Shame and Character

It is sometimes assumed that shame is an unnecessary emotion. In this posting I want to challenge this assumption. I will argue that shame is central to both our character and behaviour. What do we mean by shame? Oxford dictionaries define shame as “a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behaviour”. However if we adopt this definition there seems to be no difference between shame and guilt. If someone does something wrong and feels guilty about his actions he may apologise for these actions. Provided his apology is sincere he ought to be forgiven and allowed back into the moral community. It seems harder to apologise for something one is ashamed of. One of the characteristic reactions to shame is to hide our shame rather than apologise for it. The reason for this is I would suggest is that shame is more directly connected to our character rather than our actions. We find easier to apologise for what we have done than to apologise for what we are. Our character is difficult to change. This difficulty leads to shame being seen as an unnecessary emotion for it appears to follow there is no real point in apologising, for who we are, if we cannot change who we are. Shame serves no real purpose.

Let us accept that shame is connected to our character rather than our acts. Nonetheless acts still matter with regard to shame. When I feel ashamed about some act, the act captures my attention but the focus of my attention is on my character from which the act flows. For instance a drunkard may feel guilty about his actions last night. A drunkard may also feel shame about his actions last night. These actions focus his attention on the fact he is a drunkard. This focus can have two sub focuses, one on how others see the drunkard’s character and secondly how the drunkard sees himself. I have previously argued these different sub focuses give rise to Two Types of Shame. Type one shame is someone’s anxiety about social disqualification because of his character. Type two shame is someone’s anxiety about harming the things he cares about or loves. I will consider each type of shame in turn.

I will consider type two shame first. Before proceeding I will briefly consider the nature and the purpose of the emotions. Michael Brady argues emotions are analogous to alarms (1). Emotions draw our attention to things which are wrong. Emotions capture and focus our attention forcing us to reappraise our situation. For instance if I make a snide remark about someone, my guilt captures and focuses my attention on whether my remark was wrong and perhaps makes me reappraise the situation causing me to apologise. However my shame about the remark captures and focuses my attention on the inadequacies of my character from which my snide remark flowed. My shame may force me to reappraise my character. Unfortunately character is hard to change and even if I don’t hide my character from myself I may seek to hide it from others. A somewhat similar approach is taken by Bennett Helm. Helm holds that someone’s pride and shame are a kind of attention, a kind of vigilance, about himself and his identity and that this attention or vigilance is a form of self-love. Helm argues our values are constitutive of us as persons. With regards to values he argues,

“what is at stake in one’s values are oneself and one’s own wellbeing as this person, and because values involve an implicit understanding of the kind of life it is worth one’s living, the felt evaluations constitutive of this pattern …. are emotions like pride and shame.” (2)

It follows even if our shame is something we may feel we have to hide from others that it is nonetheless constitutive of us as persons. It follows shame is an extremely important emotion.

In order to illustrate the importance of type two shame let us try to imagine someone who feels no type two shame whatsoever. It might be thought that such a person is a happy go lucky person who takes life as it comes and as a result leads a naturally authentic life. Let us accept that someone without type two shame is someone without any anxiety about harming the things he cares about or loves. I would suggest such a person would be a selfish person who wantonly disregards both himself and others. It might be objected that it is possible for someone to care about himself and others without any anxiety about harming the things he loves. He simply has a natural caring nature. I am doubtful whether the above is possible. I will now return to a theme which runs through many posts in this blog. If someone ‘cares about’, loves, something then he must identify himself with what he cares about. He makes himself vulnerable to losses and susceptible to benefits depending on whether what he cares about is diminished or enhanced (3). It seems to me that someone cannot make himself vulnerable, with regard to the things he ‘cares about’, without experiencing some anxiety about harming these things. It follows someone who ‘cares about’ or loves anything must be capable of experiencing some shame. It further follows that someone who cannot experience shame would be a selfish inconsiderate person. Additionally I would suggest such a person is in some ways a deficient person. Helm argues that both pride and shame are constitutive to us as persons. If Helm is correct then someone who can feel no shame is an unbalanced, deficient person whose personality is not truly formed, see my discussion of damaging self-love pride and shame.

It has been assumed that shame is an unimportant emotion because it has no practical consequences. It has no practical consequences because we are unable change our character. Let us assume that we are unable change our character. I will now argue even if this assumption is true that nonetheless shame is important. Someone who is aware of his character, due to shame, might decide not to place himself in situations in which his character is challenged. A drunkard might decide to avoid bars. Moreover someone’s awareness of his character might also guide his career choice. Some who feels shame at his cowardice is unlikely to join the army. I will now argue the assumption that we cannot change our character is false. I accept some of our dispositions have a genetic basis which we cannot alter. But part of our character is determined by what we love or ‘care about’. I accept what we love must have some persistence and cannot be arbitrarily changed by some act of will. However persistence is not the same as permanence. What we love or ‘care about’ can change slowly. It follows some parts of our character can change albeit slowly. Shame might help drive such change.

So far I have dealt with type two shame but type one shame is also important, especially in a social context. I now want to use an example to illustrate how type one shame might work in practice. Recall I defined type one shame as is someone’s anxiety about social disqualification because of his character. Jennifer Saul argues that we should use informal methods to combat sexual harassment when more formal means are inappropriate (4); I agree. One way this might be done is by employing shame. Let us assume someone makes an offensive sexual remark about someone else. Let us also assume such a remark is passed off in a joking manner and as such is the remark should not be dealt with by formal means. Should we just ignore such a remark? Saul believes we should not. She suggests one way of doing this might be to withhold our laughter because by doing so we show don’t approve of the remark. However this lack of approval is not the same as disapproving of the remark. I would suggest one way of disapproving the remark is to employ shame. Perhaps we might ask the harasser to repeat his remark; “did you really say that”. In doing so we are implying such a remark is not the sort of remark which would flow from a good character. If he says he was only joking he is being forced to disassociate his remark from his character, he is being compelled to feel some shame. However care is needed. Sexual harassment is a moral concern and it seems appropriate to me to use shame to address moral concerns. The same might not be true of social concerns. For instance should we employ shame in an attempt to encourage the obese to diet, see Two Types of Shame .

Is it possible to extend the idea of shaming beyond persons to other entities? For instance is it possible to shame governments? Could for instance Israel be shamed for its treatment of Gaza? Could corporations such as Amazon and Starbucks be shamed into paying more tax, see BBC, Tax Shaming . If anxiety about something is an essential part of shame then governments and corporations cannot be shamed. Governments and corporations can’t feel anxiety. However the people who run such organisations might feel anxiety about the nature of their organisation. Recall type one shame means someone feels anxiety about social disqualification because of his character. It seems possible that an executive of some large organisation might feel anxiety about the social disqualification of his organisation due to its nature. Such anxiety might be classed as type three shame. I would be somewhat reluctant to take such a step because if we do so the focus of the shame moves from someone’s character to the nature of an organisation.

1. Michael S. Brady, 2013, Emotional Insight; The Epistemic Role of Emotional Experience, Oxford University Press.
2. Bennett Helm, 2010, Love, Friendship & the Self, Oxford, page 109.
3. Frankfurt, H. (1988) The Importance of What We Care About. Cambridge University Press page 83.
4. Jennifer Saul, 2014, Stop Thinking So Much About ‘Sexual Harassment’, Journal of Applied Philosophy, 31(3)