Abstract
This article explores various scenes of shame, raising the questions of what shame discloses about the self and how this self-disclosure takes place. Thereby, the common idea that shame discloses the self’s debasement will be challenged. The dramatic dialectics of showing and hiding display a much more ambiguous, dynamic self-image as result of an interactive evaluation of oneself by oneself and others. Seeing oneself seen contributes to the sense of who one becomes. From being absorbed in what one does, one might suddenly become self-aware, shift viewpoints and feel pressed to put on masks. In putting on a mask, one relates to oneself in distancing oneself from oneself. In being at once a moral agent and a performing actor with an audience and norms in mind, one embodies and transcends the social roles one takes. In addition to the feeling of shame, in which the self finds itself passively reflected, the self’s active reflections on its shame are to be taken into account. As examples from Milan Kundera, Shakespeare’s King Lear, a line from Kingsley Amis, a speech by Vaclav Havel and Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments indicate, self-(re)presentation in the public and the private sphere is a complex hermeneutical process with surprising twists.
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Notes
This article is a slightly revised version of a paper presented at the conference “Shame and Self” at the Center for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen (December 1–2, 2010).
Cf. Wurmser (1998, p. 446).
Cf. Kilborne (2002, p. 124).
Cf. Landweer (1999, pp. 42, 88).
Quoted by Kilborne (2002, p. 70), with reference to New York Review of Books, September 21, 1995.
For the distinction between the shame of disgrace and the shame of discretion, see Schneider (1977, p. 22): “If discretion shame sustains the personal and social ordering of the world, disgrace shame is a painful experience of the disintegration of one’s world.”
The modern text of the play derives from three sources, namely from two quartos published in 1608 (Q1) and 1619 (Q2) respectively, and the version in the First Folio of 1623 (F1).
Cf. Shakespeare, King Lear, Act I, Scene 1 (1973, p. 1073).
Ibid., p. 1074.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Cf. Taylor (1985, pp. 62–63).
Ibid., p. 62.
Shakespeare (1973, pp. 1074–1075).
Ibid., p. 1075.
Ibid., p. 1076.
Taylor (1985, pp. 62–63).
Ibid., p. 63.
Ibid.
Shakespeare (1973, p. 1076).
Aristotle wrote that shame is “the imagination of disgrace, in which we shrink from the disgrace itself and not from its consequences” (Rhetoric 1383a).
Cf. Cavell (2003, p. 286).
Ibid., p. 289.
Ibid., p. 290.
Cf. ibid., p. 296.
I wish to thank Alba Montes Sánchez who has called my attention to this aspect of the tragedy.
This episode is quoted by Kilborne (2002, p. 60), with reference to New York Review of Books, September 27, 1990.
Moran (2001, p. 175).
Cf. ibid., pp. 176–177.
Cf. ibid., pp. 178–180.
Cf. ibid., pp. 184–185.
Ibid., p. 186.
Cf. ibid., p. 187.
Cf. ibid., p. 188.
Smith (2006, p. 111).
Cf. ibid., p. 113.
Ibid., p. 115.
Ibid., p. 118.
Ibid., p. 127.
Ibid., p. 128.
Ibid., p. 141.
Ibid., p. 143.
Cf. Landweer (1999, pp. 45, 125).
Cf. ibid., p. 83.
Cf. ibid., p. 112.
Elster (1999, p. 152).
Cf. ibid., p. 157.
For the following, cf. Bammel (2005, p. 427ff).
Cf. ibid., p. 452.
Cf. Plessner (1982, pp. 416–417): “Aber diese Würde hat ihre Wurzel nicht allein in der Ebenbildlichkeit des Menschen zu Gott, sondern ebenso sehr in dem mit der Abständigkeit zu sich gegebenen Abstand zu ihm. Würde besitzt allein die gebrochenen Stärke, die zwischen Macht und Ohnmacht gespannte zerbrechliche Lebensform. […] zwischen dem, was kein Selbst ist, und dem, was ganz Selbst ist, steht der Mensch, der sein Selbst sich präsentiert. […] Er fällt nicht mit dem zusammen, was er ist […].”
Cf. Bammel (2005, p. 434).
Cf. ibid., p. 437.
Cf. Bammel (2005, p. 441).
Nietzsche (1997, nr. 40, p. 603): “Alles, was tief ist, liebt die Maske; die allertiefsten Dinge haben sogar einen Haß auf Bild und Gleichnis. Sollte nicht erst der Gegensatz die rechte Verkleidung sein, in der die Scham eines Gottes einherginge? […] Es gibt Vorgänge so zarter Art, daß man gut daran tut, sie durch eine Grobheit zu verschütten und unkenntlich zu machen […]. Ein solcher Verborgener, der aus Instinkt das Reden zum Schweigen und Verschweigen braucht und unerschöpflich ist in der Ausflucht vor Mitteilung, will es und fördert es, daß eine Maske von ihm an seiner Statt in den Herzen und Köpfen seiner Freunde herumwandelt; und gesetzt, er will es nicht, so werden ihm eines Tages die Augen darüber aufgehen, daß es trotzdem dort eine Maske von ihm gibt – und daß es gut so ist. Jeder tiefe Geist braucht eine Maske: mehr noch, um jeden tiefen Geist wächst fortwährend eine Maske, dank der beständig falschen, nämlich flachen Auslegung jedes Wortes, jedes Schrittes, jedes Lebens-Zeichens, das er gibt.”
Cf. Bammel (2005, p. 460).
For a discussion of the notion of personal identity, cf. Welz (2010).
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Welz, C. Scenes of shame, social roles, and the play with masks. Cont Philos Rev 47, 107–121 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-014-9286-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-014-9286-0