2.11. When We Feel No Shame
We also feel it before those not open to the same imputation as ourselves, for it is plain that their opinions about it are the opposite of ours. Also before those who are hard on any one whose conduct they think wrong. For what a man does himself, he is said not to resent when his neighbours do it, so that of course he does resent their doing what he does not do himself. And before those who are likely to tell everybody about you; not telling others is as good as not believing you wrong. People are likely to tell others about you if you have wronged them, since they are on the look out to harm you, or if they speak evil of everybody, for those who attack the innocent will be still more ready to attack the guilty. And before those whose main occupation is with their neighbours’ failings—people like satirists and writers of comedy. These are really a kind of evil-speakers and tell-tales.
And before those who have never yet known us come to grief, since their attitude to us has amounted to admiration so far. That is why we feel ashamed to refuse those a favour who ask one for the first time—we have not as yet lost credit with them. Such are those who are just beginning to wish to be our friends, for they have seen our best side only (hence the appropriateness of Euripides’ reply to the Syracusans), and such also are those among our old acquaintances who know nothing to our discredit.
And we are ashamed not merely of the actual shameful conduct mentioned, but also of the evidences of it. Not merely, for example, of actual sexual intercourse, but also of its evidences, and not merely of disgraceful acts but also of disgraceful talk. Similarly we feel shame not merely in presence of the persons mentioned but also of those who will tell them what we have done, such as their servants or friends.
And, generally, we feel no shame before those upon whose opinions we quite look down as untrustworthy (no one feels shame before small children or animals); nor are we ashamed of the same things before intimates as before strangers, but before the former of what seem genuine faults, before the latter of what seem conventional ones.
The conditions under which we shall feel shame are these: first, having people related to us like those before whom, as has been said, we feel shame. These are, as was stated, persons whom we admire, or who admire us, or by whom we wish to be admired, or from whom we desire some service that we shall not obtain if we forfeit their good opinion.
These persons may be actually looking on—as Cydias represented them in his speech on land assignments in Samos, when he told the Athenians to imagine the Greeks to be standing all around them, actually seeing the way they voted and not merely going to hear about it afterwards. Or again they may be near at hand, or may be likely to find out about what we do. This is why in misfortune we do not wish to be seen by those who once wished themselves like us, for such a feeling implies admiration.
And men feel shame when they have acts or exploits to their credit on which they are bringing dishonour, whether these are their own, or those of their ancestors, or those of other persons with whom they have some close connection. Generally, we feel shame before those for whose own misconduct we should also feel it—those already mentioned; those who take us as their models; those whose teachers or advisers we have been; or other people, it may be, like ourselves, whose rivals we are. For there are many things that shame before such people makes us do or leave undone. And we feel more shame when we are likely to be continually seen by, and go about under the eyes of, those who know of our disgrace.
Hence when Antiphon the poet was to be cudgelled to death by order of Dionysius and saw those who were to perish with him covering their faces as they went through the gates, he said, “Why do you cover your faces? Is it lest some of these spectators should see you tomorrow?”
So much for Shame; to understand Shamelessness, we need only consider the converse cases, and plainly we shall have all we need.
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