T
I
I
I
I particularly Kant's "autonomy of duty." These revived, not without
I proper feelings of congeniality or kinship, the philosophy of life held by
Humility
by
Max Scheler
Among the new spiritual dispositions (Haltungen des Gemi.its)
brought about by the appearance of Christ and clothed with divine
radiance, humility - viewed and understood correctly - embodies the
deepest paradox and strongest antithesis when compared with both
ancient as well as modern-bourgeois morality. Humility is the most
delicate, most hidden, and most beautiful of Christian
virtues.
Humility (humilitas) is a constant inner pulsation of spiritual
readiness to serve at the core of our existence, an attitude of serving
towards all things, good and bad, beautiful and ugly, living and dead. It
is the soul's (seelische) inner replica of the one great gesture of Christian
divinity freely to abandon its grandeur and majesty, to come to man in
order to become every man's and all creation's free and blessed servant.
We are "humble" by partaking in this gesture; by truly "losing"
ourselves in letting go of our self - all its possible value, its respecta-
bility and worthiness, so rigidly clung to by the proud one; by "surren-
dering" ourselves, fearless of what might happen to us, but darkly
trustful that the partaking in this divine gesture, because it is "divine,"
can serve even us but towards salvation. Truly to "let go" of the self
and its value; to dare earnestly to swing oneself out into the dread-ful*
emptiness that yawns beyond all conscious and semi-conscious egocen-
tricity - that is the issue. Dare to wonder in gratitude at not not-
being; that there is something at all -and not nothing instead. Dare to
renounce all your alleged inner "rights," your "worth" (Wi.irdigkeit)
your "merits," the esteem of all men - most of all, however, "self-
esteem." Renounce every claim to be "worthy" of any kind of fortune,
and see it, rather, as a gift only. Then, only, are you humble.
"Humility" embodies the uttermost antithesis to the position of
sensible (Vernunft-) moral pride held by the Roman stoics; to the method
advocating that one conduct oneself in such a manner as to preserve
Humility 211
and never lose one's self-esteem, the "sovereignity" and "worthiness" of
one's self. Thus, it also opposes the moralists of the 18th century,
the late Roman bourgeoisie. Addison allows his "stoic" to say: "We
desire, my dear Lucilius, to prefer to happiness itself the worthiness of
possessing it," a sentence which conveys also a basic thought of Kant's
Ethics. Precisely this sentence is according to Christian sentiments not
half correct, not false, - it is diabolical. Humility bids you accept
thankfully all happiness, even the simplest, the most trifling pleasure
touching your senses (Nerven), as well as the deepest bliss which,
pervading your being, raises you and all things into divine light. It bids
you never to delude yourself into thinking that you "deserve" even the
smallest part. Is there a purer love than to grant to the other the blessed-
ness of loving, and even to allow things, which come our way only by
chance, the appearance of a certain goodness, - even there where the
world "in justice demands" services which are rendered by the other
purely out of love, or provided accidentally by things -as by the chair
which happens to be near when we wish to sit down, or by sunshine,
when we do not have an umbrella? Is not it also deserving of gratitude
that the world contains one just person, if he, by chance, acts "justly"
towards us?
It is not right to say that Christian ethics condemns every kind of
pride, all striving for respect, for honor, for dignity. It is natural to be
proud of one's wealth and property. It is natural to be proud of one's
beauty, of the beauty and good breeding of one's wife and one's
children. It is natural to be proud of one's name and one's origin.
Precisely these types of pride, condemned by stoicism, are meaningful
and sensible. These goods are still worldly enough to tolerate pride in
them. There is but one pride which is diabolical: that is the pride in one's
own moral value as the highest value, moral pride, or the vice of the
angel who fell - and whom the pharisees will imitate eternally. The
pride of the first kind, ascetically condemned by the stoics as merely
hollow vanity, is itself still based on a type of love towards the things
"of" which one is proud. Thus one regards with pride expanding
grounds, gracious greeting and marks of favor by passers-by, a uniform
which one wears, as things which have, even without our pride in them,
a certain intrinsic value. It is solely the pride of the second kind, which
the stoics so presumptuously displayed against the pride of the first
kind, which according to Christian sentiment constitutes the "superbia_"
and the origin of the devil. It impoverishes irreparably, and blinds us to
the world and to ourselves. It causes the subject, proud of himself, to
leap again and again above all things and values until, with complete

212 Max Scheler
"supremacy," he can look down on all except on the total emptiness and
nothingness which he has now achieved. It separates us successively
from all goods and values still maintained and upheld by the first kind of
"pride," viewing "that of which" we were still proud as now being a
condition "limiting" absolute pride, that is, pride in our naked and
emptied self. Its movement, thus, points accurately in the direction
leading towards what Christians have rightfully called "hell." Actual
hell, this is love-lessness (der Nichtbesitz der Liebe). Towards this
vacuum of love moves pride, circling ever more tightly around the ego;
harnessing all value-consciousness ever more forcefully to the naked
center of the I. Because of this constant striving for "self-esteem" and
"independence," the inner image, harbored by the proud man of himself,
whose content he values only because it is he who has it and values it,
becomes an ever more blurred medium, which finally bars him perma-
nently from self-knowledge and recognition; his "independence" cuts
off all threads of life linking the proud one to God, the universe, and
man. '"This I have done,' my memory tells me. 'This I could not have
done,' my pride stubbornly insists. Finally memory gives in"
(Nietzshe). Pride makes ever more lonely, drives ever more towards
that which Leibniz called 1 the atom: to a "deserteur du monde.
Does not this morally proud person, this person who is proud
(only) of his own self 2 , resemble a man who in ~olitude slowly strangles
himself?
\
The proud man is much too proud even to place any value on the
image others have of him, or on his stature and role in society. He is too
proud to be vain. Vanity is only ridiculous, it is not diabolical. It is
ridiculous because unconsciously the one who is vain subjects himself to
the judgment of those whom he, at the same time, seeks to surpass by
showing off his superiority. By consciously seeking to raise himself
above it and to draw its attention towards himself, the vain one uncon-
sciously becomes the victim of a secret affinity with mankind. This
situation deserves a cheerful laugh, since he does not notice that he
serves where he wishes to rule; that he succumbs to the ordinary where
he claims to be extraordinary. The vain man is merely superficial and
his shame is not sufficiently great to control the craving which he bears
towards the gratification derived from his mirror image. However
misguided the sympathy contained in vanity may be, it nevertheless still
bestows upon it the charm of a kind of love gone astray. This is missing
in pride which has depth, as does everything evil.
Should one come to feel shame at that craving to display oneself,
which is secretly influenced by the adoption of value judgments other
than one's own, judgments a priori despised by pride, this bashfulness
T
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I Humility 213
I
I
I which seeks precisely to hide the merits which have been seen, is called
"modesty." This virtue is as shallow as the vice which it rejects, for it
consists only in a race between vanity and bashfulness, won by the
latter. It moves solely within the sphere of the social and precisely
because of this, it should not be confused with humility which aims at
the world.
The proud one: this is a man who, because he persistently "looks
down," imagines himself to stand on a tower. He overcompensates for
every factual lowering of his person by casting his glance into ever
deeper depths, thus he must see himself as rising, while he is actually
sinking. He does not notice that the depth into which he gazes over and
over again draws him slowly towards itself, precisely because he forever
looks into it in order to fancy himself up high. Thus slowly "falls" the
Angel - drawn in the direction of his sight. This line of sight (Blick-
richtung) is justified as long as one is dealing only with values and goods
which can be possessed, with positions and honors, and as long as one's
attitude deals with social comparisons. Here the attitude is mere haughti-
ness which does not rule out humility of being. The typical lords and
knights of the early Middle Ages were such, as were the greatest popes,
-extremely haughty and humble at the same time. This mixture lends
a particular charm to the mores (Tugendwesen) of that age. Humility
excludes only one thing: pride of being (Seinsstolz), which aims at the
substance of one's own worth! It alone is the diabolical which leads to
hell. Humility, however, is that virtue which leads directly into heaven
by allowing the humble one to let himself sink down ever more deeply
before himself, sink through his self down before all things. For
humility is nothing else but the resolute glance towards the directions 3
of one's self, which seem to steer it towards the ideal of its individual
being, and whose point of intersection lies in the invisible- in God. It is
a continuous seeing of oneself "in God" and "through the eyes" of God,
a veritable "walking in the sight of the Lord." The great ladies of
Provence who designed the rules of courtly love, included this law
among their articles: "the picture of the beloved is ever present." One
need not "think" of it, not even "remember" it. On the contrary: one
must artificially look away, so that the always present and active might
dim a bit. Likewise, for the truly humble one there is ever present the
picture of his own individual self, which he continuously perceives as
traced anew, as well as borne before him by the movement of God's love
aimed at him. How could he in each experient moment of his life but see
himself as dark and small before the brilliance and greatness of this
picture? By sinking down, as far as his conscious experience of himself
is concerned, ever more deeply and by seeing himself as abased, as he
penetrates into this divine image, this beautiful picture actually draws
 214 Max Scheler
him up to God and, in the substance of his being, he rises gently into
heaven.
Humility is a mode of love which alone, powerful as the sun, can
break the rigid ice, girded by painful pride around the ever more empty
I. There is nothing more beautiful, nothing sweeter, than love gently
and magically allowing humility to enter proud hearts, causing them to
open and pour forth. Even the proudest man and the proudest woman
become somewhat humble and ready to serve all things, when they
love. As the most fragrant flower of Christian love, humility is
Christian virtue par excellence; in its purest form it is only the delicate
silhouette which the movement of holy, God-oriented love casts over
the soul. It is only this love for the world and God and all things in God,
the "love in God," (the "amare Deum et mundum in Deo" of the Scholastics)
this beautiful self-effacement, which can pierce our mind's congenital
cataract and allow it to be flooded with the full light of all possible
values. The proud one, whose eye is fixed, as if spellbound, on his own
worth, lives, of necessity, in night and darkness. His world of values
becomes darker from minute to minute, since each value which he
beholds appears to him as a theft and robbery from his own worth
(Selbstwert). Thus he becomes a devil and negator. Locked in the prison
of his pride, the walls grow and grow, closing him off from the daylight
of the world. Can you see the self-seeking (Ich-gierige), jealous eye as
he knits his brow? Humility, on the other hand, opens the mind's eye to
all the world's values. Only she4 can win all, who assumes that nothing is
deserved, and everything is gift and wonder. She still allows one to
perceive the magnificence of space in which bodies can spread them-
selves as they please without falling apart; how wonderful and worthy
of gratitude it is that there is space, time, light, and air, the ocean and
flowers. Ever anew she joyfully discovers foot and hand and eye, as
things whose value we seem capable of grasping only when they are
rare and others do not possess them. Be humble, and you will imme-
diately be rich and powerful. Because you no longer "deserve" anything,
all things will be given to you, for humility is the virtue of the rich, as
pride belongs to the poor. All pride is "beggar's pride." If it is a fact that
throughout the world there are traces of grace for the feelings, and
traces of wonder for the mind, - how could the proud one, who "will
not allow himself to receive," and will not knowingly accept anything,
feel and understand the meaning of the world? How could he, who wants
to admit only that which has paid tribute to his so-called 12 categories
of understanding - or better, his 12 typical whims (Gattungsspleens)
and general obsessions (generellen Zwangsideen) - know anything
essential concerning the world? Is it possible for a being which fancies
that "its mind dictates nature's laws," and that it alone can "judge"
itself, to know anything about the world?
Humility 215
Humility is the profound art of the soul whereby it expands beyond
the standard which consists merely of life-for-the-self and self-
expansion. There are two paths for the cultivation of the soul and the
overcoming of its natural confinement and dullness. One path is the
way of exertion of mind and will, of concentration, of conscious estrange-
ment from things and from oneself. All "rationalism" and all morality of
"self-liberation," of "self-orientation," of "self-perfection," lies in this
direction. The other path is the way of abandonment (Entspannung) of the
mind and will, of expansion, and of progressive cutting asunder of the
threads which, in a loose, idle manner, still automatically chain the
world, God, men, and all other living beings to one's own organism and
one's own ego. It is the path of unions with all things and God. The one
who treads the first of these paths fears the second. He mistrusts the
inclinations (Sinn) and ways of the world; he mistrusts the inclinations
and ways of his own soul, and trusts himself and his will alone. His ideal
of perfection consists of "taking" himself and the world "in hand." The
one who treads the second path fears the first no less. He who starts
with absolute trust in being and in the root from which all things
sprout, regards the desire to "arrange" a questionable world, as
madness. Experiencing himself as part of the world, and being filled
with patriotism for the world, he can consider only as absurd the
thought that the part should make something better out of the whole-
which, after all, encompasses and contains him too. This does not mean,
however, that he sees and feels less that which one calls the "trouble,"
the "weaknesses," the "evil," and "senseless" of the world. On the
contrary: only the one who loves, truly suffers from the wrongs and
weaknesses of the beloved. (The other one is glad, rather, about evils,
since they make him feel how much better he is and give him
"something to do.")6 He does not seek the root of these evils in being, in
the nature and in the origin (Wurzel) of the world: he seeks it in his
false interests, in the fever of his drives and the tonus of his bodily and
his spiritual muscles, that is, of his world-impoverishing "vigilance." He
seeks it first of all in his exaggerated attachment (Anspannung) to the world and
then, in that of others. He is concerned with removing this attach-
ment, this natural "pride" as it were, the natural centering of the world
and values in his ego, in his organization and even the organization of
every species and subspecies and every particular community. In so
doing, he wishes to penetrate into the world itself and reach its roots
wherein, he secretly knows, perfection can be found. His concern lies
with removing the inhibitions which hide from him the full and total
being and light of things. In daring to let himself go, in cutting and
severing completely the anchor cable, which has fixed 7 the world in his
ego, he does not fear, as does the other, to become the victim of surging
216 Max Scheler
waves. Rather, the new life gained from the source of all things,
compels him even to be the inner play of forces of the ocean to which he
has abandoned himself and to experience it (es mit zu leben) unharmed.
This path of "finding oneself anew in God" by totally losing oneself is, in
the moral sphere, humility and, in the intellectual sphere, pure
"intuition." Such surrender requires utter daring and is, so to speak, the
movement of boldness having become the being of the soul itself. It is
that radical renunciation of one's own power and one's own worth, that
utter "commending of oneself to God," and "placing oneself as a chick
under the wings of the hen, Christ" (Luther) which recently has been so
excellently described by William James. In the section of his book, The
Varieties of Religious Experience, which he en titles "Conversion," he draws
attention to two types of religious conversion, the "volitional" type, and
the type of "self-surrender." He shows by numerous examples the
much greater significance of the latter type. Already with quite
elementary goals, such as remembering a name, it is often not the
exertion but rather relaxation which brings us what we desire. If one
tells oneself: "cease all efforts and think of something else," then what
is desired will come of itself. Great matters belong to the same type.
Here all struggle, the taking of every "good intention" with which, as
the proverb so profoundly says, "the way to hell is paved," is set aside,
and everything is entrusted to a power slowly growing within, which,
by itself, effortlessly gives what we have previously so busily sought.s*
Frank Bullen, whose autobiography, With Christ at Sea, W. James quotes,
once during a bad storm, while hauling down the flying-jib, sprang out
astride the boom in order to furl it. Suddenly the boom gave way. "The
sail slipped through my fingers, and I fell backwards, hanging head
downwards over the seething tumult of shining foam under the ship's
bows, suspended by one foot. But I felt only high exultation in my
certainty of eternal life . . . . I suppose I could have hung there no
longer than five seconds, but in that time I lived a whole age of delight
. . . . How I furled the sail, I don't know . . . ."q This inner miracle of
ever new re-birth, of obtaining strength to "furl the sail" from a
boundless reservoir of power, by complete renunciation of one's "own
strength" and of even the smallest worthiness, is the goal which
humility seeks even without knowing it.
In his last work, A Pluralistic Universe, however, William James
writes:
Luther was the first moralist 1o* who broke with any effectiveness
through the crust of all this naturalistic self-sufficiency [that of the
ancient morality], thinking, (and possibly he was right) that Saint
Paul had done it already. Religious experience of the Lutheran type
brings all our naturalistic standards to bankruptcy. You are strong
Humility 217
only by being weak, it shows. You cannot live on pride or self-
sufficingness. There is a light in which all the naturally founded
and currently accepted distinctions, excellences, and safeguards of
our characters appear as utter childishness. Sincerely to give up
one's conceit or hope of being good in one's own right is the only
door to the universe's deeper reaches . . . . The phenomenon is
that of new ranges of life succeeding on our most despairing
moments. There are resources in us that naturalism with its literal
and legal virtues never reeks of, possibilities that take our breath
away, of another kind of happiness and power, based on giving up
our own will and letting something higher work for us, and these
seem to show a world wider than either physics or philistine ethics
can imagine. Here is a world in which all is well, in spite of certain
forms of death, indeed because of certain forms of death- death of
hope, death of strength, death of responsibility, of fear and worry,
competency and desert, death of everything that paganism,
naturalism, and legalism pin their faith on and tie their trust to.
Reason, operating on our other experiences, even our psycho-
logical experiences, would never have inferred these specifically
religious experiences in advance of their actual coming. She could
not suspect their existence, for they are discontinuous with the
'natural' experiences they succeed upon and invert their values. But
as they actually come and are given, creation widens to the view of
their recipients. They suggest that our natural experience, our
strictly moralistic and prudential experience, may be only a
fragment of real human experience. They soften nature's outlines
and open out the strangest possibilities and perspectives. 11
The most ridiculous and most comical misjudgment of Christian
humility by some of the modern bourgeoisie is the one which would
represent it as a type of "servility" raised to the position of virtue and
dedicated to God, as the "virtue" of the poor, the weak, the little ones. It
is, of course, self evident that a disposition which calls itself "bourgeois
pride before kings' thrones," and that the attitude of all upstarts which
considers it a paramount "duty" not to allow oneself to be given
anything, i.e., that a priori feeling of total non-being which expresses
itself so clearly, for anyone not morally deaf, in its singular emphasis on
the value of everything "self-earned" and of "becoming someone by
one's own initiative," must lead to such a deception. What does the
bourgeois who wants to "become someone," and who secretly measures
himself against his masters and kings even as he "proudly" protests
against them, know, what could he know, about voluntary self-
effacement, about that sweet urge to dissolve oneself, experienced by
those who are something (the soAoi) and who do not see themselves
as high, precisely because they stand on the summit naturally?
218 Max Scheler Humility 219

Humility is, after all, exactly the movement of self-effacement, that is, 8. The meaning given to the word "grace" evidently has its foundation in such expe-
riences. This meaning is retained even when the cause of these experiences cannot be found
the movement of originating from on high, of coming from the summit,
in God.
of the descent of God to man, of the holy one to the sinner. It is the free, 9. The translation is taken directly from the original: William James, The Varieties of
daring, fearless movement of a spirit whose natural plenitude makes to Religious Experience (New York: Collier Books, 1968), p. 232.
himself the very notion of giving of himself excessively (Selbstver- 10. This view does not meet with historical facts.
schwendung) inconceivable; who cannot "give himself away" because 11. The translation is taken from the original text: William James, J\ Pluralistic Universe
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977, p. 138.
he himself is nothing but the outpouring of giving. Can the servile one
will to give and serve? The servile one "wills" to rule and only a lack of
power and wealth makes him bow before his lord, and serve him with
his hands. Growing accustomed to numerous bows, he becomes
obsequious or servile. Humility, on the other hand, is, above all, a virtue
of born masters. It consists of their not allowing the center of the soul to
be touched by what are only natural worldly values for them, honor,
fame, and praise received from their servants; in bowing their inner
head before the invisible, while ruling the visible. The humble man,
furthermore, exercises his rule with a deeply secret readiness to serve
him whom he rules. He regards as a mere consequence of his position
(Haltung) what the servile man sees as central: the will to rule! And that
which is central to him, the servile one regards as a consequence of his
position only: the willingness to serve!

NOTES
* The word is hyphenated intentionally, in order to accentuate the nuance of dread
and diminish the influence of the every-day connotation implying "horrible."
1. The German "Schelten" implies disapproval which is not clearly contained in the
English "call."
2. Dieser Sitten und Selbststolze.
3. "Linien," instead of being literally translated as "lines," which Scheler may have
preferred due to his figurative use of "Schnittpunkt," (point of intersection) is here
rendered as "directions," a synonym of "trend" (No. 5 Langenscheidt). I felt the latter to
be more readable in English while still allowing for the figurative use of "point of inter-
section" later.
4. This pronoun is used here as personification of humility which takes the feminine
gender in German.
5. The German "Vermahlung" is difficult to render in direct translation: marriage,
wedding. I have chosen the word "union" in an attempt to make the translation pertinent,
while not taking too much away from the German.
6. Parentheses mine. The last sentences: "The other. . something to do," seem to
be an interjection. It is not clear to which "way" Scheler wishes to designate this sentence.
Thereafter Scheler seems to return to his reflections concerning the second "way" (aban-
donment). The persistent use of the pronoun "he" without differentiation tends to
obscure the issue.
7. The word "Auswerfen" (of which the world is the subject in the German original)
makes direct reference to "anchor" which is "cast"- the anchor which fastens the world to
the I.