'Don't tread on me: humiliation, shame and embarassment' (1994) (original) (raw)

'At First Blush: The Politics of Guilt and Shame', Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy. No.18, 2013, 85-99.

This paper focuses on the ways in which perceptions and experiences of guilt and shame are shaped by political conceptions of who belongs to the more guilty and shameful parties. Guilt is ambiguous between guilt as the fact of having done something wrong, and guilt as a felt experience. Likewise shame can be felt even when there is nothing to be ashamed of. I will examine guilt and shame and the apparent expectation and need to take these emotions on when one is not directly implicated. This phenomenon is the converse of the refusal to accept guilt when one is actually culpable, a danger with the concept of collective guilt that Hannah Arendt points out. 2 I use the debate between Karl Jaspers and Arendt over guilt and responsibility, as well as Jean-Paul Sartre's and Giorgio Agamben's work on shame, to develop an account of the political aspects of perceived and felt guilt and shame in people who are oppressed.

Cross-cultural invariances in the architecture of shame

Human foragers are obligately group-living, and their high dependence on mutual aid is believed to have characterized our species' social evolution. It was therefore a central adaptive problem for our ancestors to avoid damaging the willingness of other group members to render them assistance. Cognitively, this requires a predictive map of the degree to which others would devalue the individual based on each of various possible acts. With such a map, an individual can avoid socially costly behaviors by anticipating how much audience devaluation a potential action (e.g., stealing) would cause and weigh this against the action's direct payoff (e.g., acquiring). The shame system manifests all of the functional properties required to solve this adaptive problem, with the aversive intensity of shame encoding the social cost. Previous data from three Western(ized) societies indicated that the shame evoked when the individual anticipates committing various acts closely tracks the magnitude of devaluation expressed by audiences in response to those acts. Here we report data supporting the broader claim that shame is a basic part of human biology. We conducted an experiment among 899 participants in 15 small-scale communities scattered around the world. Despite widely varying languages, cultures, and subsistence modes, shame in each community closely tracked the devaluation of local audiences (mean r = +0.84). The fact that the same pattern is encountered in such mutually remote communities suggests that shame's match to audience devaluation is a design feature crafted by selection and not a product of cultural contact or convergent cultural evolution. emotion | cognition | culture | cooperation | evolutionary psychology

Humiliation. Social Anatomy of a Dark Emotion

Simmel Studies

Humiliation is both an emotional state and the social situation that produces it as well. This paper inquires into both dimensions, departing from Georg Simmel’s perspective and questions in his sociology of emotions, especially his thoughts on shame. Based on historical cases and literary examples, the paper analyzes humiliation as a composite emotional state (mixture of shame, wrath and sadness), and the distinctive features of it as a «form» of interaction. Regarding the latter, it is highlighted (a) its relational character, (b) the realization of a type of action whose purpose is degrading, (c) a representation of human value which is injured precisely by that action, and usually (d) its public character. It is warned about the main effects that humiliation may have at the subjective (resentment and thirst for revenge) and at the social level (increase of conflict, maintenance or instauration of an asymmetrical balance of forces, divisive effect and social stigmatization). In v...

The Moral Shadows of Shame and Contempt

This chapter critically reviews recent claims about the moral standing of shame and contempt. The moral standing of an emotion is determined either substantively, by considerations that relate the evaluations and action tendencies of the emotion to specific views about what is good or bad; or structurally, by considerations that relate the emotion to those central moral concepts such as autonomy and moral responsibility that determine whether something pertains to the moral domain. On the basis of this analysis, recent claims to the effect that shame is (substantively) immoral or, in fact, outside the moral domain due to its (structural) failure to engage the subject’s responsibility are rejected. In conclusion the chapter considers the globalist nature of shame and contempt, i.e., the fact that these emotions may deny their target all moral worth and thereby the possibility of improving. Attention is in particular given to recent arguments aimed at rejecting either the claim that shame and contempt are global, or the claim that being globalist is necessarily a bad or vicious trait for an emotion to have.

Reflexive Emotions: Shame, Humor, Humility - chs.1-3

SpringerBriefs in Philosophy (forthcoming February 2025)

This book looks closely at three first-order reflexive emotions―shame, humor and humility―that are shown to be not only exclusively human, but definitive of major aspects of human selfhood, agency and normativity. A separate chapter that covers second-order emotions, shows that when negative, they display a crucial and equally exclusive aspect of human normative self-critique. In addition to jointly delineating agency, sapience, normativity, rationality, and the ability to critically self-reflect, this book further demonstrates the inevitable role of the we in the I (to paraphrase Axel Honneth), namely, how realizing one’s full human potential necessarily requires engaging others. This book appeals to students as well as researchers and looks closely at how these three reflexive emotions bestow categorical value on otherness, rendering normative diversity not merely something to be tolerated or rationally overcome, but a rare and necessary blessing.

The individual and society: the social role of shame

2018

The feeling of shame has a longstanding role in the relations between individual and society. In this article we shall distinguish between shame and shaming and try to understand the social and cultural function of shame. Even though shame is a feeling that has a physiological basis, the way in which we experience emotions differs from culture to culture since it is the meaning that we attach to an event that evokes the emotion rather than the event itself (Ben-Ze’ev 1996). In order to understand the phenomenon of social shaming in the present we must examine the social origins of this phenomenon in Western culture. The methodology most fitting to examine this cultural construct is the genealogical method, by way of which we shall come to see that shaming is not an essentially new phenomenon in Western culture, but only a new mode of expressing old patterns.

Cfp -The meaning of shame revisited in cultures of the 4IR.pdf

THE MEANING OF SHAME REVISITED IN CULTURES OF THE 4IR, 2020

Dear colleagues, Claude-Hélène Mayer, Paul Wong and I, Elisabeth Vanderheiden, would like to invited to submit a chapter proposal for the book project: "The meaning of shame revisited in cultures of the 4IR". The book is founded on our first two publications on shame from positive psychology perspectives (Vanderheiden & Mayer, 2017; Mayer & Vanderheiden, 2019 in press) and is envisioned as a primary reference in research, studies and concepts on shame from transdisciplinary, cultural and transcultural perspectives within the context of the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR). It envisions to reflect on the state of the art of shame and its meaning in the 4IR from theoretical, conceptual and empirical perspectives. Interdisciplinary and international contributions are encouraged and very welcome. Kindly send us kindly inform us of your intent by return of email to Claude claudemayer@gmx.net and/or Elisabeth ev@keb-rheinland-pfalz.de The deadline for the abstract submission is the 1 August 2019. The first draft chapter contribution for peer review is due on 1 January 2020. Suggests that successful submissions meaning: • opportunities to present at the Round Table at the Meaning Conference 2020 in Toronto, • take part in a grant proposal, and • participate in a book launching party. We are looking forward to your response. PLEASE SEE THE CALL ATTACHED AND FIND OUT HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR ABSTRACT! We are looking forward to further cooperation.

The Complexities of ‘Shame’: An Exploration of Human Connection

2017

This dissertation is about one of the most controversial emotions: shame. The foundational question is: What constitutes the experience of shame as both an emotion and a dynamic of power, with an emphasis on women’s gender roles? The topic is inspired by my lived experience. Expressions of my narratives and those of others are integral to this work. The discussion begins with an overview of the history of ideas on emotions and shame. Shame was considered more important than other emotions because of its evaluative cognitive dimension. The overview highlights the continuum of inherited scholarly and culturally based gender stereotypes. Through exploring current interdisciplinary scholarly research on shame, a common theme emerged: the irrevocable presence of the ‘other’ in the shame experience. Discussions around this theme led to two basic principles: 1) the individual and the social

Shame and Philosophy: An Investigation in the Philosophy of Emotions and Ethics

"'Phil Hutchinson offers an incisive, insightful and deeply humane New Wittgensteinian critique of a number of influential accounts of the emotions, including shame. That too many philosophers have marginalized the 'person' in their accounts – that they have forgotten the place of the emotions in human lives and in the life-world – is the shame of philosophy.' - Katherine Morris, Oxford University 'A fine work: not only does it provide convincing answers to important questions, it also reveals the limitations - and cures some of the blindspots - of much contemporary research on emotions. The discussion of cognitivism is particularly subtle, while the perspicuous presentation of the lived experience of shame might help to resolve some crucial theoretical aporias about the nature and the significance of being a person.' - Anthony Hatzimoysis, The University of Manchester 'Hutchinson's book is a thoughtful, thorough and interesting work. He offers many striking reflections on emotion, language and, specifically, shame. In showing how different conceptions of emotions are based on problematic conceptions of language, he also goes much deeper than philosophers usually when they write about this subject.' - Ylva Gustafsson, Philosophical Investigations 'Shame and Philosophy is an engaging philosophical effort to explore reflection about emotion with its relevant connection to personhood. Phil Hutchinson offers a careful reflection that establishes a dialogue among current research both from the analytical and the continental traditions. This novel approach to philosophy of emotions provides, just like Hutchinson wants, a conceptual network for a better understanding of how emotions make up our world.' - Dina Mendonça, Metapsychology online Abstract In an important contribution to the burgeoning area of philosophy of emotions, Phil Hutchinson engages with philosophers of emotion in both the analytic and continental traditions. Shame and Philosophy advances a framework for understanding emotion: world-taking cognitivism. He argues that reductionist accounts of emotion leave us in a state of poverty regarding our understanding of our world and ourselves. The book contains detailed engagements with theorists of emotions such as Peter Goldie, Paul Griffiths, Jesse Prinz and Jenefer Robinson as well as a chapter on the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, which also contains a detailed critical engagement with Jacques Derrida's work. The Chapter on Griffiths' work also contains a detailed critique of the program of natural kind semantics. As the book progresses it becomes more and more concerned to meditate on shame as discussed by Primo Levi and other survivors of extreme trauma. The book moves towards conclusion by suggesting further directions for study."