The body of knowledge at our disposal seems hopelessly unmanageable. If the world is getting smaller, then there is an inverse relationship between its size and what there is to know about it. Considering our intellectual abilities, when we venture into more difficult, divisive issues, we would be fools to do so without profound humility and caution. Many of the brightest thinkers in history, after their best efforts, have disagreed on the issues that still matter to us. Personally, I find it disconcerting that many thinkers of great intelligence, both living and dead, have judged various beliefs that I hold and found them wanting. Indeed, in the present cultural milieu, most of my beliefs are minority views, and so I find myself at odds with the cognoscenti.
Moreover, anyone who has ever followed the perennial philosophical questions to their end must be humbled by the divers considerations that must be taken into account. Then there is the fact that our beliefs and values are tied to cultural tides that are forever adrift. The sacred cows of yesteryear are the laughing stock of today. The tides are unrelenting. We too will suffer under the chronological snobbery of our descendants. Finally, as one who is directly acquainted with my inner-life, I know that I harbor fears, mixed motives, deceptions, and more. There is a lot going on in the background that informs my beliefs and words and actions.
Anyone who is cavalier or haughty in his or her convictions has failed to realize the cloudiness and uncertainty debasing our convictions. Knowledge is not impossible, but our view is certainly obstructed by our limited faculties and our proneness to motives other than “splendorous truth.” The humble person sees conversations as opportunities to learn because she is realistic about her own apprehension.
Intellectual humility
Humility and the associated traits of open-mindedness, self-criticality, and nondefensiveness [are] virtues relevant to the intellectual life. We must be willing to seek the truth in a spirit of humility with an admission of our own finitude; we must be willing to learn from our critics; and we need to learn to argue against our own positions in order to strengthen our understanding of them… The purpose of intellectual humility, open-mindedness , and so forth is not to create a skeptical mind that never lands on a position about anything, preferring to remain suspended in midair. Rather, the purpose is for you to do anything you can to remove your unhelpful biases and get at the truth in a reasoned way.
JP Moreland, Love God With All Your Mind
On knowing only in part
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
1 Corinthians 13
An impediment to truth
Vices can also block our access to the truth. They can make it look threatening if, say, our sense of importance as persons is tied up with our intellectual achievements, the respect or adulations of our intellectual community, or our sense of ourselves as experts. We can be vain and conceited about our intellectual reputations, our knowledge, and our skills in argument. If the truth looks as though it may wound our vanity or bruise our conceit, such vanity and conceit can close us off to hearing new arguments from new sources, ones of which we are not masters. They can block our access to the truth in much the way they can block our “access” to the neighbor.
Robert C. Roberts, “Dismantling Walls: How Humility and Love Help Us Make It to the Other Side“
Praxis
- Ask yourself if you know the name of your mayor and your congressperson. How about the national leaders of the countries to your north and south? Can you still calculate a hypotenuse?
- Think of someone you respect, someone whom you know is educated and well-intentioned but who nonetheless has a different ethical or political conviction.
- Think of a controversial issue, search for a leading intellectual proponent of the contrary view to your own and read their book or follow them on social media.
- Practice listening and pausing before answering in a disagreement.