On the faculty web page of Asif Ghazanfar [1], a psychologist at Princeton University, Ghazanfar comments, “For primates (including humans), the most salient features of the environment are other status-striving agents.” In other words, the monkeys, chimpanzees, baboons, gorillas and you and I tend to be quite preoccupied with our personal worth and more particularly with our rank or status. We tend to be hyper-aware of how we rank relative to the other “status-striving agents” in our environment. We want to be alpha, if not absolutely, then at least relative to somebody...
Ora, occupandoci della definizione, consideriamone alcune probabilmente errate:
One commentator considered humility to be a kind of effortless mental naturalness or going-with-the-flow that can’t be adopted as action or pursued. To another, ‘humility’ suggests servility or obsequiousness, a kind of groveling bootlicking attitude. Another thought it to be a combination of disregard for social status, contrition for one’s moral shortcomings, and trust in God to bless one with moral improvement. In recent literature, humility is sometimes equated with low self-esteem, to which people sometimes respond by saying that it’s actually accurate self-assessment, rather than low self-assessment. The history of philosophy doesn’t provide much help. David Hume writes of humility as though it is the feeling of shame, while Thomas Aquinas regards it as a brake on immoderate ambition...
E adesso veniamo a una definizione più congegnale:
I propose that it is a lack of regard for social status that comes of caring passionately about some good. Jesus and Socrates are prime exemplars of the virtue. Jesus’ humility consists in not regarding his divine status as “something to be insisted on” or “grasped” because of his great love for the Father and for humanity, and Socrates’ humility consists in his disregard for social approval that comes of caring passionately for truth and for his own integrity. Since the passion that explains Socrates’ lack of regard for social standing is in large part an intellectual passion (the love of truth and the desire to understand), Socrates’ trait is a prime example ofintellectualhumility...
https://www.bigquestionsonline.com/print/135
