You should be ashamed if you drive an SUV, fly on vacation, or eat meat. Many face such allegations on social media. One also often encounters phrases such as “Because you are not ashamed, I am ashamed of you”: an audience that is “ashamed of others” with an advertisement and a swollen chest.
Austrian philosopher Robert Waller deals with such manifestations of identity politics in his new book, Two Reveals of Shame. The work is simultaneously a philosophical examination of theories of shame and a contribution to their identification and revision.
Shame turns into luxury
The author outlines current patterns of shame in Chapter One. Shame has turned into a luxury item and a mask for undisguised pride, into a social reality and a way to denounce the unpopular – for example, the accusation that someone is an “old white man”. Many of the new patterns came from a prolific discussion of identity set off by gender, sexism, or racism. Are these identity politics shifting us from a community of guilt to a community of shame? Before Pfaller responds to this, he exposes two fallacies about shame.
The first revelation targets a fallacy of anthropology, which sees shame as externally directed while guilt is internally directed. In Margaret Mead’s notes from the 1930s, Valver realized the main mistake many have since relayed. The author uses examples to demonstrate that shame also has its place within a person, while guilt arises from accusations of misconduct by third parties. Shame afflicts the whole of man and exists suddenly; I was ashamed. On the other hand, guilt comes on gradually and in part. It can be associated with shame, but it doesn’t have to be. You can apologize but do not be shy.
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