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just," but "... we shall be revealed as being just."[31] Then Odysseus states quite precisely what he
wants:
But now for a short part of a day without shame,
give me yourself: and then for the rest of time
you can call yourself the most decent of men.
Neoptolemus refuses at this point, saying rather conventionally:
My lord,
I prefer to fail nobly rather than to win shabbily.
When Odysseus eventually persuades him, by appealing to the reputation he will get for this
success, Neoptolemus says:
All fight, I'll do it, and put the shame aside.[32]
The most natural translation of the word I have translated as "put aside" is "get rid of" or "expel";
but it can also mean
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"neglect" or "pass by" something that is still there to be attended to. But I do not think that it can
mean, as has been proposed, "I'll put up with the shame."[33] This he cannot do: if it is present to
him, he cannot put up with it, and this becomes clear to him later, when he changes his mind.
Neoptolemus, although he himself is an heroic warrior, is one for whom the standard by which he
Shame and Necessity http://content.cdlib.org.oca.ucsc.edu/xtf/view?docId=ft4t1nb2fb&chunk....
measures his own worth quite clearly involves values beyond so-called competitive success, though he
is open to the attractions of that, too, which is why he can be temporarily seduced. He learns enough
from these experiences to become confident in trying to teach Philoctetes something, in order to
reclaim him from savagery and solitude to a shared world. Philoctetes asks him whether, after all this,
he is not ashamed to be doing the Atreides' work, and Neoptolemus can say:
How can someone be ashamed, when they are being of help?[34]
when he is helping, now, Philoctetes.
In this discussion, I have been using the English word "shame" in two ways. It has translated
certain Greek words, in particular aidos . It has also had its usual modern meaning. I have been able
to use it in both these ways without its falling apart, and this shows something significant. What we
have discovered about the Greeks' understanding of these reactions, that they can transcend both an
assertive egoism and a conventional concern for public opinion, applies equally well to what we
recognise in our own world as shame. If it were not so, the translation could not have delivered so
much that is familiar to us from our acquaintance with what we call "shame".
Yet we have another word, "guilt", for which the Greeks had no direct equivalent. This determines
for us another concept, and perhaps a distinct experience. Some people think that this difference
between ourselves and the Greeks is ethically very important. We must ask whether this is so. First we
have to consider how shame and guilt are, in our conception of things, re-
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lated to one another. The mere fact that we have the two words does not, in itself, imply that
there is any great psychological difference between shame and guilt. It might merely be that we set up
an extra verbal marker within one and the same psychological field, in order to pick out some
particular applications of what would otherwise be shame its application to one's own actions and
omissions, perhaps.
This might be so, but I do not think that in fact it is. The distinction between shame and guilt goes
deeper than this, and there are some real psychological differences between them. The most primitive
experiences of shame are connected with sight and being seen, but it has been interestingly suggested
that guilt is rooted in hearing, the sound in oneself of the voice of judgement;[35] it is the moral
sentiment of the word. There are further differences in the experience of the two reactions. Gabriele
Taylor has well said that "shame is the emotion of self-protection,"[36] and in the experience of
shame, one's whole being seems diminished or lessened. In my experience of shame, the other sees
all of me and all through me, even if the occasion of the shame is on my surface for instance, in my
appearance; and the expression of shame, in general as well as in the particular form of it that is
embarrassment, is not just the desire to hide, or to hide my face, but the desire to disappear, not to
be there. It is not even the wish, as people say, to sink through the floor, but rather the wish that the
space occupied by me should be instantaneously empty.[37] With guilt, it is not like this; I am more
dominated by the thought that even if I disappeared, it would come with me.
These differences in the experience of shame and of guilt can be seen as part of a wider set of
contrasts between them.[38] What arouses guilt in an agent is an act or omission of a sort that
typically elicits from other people anger, resentment, or indignation. What the agent may offer in order
to turn this away is reparation; he may also fear punishment or may inflict it on
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himself. What arouses shame, on the other hand, is something that typically elicits from others
contempt or derision or avoidance. This may equally be an act or omission, but it need not be: it may
be some failing or defect. It will lower the agent's self-respect and diminish him in his own eyes. His
reaction, as we just saw, is a wish to hide or disappear, and this is one thing that links shame as,
minimally, embarrassment with shame as social or personal reduction. More positively, shame may be
expressed in attempts to reconstruct or improve oneself.
The discussion in this chapter, as elsewhere in this study, is directed to an historical interpretation
from which we can ethically learn something, and I have included psychological materials in it only to
the extent that it may help to focus that discussion. A deeper exploration of the relations between
shame and guilt is needed if we are going to be able to carry our understanding of these historical and
ethical issues farther; as a start on that inquiry, I have added some further speculations on these
matters as an appendix (Endnote 1).
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The immediate point is that if these distinctions between shame and guilt are even roughly
correct, then it looks as though aidos (and the other Greek terms) cannot merely mean "shame", but
must cover something like guilt as well. We noriced earlier in this chapter that nemesis , the reaction
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