Humility: Vice or Virtue
The mighty god of "self-esteem" sometimes seems to have replaced humility.
continue readingWilfred M. McClay
Wilfred M. McClay holds the SunTrust Bank Chair of Excellence at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where he is also a history professor. His books include the award-winning The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America (University of North Carolina Press). He is currently at work on a biography of the sociologist David Riesman.
Articles by Wilfred M. McClay
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Virtue or Vice?
The mighty god of “self-esteem” sometimes seems to have replaced humility.
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Vice or Virtue?
The mighty god of “self-esteem” sometimes seems to have replaced humility.
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An American Virtue
The story of the world is mirrored in the history of words. And because that story is full of surprises and paradoxes, the words we use are bound to reflect that fact.
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An American Virtue
The story of the world is mirrored in the history of words. And because that story is full of surprises and paradoxes, the words we use are bound to reflect that fact. Take the humble monosyllable grit , for example. In its fundamental meaning, it could hardly be less ambiguous, or less impressive. A piece of grit is nothing more than a hard granule, such as a grain of sand. In fact, the word comes from the Old English word for sand, though our term grit is used more generally to apply to any such tiny particulate matter, ranging from pulverized or ground-down stone to the airborne byproducts of combustion or heavy industry. Grit is everywhere, one of the smallest and commonest things in the range of our everyday experience, and of little obvious value.
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Pinning Your Own Tail on Someone Else’s Donkey
Guilty feelings got you down? Let Dr. Feelgood help you move on.
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Pinning Your Own Tail on Someone Else’s Donkey – Guilty feelings got you down? Let Dr. Feelgood help you move on.
Forgiveness is one of the golden words of our culture. It glistens with a hundred admirable qualities, and its purity and moral prestige seem beyond challenge. Even when we cannot ourselves forgive a transgressor, we usually credit the generosity of those who can. To forgive others is taken to be a sign of a full and munificent and sacrificial heart, and moreover a heart that wisely recognizes the fleeting nature of life and the universal weakness of all human beings, very much including oneself. There but for the grace of God, or sheer happenstance, go I, it seems to say, so why hold a grudge, when life is short and happiness ephemeral? In the face of our shared human frailty, forgiveness expresses a kind of transcendent and unconditional regard for the humanity of the other, free of any admixture of interest or punitive anger. It transcends mere considerations of justice, for to forgive, whether one is forgiving trespasses or debts, precisely means suspending all such just and legitimate claims in the name of the higher ground of love and human solidarity.
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Idol-Smashing and Immodesty in the Groves of Academe
We don’t hear the word “modesty” very much these days. And when it is used, it generally has a faintly antique, Victorian sound, a distant rustle of petticoats amid the stillness of overstuffed parlors with lacy tabletops and antimacassars and scrupulously concealed furniture legs. As a consequence, the word “modesty” often carries for us a negative weight of falseness or artifice or timidity. It cannot possibly be both sincere and healthy; it must be either insincere or pathological, or both. That it is seen this way is a sign of how completely “modesty” has come to embody the very things that modern mores have sought so ardently to defeat.
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