It is a sign of the times that the subject of humility is not discussed by philosophers as much as it once was; yet, even in our cynical age, we are still impressed when we hear people speak of someone's "true humility." Philosophical theories of morality come and go, but new generations continue to be Judaized and Christianized; 1 and so humility survives, in some form of other, as an ideal of our civilization.
No one who slights humility can understand Jewish-Christian-Western morality. The words of prophets and sages ring through the centuries: "And what the Lord doth require of thee: Only to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God" (Micah 6:8); "Seek righteousness, seek humility. It may be ye shall be hid in the day of the Lord's anger" (Zephaniah 2:3); "For though the Lord be high, yet regardeth He the lowly, and the haughty He knoweth from afar" (Psalms 138:6); "And before honour goeth humility" (Proverbs 15:33, 18:12); "Blest are the lowly; they shall inherit the land" (Matthew 5:5; cf. Psalms 37:11); "Take my yoke upon your shoulders and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart" (Matthew 11:29). It is, then, with good reason that even the cynical La Rochefoucauld recognizes humility as "the altar on which God wants us to offer Him our sacrifices, ''2 and as "la vdritable preuve des vertus chrdtiennes: without it we keep all our faults, and they are only concealed by the pride that hides them from others and often from ourselves. ''a But long before Nietzsche had initiated the modern diatribe against Jewish-Christian slave-morality, the morally earnest Spinoza had already concluded, by geometrical method, that "Humility is not a virtue, or does not arise from Reason"; 4 and Hume had already observed that "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. ''s Is it any wonder, then, that most moral philosophers of our day find the subject of humility so much less interesting than "practical" questions of justice and utility? For that matter, is it any wonder that they have so much trouble being humble?