The Virtue of Humility: Interpreting the Summa Theologiae’s ‘Minimalist Approach’

Abstract

Abstract This paper argues, in response to scholarly criticism, that Thomas Aquinas’s account of the virtue of humility in the Summa Theologiae does not undermine the importance of humility in the Christian moral life. While the Summa’s classification of humility as a ‘potential part’ of temperance, which results from Thomas’s reliance on classical sources, has been blamed for this work’s perceived belittling of humility, an understanding of the Summa’s overall scope and Aquinas’s system of organizing virtues therein helps demonstrate that this categorization does not imply a lesser significance of humility either than other virtues in the Summa or than humility as treated in his Bible commentaries. Furthermore, even if the Summa’s structure creates limited space for an extensive discourse on humility, the establishment of humility’s reciprocity with magnanimity and absolute contradiction of pride leave no doubts as to the magnitude of this virtue. Thus, the ‘humble’ portrayal of humility in the Summa not only adequately but aptly expresses this uniquely Christian virtue, capturing the way it disposes human beings to ‘creaturely’ reverence before the Creator, and invites a more holistic understanding of Aquinas’s virtue ranking in the Secunda Secundae.