Shame and NecessityWe tend to suppose that the ancient Greeks had primitive ideas of the self, of responsibility, freedom, and shame, and that now humanity has advanced from these to a more refined moral consciousness. Bernard Williams's original and radical book questions this picture of Western history. While we are in many ways different from the Greeks, Williams claims that the differences are not to be traced to a shift in these basic conceptions of ethical life. We are more like the ancients than we are prepared to acknowledge, and only when this is understood can we properly grasp our most important differences from them, such as our rejection of slavery. The author is a philosopher, but much of his book is directed to writers such as Homer and the tragedians, whom he discusses as poets and not just as materials for philosophy. At the center of his study is the question of how we can understand Greek tragedy at all, when its world is so far from ours. Williams explains how it is that when the ancients speak, they do not merely tell us about themselves, but about ourselves. Shame and Necessity gives a new account of our relations to the Greeks, and helps us to see what ethical ideas we need in order to live in the modern world. |
Contents
Centres of Agency | 21 |
Recognising Responsibility | 50 |
Shame and Autonomy | 75 |
Necessary Identities | 103 |
Possibility Freedom and Power | 130 |
and Guilt | 219 |
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Common terms and phrases
Achilles action Aeschylus Agamemnon agent aidos Ajax akrasia ancient Greeks ancient world archaic argument Aristotle Aristotle's basic belief called cause chap chapter character claim conception concerned contrast course criticism decision discussion distinction divine effect Eteocles ethical Euripides expressed fact fear feel G. E. R. Lloyd gods Greek Tragedy Gregory Vlastos guilt happened Hector Heracles hero Hippolytus Homer human idea Iliad internalised involved justice Kantian killing kind luck mean merely mind modern moral motive natural Nietzsche notion Odysseus Oedipus one's oracle outlook particular passage Phaedra philosophy Plato play political problem progressivist psychological question reactions reason recognised refers relations remark responsibility role sense shame simply slave slavery Snell social society Socrates someone Sophocles soul structure suggested supernatural necessity supposed Teiresias Telemachus theory things thought Thucydides thumos tion tragic translation true understand Vernant women word Zeus γὰρ καὶ