Abstract

Hume criticised ‘humility’ as a ‘monkish virtue’ and objected to it on the basis that such virtues ‘stupefy the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the fancy and sour the temper.’1 Despite the appeal of Hume’s plea for less restraint and self-denial, other thinkers such as Kant consider epistemic humility to be fundamental, given the limits of our rationality and our struggle to know and do the right thing.2 By epistemic humility, he did not mean weakness or being self-effacing, instead he was referring to an appropriate degree of self-respect that’s tempered by an awareness of the ways in which we can go wrong. ‘Epistemic’ comes from the ancient Greek episteme, which is often translated as knowledge, understanding or acquaintance. So epistemic humility can be understood as an appropriate awareness of the limits of what we know, understand or have experienced. There are a number of reasons why epistemic humility and being mindful of the ways we can go wrong is important for medical ethics. They include that ethics is interdisciplinary and often focuses on the new, it discusses ethical questions that require detailed and accurate information and that it analyses issues …