What is the difference between modest and humble

For example, the phrase modest income refers to a small income. Modest can also be used to refer to attire and propriety. In this sense, modest is equal to decent. The following sentences will help you to understand all these meanings better.

Despite coming from a very wealthy background, he was very modest. She is very modest about her cooking skills. Humble has connotations of weakness and submissiveness. On these views, it is a way of valuing and promoting the wellbeing of others. These views make modesty not merely a trait of an individual, but deeply social in nature. Wilson describes it as a type of kindness, a sensitivity to the well-being of others when presenting our own good qualities.

In addition to making modesty or humility more strongly social in nature, these accounts make modesty compatible with epistemic defects but do not require them. Attention accounts of modesty see it as rooted in patterns of motivated conscious attention.

And when they do think about them, they tend to emphasize the role of situational factors in bringing them about, emphasizing things like having good teachers, supportive parents, or fortunate circumstances. Such habits of attention are compatible with, but do not require ignorance. Some have seen modesty as being essentially related to the execution of other virtues.

These virtues help one to overcome inclinations that are contrary to virtue and so serve to help one overcome moral obstacles. Various philosophers have seen modesty as functioning as a brake on certain bad tendencies. Iris Murdoch, for example, sees humility as a brake on pride; see Milligan for a detailed discussion of humility in Murdoch. Foley highlights a similar strand in Aquinas, who describes modesty and humility as moderating desires for personal excellence.

Kant sometimes describes humility as moderation not of our personal desires, but of our demands on others Doctrine of Virtue Though on this account modesty itself has no positive aim, he highlights that this does not mean that modesty has merely a negative function; it is not merely a brake on inclinations, but has a positive role of promoting the ends of other moral virtues.

Modesty and humility concern how we relate to our own good qualities. In an epistemic context, they concern how we relate to the truth or rationality of our own beliefs rather than good qualities more generally.

Discussions of intellectual humility or modesty involve how we relate to our own beliefs, views and judgements. Though sometimes discussed in a purely epistemic context, these often blur the line between moral and epistemic virtues, as in the case of open-mindedness. To be an anti-expert about a topic is to be reliably wrong about that topic. Egan and Elga distinguish being unreliable, as when a compass does not point north when facing north, from being anti-reliable, as when a compass points south when facing north.

They also give the example of directions while driving: When someone is an anti-expert about directions, whenever they think they should go left they should really go right and whenever they think they should go right, they should really go left.

Egan and Elga also argue that one cannot rationally believe oneself to be an anti-expert. So in the driving case, they say that one should withhold belief about which way to go. But suppose that whenever the person withholds, it turns out they should go left.

In this case, withholding does not escape the problem. Like modesty, there are special issues with self-ascription; one can accept that others are anti-experts with no problems, but self-ascription seems self-undermining. In this sense, it can be seen as a limit on epistemic modesty—rationality prohibits one from thinking that their own faculties are anti-reliable.

So, in the more difficult directions example, Sorensen , ff. Gilbert makes a similar claim in the moral domain, arguing that there are rational limits on the self-ascription of moral vices.

Others have argued that it is possible to self-ascribe anti-expertise. Conee does this by suggesting that one can believe the premises of a valid argument but not its conclusion and Richter claims that one can believe general claims without believing particular instances of it. Bommarito highlights cases where the most rational option for non-ideal agents is to self-ascribe anti-expertise.

Anti-expertise highlights the limits of what attitudes we can take to our own epistemic states and faculties. Disagreement raises similar issues in a social context by considering how one should respond to disagreement with others who have similar evidence and faculties as you.

For conciliation views, the disagreement itself is a type of higher-order evidence that warrants you to be less confident in your own position see Christensen For steadfast views, such disagreement should not alter your confidence in your own view see Kelly and Like modesty, the epistemology of disagreement in part turns on whether or not we have a special relationship with our own states aside from more general agent-neutral considerations see Christensen , ff.

This affects how we should relate to our own beliefs and how to respond when such beliefs conflict with those of others. This is relevant to responding to rival philosophical views; see Barnett forthcoming.

Intellectual humility concerns similar issues as modesty more generally, but in the epistemic domain. Roberts and Wood defend an account that roots intellectual humility in low concern for status due to a high concern for epistemic goods. Like the indifference views described in 3. Whitcomb et al. On this view the intellectually humble person attends to and owns their own limitations.

These accounts tend to presume that there is something special about our own limitations that warrant special attitudes beyond concern for epistemic limitations more generally.

Other views defend more doxastic accounts of intellectual humility, making it about particular higher-order epistemic states and not about general abilities or attitudes. These views treat intellectual humility as an epistemic virtue. Dalmiya , ff. Drawing on Indian philosophy and ethics of care, she sees humility as both a disposition to embrace others as partners in cognitive activity and an awareness of our own ignorance and limitations.

This gives intellectual humility both epistemic and moral aspects. Open-mindedness raises similar issues to modesty and humility in that it involves taking a special attitude to oneself.

Some deny this; Hare , for example, argues that open-mindedness is nothing more than treating evidence in an impartial way. Though it is often talked about as an epistemic view see Zagzebski , it is also discussed as a moral virtue too. Arpaly sees it as a disposition to change our beliefs without being opinionated out of moral concern.

McRae also sees it as involving moral concern but also a willingness to consider alternate self-narratives, linking it with equanimity in the Buddhist tradition.

This casts open-mindedness as a freedom from certain mental habits involving the self and its place in the world. Modesty and humility touch on a variety of more general issues in philosophy. It relates to moral issues about self and other: Whether there are special moral requirements regarding our self-orientation and if so, what underlies them? On the contrary, humility is considered as one of the greatest virtues.

In many religions such as Buddhism, Christianity humility is often appreciated and believed to be a quality that needs to be developed. Being humble allows us to explore ourselves. In other words, it assists us to investigate our strengths, weakness, abilities and mistakes internally. This is why it is often referred to as an internal gaze. Some believe that being humble is lowering our opinion of ourselves or criticizing ourselves for past mistakes.

This is a false conception because humility does not entail criticism or condescension. Improve this answer. Raissa Raissa 1 1 silver badge 3 3 bronze badges. Fantastic answer; while the words can obviously mean other things as described in other answers , the "behavior" vs "innate quality" difference is crucial when deciding which word to use IMO.

Yes, very nice, succinct answer that cuts to the chase. Humble can of course refer to behavior. One definition is "having or showing a modest or low estimate of one's own importance". Should we only use humble for ourselves? A person is humble when they show deference and a willingness to submit to others. They often go hand-in-hand, but do not have to.

Jim Jim You and Raissa need to get together and work this out. Which of you is right? Jordaan Mylonas Jordaan Mylonas 1, 8 8 silver badges 9 9 bronze badges. Sorry, I agree that the verb "humble" implies lowering someone's self-esteem thus carrying a negative connotation ; however, the concept of humility and its associated adjective , which is what the OP asked about is seen as a virtue in many societies. As Raissa points out, it reflects a personality type that is not pretentious and is able to respect other opinions, irrespective of one's self-belief.

Similarly, modesty does not necessarily stem from a moderate view of oneself.