El Ignaciano / Junio 2026

Humility, Dignity and Democracy

José A. Solís-Silva

Humility, properly understood, moving beyond pious platitudes, is the courage to face, to accept our humanity and therefore to accept our utter vulnerability, the utter indigence of our very being. Accept it, say yes to it. When we do so, we encounter the profound experience of our dignity.  

Humility is the precondition for the possibility of discovering dignity, but freedom is the ground of dignity.  When we utter the word “freedom” we acquire the obligation of clarifying its meaning as intended in this context. First, we do not mean political freedom, not even moral freedom. We mean ontological or existential freedom.  Ontological or existential freedom is the ground of moral freedom and of political freedom, and it is so, precisely because it is primarily and fundamentally the ground of human dignity. What kind of freedom is this?  Obviously, it is not absolute freedom. There is no such thing anywhere in the world or in nature. Minerals, plants and animals are embedded in nature and completely governed by its laws. As Gertrude Stein pointed out with poetic intention, “A rose is a rose, is a rose, is a rose…” But the same can be said of a dog or a monkey or a dolphin. Indeed, “…a dog is a dog is a dog…”  It is what it is. Its behavior is fully predictable if we have available all the necessary data. That is what makes animals controllable, even trainable. B.F. Skinner, in the middle of the last century gave us a powerful understanding of that behavior. Humans are also embedded in nature. Humans are also conditioned, affected by the laws of nature. Biological laws, chemical laws, physical laws, psychological laws, even sociological laws. They all play a role in affecting human life, human behavior.  When we talk about ontological or existential freedom, we don’t mean to deny that or to gloss over it. Human being, woman, man, is the only being that not only is, but is fully aware that she is. The consciousness that she is becomes a question, “Who am I?” “What is the meaning of my being?” 

When Shakespeare through the mouth of Hamlet rhetorically exclaims, “To be or not to be, that is the question!” he was giving expression to that most profound freedom that is the ground of all other freedoms. I have no control over who my parents were, no control over the DNA, or the genes that are governing my increasingly and rapidly aging body, no control over the color of my skin, no control over the appearance and aesthetic quality of my features. No control over what country to be born in, no control over what language I was raised in, no control over what religion or lack of it I was raised in. No control over how gracefully or fast I can move, no control over how well my brain cells function or the size of my brain, no control over what gender I became attracted to when my hormones kicked in. No control over how my parents and my teachers educated me and formed my character. No control over how many days, hours, minutes or seconds are left to me. I share with the plants and the animals my total vulnerability, my total indigence.

The one single difference is that I experience my life, my vulnerability, my indigence as an issue towards which I must take a position. Will I accept the fact that I don’t own it, the fact that I did not give it to myself, the fact that I do not control it? Accepting that means that I accept the fact that my very being comes to me from outside of me, therefore, it has the character of a gift. A gift wrapped in mystery. For some of us that mystery has a face, a name that is not necessary to utter here. The first dimension of my freedom lies there. Do I accept it as gift or do I recoil in anger, or even horror, from that acceptance. Whichever choice I make, it is nonetheless a choice. That this is so makes us persons. This is what personhood is all about.

That is the first dimension of our fundamental, irrevocable, freedom as human beings, our ontological freedom. Some regard it as a burden and wish they could be free from it so that life might be easier and more carefree. Indeed, some would rather they be hypnotized, desensitized, drugged, so to speak, so that they are freed from that burden. In our world, today, one of our most prominent temptations is to allow ourselves to become simply consumers. Entertained, lulled into complacency, relieved from the burden of being free, from taking responsibility, and allowing others to make decisions for all as long as the goods to consume continue to flow. “let there be dictators, a strong man, that makes all decisions as long as the economy is good.”

How we position ourselves regarding this fundamental question has far reaching consequences for ourselves, for our family, for our community. 

The second aspect or dimension of humility could be called cognitive or intellectual humility.

It is personhood, the mode of being of our humanity, in and of itself, that has dignity and must be treated accordingly.  When we regard a person as having it we are not passing judgment on their behavior, that is, we are not necessarily approving or condoning their actions or their behavior. We are addressing their personhood. Our own personhood, our own dignity is at stake.

There is no “I”, no “me”, without an “other.”  I am not using here the term “other” in the sense that it is commonly used in sociology or political science, as the excluded one. I am using it in the sense used by Emanuel Levinas, and not far from the way that Martin Buber uses the term “thou”. There is no “I” without a “thou”.

An examination of the human phenomenon of language would throw light on this issue, but we cannot consider this issue here at length because it would take us far afield. Nevertheless, we can briefly point your attention to the nature of language. As human beings, as persons, we dwell in language. It is our most inherent and indispensable character. To such an extent that I would dare say that “no language, no woman, no man, no person.” and conversely, “no woman-no man, no person, no language”. Language and human being are inextricably related. And language, like the “tango” takes two. To ask, “what came first, human being or language?” is akin to asking, “what came first the chicken or the egg?” It is a false question, a captious, question because to ask it presupposes a radical independence and/or separation from each other which is precisely what is in question. To recognize the inherent connection between person and language is, at the same time, to recognize the inherent social character of the human person. No one is an island. Our humanity, our personhood and, therefore, our dignity is inextricably connected to each other.  If self-affirmation, authenticity is an indispensable value, so is solidarity.

As we move into the topic of democracy let’s keep in mind what we have established up to now. Let’s keep in mind the connection between humility, freedom, personhood and dignity.

The second aspect or dimension of humility could be called cognitive or intellectual humility. If it is true that fundamental humility is necessary to encounter our dignity and that of the “other”, cognitive or intellectual humility is necessary to develop our relationship with the other into the mode of “democracy”.   And we understand democracy as “the state of manifesting reciprocal goodwill and cooperation.”   Democracy is a state in which goodwill and cooperation exist between all parties, all members of the community in question. It does not say that it is a state in which all parties agree on everything and are of the same opinion and position on all issues. Unanimity is not a characteristic or requirement of the mode of democracy. A community that wishes to live and to maintain that manner of life must give itself an instrument to permanently and consistently articulate that observance of mutual dignity, of good will and cooperation. This, if we look carefully, is what the democratic state is all about. A democratic state emerges from a society that gives itself such an instrument. A democratic constitution is such an instrument. It is an instrument that allows a society to live together in the observance of mutual dignity, good will and cooperation so that all matters affecting the community can be resolved in a way that maintains that goodwill and that cooperation and is in keeping with it.  

In the same way that there can be no real justice without the acceptance of our reciprocal dignity, that without the dignity of the other, there is no dignity in us either. In the same way that dignity is a dynamic reciprocal relationship, as is justice, in that same way, truth is a dynamic reciprocal relationship. Dialogue is the name of that dynamic reciprocal relationship. Dialogue is the dynamic mode in which truth is available. Human being, human intelligence, has no absolute access to reality, that is, our access is mediated by our social nature, by our finitude. To talk about human absolute truth is to manifest lack of intellectual humility, arrogance and ultimately, lack of wisdom.

Science has come to the realization that its findings, its truth, is never absolute. Scientific findings are reported in degrees of probability, are conditioned by margins of error. It is a progressive strugle, it is a road.  Hans George Gadamer, Jurgen Habermas and others have enlightened us in the 20^th Century about the centrality of language, of dialogue, of communicative action, and the absence of absolute claims of truth. The 19^th century was witness to the human aberration of ideologies; conceptual schemes laying down the claim of absolute truth. Those who disagreed, of course, became heretics to be condemned. That century which gave birth to ideological “isms” left the 20^th century a legacy of cruelty and death that expressed itself in the horrors of the Holocaust, and the unspeakable crimes committed by Stalin and Mao.     

It is a paradox, that in the last stages of the 20^th Century and the early stages of the 21^st Century the worst excesses of Modernity have been supplanted by the regrettable excesses of postmodernity: religious fundamentalism and extreme nationalism. 

Even non-fundamentalist religions that have traditionally tended to express themselves dogmatically have wisely matured, guided by their own philosophical and theological tradition. In the early 1960s, the Roman Catholic Church celebrated an Ecumenical Council, the Second Vatican Council. During a recess between the first session of the Council and the second session, Pope John XXIII granted a press conference to the international press. One American journalist asked the Pope, “Given all the changes taking place and being proclaimed by the Council, are we to conclude that the Gospel has changed?” John XXIII answered, “No, the Gospel has not changed, but we are coming to understand it better, and better, and better.” The same humility was exhibited by John Paul II when he apologized for the treatment meted out by the Roman Catholic Church to Galileo and others in earlier centuries. 

That the Gospel has not changed, but “we are coming to understand it better and better” recognizes that understanding is a historical event, it is capable of change and growth and that to assume some absolute grasp, some absolute truth is to misunderstand the very nature of human knowledge and an act of arrogance and lack of wisdom.    

Dialogue, as our very mode of being in the world, begins with the recognition that neither I, nor the “other,” possess the whole truth, absolute truth. It begins with the understanding that truth and knowledge is a process. Dialogue is not a strategy that assumes that I have absolute truth and that sees itself as a way of manipulating the conversation and the “other” to bring her, him, to my position, to my “truth”. Dialogue knows its beginning but does not know its end. It requires intellectual humility to recognize each other’s limitations and the courage to assume the risk to end in unknown territory.

Ideologies and dogmatisms are the enemies of dialogue. Pope Francis, when asked by the editor of the Italian newspaper, La Republica, if he believed that he had absolute truths, responded by saying that the question was misdirected. To accept the question as posed would throw the conversation into the vicious circle of the necessarily empty discussion between relativism and absolute objectivity.  He continued by quoting Jesus in the Gospel when He states: “I am the truth, the life and the way.”  Thereby equating truth with life and with way. That is the notion of truth as the dynamic mode in which truth is available to human understanding.  

Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino y nada más;
Caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace el camino,
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante no hay camino
sino estelas en la mar.

Antonio Machado captures in that poem the nature of our very mode of being in the world.

To live in democracy is to live constantly in a process where fundamental humility and intellectual humility come together to allow us to live in the justice of reciprocally recognized dignity and in the truth of dialogue, that reciprocally recognized fact that the “other” has something important to say, something important to contribute, that, in fact, the “other’s” position complements and completes mine.  

We hope we have thrown some light on the intrinsically related issues of humility, dignity, dialogue and democracy. It must suffice to repeat here that civic life lived in conciliation is the paradigm of life in a democracy. To preserve that state of conciliation, that is, to preserve democracy, it is imperative that its citizens constantly renew their commitment to respect each other’s dignity and to behave accordingly. To do so there is no alternative but to embrace fundamental humility and intellectual humility as the cornerstone civic virtues. It is alarming to observe that sometimes extremism and ideological stances threaten the very fabric of life in democracy by the practice of a discourse that weakens the commitment to respect each other’s dignity and the possibility of living in true dialogue.

Let’s pray that the legacy of the founding fathers and their belief in human dignity and dialogue, wonderfully expressed in the Bill of Rights, is carried forward by the new generation of Americans.

José A. Solís-Silva obtained a Ph.D. degree in Philosophy from Duquesne University.  He is Chair Emeritus of the Philosophy Department of St. John Vianney College Seminary and Adjunct Professor of the Philosophy Department of the University of Miami.  He was the Editor of Postmodern Notes for 12 years; Editor of El Ignaciano for 4 years, he is actually part of our Editorial Board.