John Casey, Alasdair MacIntyre, and others famously claim that “pagan” classical Greek ethical thought recognises no virtue of humility.
The claim is true in the lexical sense that the pagan Greeks’ lists of virtues did not include a single virtue whose name is correctly translatable by the English word “humility”.
However, their ethical world was richly charged with what we today have no difficulty recognising as humility-thoughts and humility-motivations, even if these were not collected together under a single virtue, but distributed instead among at least three other virtues—sophrosyne, dikaiosyne, and hosiotes.
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/97813511...
Our two most important sources for pagan Greek ethics are of course Plato and Aristotle.
But we can and should look beyond them, to Homer, Aeschylus, and Sophocles for example, to get the full picture of the importance to the pagan Greeks of ethical thoughts about the smallness of humans like us in a big and alien world, and the consequent need for restraint and pity, and for the avoidance of hybris (outrage against the natural order of the world).The position reiterated in your article is based on a comparison of the New Testament to a naive reading of the Greek philosophers. Christianity did not uniquely bring humility into culture.
Well, humility is inverse of pride; pride is one of virtues in Aristotle's principia nicomachea.
'Christianity (to some extent Judaism), presented an idea, unknown to the world in which it grew, namely the Pagan world of Rome. The idea was that human beings are creatures of God and that they belonged to His domain. He was the dominus or the Lord of the domain. As a result, human beings should not be arrogant, but must be humble instead. (As the ‘Book of Job’ in the Old Testament makes it clear, there is a very heavy price to be paid for arrogance.) Here, it belonged to the opposite spectrum in Ancient thought, which saw arrogance as a moral virtue and humility as a despicable vice. Protestant Christianity, especially Luther and Calvin, very forcefully propagated this idea: Man was a sinner, worse than the lowest worm, because of which God’s Grace becomes unfathomable and ungraspable.' [1]
There is no such thing as a monolithic “Ancient thought” — this is a boogeyman created by Christian apologists.
edit: Is that your site? You’ve put a lot of work in.
It doesn't matter how you call it, whether "Ancient thought" or "blah blah", what matters is that what is being referred to. It is about how people thought about human actions before Christianity took over.
My second point is that attempting to reason about, or exclude topics from, something as practically diverse and unknown as “Ancient thought” in order to support the primacy of a specific religion is essentially folly.
I write this as someone who despises significant portions of Christianity and indeed all Monotheistic religions, and yet even I see some value in what the OP wrote.
How about you do something similar? Instead of writing self-serving nonsense, maybe tell me what value I have to gain from engaging in performative rhetoric against a crazed and fanatic audience who really only care about what happens to their immortal soul after death. Or do you not have the intellectual capacity to make a single well-reasoned counter-point?
A case in point being [from my possibly wrong point of view] the pre-Christian Romans whose list of principal virtues included: Dignitas, Severitas, & Gravitas, very roughly translated: Dignity, Sternness, and Self-Importance.
The OP's views on this particular topic are held by most serious historians of Early Europe. And yet, you lazily jumped into attacking his [presumed] religion instead of calmly stating your reasons why his views are wrong (if your mental capability is enough for you to formulate any such reason, a possibility I strongly doubt).
Within the specific context of the modern secularized world appropriating some of the more compassionate traits of Christianity (namely an appreciation for Humility, Care for the Weak, and a concern for the welfare of others even if they are not members of one's tribe/nationality, etc), I agree with the OP's viewpoint even if I do have some personal antipathy (which I mostly keep to myself) towards Monotheistic religious systems due to the rigid intolerance they tend to breed.
And since I am obviously not against any of the specific points the OP wrote on, what exactly would I be writing the counter-point to?
> why his views are wrong
So did you never get the basic lesson in the difference between fact vs opinion or are you just too dense to understand that what he stated was an opinion and therefore can't rightly be labeled "right" or "wrong"? which is why I've been couching my responses in the language of philosophy and epistemology, or can you not read in between those particular lines?
> what exactly would I be writing the counter-point to?
Me, you fucking idiot.
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how about next time you step away from the insults? I've included them to show you what you look like to others. It doesn't do your writing any favors and it obviously doesn't increase your capacity to come to a common understanding with your fellow man.
Do better.
Clearly you have never argued with Hindu or Muslim apologists.
I m no expert but i think what christianity brought was forgiveness, and the inclusion of women, the poor and the meek
Read this interesting article 'How Christian humility upended the world': https://www.abc.net.au/religion/how-christian-humility-upend...