To Be Humble Is To Refuse
Vanity, Hate, Pride
Humility and Love
We all are deeply dependent on luck, and subject to the
cruelties of life. We all need love. We all share the
same existential conditions. We are all different, but
also equals. And to understand this at the bottom of our
hearts is to become humble, and to renounce vanity and
pride. To be humble is not to give too much importance
to our strength, power, or intelligence. Humility can be
a major virtue.
That’s what Sponville defends: «Humility is the virtue
of the man who knows that he is not God». And that’s why
humility is a major virtue, and not a virtue of the weak
and losers, as often seen. «The more generous human
beings are usually the most humble» (Descartes).
We need humility. If Aristotle – of whose superior
intelligence nobody doubts – had been more humble, he
wouldn’t have expressed the shocking opinions he did
about women or slavery: «Women are defective by nature
(…). A woman is as it were an infertile male»; «There is
little difference between using slaves and using tame
animals: both provide bodily help to do necessary
things».
Aristotle never revealed the humility that others of his
time, or of some years after, revealed:
Isn’t it true that the one who you indicate as a slave
was born from the same seeds and enjoys the same sky as
you, and breathes, lives and dies as you, and that you
can see the master in him and the servant in you?
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius
You are my brother because you share the same conscience
and the same destiny.
Marcus Aurelius, Thoughts
To hate others is lack of humility:
It’s not suitable of the wise man to hate those we are
going wrong, because in that case he should hate
himself. There is nobody who absolutely can absolve
himself, and if someone proclaims that publicly, he
feels otherwise in his conscience.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius
Lack of humility may inclusively be a source of war and
crime. Lack of humility makes men see their adversaries as
inhuman and as enemies, and leads them to proclaim the right
to vengeance, with all it may bring of evil.
Life ends up by being a long lesson in humility, but we
seldom t learn some fundamental things. And that’s
why we don’t love more, and aren’t more humble, and there
are so many conflicts.
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