of great things” (Aristotle 2005, NE 4.3) and accordingly does and demands great things in accordance with her status. By contrast “[t]he person who is worthy of little and thinks himself to be such is temperate, but not [magnanimous]”. Only those who are properly entitled in some aspect can be magnanimous.

On Aristotle’s view, the magnanimous person will demand great honours in accordance with their greatness. In magnanimous humility, however, we see a Christian twist to the Aristotelian understanding of greatness. From this perspective, the great acts that are fitting for the great person consists not in demanding the honours that are due one, but in acts of self-giving with respect to one’s entitlements.

Now Stevenson and the others displayed not just magnanimous humility but magnanimous intellectual humility (IH). They skilfully refrained from exercising their legitimate epistemic entitlements to pursue mutual understanding with Black. What are these epistemic entitlements? I presume we have entitlements to cease inquiry, to make assertions, and perhaps to settle belief when we have certain epistemic credentials. For instance, I may cease inquiring into whether climate change is happening once I have enough evidence to know this. Data collection may never cease but once results are obtained within a certain level of confidence, we are entitled to stop inquiry. Furthermore, once we obtain this knowledge, I am also permitted to assert that “climate change is real!”.

Stevenson, Gornik, and others knew that white nationalism was false and pernicious, giving them the entitlement to dismiss its claims and shut Black down. However, they exercised magnanimous IH in ‘lowering’ themselves to ask further questions and refrained from exercising their epistemic entitlements. This was instrumental in finally persuading Black.

Magnanimous Intellectual Humility and the Epistemology of Resistance

I have sketched out the importance of magnanimous IH from a religious perspective elsewhere, but I now want to think examine the importance of magnanimous intellectual humility for oppressed and marginalised subjects.

Many troubling disagreements arise not only across political and religious divides, but across relations of domination and oppression. Decades before Stevenson and Black, Daryl Davis, a black blues musician, travelled across the United States engaging with members of the Ku Klux Klan. Through long conversations and the formation of genuine friendships, David ultimately convinced more than 200 members of the KKK to leave the organisation Part of Davis’s motivation was epistemic, in his words, “I just wanted to have a conversation and ask, ‘How can you hate me when you don’t even know me?’” (Davis 2023). What role might magnanimous IH play in contexts of oppression?

Some have doubted the value of humility in contexts of oppression. Historically, humility has certainly been weaponised to perpetuate oppression, as Fredrick Douglass observed:

“I have met, at the south, many good, religious colored people who were under the delusion that God required them to submit to slavery and to wear their chains with meekness and humility.” (Douglass 1982)

Such criticism is usually targeted at self-accepting forms of humility. If humility consists in focusing on one’s limitations and accepting a subordinate place, it seems particularly cruel demand this of the marginalised and oppressed (See e.g. Dillon 2021; Bloomfield 2021). Does magnanimous IH succumb to a similar criticism? Drawing on José Medina’s (2012) influential epistemology of resistance, I suggest that there is much reason to cultivate magnanimous IH in such contexts.

On Medina’s conception of the epistemological situation of the oppressed, there is a deep connection between social and epistemic injustice. The epistemic frameworks that structure society reinforce existing relations of domination and oppression. However, the different social positions of the dominant and the oppressed foster distinct epistemic tendencies.

For the dominant, these positions encourage the development of epistemic vices, such as active ignorance about the conditions sustaining their privilege and the key vice of meta-blindness: the inability to recognise the limits of one’s own perspective. Conversely, the oppressed are more likely to cultivate epistemic virtues, driven by the necessity of understanding their oppressors to navigate oppressive systems. This positions them to develop the key virtue of meta lucidity: the realisation that there is more to know than what is disclosed by the cognitive structures underpinning oppression.

According to Medina, meta-lucidity emerges from exposure to epistemic friction — alternative viewpoints that challenge and refine our assumptions. This cultivates development of better epistemic resources by bringing diverse perspectives into dialogue. The oppressed are compelled to internalise the social gaze of the dominant group and so are forced to develop what Du Bois (1903) calls double consciousness. This involves a heightened awareness of two conflicting perspectives: their own and the distorted view imposed by the dominant class. Du Bois claims that the goal of the struggle is not to eliminate this duality but to live with it and to learn from both perspectives. This awareness equips the oppressed to to discern the structure of oppression and develop new epistemic resources to tackle these problems.

Developing the virtue of magnanimous IH is especially valuable for generating the sorts of epistemic resources we need to combat oppression. Cultivating magnanimous IH allows the oppressed to (1) enhance their own meta-lucidity and (2) foster meta-lucidity among the privileged.

First, cultivating magnanimous IH, rather than self-accepting IH is particular effective in this context. While self-accepting IH has its place ¾ meta-lucidity, after all, involves recognising blind spots in our epistemic resources ¾ it carries risk in oppressive contexts. Encouraging self-accepting IH might inadvertently undermine the psyche of the oppressed, as dominant perspectives could overpower and marginalise the valuable perspectives of the oppressed.

What is required is a way for the oppressed to seriously engage with dominant perspectives without forsaking their confidence. For example, Davis’ engagement with the KKK required that he maintain confidence in his fundamental dignity and his ability to discern basic moral truths. Magnanimous IH offers precisely the stance needed in such situations. It combines a sense of confidence in one’s authority and entitlement with a willingness to bracket those entitlements in pursuit of epistemic goods. In contexts of oppression, then, magnanimous IH would equip the oppressed to confidently engage with the perspective of their oppressors.

Secondly, magnanimous IH on the part of the oppressed is key to developing meta-lucidity for the oppressors. Why should we care about whether oppressors develop meta-lucidity? In conditions of oppression, political and epistemic structures reinforce one another. This means that while structural change is crucial, transforming hearts and minds is equally important. In modern democracies, there are limits to what can be achieved solely through social power and legislation.

Although the social location of the privileged predisposes them to meta-blindness, this outcome is not inevitable. In the American context, Medina discusses the possibility of the development of a white double consciousness — a way for privileged whites to imbibe epistemic friction into their own perspectives to develop meta-lucidity. As he notes, however, this cannot happen in isolation, they require “actual bodily encounters with racial others that disrupt the normal operation of one’s racialised transactional habits [to produce] a vivid racial awareness” (2012: 222).

Magnanimous IH plays a vital role in enabling this process. By creating safer, gentler spaces in a hostile landscape, individuals can come and share and listen to each other’s experiences. Gracious engagement across lines of oppression encourages the privileged to let down their guard to see things from a different point of view.

To be clear, I do not mean to imply that there is no cost on the part of the oppressed and marginalised when exemplifying Magnanimous IH. There is indeed something to be given up: one’s legitimate epistemic entitlements. Yet to point this out is simply to accurately describe the unfortunate structural consequence of injustice: that that those who ought to bear the greatest responsibility for remedying injustice (the privileged, the oppressors) are also those who are least epistemically equipped to do so. Progress requires magnanimous IH from those who are less responsible but have greater epistemic capacity. The oppressed are fully entitled to refuse to engage and befriend those who have benefitted from their oppression. Magnanimous IH is something that no one can demand that they cultivate.

References

Aquinas, Thomas. 1920. The Summa Theologiæ. Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province. 2nd ed. https://www.newadvent.org/summa/.

Aristotle. 2005. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Roger Crisp. Cambridge University Press.

Bloomfield, Paul. 2021. ‘Humility Is Not A Virtue’. In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Humility, edited by Mark Alfano, Michael P. Lynch, and Alessandra Tanesini, 36–46. Routledge.

Chrysostom, John. 1889. ‘Homilies on Philippians’. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, edited by Philip Schaff. Vol. 13. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2302.htm.

Davis, Daryl. 2023. ‘Perspective | I Wanted to Understand Why Racists Hated Me. So I Befriended Klansmen.’ Washington Post, 8 April 2023. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/i-wanted-to-understand-why-racists-hated-me-so-i-befriended-klansmen/2017/09/29/c2f46cb8-a3af-11e7-b14f-f41773cd5a14_story.html.

Dillon, Robin S. 2021. ‘“Humility and Self-Respect: Kantian and Feminist Perspectives”’. In Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy of Humility, edited by Michael P. Lynch Mark Alfano, 59–71. Routledge.

Douglass, Frederick. 1982. The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. Boston, MA: DeWolfe and Fisk.

Du Bois, W.E.B. 1903. The Souls of Black Folk. New York: Penguin Classics.

Medina, José. 2012. The Epistemology of Resistance. Oxford University Press.

Whitcomb, Dennis, Heather Battaly, Jason Baehr, and Daniel Howard-Snyder. 2017. ‘Intellectual Humility: Owning Our Limitations’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 94 (3): 509–39.