[lit-ideas] Re: Kamikaze versus 9/11 Terrorists

In The Greeks and the Irrational, the classicist E. R. Dodds, who was an amateur Freudian, distinguished between an earlier 'shame culture,' and a later, more 'modern' guilt culture. The Greeks… was published in 1951; I'm sure many on the list know it. The notion that there was such a transition in Greek morality and practice is also discussed by A. W. H. Adkins, in Merit and Responsibility, 1960.

This about 'shame culture' from

http://www.anistor.co.hol.gr/english/enback/e024.htm

Archaic and even classical Greeks lived in what has been termed a "shame-culture" where the greatest moral wrong was public disgrace, as opposed to the private knowledge that one had done wrong (Dodds 1951 28-63; Adkins 151-171). In fact, there were no private wrongs. As Alister MacIntyre explains in After Virtue "morality and social structure are in fact one and the same in heroic society (116)." This is to say that to possess status and reputation is to be good, and to not have these is to be bad. The word for a noble, the agathos, actually meant good, as the word for one of lower class, kakos, meant bad. In a shame-culture the only moral evil is failure to live up to one’s status, and the only moral sanction is a reduction in status. In such a world, any failure of others to acknowledge the rightful status of an individual is a great slight that demands retribution. The "anger of Achilles" which is the subject of the Iliad is prompted by the highly public slight of Achilles by Agamemnon, a slight that causes him to withdraw from the battle. Why fight and die if one would not be honored for it? The warrior fights for the sake of honor and remembrance, not because his cause is "right" in any abstract moral sense.

[By David Hoffman, who seems to accept the shame/guilt division more or less without question.]

Robert Paul
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