Redefining Humility

Rav Yisrael Hess, Derekh ha-Avoda

Who, then, am I? Not my body, my mind, my other spiritual capacities, not even my will. We have searched for the ani (“I”), but we have not found it. Perhaps, then, there is no I.

Wonderful – congratulations! At long last we discover that there is no ani, but there is ayin (nothing). This actual nothing, while descending from the world of absolute truth into this world of falsehood and confusion, became so distorted and confused that the order of the letters of the word which designates our essence, ayin, became distorted and disordered into the lie that there is an ani. . . .

This requires explanation. We know from the Prophets that the glory of God fills the world. . . . If the existence of God is present in all the worlds and fills them, then there is no place vacant of Him, and it follows that there can be no existence other than Him in the world. Any reality that takes up a place in the world, of necessity, pushes away the Holy One, who until now occupied that place. Of course, we are not talking about, God forbid, a physical reality, as though Divinity were to occupy physical space in the world and the space that occupies, say, a stone, pushes God away. We are, of course, talking about a feeling. Any created thing should feel itself as totally null vis-à-vis its Creator. Anything that feels itself to be an independent entity, existing separately from God and standing autonomously, is demonstrating (by this very feeling of existence which does not nullify itself before God) that there is, so to speak, another entity in the world besides God, and this is what is tantamount to pushing away the Divine Presence. On the other hand, any created thing that while physically existing and occupying physical space in the world, still does not feel itself as an entity, nullifies its existence before God, and is not autonomous and independent —that creature is void and does not take up the place of its Creator.

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It follows that the evil in the world results only from the lack of self- nullification before God, and is to be found only in one who feels and acts as an independent entity that exists unto itself. Whoever utilizes his free choice and actualizes the option given him at the moment of his creation to sense himself as a separate entity, he is the doer of evil. Hence, when we say that God created evil, we are saying that God created man with the option of seeing himself as a separate entity. . . . This feeling of existence is what we have called “I,” the sense that there is an I which is not null. Hence, “God created evil” equals “God created me with the feeling of I”; in other words, “I” = evil.

Rabbenu Bahya ibn Paquda, Chovot HaLevavot (1040 CE)

Pride over spiritual attainments can be of two types, one disgraceful and the other praiseworthy. It is disgraceful if a person is proud of his wisdom or the righteous man of his deeds, if this makes whatever he already has of them to be much in his eyes, and makes him think that the good name and high opinion which he has among men is enough for him, and makes him belittle and despise others and speak ill of them, and causes the wise and great of his generation to be unworthy in his eyes, and causes him to gloat over the faults and folly of his comrades. This is what our Sages of blessed memory called “honoring oneself through the disgrace of one’s fellow man.” A person such as we have described is neither meek nor humble.

But the praiseworthy type is when a person is proud of his wisdom or the righteous man of his deeds, and considers them a great favor of the Creator for which to be thankful and joyous, and this causes him to try to add on to them, to be humble with his near ones and enjoy his friends, and to be considerate of their honor, to conceal their folly and speak their praise . . . and all his good deeds are few in his eyes, and he constantly works to increase them, and is humble because of his inability to do as much as he would like. . . . This pride does no harm to humility and does not keep it distant. Of this pride Scripture says in connection with Yehoshafat, “His heart was high in the ways of God.” This pride assists humility, and adds to it, as it is written, “humility brings about fear of God.”

Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook, Midot ha-Re’iya

He who would penetrate the profound hidden reaches of his soul must carefully assess the feeling of pride, that illegitimate feeling which can cause him to behave against his own better judgment as well as that of his Maker, and which is the refined feeling that enlarges the human spirit and reminds man of his full, glorious, spiritual essence.

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To the extent of the lack of inner perfection, nature will strive for exterior perfection. Only from a state of baseness of spirit will the drive for self-glorification before others awaken, whether in what the spirit really has or in what it does not have. Therefore, man must increase the impression of inner perfection, and then his words, when speaking of himself before others, will always be properly balanced.

Rav Elyakim Krumbein, "On the 'Humility' Dilemma and its Solution"

To sum up: humility (anava) = self-esteem; arrogance (ga’ava) = lack of self-esteem. We are arguing that self-esteem and arrogance are two attitudes that may be called “pride” but in reality are totally different from one another. When the sources denigrate ga’ava, we claimed, they are referring only to the second; the first, upon examination, turns out to be the basis of humility. Conversely, praiseworthy humility is always associated with healthy self-esteem. Lack of self-esteem leads to the damaging feeling of worthlessness.

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We conclude, after having offered our definition of anava, with a different dilemma: the psychological fault-line of intrinsic self-worth, on the one hand, versus the sense of inadequate fulfillment, on the other. The two poles are logically interdependent, though they are bound to conflict experientially even as they fortify each other. This is a healthy conflict. It is, perhaps, the fundamental conflict of religious man.

Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook, Midot ha-Re’iya

Genuine humility and lowliness increase health and vitality, whereas the imaginary [humility] causes illness and melancholy. Therefore, one ought to choose for oneself the traits of humility and lowliness in their clear form, and thus become strong and valiant.

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Whenever humility brings about melancholy, it is invalid. But when it is worthy, it engenders joy, courage, and inner glory.

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At times we should not be afraid of the feeling of greatness, which elevates man to do great things. And all humility is based on such a holy feeling of greatness.

Rabbenu Yona, Sha’arei Teshuva 1:12

The level of the penitence and its merits are in relation to the degree of the bitterness and the force of the agony [felt by the penitent]. This is the penitence that comes by way of purity of the spirit and clarity of the mind. For the greater the mind, the more the eyes are opened; the agony of thought should likewise increase exceedingly. . . . For agony [over sin] comes from the purity of the uppermost soul, and the soul is again accepted [by God], more than it would have been as a result of physical suffering and pain.

Rabbenu Bahya ibn Paquda, Chovot HaLevavot (1040 CE)

When I planned to execute my decision to write this book, I saw that one like me is unworthy of writing a book such as this. I surmised that my ability would not suffice to analyze all the necessary aspects, owing to the difficulty which I perceived and to my wisdom being insufficient and my mind being too weak to grasp all of the issues, and that I am not fluent in the Arabic language in which I wrote it (that being the language best understood by most people today). I feared that I would toil at something that would evidence my inability, and that it would be a presumptuous undertaking, so that I considered changing my mind and abandoning my previous decision.

But when I designed to remove this laborious burden from myself and desist from composing the work, I reconsidered and became suspicious of myself for having chosen to rest and to dwell in the abode of laziness in peace and tranquility, and I feared that it was the desire of the [evil] passion which was placing this thought [within me], and that it was he who was diverting me to the way of composure and peace . . . and I knew that many minds have been lost out of apprehension, and many losses have been caused by fear. And I remembered what someone said: “Vigilance dictates that one not be excessively vigilant.” . . . And I said, if all those involved in good causes and teachers of the straight and correct path were to remain silent and still until they could completely attain their ideal, no man would ever say a word after the Prophets of blessed memory, who were chosen by God and strengthened by His help. . . . And I realized that people have a great natural desire for ill purposes, and are negligent in the ways of kindness, and behave with laziness when it comes to advancing good. . . . And when they see an object of desire, they invent falsehoods in order to justify their inclination to it, and they rely on those arguments to sustain and strengthen their [natural] inclination.

Dr. Troy Jollimore, "Humility" [link]

In an interview with the Paris Review, [award-winning Irish novelist John] Banville was asked, “Do you really hate your own novels?.” He responded, “Yes! I hate them. I mean that. Nobody believes me, but it’s true. They’re an embarrassment and a deep source of shame. They’re better than everybody else’s, of course, but not good enough for me.”

Perhaps Banville was simply making a joke. I don’t think so. I think he meant what he said, that while he was probably exaggerating a bit for effect—I am not convinced that Banville truly believes his novels are better than those of any other contemporary writer—he was being, for the most part, sincere. I would say, too, that he is one of the few contemporary writers who could get away with saying such a thing. He is a brilliant writer. And it matters, in this context, that he is a brilliant writer, because the remark, made by any lesser artist, would not mean the same thing and would not be interesting at all. It would be an expression of misguided arrogance, and nothing more. Whereas, coming from John Banville, the statement seems to represent something quite different: a sincere attempt to come to grips with the recognition that a given body of work might simultaneously be, on the one hand, among the best that is being produced, and on the other hand, deeply disappointing.

But isn’t it arrogant to be disappointed in what one acknowledges to be the best there is, to hold oneself up to inhuman, godlike standards? Isn’t this, in itself, really just an indirect way of complimenting oneself, of saying, I believe myself to be capable of such greatness that I hold myself to standards the rest of you could not possibly aspire to, perhaps could not even conceive. When Banville says that his novels are “not good enough for me,” the clear implication is that they would be good enough for the rest of us—isn’t it?

Perhaps, though, this is to focus in the wrong place. Perhaps Banville’s dissatisfaction with his own work is not so much a reflection of his view of his own capabilities, but rather a principled dissatisfaction, the kind of determination that moves even the greatest artists—and, perhaps, the most admirable moral saints—to be unsatisfied with what they have done, no matter how impressive it is. Perhaps it is what moves them to keep trying to achieve on a completely different, even unprecedented level. (Many notable altruists, too, have been profoundly dissatisfied with their contributions to the world, despite the fact that they have sacrificed and accomplished far more than the rest of us.) Viewing things from this angle may encourage us to adjust the way we think about humility, to think of it as being naturally and directly opposed not so much to pride, or even arrogance, but rather to complacency. We might take a view, that is, that resists defining humility as having a low assessment of oneself and one’s abilities, or anything of the sort, but rather equates it with a tendency to be, as a matter of principle, perpetually unsatisfied with oneself and one’s abilities, and to be committed to developing and improving them.

One way to fail to be humble, then is to be fully satisfied, to the point of complacency, with oneself as one is: to feel that one has achieved enough, has contributed enough, has achieved a sufficiently comprehensive and sophisticated understanding of the world, etc.