In The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life, Kenneth Minogue explores the intelligentsia’s love affair with social perfection and reveals how ...

Thomas E. Hill, Jr.; Servility and Self-Respect, The Monist, Volume 57, Issue 1, 1 January 1973, Pages 87–104, https://doi.org/10.5840/monist197357135.

Intellectual servility is a vice opposing proper pride about one's intellectual achievements. Intellectual timidity is also a vice; it is manifested in a lack of proper concern for others’ esteem. This paper offers an account of the nature of these vices and details some of the epistemic harms that flow from them. I argue that servility, which is often the result of suffering humiliation, is a form of damaged self-esteem. It is underpinned by attitudes serving social-adjustive functions and (...) causes ingratiating behaviors. Timidity, which is habituated through self-silencing, is underpinned by negative attitudes toward the intellectual worth of the self, which serve a defensive function. Like servility, timidity is an obstacle to the acquisition and transmission of knowledge and especially knowledge about oneself. (shrink)

This article argues that an interlocutor’s deference and open-mindedness can indicate servility rather than virtuous humility. Section 1 evaluates an influential philosophical analysis of the virtue of humility and two psychological measures, all of which emphasize the contrast between humility and arrogance. Section 2 develops a philosophical analysis of servility, building on the limitations-owning view. It argues that servility is an unwillingness or inability to be attentive to and own one’s strengths, and a disposition to be overly (...) attentive to and over-own one’s limitations. Section 3 sketches a picture of servility in political discourse, suggesting that we can expect servility to be positively correlated with deferring to others, open-mindedness, and belief-revision, and negatively correlated with anger. Section 4 sketches a picture of countering servility in political discourse through the virtues of pride and humility. By comparison with servility, we can expect virtuously proud and virtuously humble people to exhibit higher correlations with refusals to defer, to be open, to engage, and to revise beliefs. It points us toward psychological measures that aim to distinguish the virtue of humility from the vice of servility. (shrink)

In the last two books of the Politics, Aristotle articulates an education program for his best regime in contrast to what he takes to be the goal and practices of Sparta’s educational system. Although Aristotle never refers to his program as liberal education, clearly he takes its goal to be the production of free male and female citizens. By contrast, he characterizes the results of the Spartan system as ‘crude’, ‘slavish’, and ‘servile’. I argue that Aristotle’s criticisms of Spartan education (...) elucidate his general understanding of Sparta and provide an interpretative key to understanding Politics 7–8. But although Aristotle contrasts the goals and methods of Spartan education with that of his own best regime, the citizens of his best regime are more like Spartan citizen-soldiers than Athenian participatory-citizens. (shrink)

Scholars often turn to Livy’s famous digression on Aulus Cossus and the spolia opima (4.17–20) to shed light on his larger political inclinations. These readings generally regard Livy as either an Augustan (or at least a patriotic Roman) or an apolitical skeptic. Yet neither view, I argue, fully explains the Cossus affair. What is needed is an interpretation that recognizes the political nature of the Cossus digression and its skepticism toward Augustus. Attending to Livy’s rhetorical strategy in the digression allows (...) us to see it as an instance of oblique criticism of Augustus and his control over Roman life. The explanatory power of this reading extends to episodes from the life of Romulus as well. I argue Livy uses these stories to make a theoretical argument about the nature of despotism, namely, that it seeks to control narratives of the past just as much as it aims for political domination. (shrink)

Recent scholarship in intellectual humility (IH) has attempted to provide deeper understanding of the virtue as personality trait and its impact on an individual's thoughts, beliefs, and actions. A limitations-owning perspective of IH focuses on a proper recognition of the impact of intellectual limitations and a motivation to overcome them, placing it as the mean between intellectual arrogance and intellectual servility. We developed the Limitations-Owning Intellectual Humility Scale to assess this conception of IH with related personality constructs. In Studies (...) 1 (n= 386) and 2 (n = 296), principal factor and confirmatory factor analyses revealed a three-factor model – owning one's intellectual limitations, appropriate discomfort with intellectual limitations, and love of learning. Study 3 (n = 322) demonstrated strong test-retest reliability of the measure over 5 months, while Study 4 (n = 612) revealed limitations-owning IH correlated negatively with dogmatism, closed-mindedness, and hubristic pride and positively with openness, assertiveness, authentic pride. It also predicted openness and closed-mindedness over and above education, social desirability, and other measures of IH. The limitations-owning understanding of IH and scale allow for a more nuanced, spectrum interpretation and measurement of the virtue, which directs future study inside and outside of psychology. (shrink)

The article aims to expose and contest the gendered representation of betrayal in resistance movements. For a theoretical framework, I draw on Simone de Beauvoir’s critique of masculinist myths of femininity inThe Second Sex, combined with contemporary feminist scholarship on the oppressive constructions of female subjectivity in debates on war and violence. I trace how the hegemonic visions of virile resistance tend to subsume the grey zones of women’s resistance activity under two reductive myths of femininity – the self-sacrificial mother (...) and the seductivefemme fatale– while obscuring the complexities of betrayal arising from women’s embodied vulnerabilities. I demonstrate the political relevance of this theoretical exploration on the example of two representative French Resistance novels, Joseph Kessel’sArmy of Shadowsand Roger Vailland’sPlaying with Fire. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 99 Heft: 1 Seiten: 51-88.

Integrity is often conceived as a heroic ideal: the person of integrity sticks to what they believe is right, regardless of the consequences. In this article, I defend a conception of ordinary integrity, for people who either do not desire or are unable to be moral martyrs. Drawing on the writings of seventeenth century thinker Huang Zongxi, I propose refocussing attention away from an abstract ideal of integrity, to instead consider the institutional conditions whereby it is made safe not to (...) be servile. (shrink)

It is a relatively uncontroversial proposition that without “ethics,” an “ethics of homelessness” is impossible. What is less uncontroversial, though, is that philosophy—or at least philosophical analysis—is a necessary condition of ethical discourse. The distrust—or skepticism regarding the utility of— philosophical analysis is predicated on rendering philosophy as useless. This, though, should create a sense of cognitive dissonance, since we universally acknowledge that ethics informs how we interact with ourselves and others, while we also accept, and rightly so, the uselessness (...) of philosophy. While pop- ular parlance has it that uselessness is logically and semantically equivalent to not needed or conceptually irrelevant, this, I will argue, is mistaken. This mis- take, as I see it, is a result of the failure to recognize that liberal arts are intrinsi- cally useless—and ought to be treated as such. To mend this mistake, I will outline the liberal arts in contrast to the servile arts and explain how Aristotle, and his later defender Josef Pieper, correctly understood the distinction. I will then move onto suggest that while philosophy—as a liberal art—is useless, and rightfully so, it is a conceptually relevant, necessary condition for dealing with conceptual problems which arise in ethics—and therefore in the ethics of homelessness. To explicate and defend this thesis, I argue that Plato’s three- fold division of goods, originating in Book ii of his Republic, helps to amalgamate our reservations in accepting philosophy as useless—strictly speaking—and simultaneously useful. From this, I move on to provide various ways in which philosophy is relevant to questions of home and homelessness generally, and display how philosophers themselves have, historically, taken seriously the question of home and homelessness as serious philosophical concepts. Finally, I outline how philosophers can work on the ethics of home- lessness by taking seriously the necessary presuppositions which make work- ing on the alleviation of homelessness not merely possible, but morally obligatory. Having sketched a broad picture of how philosophy interacts with the practical problems of homelessness, I conclude that progress in the field of the ethics of homelessness—as a conceptual endeavor—will ultimately arise from overcoming our prima facie interpretation of the liberal/servile arts distinction and thereby preserve its original meaning. (shrink)

Some of the students in our classrooms doubt their intellectual strengths—their knowledge, abilities, and skills. They may be unaware of the intellectual strengths they have, or may ignore, lack confidence in, or under-estimate them. They may even incorrectly judge themselves to be intellectually inferior to their peers. Students who do such things consistently are deficient in the virtue of intellectual pride—in appropriately ‘owning’ their intellectual strengths—and are on their way to developing a form of intellectual servility. Can the ‘standard (...) approach’ to intellectual character education help these students make progress toward intellectual pride? This article argues that there are two limitations in its ability to help. First, the standard approach isn’t likely to help unless it is combined with classroom strategies for ameliorating servility. Second, even when it is combined with ameliorative strategies, any progress it might make in the classroom is likely to be fleeting when a student’s servility is caused by systemic epistemic injustice. This article suggests that rather than prioritize the standard approach, we prioritize strategies that aim at systemic change and amelioration. (shrink)

Educational practices that encourage children to understand ethical diversity commonly conflict with the parental desire to instil unswerving identification with a particular way of life. This paper examines whether the scope of parents’ rights to educational choice includes the option of vetoing such practices. Although parents’ rights are no less important than the rights of their children, the option of denying children experiences that would expose them to ethical diversity cannot be rightfully claimed by any parent without repudiating the egalitarian (...) basis of rights discourse. (shrink)

Educational practices that encourage children to understand ethical diversity commonly conflict with the parental desire to instil unswerving identification with a particular way of life. This paper examines whether the scope of parents’ rights to educational choice includes the option of vetoing such practices. Although parents’ rights are no less important than the rights of their children, the option of denying children experiences that would expose them to ethical diversity cannot be rightfully claimed by any parent without repudiating the egalitarian (...) basis of rights discourse. (shrink)

Questo contributo esplora le connessioni esistenti tra un particolare sistema di produzione e il corrispondente modello di sfruttamento nel contesto dell'assegnazione del colore - o razzializzazione - delle popolazioni del Pacifico e di una concezione dell'Australia come spazio politico ‘bianco'. L'analisi si concentra sul fenomeno del, quel particolare sistema di reclutamento e sfruttamento della forza lavoro impiegato prevalentemente nelle piantagioni di canna da zucchero del Queensland e delle Isole Fiji che, tra il 1863 e il 1904, coinvolse uomini e donne, (...) adulti e ragazzi delle isole della Melanesia, della Micronesia e, in minor modo, della Polinesia. Il processo di reclutamento comprendeva quasi sempre la coazione e il servaggio, per quanto vi fossero tra i lavoratori reclutati anche coloro che si offrivano volontariamente. Il lavoro a contratto o, sottoposto a livelli di disciplina, controllo e coercizione molto elevati e senza reali garanzie di salario, condizioni e durata, aveva termini temporali precisi e difficilmente rinnovabili. (shrink)

Les sources orales font-elles des femmes les grandes muettes? Au primat de l'écrit comme moyen de connaissance du passé, héritage de l'histoire positiviste, a succédé l'évidence du recours à l'éventail le plus large possible de sources. Les traditions et enquêtes orales ont ainsi acquis leurs lettres de noblesse, en particulier pour l'étude des sociétés de l'oralité. Cet important acquis méthodologique, novateur en lui-même, comporte cependant bien souvent un aspect conservateur et ré...

Les sources orales font-elles des femmes les grandes muettes? Au primat de l'écrit comme moyen de connaissance du passé, héritage de l'histoire positiviste, a succédé l'évidence du recours à l'éventail le plus large possible de sources. Les traditions et enquêtes orales ont ainsi acquis leurs lettres de noblesse, en particulier pour l'étude des sociétés de l'oralité. Cet important acquis méthodologique, novateur en lui-même, comporte cependant bien souvent un aspect conservateur et ré...

The Mismeasure of the Self is dedicated to vices that blight many lives. They are the vices of superiority, characteristic of those who feel entitled, superior and who have an inflated opinion of themselves, and those of inferiority, typical of those who are riddled with self-doubt and feel inferior. Arrogance, narcissism, haughtiness, and vanity are among the first group. Self-abasement, fatalism, servility, and timidity exemplify the second. This book shows these traits to be to vices of self-evaluation and describes (...) their pervasive harmful effects in some detail. Even though the influence of these traits extends to any aspect of life, the focus of this book is their damaging impact on the life of the intellect. Tanesini develops and defends a view of these vices that puts vicious motivations at their core. The analyses developed in this work build on empirical research in attitude psychology and on philosophical theories in virtue ethics and epistemology. The book concludes with a positive proposal for weakening vice and promoting virtue. (shrink)

Unlike its moral and intellectual counterparts, the virtue of aesthetic humility has been widely neglected. In order to begin filling in this gap, I argue that Kant’s aesthetics is a promising resource for developing a model of aesthetic humility. Initially, however, this may seem like an unpromising starting point as Kant’s aesthetics might appear to promote aesthetic arrogance instead. In spite of this prima facie worry, I claim that Kant’s aesthetics provides an illuminating model of aesthetic humility that sheds light (...) not only on the self- and other-directed attitudes it involves, but also on how aesthetic humility can serve as a corrective to the vices of aesthetic arrogance and aesthetic servility. In addition to revealing the ways in which Kant’s aesthetics prizes humility rather than arrogance, I aim to show that the Kantian model of aesthetic humility can enrich our understanding of humility more generally and contribute to the on-going effort in aesthetics to analyse specific aesthetic virtues and vices. (shrink)

It is sometimes claimed that faith is a virtue. To what extent faith is a virtue depends on what faith is. One construal of faith, which has been popular in both recent and historical work on faith, is that faith is a matter of taking oneself to have been spoken to by God and of trusting this purported divine testimony. In this paper, I argue that when faith is understood in this way, for faith to be virtuous then it must (...) be accompanied by intellectual humility. I defend this view by showing how someone ought to respond to purported divine testimony if her faith is to be intellectually humble, and how, if it fails in this respect, it will instead be accompanied by the vices of either servility or arrogance. (shrink)

While the Confucian canon has much to say about women, the Analects contains a few passages that make significant observations about them. These passages deserve the close scrutiny not only because they are all the Analects has to offer on the topic of women, but, more importantly, because at least one passage has been singled out as representing a toxic misogyny that clouds any hope for the continued relevance of Confucianism in today's world. In Analects 17.25, Confucius uniformly and somewhat (...) unfairly dismisses women of servile status as grasping and manipulative, but nevertheless ranks them along with the similarly disconcerting “small men”. While Analects 17.25 also reveals Confucius' awareness of a vague obligation to his inferiors that goes beyond a desire for their unquestioning subservience, in the minds of these lowly figures, his efforts to draw close position him as nothing more than a resource to be exploited. (shrink)

Philip Pettit and Quentin Skinner find Hobbes's understanding of freedom as non-interference inadequate because it fails to appreciate what is wrong with a life lived as a slave. Though their critiques have some force, however, Hobbes's view of freedom has virtues of its own. It is highly sensitive to the fact that freedom is a matter of degree. It is also unlikely to mistake freedom for something else, like security or dignity. Moreover, Hobbes is not as unmindful of the dangers (...) of servility as many think. (shrink)

Kant introduces a duty to oneself to respect oneself and to avoid servility – or notto make oneself a worm. I argue for a wider understanding of this duty: Persons ought to respect their own dignity as persons with autonomy, rationality, and morality (A), but also as personalities, who embody dignity and live a dignified life (B). A corresponds to Kant’s concept of duty as the necessity of an action done out of respect for the moral law, B is (...) an obligation arising from the practical necessity that follows from one’s self-understanding as an individual personality in a socio-cultural context. A and B relate to two types of dignity that are discussed in current debates. I argue that both types of dignity are equally relevant for understanding and respecting one’s own dignity. Finally I discuss why, even though persons can behave like worms, others ought not to step on them. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider how dignity is discursively constructed in the context of work dominated by physicality and dirt. Based on semi-structured interviews with garbage workers, our analysis considers how the deprivations they experience are cast through discourses intended to construct their individual and collective worth. We consider the manner in which dignity maybe denied to such workers through popular repudiations of individuality and status. We demonstrate how this positioning arises from contact with physical dirt, and associations with socially (...) dirty work based on ascriptions of servility, abuse and ambivalence. We go on to consider how garbage workers respond to this positioning through discourses of ‘everyday heroism’. Heroism is evoked through three inter-related narratives that speaks to a particular type of masculinity. The first takes the form of a classic process of reframing and recalibration through which workers not only renegotiate their public position and status, but also point to the inherent value to be had in working with dirt as part of that which we identify as a process of ‘affirmation’. The second narrative arises from the imposition of favourable social and occupational comparisons that effectively elevate garbage collectors’ social position. The third discourse—and previously unobserved in respect of garbage work—centres on paternalistic practices of care. Combined, these discourses disrupt the generally held view that dirty work is antithetical to heroism and wounds dignity. (shrink)

This stimulating collection of essays in ethics eschews the simple exposition and refinement of abstract theories. Rather, the author focuses on everyday moral issues, often neglected by philosophers, and explores the deeper theoretical questions which they raise. Such issues are: Is it wrong to tell a lie to protect someone from a painful truth? Should one commit a lesser evil to prevent another from doing something worse? Can one be both autonomous and compassionate? Other topics discussed are servility, weakness (...) of will, suicide, obligations to oneself, snobbery, and environmental concerns. A feature of the collection is the contrast of Kantian and utilitarian answers to these problems. The essays are crisply and lucidly written and will appeal to both teachers and students of philosophy. (shrink)