Being Riveted to Oneself: Shame and Personal Identity

Abstract

In Shame and Necessity, his brilliant book on the ethics of the Ancient Greeks, Bernard Williams performed a detailed and intriguing analysis of an emotion that, up to then, had been given little merit in connection to morality. Arguing with his former professor, E.R. Dodds, and picking up on a distinction between "shame cultures" and "guilt cultures" drawn by American anthropologist Ruth Benedict, Williams contended that some features of shame allow us to make sense of our ethical outlook in deeper and more meaningful ways, than guilt, which is assumed to be the "superior" moral emotion, Interestingly, in William’s view, this is so because of the special link between ethical judgement and personal identity that underlies shame. This paper will focus on personal identity issues connected to shame. Taking a narrative theory of identity as the starting point, I will explore how in shame the ongoing narrative breaks down and a reassessment of the self takes place.