Buddhist Humility

Contemporary analytic philosophy often thinks of humility as about how someone places themselves in a larger context, often by acknowledging values of others or outside of oneself. This framework admits of a wide variety of views about what exactly this acknowledgement amounts to and what sorts of values are the relevant ones. Buddhist philosophy includes many different conceptions of pride and humility, many of which fit very easily into this framework. But here I focus on a way that Buddhists have understood humility as not about how you compare yourself with others or place yourself in a larger context, but about denying the reality of such a self. This type of humility is connected with Buddhist metaphysical views about the nature of the self and appears in the work of Buddhist philosophers such as Śānetideva and Nāgārjuna. Nevertheless, even if one does not accept the Buddhist denial of self, Buddhism offers a unique conception of humility as not about placing ourselves but giving up our investment in the very idea of a self.