If asked to generate a list of virtues, most people would not include meekness. So it is surprising that Hume not only deems it a virtue, but one whose "tendency to the good of society no one can doubt of." After explaining what Hume and his contemporaries meant by 'meekness', the paper proceeds to argue that meekness is a virtue we, too, should endorse. You are in the supermarket and you overhear two familiar voices talking in the next aisle. They belong to your neighbours, with whom you have always maintained a cordial relationship. So, putting a bottle of sesame oil into your shopping cart, you begin to move in their direction with the intention of saying hello. Just as you reach the end of the aisle, you realize they are talking about you. At the very same moment you hear one of them say that you are "such a meek person." How are you likely to respond?Your neighbour's remark might prompt any number of emotional responses, but pride will probably not be among them. To refer to someone as meek in common parlance is rare, but when it does occur, it is seldom a term of praise. Meekness is not widely discussed in contemporary moral philosophy either, but on those infrequent occasions when it is, it is generally assumed to be a vice. 1 At least in this case, common usage and philosophical usage line up fairly closely. To call someone meek is to suggest that he or she is timid. One may also be suggesting that the person is

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In the philosophical literature on forgiveness it is almost universally assumed that only the victim of a wrong has the standing to forgive. This paper challenges that assumption and argues for the possibility of meaningful second-and third-party forgiveness.Who may forgive? The standard answer to this question in the philosophical literature on forgiveness is that only the victim of a wrong has the standing to forgive. 1 Typically the exclusive standing of the victim is simply asserted as if it were self-evident. Occasionally, to accommodate the observation that in ordinary language persons other than the immediate victim are sometimes spoken of as forgiving or withholding forgiveness from certain wrongdoers, the category of victim is expanded to include direct and indirect victims, or primary, secondary, and tertiary victims. 2 This move, too, is built upon the assumption that only the victim has the standing to forgive. These people have forgiven, therefore they must be victims, even though the wrong they suffered was directed against some other person. The aim of this paper is to challenge the widespread assumption that only the victim has the standing to forgive.Seldom are reasons offered in support of the victim's exclusive standing to forgive. But when they are, they tend to take one of four forms, viz., the debt-cancelling argument, the emotion-based argument, the relation-based argument, or the normative difference argument. I contend that, in the end, none of these arguments is satisfactory. And I offer reasons for thinking that the class of those with the standing to forgive is larger than these arguments admit.

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Ambition is a curiously neglected topic in ethics. It isn't that philosophers have not discussed it.