Abstract
This essay examines the notion of shame in Hegel’s writings as a case study to show that an emotion that is generally considered ‘negative’ may nonetheless fulfil important functions in the life of the subject. In none of Hegel’s works the concept of shame is analysed systematically and thoroughly. Therefore, I will start by analysing the encyclopaedic Anthropology to show how feelings always presume, for Hegel, states of physiological arousal and include bodily manifestations. Subsequently, on the basis of the encyclopaedic Psychology, I will show not only that the philosopher attributes considerable importance to sensations and feelings in general but also considers the emotional dimension of the subject in continuity with rational thinking. Eventually, I will examine some relevant passages of the Encyclopaedia Logic and the Aesthetic and I will show how, for Hegel, shame plays a relevant role in the process of development of the human being. Indeed, shame is considered by the philosopher as the constitutive place of self-consciousness. Contextually, I will try to retrieve the relations, by way of comparison and contrast, between the Hegelian understanding of shame and the most recent psychological and neuroscientific findings.
The English version of this paper was revised by dr. Giorgia Falceri.
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Notes
- 1.
With regard to Hegel’s works it is not correct to use the term ‘emotions’, because the term did not exist in the German language in Hegel’s time, as evidenced by the fact that the word does not appear in the brothers Grimm’s Deutsches Wörterbuch (1854–1917).
- 2.
The Große Enzyklopädie published after Hegel’s death by his disciples is nothing but the text of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1830) enriched by substantial additions in which the editors collected Hegel’s autograph notes and notes taken by some of his students during lectures.
- 3.
Some illustrious interpreters of Hegel’s philosophy, such as Bodammer (1969, 2), Peperzak (1987, 9) and Rometsch (2007, 9–16), are against the use of secondary sources. However, unpublished or non-autographed documents (although they should not be used uncritically as evidence) provide information both on how Hegel meditated on different topics and on his own writings, and on how students received his lectures. Moreover, since in the last few years a large amount of non-autographed and unpublished material has been published by the Hegel-Archiv of Bochum and included in the critical edition of the Gesammelte Werke, it is now possible to use the secondary tradition according to criteria that guarantee a remarkable reliability.
- 4.
These considerations seem to precede the research of neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, according to whom body and mind constitute an integrated unity with respect to which every dualism turns out to be an abstraction that prevents from understanding our neurological and mental processes. Consequently, emotions cannot be reduced to the mental activity of the brain, but result from a combination of mental evaluative acts and somatic modifications (Damasio 1994).
- 5.
In the Philosophy of Mind edited by Michael Inwood, which is cited in this study, ‘Affekte’ is in my opinion erroneously translated into ‘emotions’ (cf. footnote 1). ‘Affektion’, which derives from the Latin ‘afficere’, suggests the idea of being affected by something and it is a common word in Hegel’s time (see Kant 2006, 149–182), as it had entered the German vocabulary in 1500. Michael J. Petry – who in his edition of Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit translates ’Affekte’ with ’affections’ (Petry 1978, Vol. 2, 163) – explains: “Hegel, like many of his contemporaries, regarded affections as being closely associated with sensations (§ 401), an as therefore differing from passions […] (§§ 473/4), in that they are intense and ephemeral, and not the outcome of a slowly developing or persistent desire. If an affection’s effect upon a person’s disposition remained confined to the soul, it was a feeling; if it influenced his body, it was an ‘Affekt’” (Petry 1978, Vol. 1, cxxiv).
- 6.
On the difference between ‘basic’ or ‘primary’ emotions and ‘complex’ or ‘secondary’ emotions see infra, 11.3.
- 7.
Schachter and Singer critique William James who, in his famous What is an Emotion?, defines the emotion as a feeling of the bodily changes that occur following a stimulus. Consequently, says James, we do not cry, strike or tremble because we are sad, angry or afraid, but “we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble” (James 1884, 190). According to James, the feeling of arousal that the subject has is therefore fundamental to define an emotion.
- 8.
A link between cognition and feeling was already suggested by Aristotle in his Rhetoric. It is indeed the judgment of something like an insult that we deem undeserved, that triggers the passion of anger (Aristotle 1909, 68–69).
- 9.
Most contemporary theories maintain that there is only a small number of basic emotions and that all the others result from a mixture of these, as it happens with complex colours – to use a metaphor of Robert Plutchik (1962) – which all derive from the three primary colours. However, there is no unanimity on what and how many the basic emotions are: Plutchik postulates eight, Carroll Izard (2007) six, while Silvan Tomkins (1963) claims they are also eight, but different from those listed by Plutchik.
- 10.
- 11.
In The Conjectural Beginning of Human History (1786), Kant rereads the myth of the fall having in mind Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men (1755), and states that the knowledge acquired by Adam and Eve consists in the fact that human beings, unlike animals, can say no to instinct, which means they are capable of freedom (Kant 2007, 169).
- 12.
Lloyd-Jones (1971) subsequently extended his interpretation of Greek society as based on the sense of shame to the entire classical period. Scholars such as Adkins (1960) and Carter (1986) worked in the same framework. Instead, Williams (1993) – in counterposition to Snell (1948) – criticised this hermeneutic approach, developing his own arguments from the implications that the antithesis under scrutiny has with regard to personal identity and the existence of the Self.
- 13.
“But if it is simply identical with the actuality of individuals, the ethical, as their general mode of behaviour, appears as custom; and the habit of the ethical appears as a second nature” (Hegel 1991a, 195).
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Maurer, C. (2021). Blushing with Shame: Toward a Hegelian Contribution on the Issue of the Positive Role of Negative Emotions. In: Giacomoni, P., Valentini, N., Dellantonio, S. (eds) The Dark Side: Philosophical Reflections on the “Negative Emotions”. Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind, vol 25. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55123-0_12
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