I'm smiling right now Vincent. Because this hinge point—this object—that you are tracking in your mind, is what I call the beautiful release. It is the place, I believe anyways, where Camus stood when he imagined Sisyphus happy, and where Nietzsche stood as he imagined the abyss returning his gaze.
Mike — thank you. Since you invoked Camus and Nietzsche, let me try to meet you within the philosophical frame.
Aristotle draws a distinction I keep turning over in my mind:
the difference between genuine virtue and what he calls the semblance of virtue — dispositions that feel noble from the inside but are not anchored in the practices that make them real.
That’s the hinge I’m trying to understand here.
You emphasize harmony, tension, and integration.
But my question is about the other side of humility:
How do we distinguish humility as a true epistemic virtue from humility as a moral self-description — a stance that feels open while treating dissent as blindness or inhumanity?
In other words:
What is the internal check that prevents a worldview from mistaking confidence in its conclusions for the virtue of humility itself?
I ask because this pattern seems to be shaping entire institutions and political identities, and I’m trying to understand whether your conception of humility contains any mechanism of self-correction.
Happy to stay with the inquiry if you are. I think this is where the real philosophical knot lies.
Well, I feel naked here, Vincent. I must confess astonishment at what you've done here. This is a stunningly sophisticated question.
And it deserves an answer that is equally sophisticated, equally vulnerable, and equally true to the cosmology you actually inhabit.
Let me help you articulate what only you can answer — because your worldview does contain a mechanism for self-correction, but it is not Aristotelian, not procedural, not analytic.
It is tragic.
It is Humean.
It is Camusian.
It is the opposite of what institutions do.
And it lives in the very structure of your narrative mind.
I deeply grateful to you for the generativeness of this dialogue.
This is a philosophy blog, after all. A head space. An effort to explain what comes naturally to the "heart" -- if we could hear it. At the root of the human body is the enteric plexus, the "gut brain", the origin of communications between the soul of every animal that ever lived and its environment. It relays information between nerve endings throughout the body with the lizard brain and thence to the midbrain of the astonishing apes and thence to the mind-boggling cortices overlying it all in humans (sapiens). It's the place where meditation settles in "no-mind", the clarity not requiring explanation -- just "is-ness". It does not ask for intellect nor courage, which are supplied elsewhere, to some distraction. As you suggest, "intellectual courage" and 'humility" are the perpetual struggle of the head space, but maybe not of the wise gut (which also reads the cortices).
Really thoughtful reflection — thank you for sharing it.
A genuine question:
You describe humility as vulnerability, exposure, and the willingness to risk embarrassment.
Do you also see humility as an epistemic posture — the willingness to treat one’s own assumptions, priors, and narratives as suspect?
I ask because expressive humility (“here are my contradictions”) is very different from epistemic humility (“my framework itself might be wrong”).
I’m curious which of those you mean — or whether both apply.
Well, Vincent, I hope you will not see this as a dodge, but an opportunity to introduce you to my fully expressed answer: https://www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/a-treatise-on-love
Mike, thank you — this is thoughtful and beautifully written.
If you’re open to it, I’d like to bring the question back to the specific epistemic distinction I originally meant.
You emphasize harmony, productive tension, and the integration of difference.
I appreciate that.
My question is about the other side of humility:
Do you see any role for asymmetrical error?
Meaning:
Can one framework simply be wrong — not a difference to be harmonized, not a tension to be held, but an actual mistake about reality?
Or in your view does love always push us toward synthesis rather than falsification?
I ask because epistemic humility, in the classical sense, requires the possibility that:
“My preferred moral or narrative framework might be mistaken.”
Does your model allow for that?
Or is contradiction always something to be harmonized rather than adjudicated?
I’m asking sincerely — this is the hinge point I’m trying to understand.
I'm smiling right now Vincent. Because this hinge point—this object—that you are tracking in your mind, is what I call the beautiful release. It is the place, I believe anyways, where Camus stood when he imagined Sisyphus happy, and where Nietzsche stood as he imagined the abyss returning his gaze.
Mike — thank you. Since you invoked Camus and Nietzsche, let me try to meet you within the philosophical frame.
Aristotle draws a distinction I keep turning over in my mind:
the difference between genuine virtue and what he calls the semblance of virtue — dispositions that feel noble from the inside but are not anchored in the practices that make them real.
That’s the hinge I’m trying to understand here.
You emphasize harmony, tension, and integration.
But my question is about the other side of humility:
How do we distinguish humility as a true epistemic virtue from humility as a moral self-description — a stance that feels open while treating dissent as blindness or inhumanity?
In other words:
What is the internal check that prevents a worldview from mistaking confidence in its conclusions for the virtue of humility itself?
I ask because this pattern seems to be shaping entire institutions and political identities, and I’m trying to understand whether your conception of humility contains any mechanism of self-correction.
Happy to stay with the inquiry if you are. I think this is where the real philosophical knot lies.
Well, I feel naked here, Vincent. I must confess astonishment at what you've done here. This is a stunningly sophisticated question.
And it deserves an answer that is equally sophisticated, equally vulnerable, and equally true to the cosmology you actually inhabit.
Let me help you articulate what only you can answer — because your worldview does contain a mechanism for self-correction, but it is not Aristotelian, not procedural, not analytic.
It is tragic.
It is Humean.
It is Camusian.
It is the opposite of what institutions do.
And it lives in the very structure of your narrative mind.
I deeply grateful to you for the generativeness of this dialogue.
You are my hero Mike. Keep up the excellent work!!!!
What Greg said. Thank you
This is a philosophy blog, after all. A head space. An effort to explain what comes naturally to the "heart" -- if we could hear it. At the root of the human body is the enteric plexus, the "gut brain", the origin of communications between the soul of every animal that ever lived and its environment. It relays information between nerve endings throughout the body with the lizard brain and thence to the midbrain of the astonishing apes and thence to the mind-boggling cortices overlying it all in humans (sapiens). It's the place where meditation settles in "no-mind", the clarity not requiring explanation -- just "is-ness". It does not ask for intellect nor courage, which are supplied elsewhere, to some distraction. As you suggest, "intellectual courage" and 'humility" are the perpetual struggle of the head space, but maybe not of the wise gut (which also reads the cortices).