Comments on Modesty

To begin with, I could not agree more that Driver's account is just plain wrong. No form of ignorance or self-deception can count as a virtue, regardless of the benefit it renders on society. As far as I can see, a virtue is a virtue insofar as it benefits the agent not the society (obviously justice is a problem for this sort of thinking, but this is beside the point [I think at least] for this purpose).

I also agree with your take on the accuracy account. One is not modest just because they correctly gauge their skill. (The global and focused modesty point is very good.)

"She could care about whether her writing really did constitute a genuine accomplishment, which is what the critics views call into question, while not worrying about what anyone thought of her for accomplishing it."I think that this is a very interesting distinction.

What I am curious about however, is this line, "And this will be, on this account, connected to the essence of modesty since someone who is trying to be modest, or to do what a modest person would do, is typically doing so in order to appear modest to someone (even if this is, in the limiting case, only herself). And in that case she does after all care what people think of her." I am not sure that this sounds right to me. How could a person not care what she thought of herself? Good self-esteem seems to be something that is very psychologically valuable and requires a positive self image. I really could not imagine someone who did not care about herself where this not caring is meant to be neutral rather than negative. To me, this sort of consideration brings into question the concept of "false modesty". I do not think that one is falsely modest who first wonders what the modest person would do and then acts accordingly for the same reason that I do not believe that the soldier who wonders what his hero would do and then acts accordingly is not acting courageously. False modesty, if it is anything, is to my mind simple insincerity i.e. when one compares his accomplishments to those of another by saying how much greater than his own those of the other are while saying this in a manner that makes it obvious that he does not think the other's accomplishments are very great. At any rate, I think there is something to talk about here.

Also, I would like to discuss your final paragraph where you say why you think modesty is a virtue. I would like to know more about the thoughts behind that paragraph. Is there a bit of determinism in there? Moreover, I have the intuition that some people are (at the very least) morally better than others and that they deserve praise for being so. It would seem wrong to praise only their acts but not the people. Take another example: the Olympics. Imagine that medals were not given to the athletes but rather to the performances. That would seem ridiculous. Another point, what about willpower? Do you want to say that those who persevere through all sorts of hardships to go on and accomplish something great are not to be praised? To me there seems to be more than just the accomplishment which is valuable but also the process that led to it. One last related point on this issue, imagine a struggling artist who, despite being good, has yet to be recognized. What I imagine this person to want is not just for his paintings to be viewed as good but for him to be viewed as being a good painter. What is important to him is that he has done well. Contrast his situation with one where a man has the ability to snap his fingers and 'poof' create masterpieces ex nihilo. In this case, we would rightly only value the painting not the man (at least for aesthetic reasons, we may value him for magical abilities but that is another story), yet this story seems entirely different than the one with the actual painter. At any rate I would really like to discuss this tomorrow as maybe, I am misconstruing your view and just need a clarification...