Embracing Intellectual Humility in Political Conversations
In my last post, I discussed the principle of intellectual charity as an essential element of constructive political conversations. As a companion to the principle of charity, we also need to cultivate an attitude of intellectual humility. I am using the word humility both in its common meaning and in a more specific sense. We should begin with personal humility — recognizing the limits of our knowledge, that others know more than we do, and that, in any specific instance, we might be wrong. Humility in this sense (“I don’t know enough about this problem” or “I could be wrong”) is an antidote to pathological certainty, and it’s almost entirely absent from current political arguments, at all levels. I would like to add an additional meaning of intellectual humility that is especially relevant to political debates. Intellectual humility asks, “What are the limits of my beliefs?” An attitude of humility requires that we recognize the complexity of most social and political problems. Every policy, domestic or international, is likely to have both good and bad …
