Modesty: A Contextual Account

I propose in this talk to praise the virtue of modesty. But not just that: I also propose to recommend this virtue as one worth pursuing and maintaining? particularly for philosophers. By some accounts of this virtue, however, in proposing to praise modesty as worthy of pursuit, I show that I must not understand what modesty is. This is because in some accounts, modesty is not at all the sort of virtue that one can reasonably pursue, because it is said to be a virtue of ignorance. A virtue of ignorance, roughly, is one whose possession must be unknown to its possessor: In this view, those who are modest cannot know that they are modest. But if one's goal in a pursuit is the sort of thing that one must not know one has achieved, were one actually to achieve it, it would seem that modesty, if it is a virtue of ignorance, is not the sort of thing that one can reasonably hold as an aim to pursue and achieve.