Guilt, Shame and Society

According to Max Wind-Cowie shame should be liberated rather than legislated for. By this I take Wind-Cowie to mean that shame should play a greater part in regulating our society and this regulation should replace the need for some legislation. In my posting "me and my values"  I suggested the balance between pride and shame has shifted in most people’s psyche and that this shift damages them as persons. I believe shame is important to us as persons but I also believe shame is important to society. It follows that I broadly agree with Wind-Cowie’s aim. However in what follows I will argue that whilst this aim is desirable it is by no means easy to achieve.

Wind-Cowie suggests that for “a myriad of pressing, modern problems - from tax avoidance to obesity - society needs to judge more and legislate less”. Exactly how is a more judgemental attitude linked to shame? It seems Wind-Cowie’s argument runs roughly as follows. If society was more judgemental then more people would feel shame when contemplating actions society finds unacceptable. This shame would stop them from undertaking these actions. If the above argument is sound it follows in the context of a more judgemental society there would be less need for legislation. Wind-Cowie then uses, the example of Jimmy Carr’s use of an apparently legal tax avoidance scheme and his subsequent change of heart after others judged this scheme to be morally wrong, to support his argument, see the Guardian . I have two important reservations about society becoming more judgemental even though I accept that shame should be liberated.

My first reservation is that, even if it is accepted our society needs to be more judgemental, these judgements might be carried too far. For instance in my previous posting I suggested that in the past some gay people were ashamed of their homosexuality and this unjustified shame led them to lead inauthentic lives. They were ashamed because society judged their homosexuality to be wrong. My first worry is certainly not an insubstantial one because in the past some people such as Alan Turing may have committed suicide partly in response to such judgements. Perhaps society should only be judgemental about matters that harm society rather than harm individuals. I would suggest one of the things that harms society most is unfairness. Tax avoidance even if legal is unfair. Unfortunately judgements about what harms society and what harms individuals are not always as easy to make as in the case of tax avoidance. For instance obesity harms individuals. But it might be argued the obese place an unfair burden on the non-obese if the latter are required to support them through taxes. It follows obesity also harms society. Should then society become more judgemental about obesity?

Let us accept making society more judgemental carries dangers as well as benefits. My second reservation is whether Wind-Cowie’s argument outlined above is a sound one. For surely it would be wrong to encourage a more judgemental society, if its judgements were not effective in solving society’s problems, due to the problems outlined above. Clearly society’s judgement was effective in the case of Jimmy Carr. But is society’s judgement always just as effective? For instance, if the judgement of the majority of society condemns some action but a sizeable subsection of that society condones the same action then the majority’s condemnation seems likely to be ineffective. Consider the traders working for Barclays Bank who tried to manipulate the Libor rate in order to benefit the bank. The majority of people would have condemned such an action. However these traders were not rogue traders and it seems possible that their colleagues and traders in other banks might well have condoned their actions. It further seems possible that despite society’s condemnation these traders might have felt no shame. They might have felt no shame because their actions were just the actions of any average bank trader.

Nevertheless even if these traders did not feel ashamed of their actions it seems probable that they did feel some negative emotions with regard to these actions for after all they kept them secret. In everyday usage the terms guilt and shame are often treated as interchangeable. At this point I want to try and differentiate between these terms. I must make it clear I am only interested in guilt as an emotion. David Velleman defines guilt as anxiety about being in an indefensible position that might warrant one’s being cut off from social interaction (1). Let us accept this definition. The traders who attempted to manipulate the Libor rate may well have felt no shame but I would suggest that they might well have worried about damaging their social interactions. Of course they would not have worried about damaging their social interactions with fellow traders nor would they have worried about being cut off totally from social interaction. Nevertheless they might have worried that their actions, if fully public, would have damaged their social interactions with the majority of the population. I would suggest such a worry is a form of guilt. Velleman also suggests guilt might be connected to the loss of love of one’s conscience (2). Guilt may well be tied to one’s conscience but I don’t believe it is tied to loss of love of one’s conscience. Shame however may be tied to loss of love of one’s conscience. Bennett Helm links pride and shame to our identity as a person (3). Let us accept that someone must love himself at least to some degree to be considered a person at all. Someone who feels absolutely no love for himself has no reason to act and so becomes a wanton. It might then be argued that for someone, who feels shame and as a result comes to love himself less, his shame acts a guardian of his identity. I would suggest shame can be partly defined as someone’s worry about the loss, at least in part, of his identity. I would further suggest the traders who attempted to manipulate the Libor were not worried about their identity and that any negative emotions they felt as a result should be characterised as guilt rather than shame.

I have attempted to differentiate between guilt and shame by claiming that guilt is a worry about social exclusion whilst shame is a worry about someone’s identity. If my claim is accepted then the following would seem to hold; because guilt is a worry about social exclusion whether we feel guilt depends on society’s judgements whilst because shame is worry about our identity shame is not. It follows if society becomes more judgemental it will liberate guilt rather then shame. Personally I see no reason why guilt should not be liberated in some contexts. For instance liberating guilt about tax avoidance would be acceptable whilst fostering guilt about someone’s homosexuality or obesity would be wrong. How then are we to differentiate between contexts in which liberating guilt is desirable and those in which it is not? It might be suggested that our politically correct society places restraints on our natural inclination to criticise and all that is needed is to remove these restraints. Unfortunately our natural inclination to criticise in a social setting usually applies to all those who don’t observe society’s norms. These norms may well include sexual orientation.  Nonetheless I still believe it would benefit society to remove some of the restraints society places on people in order to make society more judgemental and by so doing liberate guilt. An unfair society is an unjust society. It should always be perfectly acceptable in society to criticise unfairness.

My argument suggests that a more judgemental society would rely on guilt rather than shame. Nonetheless I still believe shame is important to society and that society should foster shame. What basis do I have for believing society should foster shame? I would argue the quality of any society depends in part on the qualities of the individuals who make up that society. A society composed mostly of rogues is likely to be a very limited poor quality society. I have previously argued shame makes people better people it follows fostering shame makes for better society. I would further suggest a society that is regulated for the most part by individual morality is a better one than one mostly governed by legislation. How then may society foster shame if society becoming more judgemental cannot be do this? To answer this question we must first ask why people feel shame. Let it be accepted the ability to feel shame makes someone a better person. Why is this so? I would suggest that shame like pride is essential in helping someone maintain his identity. I have frequently argued in this blog that someone’s identity is linked to Frankfurt’s ideas on loving or ‘caring about’. Frankfurt believes when someone cares about something he,

“identifies himself with what he cares about in the sense that he makes himself vulnerable to losses and susceptible to benefits depending upon whether what he cares about is diminished or enhanced.” (4)

In what follows I will follow Frankfurt is assuming that ‘caring about’ as defined above is equivalent to loving. Loving so defined differs from erotic love and the beloved may be for instance a person, a place or even an ideal. I would suggest that one of the ways someone who causes losses or damages to what he loves, becomes vulnerable, is because he feels shame. I would further suggest anyone who doesn’t love anything cannot feel shame. It follows if we want to foster shame we must foster a society in which people come to love things.

Someone might object it can’t be that simple and fostering a society in which people come to love things need not be any better than a society in which people don’t. She might suggest someone could come to love, identify himself with, getting rich and feel shame if he failed to do so. I have two responses to this objection. Firstly I doubt if someone can actually feel shame at his failure to become rich. I don’t deny someone may feel shame at his failure to support his family but this is different from becoming rich. It is easy to see how someone might identify himself with supporting his family but I would question whether someone can identify himself with becoming rich. This is an empirical question and it seems to me an experimental philosopher could do some useful work on shame. My second response is that if we foster a society in which people love things that help them to flourish. Becoming rich is not one of these things.

How do we foster people coming to love certain things that help them flourish? The certain things in this context being ideals or virtues. We teach them. My objector might respond you can’t teach people to love something. She might point out that love has an affective element and cannot be taught like arithmetic or even philosophy. In reply I would argue even if we can’t teach someone in a conventional sense to come to love something we can nevertheless help or foster him to learn to love something. For instance we may point out the things we love. We may encourage someone to persist in some activity in the hope he later learns to love it. We must make it clear what we love in the hope someone may emulate us. By so doing we are not becoming judgemental about someone else’s actions as Wind-Cowie would have us do but we are being judgemental about what we love and demonstrating this judgement. Lastly we may simply introduce someone to what we love in the hope he will come to love much the same sort of thing.

I believe fostering shame would benefit society as Wind-Cowie hopes. Unfortunately as I have argued fostering shame cannot be achieved by society becoming more judgemental even if by so doing we liberate guilt. Fostering shame is difficult. Indeed fostering a genuine sense of shame is best achieved in children by helping them become virtuous. It follows fostering a sense of shame is a long term process. Shame is related to our identities and should be fostered by fostering our identities by fostering our loving in ways I have suggested above. Because fostering shame is a long term process and society’s problems are pressing it might be argued that these problems are better addressed by liberating guilt or government legislation. In reply I would suggest many of society’s problems are related to personal problems and as such are best solved by helping people come to love or value certain things. For instance it seems to me that the problem of obesity is mostly a personal problem better dealt with by shame about what people ‘care about’ rather than making fat people feel guilty or forcing legislation onto reluctant food manufacturers as some sort of bandage. I would further suggest many of the problems facing society are not the kind that are amenable to quick fixes and can only be dealt with in the long term.

1. David Velleman 2009, How We Get Along, Cambridge University Press, page 99.
2. Velleman, page 101
3.  Bennett Helm, 2010, Love, Friendship & the Self, Oxford, page 109
4. Frankfurt, H. (1988) The Importance of What We Care About. Cambridge University Press page 83.