Toward a Psychology of Humility in the Letters of St Basil the Great

This article examines humility (ταπεινοφροσύνη tapeinophrosynē) in the correspondence of St Basil the Great, read together with his homily On Humility and set within the wider witness of Greek patristic and ascetic literature. It isolates and analyses passages across the Letters in which Basil presents humility as a disposition of the whole person — heart, mind, soul and strength — directed simultaneously toward God and neighbour. Drawing a distinction between a macro and a micro psychology of the person, the article argues that Basil's Letters, read alongside St John Climacus and Abba Dorotheos of Gaza, offer a coherent, if unsystematic, spiritual psychology of humility that remains pertinent to Orthodox theological anthropology.