Humility in Chinese contexts: Implications for education

Abstract

Humility has recently received increased attention in scholarship and society, as crucial to cultivate in both educational contexts and the public sphere. While today Western psychological literature on humility is influential in education, philosophical inquiries seek to understand the meaning of humility across different social arenas and cultural traditions. In relation, how humility is understood through the lenses of Confucian scholarship and Chinese moral philosophy has been explored by some scholars, although the literature is limited in this area. In this paper, our central aim is to explore key notions and major themes of humility in Chinese contexts and discuss their implications for education.