Humility and understanding

Philosophical Papers

Volumn 39, Issue 3, 2010, Pages 427-455

  Penrose, Brian ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF THE WITWATERSRAND   (South Africa)

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 79957893955     PISSN: 05568641     EISSN: 19968523     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/05568641.2010.538917     Document Type: Article

References (33)

1. Rosie DiManno, 'Try to imagine the way U.S. Marine was thinking', Toronto Star, www.thestar.com, 17 Nov., 2004.
2. The source of the terms 'judging' and 'understanding' as they are used in this paper is Pedro Tabensky. He has discussed them in 'Judging and Understanding', Law and Literature, 16/2 (2004), pp.207-228, and 'Moved Movers: Transfiguring Judgement Practices', in Judging and Understanding: Essays on Free Will, Narrative, Meaning and the Ethical Limits of Condemnation, ed. Pedro Alexis Tabensky (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 129-151.
3. Most of the material in this section, and some in Section III, is dealt with much more patiently in my 'Understanding "Understanding" in The Reader', in Tabensky, ed., Judging and Understanding, op.cit., pp.65-90.
4. Peter Strawson, 'Freedom and Resentment' (1962), in Free Will, ed. Gary Watson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp.59-80.
5. Watson actually calls them 'type-1 pleas', following Strawson's use of the word 'plea'. See Gary Watson, 'Responsibility and the Limits of Evil: Variations on a Strawsonian Theme' (1987), in Perspectives on Moral Responsibility, ed. John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 119-148, pp.123ff., and passim.
6. This idea first registered with me in reading Ward E. Jones, 'Explanation and Condemnation', in Tabensky, ed., Judging and Understanding, op.cit., pp.43-64.
7. This idea emerges from some discussions in the literature on forgiveness, but my recognition of its significance comes from my reading of Glen Pettigrove, 'Excusing, Understanding, Forgiving', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 74/1 (2007), pp.156-174. This is not meant to suggest that Pettigrove attaches the same significance to it as I do.
8. Bernhard Schlink, The Reader, trans. Carol Brown Janeway (London: Phoenix House, 1997), p.133.
9. Martha C. Nussbaum, 'Equity and Mercy', Philosophy & Public Affairs, 22/2 (1993), pp. 83-125.
10. G.F. Scheuler, 'Why Modesty is a Virtue', Ethics, 107/3 (1997), pp.467-485, p.474. 'Focussed modesty' is contrasted with 'global modesty', a modesty about oneself more generally as distinct from some particular respect or other. In my discussion below I will not worry about this distinction, but it will be clear later that it's normally a type of focussed humility in which I am primarily interested.
11. Norvin Richards, 'Is Humility a Virtue?', American Philosophical Quarterly, 25/3 (1988), pp.253-259, p253, column i.
12. Julia Driver, 'The Virtues of Ignorance', The Journal of Philosophy, 86/7 (1989), pp.373-384, p.374.
13. See also Driver's reply to Schueler's criticisms of this view in 'Modesty and Ignorance', Ethics, 109/4 (1999), pp.827-834.
14. Owen Flanagan, 'Virtue and Ignorance', The Journal of Philosophy, 87/8 (1990), pp.420-428, pp.424ff..
15. Richards, 'Is Humility a Virtue?', op.cit., p.254,ii.
16. Scheuler, 'Why Modesty is a Virtue', op.cit., p.477, emphasis added..
17. Aaron Ben-Ze'ev, 'The Virtue of Modesty', American Philosophical Quarterly, 30/3 (1993), pp.235-246, p.240,i.
18. Joseph Kupfer, 'The Moral Perspective of Humility', Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 84 (2003), pp.249-269. The attitude or affective state will, of course, be shaped and informed by certain cognitive phenomena like beliefs, some moral, some not. The same is clearly true for Kupfer's 'orientation'. But as with, for example, the reactive attitudes, they are not reducible to cognitive phenomena.
19. Ben-Ze'ev, 'The Virtue of Modesty', op.cit., p.237,ii, emphasis added.
20. Schueler, 'Why Modesty is a Virtue', op.cit., p.481.
21. Cf. Flanagan, 'Virtue and Ignorance', op.cit., p.425. I should add that Schueler goes on to reject 'this idea' as a necessary condition of modesty. My appeal to it, though, is as a feature of the attractive humility-like virtue that I am trying to sketch.
22. Joseph Kupfer, 'The Moral Perspective of Humility', op.cit., p.254.
23. Schueler also flirts with this idea, but later backs away from it. See 'Why Modesty is a Virtue', op.cit., p.484
24. Kupfer, 'The Moral Perspective of Humility', op.cit., p.252.
25. Thomas E. Hill, Jr., 'Ideals of Human Excellence and Preserving Natural Environments' (1983), in Autonomy and Self-Respect, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp.104-117. Both quotations are from p.114.
26. Nussbaum, 'Equity and Mercy', op.cit., pp. 95 and 103 respectively.
27. Lucy Allais, 'Dissolving Reactive Attitudes: Forgiving and Understanding', South African Journal of Philosophy, 27/3 (2008), online version, pp.1-23, p.14.
28. Nussbaum, 'Equity and Mercy', op.cit., p. 103.
29. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, (New York: Penguin Books, 1964).
30. John Conroy, Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: The Dynamics of Torture, (London: Vision Paperbacks, 2001), p.84.
31. Kupfer, 'The Moral Perspective of Humility', op.cit., pp.255f.
32. Schlink, The Reader, op.cit., p.156.
33. Justin D'Arms and Daniel Jacobson, 'The Moralistic Fallacy: On the "Appropriateness" of Emotions', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 61/1 (2000), pp.65-90. I am using the more general 'affective state' rather than 'emotion', but I do not think this does any illicit work. I am grateful to Lucy Allais for pointing me to this paper.