[lit-ideas] Re: Kamikaze versus 9/11 Terrorists
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2006 00:03:24 -0500
> [Original Message]
> From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 3/28/2006 11:08:29 PM
> Subject: [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.
>
This is shame in a different context from the way I think it's used in
contemporary psychology. The sentence, "Why fight and die if one would not
be honored
> for it?" echoes Madeline Albright's, why have a military if you don't use
it? Maybe we need to rethink and do away with "honor". Likewise, the
sentence, "The warrior fights for the sake of honor and remembrance, not >
because his cause is "right" in any abstract moral sense." makes it clear
that we definitely need to get rid of honor. The world would be a much
nicer place without it.
> [By David Hoffman, who seems to accept the shame/guilt division more or
> less without question.]
>
Well, he's wrong. There is a distinct difference between the two.
> Robert Paul
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