Recently there has been significant growth in scholarly interest in the character trait of humility within several academic disciplines. Michael Austin's book engages with much of this research, while developing a distinctive approach to conceptualizing the Christian virtue of humility and evaluating its significance for human flourishing. This interdisciplinary work should be of interest to biblical scholars, philosophers, theologians, and psychologists with interests in humility and character more generally.

The book contains five full-length chapters and a sixth short chapter containing a brief summary and concluding reflection. The first chapter outlines Austin's conception of Analytic Moral Theology and explains how he conceives of the book as a work exemplifying it. He conceptualizes Analytic Moral Theology as ‘involv[ing] approaching theological topics where moral concerns are central with the ambitions of an analytic philosopher, prizing particular intellectual virtues, and using the analytic style of discourse’ (7). In contrast to certain others, Austin follows William Wood in contending that ‘analytic theology can be approached as a spiritual practice aimed at cultivating virtue, including the virtue of love for God’ (9). The book, then, aims to be both theoretically illuminating and morally uplifting.

Chapter 2, the largest in the book, develops Austin's account of the Christian moral virtue of humility. The account is largely inspired by a careful reading of the New Testament text of Philippians 2:1–11, informed by engagement with biblical scholarship on this text. In summary form, Austin proposes that Christian humility consists in ‘proper self-assessment and self-lowering other-centeredness’ (40). Proper self-assessment includes an accurate assessment of one's strengths and weaknesses along with an appropriate level of concern with them which involves neither undervaluing them nor overvaluing them. Self-lowering other-centeredness involves a ‘valuing of God and others that . . . includes a form of rational and voluntary subjection to the relevant needs, interests, or values’ (44). Characteristically, the humble person ‘will be disposed to place the interests of others ahead of her own’ (43). Austin conceives of proper self-assessment and self-lowering other-centredness as the self-regarding and other-regarding dimensions of humility, and he stresses that the emphasis in the Bible falls most heavily on the other-regarding dimension.

But Austin offers much more than this summary account of humility. He proposes that there are eleven distinct modules of the virtue of humility, including cognitive, emotive, and active modules. Here are three examples:

• (C1) The humble person possesses self-knowledge with respect to his virtues, vices, and limitations, both personal and qua human being.

• (E1) The humble person has a prima facie preference for the satisfaction of the interests of others over his own.

• (A3) The humble person will not be disposed to seek either honour or social status.

Austin maintains that these modules ‘are jointly necessary for humility in its ideal or perfect form’. Yet, he also maintains that ‘we can properly attribute humility to one who only possesses a single module of humility’ (47). In this way, the account maintains a certain pluralistic orientation, despite being distinctively Christian.

Chapter 3 contains responses to a range of theological and philosophical objections to this account of humility. In response to theologically oriented objections, Austin maintains that his account of humility permits God to be recognized as humble, that its emphasis on putting others ahead of self is not in conflict with Jesus’ instruction to love one's neighbours as oneself, and that his reading of Philippians 2:1–11 as calling for Christians to imitate Jesus’ humility does not conflict with recognizing the uniqueness of Jesus’ salvific work. Austin engages with the work of philosophers such as David Hume and Tara Smith who have argued that humility is not a virtue, and he maintains that if humility is defined as he has defined it then their arguments can be resisted. He also responds to philosophical objections more narrowly directed at his own account which contend that some of his proposed modules of humility are misguided or overly demanding or that the account fails to distinguish humility satisfactorily from other virtues. For example, he contends that E1 is not overly demanding because it requires only a prima facie preference for the satisfaction of others’ interests rather than one's own which in many cases will not lead its possessor to sacrifice their interests in favour of others’ once all relevant facts have been considered in accordance with practical wisdom. He proposes that we distinguish between love and humility on the basis that ‘love includes a desire for union with the other whereas humility does not’ (115).

Chapter 4 makes a case for thinking that humility is conducive towards human flourishing. The bulk of the chapter examines the relationships between humility and other virtues and vices, where Austin argues that humility is mutually supportive of other virtues while undermining vices, especially the vice of pride. His focus is on the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love and the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, and his discussion of these virtues is based largely on the work of Josef Pieper. The emphasis in the chapter tends to fall on humility's role in fostering the other virtues, which yields the perception that on Austin's view humility may be a relatively more fundamental or cardinal virtue than these others. While empirical research is cited in several cases, the majority of the argumentative work is done via conceptual analysis, which suggests an opportunity for future empirical research.

Chapter 5 is devoted to various ways in which aiming to exemplify Christian humility may provide practical guidance in the moral life. Specifically, Austin focuses on humility's implications for spiritual life, family life, and the life of sport. Drawing on the work of Dallas Willard, he notes various ways in which humility is both foundational for and can be cultivated through spiritual disciplines such as prayer, biblical study, and fasting. He also offers an intriguing argument that one can be a humble soteriological exclusivist. In the realm of family life, Austin argues that following the path of humility leads to a Socratic nurturing approach to parenting which he has written about elsewhere. Finally, with respect to sport, Austin argues that humility is a virtue of sport, conducive both to its possessor's excellence as sportsperson and to the excellence of their team.

In many respects, I am very sympathetic to Austin's approach to conceptualizing Christian humility and his arguments regarding its value. Like Austin, I, as a philosopher, recently published a book (Putting Others First, 2019) about character largely inspired by a close reading of Philippians 2:1–11. While Austin and I worked independently, each unaware of the conclusions the other was reaching, we came to defend remarkably similar views. We each came to think that a central component of the teaching of Philippians 2:1–11 involves encouraging readers to adopt a characterological orientation that involves prioritizing others’ interests ahead of one's own; that adopting such an orientation may well be at least part of what is involved in exhibiting biblical humility; that adopting this orientation is not inconsistent with loving one's neighbours as oneself; and that Jesus and his incarnation are plausibly viewed as exemplifying such an orientation, among other shared conclusions. If one is looking for an example of (unintentional) replication in the humanities, this is as good as any! One reason our agreement here is important is that it demonstrates the attraction of an account of humility as involving prioritizing others’ interests which is not well represented in contemporary philosophical discussion of the trait.

Despite these significant points of agreement, there are nonetheless subtle differences between Austin's views and my own which lead me to raise here a few critical observations about the book. First, while I am friendly towards interpreting Philippians 2:1–11 as encouraging readers to put others ahead of themselves as a manifestation of humility, I think there are objections to this interpretation strong enough that we shouldn't be as confident in it as Austin appears to be. One objection to this interpretation is that there is a significant strand of biblical scholarship (exemplified by John Reumann's 2008 translation (with introduction and commentary) of Philippians) that understands the term translated ‘humility of mind’ in verse 3 not as referencing the character trait of humility but as referencing the Philippians’ social humiliation. Another is that even if the trait of humility is in view, it may not be that prioritizing others’ interests is being treated as a manifestation or constituent of humility rather than a distinct activity or character trait humility can help facilitate.

A second critical comment is concerned with the precise nature and justification of the other-favouring preference the passage champions. Austin proposes that this preference is a prima facie preference for the satisfaction of others’ interests. But it is never quite clear which specific information is included within this first glance. As best as I can tell, Austin's proposal is that the only information included in this first glance is the information that one interest belongs to oneself and another interest belongs to someone else. Thus, for any interests i and i*, the humble person prefers the satisfaction of i given just that i is someone else's to the satisfaction of i* given just that i* is their own. This proposal is subtly different from my own. I propose that, for any interest i, the others-centred person prefers to promote i given just that i is someone else's than to promote i given just that i is their own.

A natural question to ask about these other-favouring preferences is what could justify them. Austin's approach on this score is virtue ethical, deontic, and Christocentric. Adopting this preference is obligatory in order to imitate Christ, which is valuable for its own sake. While I too point to exemplarist virtue ethics as one way of defending the value of the preference as I conceive of it, I also argue that a deeper account of its value can be given by appealing to the value of interpersonal union. The virtuously others-centred person is more strongly motivated to promote another's interest than to promote this interest for themselves because they recognize that by promoting the other's interest they not only promote the value of the interest itself but they secure a greater volume of interpersonal union between themselves and the other than they would secure by promoting their own interest instead. Because Austin formulates the other-favouring preference in terms of satisfaction rather than promotion, allows the interests of self and other with which it is concerned to be different, and insists (as we saw above) that humility doesn't include a motivation for union, it appears he cannot avail himself of this account of the value of the other-favouring preference.

Finally, I raise two related comments about Austin's many modules of humility. First, the biblical evidence Austin offers for the modules is uneven. A cynical reading of this is that Austin has included some of them not so much on the basis of biblical evidence but because some version of them has proven popular in contemporary philosophical accounts of humility. Second, it appears that some of the modules can explain others, leading to a simpler and more elegant account of humility. Some cases of this are straightforward: E1 explains the cognitive module (C3) which consists in recognizing that one has an obligation to adopt E1. Other cases are only slightly less straightforward: E1 explains why the humble person is disposed to take certain kinds of risks (A4). And there seem to me other cases where a similar strategy can work, as with A3. Once we control for the perhaps outsized influence that contemporary philosophy may have had on selecting these modules and recognize relationships of explanatory priority between those that remain, we may be left with the view that Christian humility is fundamentally just the sort of other-favouring preference that seems to be the main focus of much of the book, rather than something more complex.

These critical comments aside, I found a great deal to recommend in Austin's book. Scholars of humility should take heed, and so should the rest of us who just want to be humble.