Shame, stigma, and disgust in the decent society

Journal of Ethics

Volumn 11, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 31-63

  Arneson, Richard J ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

Absolutism; Consequentialism; Disgust; John Rawls; John Stuart Mill; Martha Nussbaum; Priority; Shame; Stigma

Indexed keywords

EID: 33846839641     PISSN: 13824554     EISSN: 15728609     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s10892-006-9007-y     Document Type: Article

References (36)

1. I thank an anonymous referee for The Journal of Ethics for comments on a first draft of this essay.
2. See Avishai Margalit, The Decent Society (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996). I disagree with the author's normative conclusions but am indebted to his excellent analyses.
3. John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, in Collected Works, Volume 10, J. M. Robson (ed.), (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977).
4. On prioritarianism, see Derek Parfit, Equality or Priority (Department of Philosophy: University of Kansas, 1995).
5. For a qualification of this claim see footnote 17.
6. Martha C. Nussbaum, Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).
7. G. A. Cohen, If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich? (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), Chapters 8 and 9. The Rawlsian principles of justice are elaborated in John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Revised Edition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999).
8. In J. S. Mill, On Liberty, in Collected Works, Volume 18, J. M. Robson, (ed.), (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), Chapter 4, Paragraph 17, J. S. Mill emphasizes possible negative consequences of the prevalence in society of an egalitarian ethos somewhat like the one I am describing. He recoils from the social norm and declares it hostile to individual liberty. He has a point, but it is not dispositive of the issue. We are dealing with the distribution of real freedom across people and not simply with its maximization. I note that a prioritarian will resolve tradeoff issues such as the one that here exercises Mill and reach results that differ from those straight utilitarian calculation would recommend.
9. Gabriele Taylor, Pride, Shame, and Guilt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 57.
10. Taylor qualifies her account. According to her, an audience, real or imagined, is not required for shame. What is required is a shift in the point of view of the person who experiences shame. An aspect of oneself that had passed without notice is then regarded from a detached critical perspective, with which one identifies. One then believes oneself to be "defective and degraded" (Taylor, Pride, Shame, and Guilt, p. 66). The detached critical perspective can appear at a higher-order viewpoint. An individual might imagine people applauding what she is doing, note that these people are approving what should arouse condemnation or contempt, and then experience shame. One as it were imagines a critic regarding with disapproval the inappropriate praising and identifies with the criticism of oneself. Bernard Williams denies that the identification with a critical standpoint has to be an ingredient in shame. He suggests that shame can be occasioned by the awareness of an actual or imagined gaze on the agent that is perceived to put the agent at a disadvantage or involve a loss of power [See Bernard Williams, Shame and Necessity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 220-221].
11. Dan M. Kahan, "What Do Alternative Sanctions Mean?" University of Chicago Law Review 63 (1996), pp. 591-653. Again, the issue discussed in the previous footnote arises. One might hold that to experience shame, it is not necessary that one respect the persons in whose eyes one is disgraced. One might instead fear them, or suppose that their negative appraisal of oneself will be widely shared.
12. Nussbaum discusses a proposal by Amitai Etzioni to deal with Bad Samaritanism by a social norm rather than criminal law requirement in Nussbaum, Hiding from Humanity, pp. 245-246. She is unsympathetic to the idea, but mainly finds it too sketchy and incomplete to be assessable.
13. In particular, I applaud her suggestions about how it would be desirable for modern societies to follow the lead of Walt Whitman and liberate its members from disabling shame regarding sexuality and the human body.
14. Nussbaum, Hiding from Humanity. The first quote in this paragraph is at p. 7, the second at p. 13, the third at p. 14.
15. See Patrick Devlin, The Enforcement of Morals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965).
16. Nussbaum, Hiding from Humanity, p. 15.
17. An absolutist moral rule prescribes an exceptionless agent-relative duty. An absolute rule against lying prescribes that one ought never to lie, period. Such a rule holds unconditionally. According to a weaker construal of absolutism, an absolutist rule prescribes an agent-relative duty to which one ought always to comply whatever the consequences (An absolutist who holds that, for example, one ought never to kill the innocent, whatever the consequences, but who allows that it would be right to kill the innocent if God commanded such an act, would be an absolutist in the weaker sense).
18. W. D. Ross, The Right and The Good (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1930).
19. John Rawls, Political Liberalism, Second Edition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).
20. Thomas E. Hill, Jr. interprets Kant's humanity formula as absolutely forbidding treating people with degrading contempt that denies their status as rational agents. Applied to issues of punishment and the social response to evildoers, the doctrine, writes Hill, holds "that criminals must be treated with respect as human beings, not humiliated or manipulated like animals" [See Thomas E. Hill, Jr., Dignity and Practical Reason in Kant's Moral Theory (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), Essays 2, 9, and 10. The quoted passage is at p. 210].
21. John Locke, Second Treatise of Government (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1980), p. 11.
22. Nussbaum, Hiding from Humanity, pp. 234-237.
23. Nussbaum, Hiding from Humanity, p. 212.
24. Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2001); cited after Nussbaum, Hiding from Humanity, p. 241.
25. Nussbaum, Hiding from Humanity, pp. 213-214.
26. Margalit, The Decent Society, p. 146.
27. See Dan M. Kahan, "What do Alternative Sanctions Mean?" also Dan M. Kahan and Eric A. Posner, "Shaming White-Collar Criminals: A Proposal for Reform of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines," Journal of Law and Economics 42 (1999), pp. 365-391.
28. Nussbaum, Hiding from Humanity, p. 230.
29. The view mentioned in the text is just one of three plausible construals of the harm principle. Another is: The only acceptable reason for restricting a person's liberty to act as she chooses is that restricting her freedom would prevent harm to (nonconsenting) others. A third is: The only acceptable reason for restricting a person's liberty to act as she chooses is that her action would cause or excessively risk causing harm to (nonconsenting) others. David Lyons defends the second construal of Mill's harm principle in David Lyons, Rights, Welfare, and Mill's Moral Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
30. Nussbaum, Hiding from Humanity, pp. 327-328.
31. I am unsure how to reconcile Nussbaum's affirmation of inviolability here with her sympathetic discussion of what she calls "Sensible Consequentialism" and "Sensible Deontology" hi her "Comment" on Judith Jarvis Thomson's Goodness and Advice. Both sensible views agree that there is no ordinary deontological duty such as the duty to refrain from telling lies that one morally ought to fulfill come what may, whatever the consequences. The sensible views Nussbaum approvingly characterizes reject inviolability [See Judith Jarvis Thomson, Goodness and Advice, Amy Gutmann (ed.) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 98-102]. I should note that in her "Comment" Nussbaum excplicitly declines to affirm consequentialism and expresses a concern that the doctrine of consequentialism may leave room for amendments and qualifications that render the doctrine purely formal, a notation in which any substantive moral position might be expressed.
32. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 133. For criticism of Rawls's lexical ordering of his principles, see Richard Arneson, "Rawls Versus Utilitarianism in the Light of Political Liberalism," in Clark Wolf and Victoria Davion (eds.), The Idea of a Political Liberalism: Essays on Rawls (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2000), pp. 231-252;
33. Richard Arneson, "Against Rawlsian Equality of Opportunity, Philosophical Studies 93 (1999), pp. 77-112.
34. John Gray develops this interpretation of Mill's On Liberty argument in John Gray, Mill on Liberty: A Defence, Second Edition (London: Routledge, 1996).
35. John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, in John Stuart Mill, Collected Works, Volume 19, J. M. Robson, (ed.) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), Chapter 8.
36. See Harold Garfinkel, "Conditions of Successful Degradation Ceremonies," American Journal of Sociology 61 (1956), pp. 420-424.