Abstract
There are many reasons to worry about shame in moral development. Shame can be employed for bad ends, such as manipulation and making others feel powerless. Shame is often associated with denial and hiding behaviors, social phobia, and anxiety. It is also not a motivation suitable for performing virtuous actions. This article argues that, nevertheless, well-ordered shame plays an indispensable and constructive role, as part of a mixed-methods approach in the development of moral character. This article assesses various reasons why shame has fallen out of favor among Western moral educators and demonstrates why each of these reasons falls short of providing a compelling case against employing shame. It defends shame on epistemic and virtue developmental grounds. Moreover, it proposes ways to employ shame in character education, while mitigating potential damages and avoiding the concerns raised by social scientists.
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Notes
Viewing shame and other negative-valence emotions as expendable and non-morally salient is a characterization made by Hunter (2000) and Kristjánsson (2014: 497). Kristjánsson points out that this is largely the consequence of social sciences’ hedonism, or bias in favor of positive emotions (497). The social sciences supply the research on shame that informs caretakers and educators, since there is “no independent discursive tradition about shame in moral education” (497). As a result, moral educators have become uneasy about the emotion, too.
There are likely exceptions to this. Consider Lady Macbeth, wandering around the castle trying to wash away the blood on her hands, overwhelmed by guilt. Consider Oedipus, aggrieved by guilt, gouging his eyes out because of his two crimes—murder and incest.
Positive parenting is a parenting style that focuses on praise and positive interactions, rather than deterrents and discipline, in a child’s development. Strong forms of positive parenting assume the Rousseauean picture that children are born good, naturally desire to do good actions, and will blossom into virtuous flowers if we give them the space to do so unimpeded.
Nel Noddings notes that unhealthy guilt can take on a similar character—persisting “even when objective outsiders see no reason for it” (2003: 46). Unhealthy guilt sometimes “nurses its own unhappiness without helping the one wronged (46). If Noddings is right, this is not unique to unhealthy shame.
Many people do this. Character education is dismissed in favor of values clarification, which (ostensibly) is value-neutral and aims not to develop virtues but to assist students in becoming aware of the values they already have.
Kristjánsson proposes that shame is still involved in the virtuous person as a “prospective deterrent” that helps one anticipate the consequences of actions one might have done (2014: 498).
These are Maibom’s italics, not my own.
When Aristotle discusses courage, he switches from speaking of goodness (agathon), to speaking of kalon, fineness or intrinsic value.
For further insights into the methods and priorities of character education, see Kristján Kristjánsson (2017) Aristotelian Character Education. London: Routledge. See also [Redacted].
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Little, S.B. A Case for Shame in Character Education. Stud Philos Educ 42, 283–302 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-023-09868-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-023-09868-6