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)

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.

In “Servility and Self-Respect” Tom Hill considers three individuals – Uncle Tom, the Self-Deprecator, and the Deferential Wife – whose behaviour is described as being servile and for that reason, morally defective. The defect in question, as characterized by Hill, is either a failure to recognize one’s moral rights or a failure to appreciate the true worth of those rights. This chapter challenge Hill’s suggestion that the behaviour of the three characters as described by Hill is genuinely servile. For (...) instance, it is argued that Hill’s depiction of the Self-Deprecator is more aptly classified as apathetic rather than servile, which may be a troubling condition, but not necessarily a moral defect. The chapter also challenges Hill’s claim that the Self-Deprecator’s behaviour is caused by a failure to understand his rights. Similar worries similar are raised about Hill’s Deferential Wife, who is described as being overly willing to obey her husband. (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 Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life, Kenneth Minogue explores the intelligentsia’s love affair with social perfection and reveals how ...

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)

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)

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)

This article reconsiders a graffitied riddle from Pompeii (CIL 4.1877). It argues that slavery is one possible dimension of the puzzle, and that acknowledging the existence of slavery in this text testifies to the potential of Pompeian graffiti as a source for overlooked social histories.

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)

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)

ABSTRACT Recent studies have suggested that intellectual humility (IH) might facilitate (a) better learning outcomes, (b) more scientific mindedness, and (c) better peer and professional relationships. However, recent philosophical work has raised concerns that too much IH might lead to intellectual servility (IS), and thus might be vicious (albeit not blameworthy) rather than virtuous. We define IS as a disposition to over-own one’s intellectual limitations and disregard one’s intellectual strengths. We begin by outlining the importance of distinguishing IS from (...) IH, noting that marginalized social groups (e.g., students of color) may be at greater risk for developing the vice of IS than the vice of intellectual arrogance. Then, in a sample of 94 racially diverse undergraduate students, we provide evidence that IS may be detrimental in educational contexts. IS was positively related to maladaptive perfectionism, and it was negatively related to civic engagement, conscientiousness, and openness. We conclude by discussing implications for fostering virtuous IH in higher educational settings. Namely, if IH interventions do not correct for the possibility of over-owning limitations, we risk exacerbating IS. (shrink)

Part Three is an overview of seven central Kantian vices or moral failings. Chapter 13 focuses on servility, or the failure to treat oneself with appropriate self-respect. Chapter 14 focuses on arrogance, explaining why it is also a failure of Kantian self-respect insofar as it involves making mistakes about one’s value relative to others. Chapter 15 explores the vice of contempt, which is a denial of fundamental respect to others as rational agents. Chapter 16 takes up the vice of (...) defamation or spreading negative gossip for its entertainment value. Chapter 17 focuses on the related vice of mockery or taking pleasure in ridiculing others. Chapter 18 explains Kant’s opposition to lying and the reasons why deceitfulness is such a serious Kantian vice. The chapter emphasizes the relationship between honesty and social trust. Chapter 19 explores Kant’s concerns about drunkenness and its negative moral effects on dignity and mutual respect. (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.

It is a common view that citizens’ relationship to the law of their political community is a matter of obedience—or disobedience: the law seeks our obedience, and a central question for political-legal philosophy is then whether we have a general obligation to obey the law. Such a view is particularly evident in relation to criminal law, which is often seen as consisting in prohibitions that citizens are required to obey. This paper argues that a polity that sought only obedience to (...) its laws would foster a distinctive kind of vice in its citizens—the vice of servility (or the opposite vice of defiance). This suggestion will be explained and substantiated by paying particular attention to the criminal law, and by discussing three contrasts: between respect and servility; between abidance and obedience; and between responsibilization and infantilization. The argument is grounded in a (roughly) republican conception of a democratic polity in which citizens are agents, not merely subjects, of a law that is their law. (shrink)

This chapter provides account of four character traits in the intellectual domain: _superbia_ and arrogance; servility and self-abasement. It argues that _superbia_ and arrogance are vices of superiority while servility and self-abasement are vices of inferiority. They are characterized as opposed to modesty and authentic pride. The chapter also defends the view that _superbia_ and arrogance are based on attitudes whose function is ego-defence, while servility and self-abasement have attitudes serving a social-adjustive function as their causal bases. (...) A case is made that the defensive attitudes characteristic of these vices of superiority constitute what is known as defensive high self-esteem while those on which servility is based are typical of damaged low self-esteem. (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)

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)

In her new book, Catherine Malabou argues that the French Revolution existed in name only, not in reality – privileges disappeared only on the surface and the old forms of domination persisted in structuring everyday life. And, sure enough, French citizens soon came to ask: "How is it that we are falling back into the same patterns of privilege and servitude?" In developing this argument, Malabou echoes the conclusion drawn by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, whose work, _What is Property?_, written in 1840, (...) claimed that there was no revolution. Proudhon witnessed how, in the aftermath of the French Revolution, feudal relations persisted and monarchy was restored. He connected the persistence of feudalism and servitude to his critique of property. For Proudhon, property is but another name for domination: "Property is theft," he famously declared; by which he meant that private property starts with a theft of memory and meaning that transforms continuous bondage into a promise of emancipation. This marks the specificity of the anarchist critique of property, and it led Proudhon to conclude "I am an anarchist." Malabou connects her re-reading of Proudhon's masterpiece with our own political situation today, more than two hundred years after the French Revolution. She examines how the enduring domination that is central to private property infiltrates various aspects of the modern world, from the legacies of colonialism and slavery to work and politics. This timely re-assessment of the relation between property and domination will be of interest to students of philosophy and politics, and to anyone concerned with today's key political questions. (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...

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)

The chapter examines Kant's treatment of lying, avarice, and servility or false humility in the "Doctrine of Virtue" (6:428–437). While those moral issues are traditionally construed as regarding moral demands towards others, Kant deals with them under the heading of the duty that a human being has toward himself merely as a moral being. The chapter analyzes Kant's arguments on each of those moral questions and concludes considering Kant's remarks on love of honour, or pride, as the corresponding virtue (...) towards oneself as a moral being. (shrink)

I defend the non-instrumentalist thesis that every adult member of a political society has a pro tanto fundamental moral right to an equal democratic say in determining the content of the laws to which she is subject. I begin by giving an account of an important kind of servility that has received only glancing notice in philosophical discussion. This servility consists in the willingness to subordinate one's capacity for moral judgement (as distinct from one's interests, desires, or will) (...) to another's. I argue that, barring special circumstances, an adult person who willingly acquiesces to a lesser political liberty displays this type of servility. An adult cannot normally self-respectfully acquiesce to a less than equal democratic say. But, I argue, a condition for a political society to be just is that its members can self-respectfully acquiesce to the status it accords them. Thus, it is a pro tanto intrinsic requirement of justice that all adult members of a political society be granted an equal democratic say. There is a pro tanto fundamental moral right to an equal democratic say. (shrink)