Intellectual Humility

No one is truly arrogant unless they think more highly of themself than they should.  As far as intellectual matters are concerned, this means that simply thinking that one is intellectually sound--or even thinking one is intellectually superior to those who wallow in fallacies--is not erroneous, given that one truly is sound.  There is no arrogance in proclaiming that one knows something that one truly knows or in taking pleasure in actual knowledge!  Despite this, genuine intellectual arrogance often goes unidentified, unacknowledged, and unopposed.

It is immensely arrogant to pretend or truly believe that one knows that which cannot be proven, and yet this form of arrogance infects the whole of society other than a small handful of genuine rationalists.  To believe that one can ascertain truths that epistemological limitations prevent one from knowing, no matter how appealing it may be to some, is to disregard the omnipresent and immutable laws of logic, which disintegrate attempts to establish knowledge of what cannot be known.  However, some might try to feign intellectual humility by committing the inverse error.

When pressed, many people might also exude a false humility by pretending like nothing can be known with absolute certainty or by acting like no one could possibly deserve hostility, mockery, or hatred for their ideological blunders.  Unfortunately, this form of arrogance is quite common: after several precise questions, many people's worldviews shatter, and yet tolerance is often regarded as humble and obligatory, as if a person can somehow be better than their worldview allows them to be.  Instead of following logic wherever it leads, though, many would rather deny that anything can ultimately be known at all than submit to reason or abandon tolerance, rejecting the necessary truths of logic and both contradicting and refuting themselves in the process.

Arrogance and a perverted sense of intellectual humility are far more common than epistemological accuracy, despite their blatant destructiveness.  One of the reasons this is the case is that many do not even understand what intellectual humility is to begin with.  Intellectual humility lies only in understanding one's epistemological limitations and refusing to believe that which cannot be proven while also acknowledging that whatever can be established by reason is knowable.  Anything else, anything that strays to the left or to the right, is by necessity either only arrogance or an illusory humility.