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Abstract
Some of the students in our classrooms doubt their intellectual strengths—their knowledge, abilities, and skills. They may be unaware of the intellectual strengths they have, or may ignore, lack confidence in, or under-estimate them. They may even incorrectly judge themselves to be intellectually inferior to their peers. Students who do such things consistently are deficient in the virtue of intellectual pride—in appropriately ‘owning’ their intellectual strengths—and are on their way to developing a form of intellectual servility. Can the ‘standard approach’ to intellectual character education help these students make progress toward intellectual pride? This article argues that there are two limitations in its ability to help. First, the standard approach isn’t likely to help unless it is combined with classroom strategies for ameliorating servility. Second, even when it is combined with ameliorative strategies, any progress it might make in the classroom is likely to be fleeting when a student’s servility is caused by systemic epistemic injustice. This article suggests that rather than prioritize the standard approach, we prioritize strategies that aim at systemic change and amelioration.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Hume (Citation1739/1978, p. 596).
2 On intellectual servility, see Battaly (Citation2021); Hazlett (Citation2017); Tanesini (Citation2018) and Tanesini (Citation2021); Whitcomb et al. (Citation2017).
3 Porter (Citation2016, p. 222); see also Baehr (Citation2013); Baehr (Citation2016); Battaly (Citation2016).
4 On intellectual humility, see (e.g.) Alfano et al. (Citation2021); on arrogance, see Lynch (Citation2019); on intellectual pride, see Carter and Gordon (Citation2017).
5 See, for example, Battaly (Citation2019); Tanesini (Citation2021).
6 For similar points, see Whitcomb et al. (Citation2017); Battaly (Citation2021).
7 See, for instance, the self-determination theory of Ryan and Deci (Citation2009).
8 Compare Dadlez (Citation2017) on the virtue of pride; Dillon (Citation2021) on self-respect; Kieran (Citation2020) on the virtue of assured epistemic ambition; and Roberts and Wood (Citation2019) on the various ‘virtues of pride’.
9 See also Dadlez and Woolwine (Citation2021).
10 Tanesini (Citation2021) analyzes a range of ‘vices of inferiority’ including servility, self-abasement, fatalism, and timidity. On the analysis I offer, all of these qualities count as servility (given that we set aside other differences between the views).
11 Whether intellectual vices require inappropriate motivations is an open question in vice epistemology; see Kidd et al. (Citation2021).
12 This does not entail that intellectual servility is an intellectual virtue in such cases – it isn’t! However, it is an open question whether intellectual servility might be a moral virtue, driven by moral motivations and overall good judgment, in contexts of severe oppression. See Tessman (Citation2005).
13 See Baehr (Citation2021); Battaly (Citation2016); Da Brasi (Citation2020); Roberts (Citation2016).
14 See, for example, Baehr (Citation2021); Battaly (Citation2015).
15 See also Baehr (Citation2021, p. 160) which includes role models who show growth and improvement.
16 For an overview of philosophical and psychological work on intellectual humility, see Ballantyne (Citation2021). For psychological interventions in a classroom, see Meagher et al. (Citation2019).
17 Relatedly, see Johnson’s (Citation2003) example of the chronic liar who is trying to become more honest.
18 Of course, whether specific activities, such as keeping a log, would succeed is an empirical matter, since they may risk reinforcing servility.
19 These methods warrant further exploration. Note that even if we could identify specific methods that were helpful, they would not be guaranteed to succeed. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for raising this point.
20 Kieran (Citation2020). See also Dillon (Citation2021, p. 62).
21 Thanks to an anonymous referee for raising this worry.
22 Thanks to an anonymous referee for raising this worry.
23 For related worries, see Sherman and Goguen (Citation2019, pp. 9–10).
24 Hazlett (Citation2017, p. 94); see also Dillon (Citation2021); and Dadlez and Woolwine (Citation2021, pp. 124–125) who apply these insights to ableism.
25 See Kidd (Citation2019) and Kidd (Citation2021, p. 72).
26 For the objection that strategies for ameliorating (e.g.) servility and arrogance can compete with one another, see Kidd (Citation2019).
27 I am grateful to Gerry Dunne for organizing this special issue, and to Katie Peters and two anonymous referees for comments on an earlier version of this paper.
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Notes on contributors
Heather Battaly
Heather Battaly is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut. She specializes in epistemology, ethics, and virtue theory. She is the author of Virtue (Polity 2015), co-editor of Vice Epistemology (2021), editor of The Routledge Handbook of Virtue Epistemology (2019) and of Virtue and Vice, Moral and Epistemic (Blackwell 2010), Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Philosophical Research, and Associate Editor of the Journal of the American Philosophical Association. She has published widely on the topics of intellectual virtue and intellectual vice. Her currents projects focus on: humility, closed-mindedness, and vice epistemology.