Abstract
Bellitto has written a delightful and eminently accessible book on humility, aptly described as a “cultural history and biography” of humility. The book is predominantly cultural and intellectual history, using the topic of humility as a lens to narrate different historical periods and survey many of their intellectual luminaries. B. writes like a master teacher of history, leading his readers on a tour of Western history that—apropos given his focus on humility—offers a frank assessment of that period’s strengths and blind spots. B. not only helps “recover a lost virtue” (134) but also demonstrates its foundational importance for intellectual inquiry and for life in community.
Humility has five historically organized chapters, bookended by a prologue and epilogue. The prologue introduces topics that resound throughout the book. What exactly is humility? At the start B. describes it primarily as what some have called an intellectual virtue. It is a “truthful apprehension of one’s place in the world” (3), where “we recognize what we know and do not know, what we can and cannot control, and act accordingly” (9). Its opposites are “narcissism” (4, 58) and “management me-ism” (4, 57). Humility is described as both a first step in the life of virtue, and a virtue requisite to possess other virtues (1; cf. 134). Though consistently found in religious thought, it is not limited to the religious (6, 114). Finally, in perhaps the most persistent theme throughout the book, B. notes two ways humility is regarded throughout history, namely as a virtue of accurate assessment of one’s self and the world, or as the vilified degradation of “being humiliated by others” (4).
The first two chapters model B.’s claim that humility is not the exclusive possession of the religious. Even as chapter 1 narrates Greek and Roman cultures as primarily concerned with “hubris and elite reputation management” (20) that are antithetical to humility, B. finds in Socrates and Aristotle true humility. Chapter 2 examines humility in the Bible. We see the start of a tension that remains unresolved in the book, namely, whether humility is essentially an accurate assessment (esp. of one’s self) or a lowering of one’s self (Phil 2). We also see in this chapter an insightful parallel between humility and fear of the Lord, which can also be described in laudable as well as servile forms.
Chapters 3 and 4 survey the Middle Ages. B. gives the most attention to Hildegard of Bingen, and calls her work on humility “the most important period in humility’s history” (45). B.’s expertise as a historian shines here, as he offers a series of personal vignettes of how humility characterizes the lives of Benedict, Augustine, Gregory the Great, and Francis of Assisi. He offers extensive attention to the Rule of Benedict’s chapter on humility, perhaps the best analysis of humility in the book (58–63). There again we see the tension between humility as “knowing your proper place relative to the wider world” (59) and as thinking one’s self the “lowest and least valuable of people” (60). Chapter 4 remains in the Middle Ages but shifts to the Scholastic university setting, focusing on Abelard, Albert, and Aquinas. In both chapters we find rich resources on humility as well as offenses against virtuous humility, whether it be excessive self-degradation (B. cites the Humiliati movement and even Catherine of Siena) or academic desire for conquest and self-exaltation (87–88).
Chapter 5 is dizzying in pace, starting with transitional sixteenth-century luminaries on humility (Teresa and Ignatius), then shifting to several early modern intellectuals (Bacon, Descartes, Darwin, and especially Hume) to show how this era primarily despised humility as an impediment to Enlightenment. B. finds recognition of the need for humility in Franklin and Shelley, particularly as salve against the excesses of the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions. The chapter ends proposing an obvious need for humility in the past century, given the destructive effects of imperialism and nationalism, and its closing four pages propose the need and possibility of institutional humility in the post-2002 Catholic Church.
The scope of Humility is grand and the sweep of figures treated is immense, such that the gifts of B. the historian are on full display. What is clear by the end is that we need humility. B. is especially successful in situating humility between hubris and self-degradation as well as affirming its importance for and yet also beyond religious faith. B. is also fantastic in elaborating the communal importance of humility (e.g., 8, 135–36). Rather than a pious individualistic fixation, humility is requisite for a thriving intellectual and social life. Those seeking technical analysis of humility as a habit, or of whether humility is primarily an intellectual virtue of assessment or a moral virtue moderating self-assertion, will be less satisfied. B.’s achievement is, as he says, broad-stroke “cultural history” through the lens of the (too often) “lost virtue” of humility.