On Shame

Michael Morgan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780415396226
• eBook ISBN: 9781134221233
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Shame is one of a family of self-conscious emotions that includes embarrassment, guilt, disgrace, and humiliation. On Shame examines this emotion psychologically and philosophically, in order to show how it can be a galvanizing force for moral action against the violence and atrocity that characterize the world we live in.

Michael L. Morgan argues that because shame is global in its sense of the self, the moral failures of all groups in which we are a member – including the entire human race – reflect on each person individually.

Drawing on historical and current affairs to explore the emotion of shame, as well as films such as Night and Fog, Hotel Rwanda and Life is Beautiful and the work of Primo Levi, Bernard Williams, and Stanley Cavell, Michael Morgan illustrates how moral responsibility can be facilitated by calling upon an emotional reaction that is familiar, complex, and central to our conception of ourselves as individuals and as members of society.

Index

acknowledged shame 35–6, 58, 108

action or omission 19–22

Agee, James 56–7, 58

Albright, Madeleine 26, 100, 101

Améry, Jean 32, 93

anger 14, 44, 52, 73–5, 117; shame-rage spiral 37, 44, 59, 72, 86–7

Annan, Kofi 100, 101

annihilation 4, 29

antisemitism 24, 67–72

appearance 22–5

appeasement policy 116

artificial shame 43, 44

Artist of the Floating World, An (Ishiguro) 82

Astaire, Fred 64

Auschwitz 11, 16–25, 62

Bandwagon, The 64

Barnett, Michael 26

Bartov, Omer 65

Beardsley, Brent 100

Belgium 12, 13, 32

Benedict, Ruth 108

beneficence 90–1

Benigni, Roberto 78

Bergman, Ingmar 85–6

bigotry 69–70, 72

Black Americans: exploitation and oppression 64, 75– 6; racism 56–7, 58

blaming the messenger 66–7, 114

Bomba, Abraham 27–8, 106

Bosnia 12, 13, 31, 62, 112

British bombing campaign 66

Brooks, Richard 71

‘bypassed’ (unacknowledged) shame 35–6, 58, 72, 108

bystanders 3, 14, 18

Caché 115–16

Cambodia 13, 31, 62

Cantor, Jay 100, 106

Carmichael, Stokely 76

Cavell, Stanley 64, 92, 115

Cayrol, Jean 8, 10–11, 65

Celan, Paul 93

Cérémonie, Le 117

Chabrol, Claude 117

change: modes of 53–4; self-transformation 5, 42–3, 53–4, 111

Churchill, Winston 116

Circl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• One. Shame, the Holocaust, and Dark Times
• Two. Locating Moral Shame
• Three. Film, Literature, and the Ramification of Shame
• Four. Beyond Shame: Emotional Reaction and Moral Response
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index