Homeric Society: A Shame-Culture?

It is widely known that in the first two chapters of his Greeks and the Irrational E. R. Dodds borrowed the terms ‘shame-culture’ and ‘guilt-culture’ and applied them to early Greek society. According to Dodds, the society depicted by Homer knew nothing of guilt or the sanction of guilt: what acted as a motivating force was aidōs, ‘shame’ or ‘sense of shame’, of which the sanction was nemesis, ‘righteous indignation’. In other words, the warriors of the heroic caste were impelled to certain courses of action, or were restrained from others, by aidōs: they were ashamed of ‘losing face’ among their equals or inferiors, and this fear of public indignation kept before the mind of the heroes where their duty lay. As the Archaic age advanced (Dodds contends), the sense of guilt became manifest, without however displacing entirely the assumptions of the earlier ‘shame-culture’.

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Aristotle on Shame and Learning to Be Good

10.1093/oso/9780198829683.001.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Marta Jimenez

Keyword(s):

Practical Wisdom ◽

Moral Autonomy ◽

Moral Progress ◽

Moral Value ◽

The Road ◽

Righteous Indignation ◽

On The Road ◽

The Right ◽

External Behavior ◽

Sense Of Shame

This book presents a novel interpretation of Aristotle’s account of how shame instils virtue, and defends its philosophical import. Despite shame’s bad reputation as a potential obstacle to the development of moral autonomy, shame is for Aristotle the proto-virtue of those learning to be good, since it is the emotion that equips them with the seeds of virtue. Other emotions such as friendliness, righteous indignation, emulation, hope, and even spiritedness may play important roles on the road to virtue. However, shame is the only one that Aristotle repeatedly associates with moral progress. The reason is that shame can move young agents to perform good actions and avoid bad ones in ways that appropriately resemble not only the external behavior but also the orientation and receptivity to moral value characteristic of virtuous people. By turning their attention to considerations about the perceived nobility and praiseworthiness of their own actions and character, shame places young people in the path to becoming good. Although they are not yet virtuous, learners with a sense of shame can appreciate the value of the noble and guide their actions by a true interest in doing the right thing. Shame, thus, enables learners to perform virtuous actions in the right way before they have practical wisdom or stable dispositions of character. This proposal solves a long-debated problem concerning Aristotle’s notion of habituation by showing that shame provides motivational continuity between the actions of the learners and the virtuous dispositions that they will eventually acquire.

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How Homo economicus lost her mind and how we can revive her

Behavioral and Brain Sciences ◽

10.1017/s0140525x1800033x ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 41 ◽

Author(s):

Peter DeScioli

Keyword(s):

Economic Thought ◽

History Of Economic Thought ◽

Homo Economicus ◽

Economic Theories ◽

Target Article ◽

History Of ◽

The Mind ◽

And Behavior

AbstractThe target article by Boyer & Petersen (B&P) contributes a vital message: that people have folk economic theories that shape their thoughts and behavior in the marketplace. This message is all the more important because, in the history of economic thought, Homo economicus was increasingly stripped of mental capacities. Intuitive theories can help restore the mind of Homo economicus.

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