A Hobbesian Theory of Shame

Southern Journal of Philosophy 53 (2):125-150 (2015)
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Abstract

On most accounts present in the literature, the complex experience of shame has the injury to self-esteem as its main component. A major objection to this idea is that it fails to differentiate between shame and disappointment in oneself. I argue that previous attempts to respond to the objection are unsatisfactory. I argue further that the distinction should refer to the different ways the subject's self-esteem is formed. A necessary requirement for shame is that the standards and values by which the subject judges himself are borrowed from a canon of values the subject accepts as a given. The proper focus of shame is the fact of conformity to that canon. Those agents who have a different conception of self-esteem and who freely set and alter their own values are prone to self-disappointment, but not to shame

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Y. Sandy Berkovski
Bilkent University

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References found in this work

A Theory of Justice: Revised Edition.John Rawls - 1999 - Harvard University Press.
A theory of justice.John Rawls - 2009 - In Steven M. Cahn (ed.), Exploring ethics: an introductory anthology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 133-135.
The Moralistic Fallacy: On the 'Appropriateness' of Emotions.Justin D'Arms & Daniel Jacobson - 2000 - Philosophical and Phenomenological Research 61 (1):65-90.
Shame and Necessity.Bernard Arthur Owen Williams - 1992 - University of California Press.

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