Abstract
Within the current retrieval of virtue ethics, and the renewed evangelical vigor for Christian philosophy, it is not surprising that humility is a debated topic. What is more surprising, perhaps, given the Western philosophical tradition’s mooring to Christianity (at least in its most primal founts), is how humility is often assumed but rarely articulated according to that Christian heritage. Kent Dunnington wades into contemporary debates by attending to a more ancient tradition of humility, a tradition that broke with classical virtue theory in important ways, offering something much more radical than current conceptions. There are many questions this sort of claim raises, in particular, questions about the nature of virtue and the role that human happiness (eudaemonia) plays in virtue. Eudaemonism has a long history in Christian moral theology, often with humility at its center, and yet it is not always obvious how this is possible.
One of the most intriguing aspect of this profoundly interesting and helpful book is how Dunnington seeks to speak into contemporary issues utilizing resources one is not used to seeing in most discussions of analytic theology. Augustine, to be sure, is a well-trod resource for the Christian tradition, but less well-developed in the contemporary West are the desert Fathers and Mothers. Dunnington’s use of these resources, all of which are profoundly weighty for the Christian tradition as a whole, brings a refreshing historical depth to this volume. To signal his retrieval from these ancient sources, Dunnington employs the descriptor “radical Christian humility,” to designate his appropriation of these figures in contrast to contemporary accounts. Furthermore, picking up language from Rowan Williams’s insightful breviary on the Christian spiritual tradition, Dunnington articulates humility as requiring that a person go through an “unselfing.” Using contemporary psychological language to explain this unselfing, furthermore, Dunnington claims that proper Christian humility requires a “stripping away of the self insofar as the self is identified with what some psychologists call one’s ego ideal” (8).
Dunnington begins this exploration with an overview of the contemporary discussions about humility in the philosophical literature. He notes how curious it is that contemporary thinkers, many of which have no interest in Christianity, have wanted to translate humility into a secular account of virtue. Nonetheless, the Christian background to North American culture has elevated certain ideals that remain entrenched in the cultural consciousness. To maintain this interest in humility, however, on Dunnington’s narrative, required a neutering of humility to make it fit into accounts of virtue unmoored from Christ and the cruciform ideal of Christianity. To compare his “radical Christian humility” to other options, Dunnington sees five major views represented in the literature, what he deems (1) Underestimation, (2) Non-Overestimation, (3) Egalitarian, (4) Low Concern, and (5) Limitations-Owning. In his overview of these positions, Dunnington notes that they map relatively well onto different “waves” of discourse: “The first wave of attempts conceptually to pinpoint humility offered descriptive, cognitive-focused definitions of humility; the second wave offered revisionary, behavioral-focused definitions of humility, and the third wave offered, and continues to offer, descriptive, affective-focused definitions of humility” (13). After unearthing a variety of assumptions that drive these views, and, in particular, the narratives that seem to govern critiques of Christian accounts of humility, Dunnington questions the standard accounts, raising serious objections to their viability.
After this, Dunnington taps Augustine as the primary thinker by which he develops his account of “radical Christian humility.” On his reading, Augustine’s account does not sit comfortably with most contemporary assumptions about Christian humility. In his development of an Augustinian account of virtue, we come to see how fitting Rowan Williams’s term, “unselfing,” truly is. “Radical Christian humility” is seen as no other than a rejection of contemporary ideals, where one abandons the project of self-sufficiency and immortality. In a provocative statement, at least at face value, Dunnington claims, Augustine does not believe there is a ‘self’ he can truthfully identify abstracted from his ongoing journey to God. The Augustinian insight at the heart of my project is simply that there is no immortal, internally stable, independent self; the Unmoved Mover is an idol. The self is an ecstatic project, known only through relationship, which is to say, through service, prayer, and worship. (39)
From here, Dunnington addresses “mundane humility,” a term that names various shared commitments among contemporary theorists. To do so, he narrates modern instincts, beginning with a brief reflection about Hobbes before moving on to Kant and his response to Hume. It is Kant’s ultimate rejection of the ancient conception of humility, and his diminished account that focuses on the self and its “proper pride” and the “love of honor,” that continues to misorder the contemporary discourse on the topic. In this chapter, Dunnington reveals how humility has been shifted to the self rather than assuming a displacement of the self. In doing so, the ancient view has become lost (or seen as dehumanizing), and secular accounts of humility are made possible. The problem with certain contemporary Christian accounts of humility is that they are now moored to these Kantian presuppositions, and instead of providing a description of the unselfing of the self, they are seeking to appropriate notions traditionally associated with pride into humility.
To clarify his view, Dunnington addresses various views on the nature of the “self,” an important discussion for humility and necessary for any consideration about what unselfing entails. Unselfing does not entail, importantly, a lack in self-knowledge, nor does it require that one has no sense of self-worth. Rather, unselfing is giving up the quest for identity because the person rests upon the care of God. Dunnington turns back to respond to the Humean critique of radical humility, turning to contemporary variants of this critique, as a way to buttress and clarify his position. This leads him to address a developmental account of humility, suggesting that there is a “proper pride” necessary for moral development on his view, but not for moral action. Proper Christian humility and moral action should be driven by love. Picking up the distinction found frequently in medieval and Reformed accounts of virtue, Dunnington utilizes the acquired/infused distinction to address how proper humility differs from the acquired virtue that necessitates pride.
Dunnington goes on to address grace and asceticism, an important discussion that speaks to the heart of any distinctively Christian account of virtue. Dunnington concludes by turning to the task of Christian virtue theory, recalling his attempt to foreground his theological commitments in his development of virtue, rejecting the common distinction between theology and ethics. This instinct gets to the core of the project and reveals how important a contribution this is as well as how odd it is that this approach is unusual (even for Christian ethicists). Overall, I think Dunnington’s development of the Augustinian (and desert) traditions into contemporary discussions of humility and virtue ethics was profoundly illuminating. Furthermore, throughout the volume, there are helpful thought experiments and even parenting scenarios that help to flesh out in important ways the practical realities of how his view would work. I think this book would be a helpful text for classes on Christian virtue theory, spiritual formation, and the history of Christian spirituality (although, for the last one, one or two chapters might work best). There are questions that still need to be raised with how Dunnington develops his account, questions about his doctrine of God, for instance. But these questions do not impact the core of the argument, and Dunnington holds these things with an open hand. This book is highly recommended.