Can humility be taught?
Famed New York Times columnist David Brooks seems to think it can -- or at the very least philosophically explained. Yale's Bullblog reports Brooks is set to teach a new course at Yale University next semester entitled, you guessed it, "Humility."
According to the Yale course catalog, the class will examine the "premise that human beings are blessed with many talents but are also burdened by sinfulness, ignorance, and weakness."
Don't worry, there is a certain self-awareness to this madness.
"The title of the Humility course is, obviously, intentionally designed to provoke smart ass jibes, but there's actually a serious point behind it," Brooks told New York Magazine. "People from Burke to Niebuhr, Augustine to Dorothy Day, Montaigne to MLK and Samuel Johnson to Daniel Kahneman have built philosophies around our cognitive, moral and personal limitations. The course is designed to look at these strategies as a guide for life and politics and everything else."
A guide for life, politics and everything else? Allow us to humbly suggest a follow-up course for Brooks: Hubris 101.
What do you think? Can we truly understand humility? Or is it merely an intrinsic faculty of New York Times columnists? Weigh in below.
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