PSYCHOLOGISTS cited in a recent (October, 2019) article in the New York Times employed the following brief definition of humility:

In her chapter on humility in the Handbook of Positive Psychology (Oxford, 2000) June Tangney lists the following key elements:

HUMILITY_AS_VIRTUOUS_MEAN_IN_POSITIVE_PSYCH

Note that in this model both false extremes (vices) render true communion, mutual self-giving, difficult or impossible.  In both narcissism and self-loathing the soul shrinks into itself. If  the soul becomes  - rather than simply indulges in - this, then this is hell, as Lewis depicts it in The Great Divorce.

LAssus_Divine_and_Human_Humility

...The unsurpassable humility of Christ has forever joined
the infinity of God and the limits of the creature

HUMILITY_as_CORRECTIVE_of_ARROGANCE_LEADING_to_JUSTICE

HUMILITY

Perhaps Benedict's Chapter 7 on Humility, and decision to describe this as a ladder of spiritual ascent, is best understood in light of a later depiction of spiritual progress: namely, Dante's Divine Comedy.

Vittorio Montemaggi invites us to a reading of Dante's Divine Comedy that discovers in the virtue of humility the way of perfection and of salvation (Reading Dante’s Commedia as Theology: Divinity Realized in Human Encounter, Oxford 2016)

[The soul] must undergo the radical decentering of self entailed by humility, whereby one sees what is other than oneself—and ultimately God—not as something to possess but as source of meaning and life. (p.4)

In the Commedia, that disclosure, the deepening or transfiguration of our sense of what we are or can be, comes about through human encounter. (Abstract, Oxford Scholarship Online, 2016)

Humility makes possible a kind of epektasis:

We must not be afraid of our inability fully to comprehend the divine as sometimes we discover and reach greater depths of understanding through humility, recognizing that we are imperfect beings who are limited in thought and action. (p.12)

TWO POLES of CHRISTIAN LITURGICAL ENCOUNTER with the MYSTERY of CHRIST'S HUMILITY:

Enshrined in two of the most beautiful pieces in the repetory of Gregorian Chant:

PUER NATUS EST - mystery of the kenotic incarnation

CHRISTUS FACTUS EST - The salvific SELF-OBLATION (showing what it means to become a GIFT) Death and Resurrection

Check in Oxford Theology Online (SJS library access)

Humility, Pride, and Christian Virtue Theory Kent Dunnington
Publisher: Oxford University Press Published in print: 2018 Published online: February 2019

ABSTRACT
This book proposes an account of humility that relies on the most radical Christian sayings about humility, especially those found in Augustine and the early monastic tradition. It argues that this was the view of humility that put Christian moral thought into decisive conflict with the best Greco-Roman moral thought. This radical Christian account of humility has been forgotten amid contemporary efforts to clarify and retrieve the virtue of humility for secular life. The book shows how humility was repurposed during the early modern era—particularly in the thought of Hobbes, Hume, and Kant—better to serve the economic and social needs of the emerging modern state. This repurposed humility insisted on a role for proper pride alongside humility, as a necessary constituent of self-esteem and a necessary motive of consistent moral action over time. Contemporary philosophical accounts of humility continue this emphasis on proper pride as a counterbalance to humility. By contrast, radical Christian humility proscribes pride altogether. The book shows how such a radical view need not give rise to vices of humility such as servility and pusillanimity, nor need such a view fall prey to feminist critiques of humility. But the view of humility set forth makes little sense abstracted from a specific set of doctrinal commitments peculiar to Christianity. The book argues that this is a strength rather than a weakness of the account since it displays how Christianity matters for the shape of the moral life.

[On Augustine:] "And, although Augustine describes submission to the will of God as the evidence of humility, he does not identify submissive behavior with humility. Augustine is clear that the difference between pride and humility is a difference of fundamental desire: “The nub of the problem was to reject my own will and to desire yours” (conf. 9.1.1). " (p, 40)

[[NOTE: this links humility with renunciation of self-will and OBEDIENCE to God's will
     RB prol quisquis abrenuntians propriis voluntatibus]]

["Radical Christian humility as "NO CONCERN":] NO CONCERN: Humility is the disposition to have no concern to develop, clarify, attain, maintain, or safeguard an ego ideal, because of a trust that one’s well-being is entirely secured by the care of God (p. )

This text apparently discusses in detail the distinction between classical and Christian concepts of humility - perhaps this section is worth citing.  Whether the psychological redefinitions fit his paradigm of problematic "proper pride" versus "radical Christian humility" needs reflection.  He emphasizes the need for a transcendent other; the psych, view, it is true, seems to suggest that one's neighbor (albeit a bearer of God's image) can serve this purpose by inspiring selfless attention to the (worth of) the other.

Perhaps what is necessary is a distinction between vertical (transcendent - awe - fear of Lord) humility and horizontal (before the other - honore se invicem) humility.

Is an active, energetic, eager horizontal humility an attentiveness to the potential for - or the ongoing process of - theosis in the other and the self/?  This links to my article on theosis and Chapter 72.

HUMILITY MAY be THE MOST DIFFICULT TRAIT for PSYCHOLOGISTS to MEASURE:

Modesty and humility have eluded reliable assessment, although nomination procedures have been used to identify modest/humble paragons. (Linley P. Alex and Joseph Stephen, Positive Psychology in Practice (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2004, p. 439)

HUMILITY as a STATE from WHICH ONE IS RAISED UP ((EXALTED)

[And into which one willingly descends]

Christ - (Link with OBEDIENCE - Christ for us became obedient unto death - even unto death on a cross,  Therefore God has exalted Him . . . )

The BLESSED VIRGIN - in the MAGNIFICAT

MONKS and NUNS in the ADMISSION to the NOVITIATE
     (what do you seek . . . In the name of God ARISE)

EXAMPLE of GERTRUDE - SHE BOWS and then Sees Christ

     She is then lifted out of tepid state ito place in choir and life of contemplation

And in the prostration at Profession - meaning of prostration

??And in the continuing bows - prostrations during the Liturgy of the Hours??

GREGORY THE GREAT

GREGORY THE GREAT

Virtue of Humility discussed in article in Notre Dame Anthology - on my Tablet

Benedict is "humiliated" - learns humility in Scene with Scholastica [like David dancing before ark?] - THEN is enabled to Contemplate!

PRELIMINARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

Akhtar, Silent Virtues, Patience, Curiosity, Privacy, Intimacy, Humility, and Dignity (Routledge, NY 2019).     (psychoanalysis; pt. selection, etc.)

Alfano, M. The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Humility (Routledge, NY 2021)

Casey, Michael, The Art of Winning Souls: Pastoral Care of Novices (Cistercian / Liturgical Press, 2012)

– A Guide to Living in the Truth : Saint Benedict's Teaching on Humility (Ligouri, 2001)

Csikszentmihalyi, ed., A Life Worth Living, Contributions to Positive Psychology, (Oxford, 2006).

Compton, ed. Positive Psychology, The Science of Happiness and Flourishing, 3rd ed., (Sage, 2020)  [Sacred Emotions]

Dunnington, Kent, Humility, Pride, and Christian Virtue Theory  (Oxford, 2018)

Dysinger, Luke, “Beholding Christ in the Other and in the Self: Deification in Benedict of Nursia and Gregory the Great” ch. 13 in Deification in the Latin Patristic Tradition (Studies In Early Christianity) ed. Jared Ortiz (Cath.Univ. of America Press, 2019) pp. 253-271.

Kvanvig, Faith and Humility, (Oxford, 2018)

Macintyre, Alasdair, After Virtue, 3^rd ed., (Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 2007).

Montemaggi, Vittorio, Reading Dante’s Commedia as Theology: Divinity Realized in Human Encounter, (Oxford University Press, 2016)

Tangney, June Price, “Humility,”.Handbook of Positive Psychology, ed. C. R. Snyder & Shane J. Lopez (University Press, 2002) pp. 411-419

Tucker, Shawn R., Pride and Humility A New Interdisciplinary Analysis (Macmillan, Palgrave, 2016).

Wood, A. & Johnson, J., ed., The Wiley Handbook of positive Clinical Psychology, (Wiley, Blackwell, 2016).

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