Why Humility Has Nothing to Do With Modesty

Humility, modesty, and humiliation: three words that are often confused, yet do not mean the same thing. This article distinguishes them in the light of etymology, questions the notion of faux-ego, and invites us to rediscover what a spiritual virtue truly is, at its core: seeing yourself as you are, neither overestimating nor underestimating yourself.

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Why Humility Has Nothing to Do With Modesty
Seeing Yourself as You Are: Neither Bigger Nor Smaller

Humility, modesty, and humiliation: three words that are often confused, yet do not mean the same thing. This article distinguishes them in the light of etymology, questions the notion of faux-ego, and invites us to rediscover what a spiritual virtue truly is, at its core: seeing yourself as you are, neither overestimating nor underestimating yourself.

Words do not always have a perfectly fixed meaning. Many have several senses, which sometimes shift with the times, the milieu, and the context. To this is added the understanding each person brings to a word, shaped by their culture, experience, and way of seeing things. Sometimes a single word is enough for two people to believe they are talking about the same thing, when in fact they mean something quite different. That is a little what Babel is about.

When the meaning of a word matters to me, I willingly turn to a dictionary and to its etymology. But etymology is not enough: it tells the history of a word, it does not by itself fix its present meaning. One must also look at who uses the word, in what era, in what language, in what context, and, when it comes to spirituality or philosophy, within what tradition of thought.

Let us take today three words that are easily confused: humility, modesty, and humiliation.

A dictionary defines humility as the "state of mind of someone who is aware of their shortcomings, their weaknesses," and who tends to belittle their own merits. The first part of this definition is easy enough to accept. The second seems more questionable to me. Why should one belittle one's merits in order to be humble? Humility consists rather in seeing oneself as one is, neither overestimating nor underestimating oneself.

A person may know that they possess a particular skill, intelligence, experience, or talent, and say so without lacking humility. If what they say is true, they are simply acknowledging a reality. They may lack modesty in the way they express it, but that is not the same thing.

This is an important distinction: humility concerns first and foremost the accuracy of the way one looks at oneself. Modesty concerns more the way one presents oneself to others.

Being humble, then, is not making yourself smaller than you are. It is believing yourself to be neither greater nor smaller than what you are.

The etymology of the word is a beautiful one. "Humility" comes from the Latin humilitas, formed from humilis, which notably means "low," "close to the ground." Humilis belongs to the family of humus, the earth, the soil.

The Latin homo, from which our word "human" derives, likewise belongs to a very ancient family of words tied to the earth. This kinship is suggestive. In Genesis, the human being is likewise fashioned from the earth. This is obviously not an etymological kinship, since we are then dealing with another language altogether, but the image is the same: the human comes from the earth. And the earth, precisely, is nothing to be despised. It bears, nourishes, and makes things grow.

Humility is thus the soil in which the seed of knowledge can germinate, not only knowledge learned from books, but the kind that reveals itself from within. Ground that is too hard does not receive the seed. A consciousness swollen with certainties receives no more readily what might surpass it.

Modesty is something else, even though it can naturally accompany humility. The word denotes reserve, restraint in the way one speaks of oneself, an absence of ostentation or vanity. A modest person does not readily put their qualities, achievements, or merits forward.

But the word also has other uses. One speaks of a modest income, a modest house, or modest means, meaning that they are limited, unremarkable, or of little consequence. This already shows that modesty and humility do not fully overlap.

Someone can be humble without being particularly modest. They may know exactly their own worth and state it frankly. Conversely, someone can display great modesty while inwardly holding a very high opinion of themselves. Modesty is a behavior, a restraint, sometimes a social convention. Humility runs deeper: it touches the way one is positioned inwardly. The two can go together, but they are not the same thing.

Humiliation is yet another matter. To be humiliated is to be wounded in one's dignity, one's pride, or the image one has of oneself. To humiliate someone is to belittle them, to place them in a situation where they feel diminished, despised, exposed, or disregarded.

The history of these words holds a curiosity here: "humility," "humble," "humiliate," and "humiliation" all belong to the same family. Yet, in modern usage, their meanings have drifted considerably apart.

One can become humble without ever being humiliated, and humiliation, for that matter, does not necessarily make a person humble. It can just as easily provoke anger, shame, resentment, or a desire for revenge.

True humility, then, does not consist in accepting to be humiliated. Nor does it consist in humiliating oneself. There is, however, a common confusion within spiritual vocabulary: the belief that lowering the ego means lowering the person. That is not what I mean by it.

The word "ego" is often used in spirituality to designate vanity, pride, self-centeredness, or excessive identification with oneself. I find this usage imprecise.

The ego, in its first sense, is simply the "I." It allows the incarnate soul to be aware of existing as an individual and to act in the world. Without this individuality, no ordinary human existence would be possible.

What one seeks to move beyond in spiritual life is therefore not the existence of the "I," but the mistaken identification of that "I" with what it is not: its possessions, its status, its opinions, its desires, its achievements, its wounds, or the image it would like to project of itself. This is what I call the "faux-ego."

Some modern translations of the Bhagavad Gita render the Sanskrit term ahankara as "faux-ego." It should be noted, however, that the Sanskrit text itself obviously makes no such distinction between our modern words "ego" and "faux-ego." It uses, among others, ahankara, a term that designates the principle of the "I," of appropriation, and of identification with action.

In the Bhagavad Gita, it is thus a matter of one who becomes free of appropriation, of desire, and of the illusion of being the independent author of one's actions. The idea that interests me here is a simple one: spirituality does not ask us to destroy the person, nor to humiliate them. It invites us to stop taking for our deepest reality what is merely a construction of individual existence. That is something quite different.

Humility is, then, for me, the fact of considering oneself without overestimating or underestimating oneself. It is neither a poor opinion of oneself, nor a posture of weakness. Saying "I am capable of nothing" when that is not true is no more humble than believing oneself superior to everyone. In both cases, the way one looks at oneself is distorted.

Humility consists in seeing what is. If I know something, I know it. If I do not know it, I do not know it. If I have a skill, it exists. If I do not, there is no point pretending otherwise. If I have made a mistake, I can acknowledge it without my whole person being diminished by it. This accuracy is a spiritual virtue because it keeps one open.

Whoever believes they know everything stops learning. Whoever believes themselves incapable of understanding learns no more. In either case, something prevents knowledge from entering. Humility leaves the door open.

Modesty, in the sense I use it here, is more a human quality, a way of being among others. It can be beautiful and pleasant, but it is not essential to the depth of a consciousness. One can lack modesty and still possess a great inner humility.

Humiliation, for its part, is not a virtue. A spiritual path that speaks of humility should therefore never be understood as an invitation to despise oneself, to diminish oneself, or to accept being despised.

Humility does not ask a person to crawl upon the ground. It simply reminds them that they come from it, that they walk upon it, and that, like it, they must remain open enough to receive the seed and let it germinate.

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