Abstract
In this essay I will put forward an account of the emotion of shame that draws from Bernard Williams’ groundbreaking work on Shame and Necessity. The main novelty will be a distinction between two senses of shame, “basic shame” and “complex shame”. Basic shame is related to what Williams refers to as a “loss of power” in relation to others that can be real or imaginary spectators and is a sense of diminishment towards those others. Complex shame, in turn, appears when this diminishment is felt in relation to an “internalised other” that embodies the values she recognises as her own as well as other values she respects. Borrowing a page from Cheshire Calhoun, I argue that many accounts of shame face what I call the “challenge of unrespected judgments”: people are vulnerable to shame even when they do not endorse or respect the judgments of those shaming them. I claim that the proposed Williamsian account of the emotion can dissolve the challenge, because for one to feel basic shame there is no need for any further attitude of the ashamed person towards the shamer besides a sense of diminishment caused by the perception of loss of power. In addition to that, oppression can influence the internalised other of marginalised people in a way that makes them vulnerable to complex shame. I will conclude with some brief remarks about how moral education in the Aristotelian sense can help us to deal with the morally problematic instances of shame.
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Notes
I will use ‘’ around the text to point out possible dialogues, whereas “” are used for quotations or introduction of technical terms.
There are, obviously enough, differences in the ways that different authors make this distinction. Nonetheless, my depiction is sufficiently general to be congenial to their views. Galligan speaks of “subject-centered theories” and “group-centered” ones, while Maibom uses the terms “agent centered” and “group centered”. Calhoun criticises what she calls the “moral pioneer” and the “discriminating social actor” strategies for being too individualistic, leaving no space for the social aspects of shame. Thomason distinguishes between the “traditional view” and the “naturalistic view” of shame. The “traditional view” attributes a bigger role to personal ideals and values in the explanation of shame, whereas the “naturalistic view” centres itself on the role played by dominance and public appearances. See Calhoun (2004); Maibom (2010, pp. 570–571); Galligan (2016, pp. 57–58); Thomason (2018).
Emotions of self-assessment were famously discussed by Taylor (1985).
The term “private shame” is recurrent in the literature, for instance, both Maibom and Galligan use it.
As noted by Phillip Galligan, the case of John Deigh’s account of shame is more controversial. Deigh claims that shame is an emotion that “strikes at one’s sense of worth”, but also that “a satisfactory characterization [of shame] must include in a central role one’s concern for the opinion of others”. See Deigh (1996, pp. 226; 240).
I will be using the expressions “loss of power” and “perception of loss of power” as equivalent since, as I will explain later, what really counts for the argument is how the ashamed agent perceives herself.
Older accounts of shame, like Rawls’, tended to moralise or ethicise shame. Against this, we should follow the lead of accounts like John Deigh’s, Krista Thomason’s, and Phillip Galligan’s in resisting this tendency. See Thomason (2015, pp. 1–2; 2018, pp. 5–8). See also Deigh (1996) Galligan (2016).
This marks a difference in strategy between the way Cheshire Calhoun addresses what I will call the challenge of unrespected judgments and the way I will try to do so through a development of Williams’ account. Calhoun’s goal is to present an account of moral shame. She tries to do that by highlighting how certain judgments might have “practical weight” in our engagement in moral practices. See Calhoun (2004, pp. 139–145).
I am borrowing the expression “formative principle of the emotion” from an anonymous reviewer. I am thankful for their suggestions and for their demands for further clarification.
A point noticed by Fessler (2004, pp. 175–176). Fessler argues that, according to his ethnographical research, “a substantial fraction of shame-eliciting events can be divided into two categories. First, shame is prototypically elicited by situations in which (1) the actor has failed to live up to some cultural standard for behavior, (2) others are aware of this failure, and (3) the actor is aware of others’ knowledge in this regard”, but also that “simply occupying a lower position in a social hierarchy can cause individuals to experience this aversive state and display the corresponding behavioral pattern”. According to Fessler, although those cases were present in both countries, they tended to be more salient in Sumatra. I am thankful to an anonymous reviewer that raised this point and suggested this reference in an earlier version of this paper.
Although it might be questioned if this second example is not better understood as expressing embarrassment rather than shame. I am not, in this paper, taking issue with the distinction between the emotions of shame and embarrassment but we should keep in mind that this is a possibility.
Taylor’s use of the example is (1985, pp. 60–61).
For an argument along those lines, regarding the role of culture for shame, see Velleman (2001).
I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for demanding further clarification on this point and for providing me with the example I am using in this paragraph.
As Stephen Bero pointed to me, however, there is at least one passage of Williams in which he might be understood as claiming otherwise. See Williams (1993, p. 82).
David Velleman raises a similar point about what he calls “failures of privacy”. See J.D. Velleman (2000, pp. 36–40).
In my formulation of this challenge, I will take Cheshire Calhoun’s excellent paper as my main reference, although, as I will try show, we have different projects. See Calhoun (2004).
It is worth pointing out that respect also plays a role in Thomason’s analysis of shame, but a very different one. Thomason tries to rehabilitate shame as a morally valuable emotion by arguing (among other things) that shame is deeply connected to our sense of respect for others qua moral agents. In her analysis of shame and its relation to respect, Thomason adopts a position heavily inspired by Stephen Darwall. See Thomason (2018, p. 154–157).
There is an important qualification that must be added here. In many cases, my respect (or even endorsement) is not with regard to what the other person values or believes, but with regard to my relationship with that person. I might not care two straws about the religious beliefs of my father, but because I value our relationship, I refrain from offending against those values in front of him. For instance, I might feel shame for eating before my father finishes his prayer at the dinner table because this can put pressure in our relationship, and this does not mean that I will feel shame for not praying when having a private meal. This adds one more layer of complexity to the notions of respect and endorsement, since there can be multiple objects of respect that are independent of one another (e.g., my father’s values, my relationship with him, and so on).
Wallace (2011, p. 366–367) distinguishes between “judging something valuable and actually valuing it”. To judge something valuable, in Wallace’s terms, is roughly equivalent to what I am calling respect. To actually value something, however, involves “a quality of emotional engagement that goes beyond acknowledgement that there are reasons to respect and support and understand the object or activity to which value is ascribed”. This gets closer to what I am loosely referring to as identification or endorsement.
It is important to notice that Williams himself distinguishes, in Shame and Necessity, two kinds of shame. Williams talks about the complexity of aidos, the Greek term that roughly stands for shame, in Euripides’ Hippolytus. Phaedra, around lines 380–390 of the play, speaks about two kinds of shame, but the passage is remarkably obscure. As I understood him, Williams interprets the passage as presenting a distinction between “good and bad aidos”. Bad aidos refers to an emotion that is “timid, reactive, and conventional”, whereas good aidos refers to an emotion that is “steady, active, and (if need be) independent of merely conventional expectations”. For Williams, this “is a duality that, on the account given in the text, is inherent in shame itself”. He does not develop further this distinction, but it seems to me that it does not overlap perfectly with my distinction (that also draws from Williams) between basic and complex shame. Nonetheless, because the commentary on the Hippolytus is quite brief and underdeveloped, it might be possible to interpret Phaedra’s distinction in a more congenial way to my own distinction as well. Insofar as that is the case, my interpretation becomes closer to Williams’ original views. See Williams (1993, pp. 95–96, 225–230).
My developments on Williams to argue for different senses of shame is not the first attempt to distinguish different senses or kinds of the emotion. For instance, Martha Nussbaum proposes a distinction between what she calls “primitive shame”, an emotion that emerges when the person faces the fact that she is not all-powerful nor of supreme importance, and more “constructive” cases of the emotion, such as “moral shame” and “aspirational shame”. For Nussbaum, shame is an emotion that can have disastrous moral consequences unless it is somehow trimmed. Nussbaum’s primitive shame and basic shame in the terms of this essay can overlap in some cases, but not in others, and the same goes for complex shame and the constructive cases of shame she talks about. See Nussbaum (2004, pp. 15, 182–185, 192–193, 211–216). For a discussion of Nussbaum’s views on shame, see Deigh (2008). For another tentative distinction, see Julien Deonna and Fabrice Teroni (2011).
For an example of what I have in mind, albeit not directly connected to shame, see Nussbaum (2017).
Williams discusses an argument similar to this, regarding conflicts of desire, beliefs and moral principles, in ‘Ethical Consistency’. See Williams (1973a).
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Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to Steve Bero, Hrafn Asgeirsson, Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco, Ken Ehrenberg, Chris Taggart, Ambrose Lee and Luana Li for reading and commenting on previous versions of this essay. I am also thankful to the anonymous reviewers that provided not only valuable feedback but also some of the examples and expressions I am deploying.
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Murata, D.P. There are Many Senses to an Emotion – Loss of Power, Diminishment and the Internalised Other. Topoi (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-023-09955-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-023-09955-w