guilt, shame and morality

J. Value lnquiry 17:295-304 (1983). �9 1983 Martinus Ni/hoffPublishers, The Hague. Printed in the Netherlands.

GUILT, SHAME AND MORALITY

LEONARD BOONIN University o f Colorado

The object of this paper is to explore guilt and shame as moral categories and as constituent elements of human responsibility. While guilt fits in clearly with mod- ern conceptions of responsibility, the status of shame is much more problematic. Shame is often characterized as a socially induced condition resulting from being observed performing certain kinds of disapproved acts or revealing certain kinds of physical or other types of defects or deficiencies. Guilt on the other hand is usually identified with conscience and internal self-judgement. The anthropologist, Ruth Benedict, has stated this view of their relationship in a forceful way:

True shame cultures rely on external sanctions for good behavior, not, as true guilt cultures do, on an internalized conviction of sin. Shame is a reac- tion to other people's criticism. A man is shamed either by being openly ridiculed and rejected or by fantasying to himself that he has been made ridiculous. In either case it is a potent sanction. But it requires an audience or at least a man's fantasy of an audience. Guilt does not. 1

When shame is thus seen as heteronomously imposed or concerned with matters which are deemed morally irrelevant or insignificant it becomes more a subject for psychological explanation than ethical evaluation. Guilt experiences can also be socially induced or relate to morally irrelevant or insignificant factors but for various reasons we generally do not identify guilt paradigmatically with such cases.

This paper will focus on what most people would judge to be morally significant experiences of guilt and shame. The thesis of the paper is that morally significant experiences of shame not only can occur without an audience, actual or imagined, but that they are in an important sense more "internal" to the person than experiences of guilt. It will be argued that, contrary to the above widely held view, guilt is more social in nature than shame and this difference is crucial for understanding the distinct roles they play within human existence. It accounts for the divergent ways in which guilt and shame arise and are dealt with. More specifically, it explains certain characteristic differences between them: (1) that while we generally seek to hide our shame there is some tendency to reveal our guilt; (2) that shame is typically a more overwhelming kind of experience than guilt; and

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(3) that there is more we can do to relieve ourselves of guilt than shame .2

Guilt and shame can only be understood in terms of their roles and functions within social interaction and individual growth and development. They are essentially modes of responsibility; that is, they are distinct but related ways of incurring and assuming responsibility for what we do and what we are. If we are to use intel- ligibly the language of guilt and shame we must understand the language of norms and values in terms of which judgments of guilt and shame are made. Guilt plays an essential role within the complex enterprise of normatively regulating human conduct by rules, while shame plays a corresponding role in regulating human existence in terms of values and ideals. Without norms or rules there can be no guilt; without values and ideals there can be no shame. Guilt is primarily and fundamentally related to transgressions or violations; shame is primarily and fundamentally related to failures, imperfections, inadequacies, and weaknesses. 3 A person who violates a valid norm or standard without excuse or justification incurs guilt. A person who fails in some fundamental way to measure up to a valid and binding ideal incurs shame. Thus unexcused and unjustified failures to keep important promises to others give rise to guilt, while failures to freely give of oneself or respond with courage and integrity when these are called for gives rise to shame.

This distinction provides the basis for the analysis to follow. But first some preliminary points.

For one to incur guilt or shame is of course not the same thing as to recognize and accept the guilt or shame one has incurred; that is, it is not the same thing as experiencing or undergoing them. A person may feel guilt or shame without being guilty or shameful; and conversely one may be both guilty and shameful without feeling guilt or shame.

A person may violate a valid norm and not recognize its validity or, through some form of self-deception or ignorance, not appreciate the fact that he has violated it. We could say in such a situation that although he has incurred responsibility in the form of guilt, he does not accept it. The reverse is also possible. One may feel or experience guilt, and behave as if he were guilty, when he is really not - at least not guilty of that which he feels guilty about. However one analyzes what has been called "neurotic guilt," it would seem to be parasitic on the concept of real or justified guilt. 4 To identify certain guilt experiences as inappropriate and unjustified presupposes there are conditions when such experiences are appropriate and justified.

There are, of course, problems concerning how one determines what those standards for incurring guilt are. Even if one denies the existence of any morally justified and objectively valid norms, one would most likely continue to speak in a sociological way of the standards for incurring guilt - by which one would mean socially established and accepted standards of behavior. I f one argues that

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the only valid norms are those which are accepted as valid by the individual himself, one would still be able to say a person incurs guilt, even though he does not feel it, if he violates his own standards of behavior. For the purposes of this paper, I am assuming that there are certain elementary norms of human conduct which are valid and binding irrespective of whether or not a particular person accepts them, as well as another group of norms whose validity does depend on their being sub- scribed to.

I believe that a similar account can be given for shame. If one believes that there is an objectively valid conception of the nature and function of man, one would then have a way of measuring fundamental failures, inadequacies, imperfections, and weaknesses. Even if one believes that ideals and values are relative, either cul- turally and socially, or personally and individually, one can still speak of shame in terms of failure to conform to the individual's own or the socially established ideals.

As far as this paper is concerned no distinction will be drawn between first- person self judgments of guilt and shame and third-person ascriptions. Although the person undergoing the experience may have privileged or even exclusive access to a legitimate form of self-knowledge, it is not this type of knowledge that is pertinent.

Even if there are certain typical and distinctive differences in the texture and phenomenological feel of experiences of guilt and shame, to identify those experiences one would still have to have a conceptual understanding of the nature of guilt and shame. Because guilt and shame are so closely related, it is doubtful that one could recognize their differences without one. One person can always legitimately question another's self-characterization of what he is experiencing; e.g., confusing shame with embarrassment. Although self-judgment may form a constituent part of our experience of guilt and shame, self-judgment does not function in a purely performatory way. Such judgments may be evaluated as being sound or unsound, correct or incorrect, or even true or false.

It has been suggested that there is a clear and simple test for distinguishing between experiences of guilt and shame. Shame, unlike guilt, it is argued, requires the presence of an external observer or audience: one can feel guilty simply from one's own awareness and recognition that one has done wrong, while feelings of shame arise only when one becomes aware that he is in some manner being observed by another. Some anthropologists have employed this distinction as a basis for classifying cultures as either guilt or shame oriented. For example, Ho- meric Greece, s Japan 6 (at least until perhaps quite recently), and various American Indian tribes, such as the Navajos, ~ have been classified as shame-oriented. On the other hand, Greece of the classical period and most Western industrial societies have been classified as guilt-oriented.

A distinction between a stronger and weaker version of the audience view of shame may be fruitful. According to the stronger version, the audience in shaming a person actually determines by its disapprobation what is shameful. In the weaker version, the person's shame while initiated by a shaming audience is based on what

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he, independent of the audience, would agree was shameful. Although one can identify instances of both types of shame experiences, it is

doubtful that the existence of an external audience or observer constitutes an essential condition for experiences of shame. There are surely cases of what we would call experiences of shame where no such audience is present. To account for these cases, it is often claimed that the person has become his own observer or audience. To argue this way, though, runs the serious danger of over-extending the meaning of the term "audience" in such a way as to deprive it of its contrary, and hence of much of its original meaning. It thereby undermines the use of the internal-external distinction as a basis for distinguishing shame from guilt.

Actually guilt seems quite similar to shame in this respect. Thus while there are cases of individuals feeling guilty without the presence of an external judge, there are both cases where persons do not feel guilty until they are judged guilty by others, and cases when the very act of being guilty creates for them their guilt. The latter instance is particularly true when the person making the judgment is looked upon as having some special and legitimate authority to make such judgments.

The question still remains as to why we tend to identify shame-oriented societies with societies in which there are audiences which do the shaming�9 It may be because in certain paradigmatically shame-oriented societies such as Homeric Greece, individuals place the highest value on public esteem. If persons crave public appro- val as their highest value, the disapproval of one's compatriots will necessarily be seen as a failure on their part. As Anthony O'Hear has argued:

� 9 in these societies there is no ground for a distinction between an account of shame in terms of public disapproval and one which separates shame logically from the attitudes of others. But this is not because of the nature of shame, but because of the type of values accepted by the society. Once certain types of conduct or character are seen as valuable in themselves, independently of their appreciation by others, shame too can operate independently of public condemnation or fantasies _of public disapproval, a

It seems clear that both guilt and shame have internal-personal and external-social aspects�9 Whatever the value of classifying cultures as guilt or shame oriented - and the value in anthropology of doing this have been seriously questioned - the distinction between internal self-judgment and external social criticism does not adequately explain their difference. 9

II

I want now to return to the original point that guilt is a norm-related concept concerned with transgressions and violations and shame is a value or axiologically related concept concerned with failures, imperfections, inadequacies, and weaknesses. An understanding of the complex relation of guilt to shame can only be

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found in understanding the complex relation of norms to values. Norms are rules or standards which both guide human actions and provide the

basis for evaluating them. Rules are concerned with regulating human interactions and are, therefore, both act-oriented and social in character. Guilt arises from an unexcused and unjustified violation of such norms. A complex system of norms not only specifies in a more or less precise fashion the ways guilt is incurred, but also the ways in which it can be overcome or removed. Because of the essentially social function served by rules, it is important that in general there be ways of restoring guilty persons to their previous status. Since the range of what constitutes excuses and justifications can vary, so can the means of overcoming or an- nuUing the guilt once incurred.

Norms range over acts and deeds; values range over a much broader spectrum which includes, besides acts and deeds, states of character and states of affairs. Values are not intrinsically either act-oriented or social in character, although they can be both. We can speak of a certain condition or state of affairs as desirable and good without ascribing responsibility to anyone for bringing it about. We may say of a person that he is blessed with certain innate abilities or personality traits without claiming he was responsible for having them or for developing them. One can take pride in and feel shame about what one is not really responsible for. As values are not essentially act-oriented, there is no direct concern in shame, as there is in guilt, with determing whether there was culpable responsibility for the failure, inadequacy, imperfection, or weakness that has been revealed. The fact that the source of shame is an irremedial part of one's being, and is not within one's control to alter, does not often seem to mitigate or annul the shame. This is perhaps the main reason why shame has not been seriously treated in ethical theory, although explored by existentially-oriented philosophers.

Shame - at least as I am considering it here - relates to failures as seen in terms of the individual's own self-estimation; 1~ hence there does not seem to be any pos- sibility of socially prescribed and institutionally established rules and procedures for overcoming shame; for example, by such devices as confession, forgiveness, restitution, and punishment. Guilt relates to transgressing or violating the rights of another person and there can be mutually agreed upon ways of overcoming it. In shame one has essentially failed only one's self - one's innermost valuation of one's own being; and it is only by some inner transformation that such shame can be overcome. Although others may assist one to see the source of one's shame in a new light - to see the source as not really shameful or as less shameful than origi- nally thought and felt or as an expression of a common human failing - it is ultimately the person himself who has to see and accept this new light. An audience can only relieve one of socially imposed but not individually accepted shame. It is true that even in guilt one has ultimately to accept that restitution or punishment, or the accepted apology or the forgiveness genuinely given does remove the guilt. Although there may be cases where no remedial behavior seems in any degree adequate to annul the guilt, in general it is possible to do something about one's guilt. At the very least we recognize some difference in status of a person who has

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genuinely sought to make amends from one who has not.

III

It is true that much of the shame we experience and undergo relates to acts and failures to act which were within our control and which we recognized were within our control. Moral weakness is a prime source of shame as well as of guilt. One can experience shame when one's deeds violate the rights of others, or when one fails to give freely of oneself, or when, in extreme circumstances, one is called upon and fails to perform acts of supererogation.

In cases when shame is derived from act and deed, the focus is not on the act itself and its surrounding circumstances and consequences, but on what the act reveals about the actor and his basic character. This focus explains why it is possible for a minor offense - one which in terms of guilt would constitute a trivial transgression - to occasion deep experiences of shame, e.g., shoplifting an article worth a few cents; taking slight advantage of a vulnerable person, while a more serious offense may not. A person may even take pride in his guilt if he feels that it reveals some estimable quality of character, such as manliness or self-assertive- ness; e.g., assaulting a stronger person, refusing to obey a legitimate order.

These considerations provide the basis for understanding what may be characteristic, although not defining, differences between experiences of guilt and experiences of shame. Shame typically appears more surprising in its occurrence, more overwhelming in its character, and more isolating in its effect than guilt. Feelings of complete helplessness are more the mark of shame than of guilt.

Although experiences of guilt can also arise unexpectedly, one can at least in retrospect see how those experiences emanated from something which one has done; and hence, in theory at least, those experiences are both predictable and avoidable. As we do not seem to be able to exercise any clear or conscious control over our ideal conception of ourselves, and as we are continually falling short of our ideals and frequently exhibiting personal inadequacies, we cannot in retrospect see as clearly what we could have done to avoid them. In case of shame related to acts, one could possibly have avoided the particular act that revealed one's weakness or failure; but since the source of the shame lies in the state of character the act reveals it can be easily revealed in other ways. Only if one transforms that state of character or becomes more accepting of it, will the shame be overcome. Although states of character may largely be the product of our acts, they have an enduring quality which makes them appear not directly controllable.

The inability to control certain acts accounts for the feeling of being overwhelmed, a feeling which is often an important aspect of shame experiences. There is very little one can directly do about feeling shame, and perhaps in some cases nothing at all. One can hope or pray that suddenly one will somehow be different in a fundamental way from the way one is. One can hope to change one's values, or change the weight one gives to the values one has; or at least one can, in cases

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of shame arising out of one's acts, hope slowly to change one's character. In the experience of guilt there seems to be some kind of commensurability be-

tween the degree of guilt experienced and the actor's self-estimation of the culpa-- bility of his deed, as measured by its degree of harmfulness and the degree of will- fulness with which he did it. Being aware that one has maliciously inflicted suffering can cause greater feelings of guilt than an awareness that one has caused such harm through carelessness or thoughtlessness. Being aware that one has caused a great deal of suffering can make the experience of guilt greater than causing only slight harm. When we experience guilt to a greater or lesser degree than it calls for, we frequently, in a detached state of mind, recognize our error, and realize that we were aware of the exaggeration within the original experience.

I do not deny that experiences of shame also range in their intensity and that one can, upon reflection, see some kind of correlation among the degree of shame incurred, the significance of the value involved, and the degree of failure to achieve or conform to that value. One can say that greater shame exists over this failure than over that one because the first has more value in the person's identity or because he fails to conform to it to a greater degree. What I am not convinced of is whether within the experience of shame itself one can attain anything like a detached understanding and perspective. People can be completely overwhelmed by their experiences of shame, no matter how slight the shame seems on more detached reflection. And although one can admittedly be overwhelmed by guilt, it does not seem to be an essential aspect of that experience. If there is this difference between guilt and shame, a possible explanation would be the following.

Since guilt is act- or deed-oriented, there is already an element of detachment within the experience itself, and the framework already exists for comparative evaluations. All kinds of questions concerning the nature of the act, the circumstances in which it was done, the consequences and effects of the act, as well as comparisons with acts by others, shift focus from the doer to the deed. It is only the doer in the deed and not the doer of the deed that is spotlighted. One can still remain hidden so to speak behind one's guilty act. As shame focuses directly on one's identity, it provides no real basis for detachment. This explains not only why people are more likely to be overcome by shame than by guilt, but also why there is a strong tendency to hide one's shame. By contrast, there is some tendency to reveal one's guilt, unless one's guilt is also a source of shame. Perhaps it is only in acts of a truly heinous nature - acts which are shameful in themselves - that guilt can in some sense be said to reveal fully the shame.

Generally, a person is not fully revealed in his deeds; but the intentional and motivational aspects of his act do reveal him in part. Thus while there is some basis for detachment in guilt, without self-deception one cannot be fully detached from one's deeds. By focusing on these internal aspects, one can easily transform the experience of guilt into the experience of shame. Intentions, motives, and even the thoughtlessness of the inadvertent deed reveal something about the person, something which may be a source of shame to him. In such cases guilt and shame may appear so inextricably interwoven as to make it fruitless to apply these cate-

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gories in the differentiated manner that I have been developing in this analysis. A closer phenomenological analysis might, though, reveal a kind of gestalt switch taking place - back and forth, depending on what the focus of attention is - between the experience of guilt and the experience of shame. However one finally accounts for that very important class of cases, I do not believe these cases under- cut the importance in general of distinguishing guilt from shame.

Experiences of shame not only are fully revealing, but are experienced as revealing us fully. Whatever the source of failure or inadequacy, shame is experienced as fully revealing our whole existence in failure and imperfection. This is why there is a lack of comparisons and a lack of perspective within the shame experience. We may experience guilt in a distorted way, but it almost seems natural that experiences of shame be distorted out of proportion.

On reflection we may truthfully say that our shame only reveals an aspect or part of our identity. Because we conceive of ourselves as constituting some more or less coherent whole having an inner integrity, any experience of shame seems to touch the core of our existence and reverberates through it. Reflection may to some extent support such a view. Weaknesses and failures are often not merely isolated parts of our existence, but form at least clusters. The inner core of a person is not some hidden substratum that somehow lies behind and beneath one's traits of character and states of being and never quite revealed. It is rather those traits of character and states of being forming a distinct and specific configuration.

But we also recognize on reflection that no person is fully coherent, that there may be genuine sources of pride as well as of shame, and that even the same traits of character and states of being may in differing circumstances be both sources of pride and shame. Clearly, the more complete our understanding is of our shame, no matter how difficult that understanding is to attain within the original experience, the greater is our hope of overcoming it. For in shame experiences we see ourselves in complete and total isolation from others. Although the source of the shame may lie in one's relation to others, the shame itself relates to one's own negative self-evaluation of one's own being and existence. This condition I believe holds true even in cases of what can be called "collective shame." Collective shame helps to give a group a shared inner identity, but it also isolates the group from other groups with whom they interact.

In guilt one experiences oneself in a social context which involves an intrinsic reference to others. One could not experience guilt without recognizing that the other person has rights and is entitled to respect. Although the guilt signals and symbolizes the breach of community, it is still seen in context of the values of community. That isolation from others can be an unbearable experience is perhaps evi- denced by the number of individuals who disclose their guilt and accept their punishment for transgressions which had gone undetected or unsolved. Disclosing shame is less likely to occur. Dramatic cases exist of where individuals accept guilt for deeds they did not do in order to avoid revealing what they were doing, because they considered what they were doing shameful. Unless it is a shared shame, it will not create any sense of community identity. Suicide is probably more closely related to experiences of shame than to guilt.

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IV

Guilt and shame are the price we pay for having a system of norms and values that- places central importance on individual self-discipline and individual self-development. Norms and values form such a basic part of the fabric of our social existence that it requires a difficult intellectual exercise to conceive of alternative social systems in which they would play no role whatsoever.

To accept the existence of guilt and shame as necessary is not to claim that they have any genuine intrinsic value. Guilt and shame function too often as mechanisms of repression rather than signs of moral and intellectual integrity. To recognize the legitimacy of the norms transgressed or of the values fundamentally failed would imply that guilt and shame are sometimes fitting and appropriate responses.

"Still, guilt and shame only achieve positive value when they are stages in an on- going process. Only if experiences of guilt help to restore our community with others, and only if experiences of shame help to restore our community with ourselves, do they reveal their genuine worth.

The question remains whether anything beyond the person's control can be a legitimate source of either guilt or shame. As we have seen, guilt is essentially act- oriented and primarily concerned with voluntary and avoidable deeds. Should one experience guilt over suffering one has brought about neither willfully nor negli- gently? Although no culpability may exist one did nevertheless bring about human suffering. Sometimes, but only sometimes, it seems appropriate to accept it. Whether it is appropriate depends largely on whether it will restore one's relation to the person harmed.

The same kind of reasoning applies to shame. Although a person primarily incurs shame over acts and deeds which reveal fundamental failures in moral and intellectual integrity, he still might assume and accept shame for what is beyond his control. He accepts it as part of the price he pays for the kind of identity he seeks and values. He may value certain natural powers, physical traits, aesthetic sensibilities, or intellectual abilities which he lacks. His shame will at least give him insight into the kind of being he would ideally like to be and essentially is. With moral and intellectual integrity, however, it would be difficult to believe that such shame would play any overriding role in his existence.

NOTE.g

I would like to express my appreciation to Betel Lang and Elias Baumgarten for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

1. Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1946), p. 223.

2. These points can be found developed from a different perspective in Helen Merrell Lynd's valuable study On Shame and the Search for Identity (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1958).

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3. Ibid., pp. 20-26. Cf. Gerhart Piers and Milton B. Singer, "Shame," in Guilt and Shame, ed. H. Morris (Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1971), pp. 82-94. Reprinted from Shame and Guilt: A Psychoanalytic and a Cultural Study (Springfield, IU.: Charles C. Thomas, Publisher, 1953).

4. Herbert Fingarette, "Real Guilt and Neurotic Guilt," in Guilt and Shame, pp. 82-94. Reprinted from On Responsibdity by Herbert Fingarette (New York: Basic Books, 1967).

5. Arthur W.H. Adkins, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1960), pp. 48-49,154-164.

6. Benedict, op.cit., pp. 222-227. 7. Dorothea Leighton and Clyde Kluckhohn, Children of the People: The Navaho Individual

andHis Development (New York: Octagon Books, 1969), pp. 104-106. 8. Anthony O~Iear, "Guilt and Shame as Moral Concepts," Proceedings of the Aristotelian

Society, Vol. 77 (1976-77), 73-86, esp. 81. 9. Piers and Singer, op.cit., pp. 150-154.

10. For a different type of analysis which connects shame with the values of privacy and intimacy see Carl D. Schneider, Shame, Exposure and Privacy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1977).

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