showing 3 related works from this author
Shame, Love, and Morality
2022
AbstractThis article offers a new account of the moral substance of shame. Through careful reflection on the motives and intentional structure of shame, I defend the claim that shame is an egocentric and morally blind emotion. I argue that shame is rooted in our desire for social affirmation and constituted by our ability to sense how we appear to others. What makes shame egocentric is that in shame we are essentially concerned about our own social worth and pained by the perception of our self as socially worthless. In itself, shame entails no morally pertinent concern about others or understanding of what is morally significant. I contrast shame with the possibility of relating to others—…
To See Oneself as Seen by Others
2019
Abstract This article develops a new phenomenological analysis of the interpersonal motives and structure of shame. I pursue the argument that shame is rooted in our desire for social affirmation and conditioned by our ability to see ourselves as we appear to others. My central thesis is that shame is what we feel when, due to some trait or action of ours, we come to perceive ourselves as fundamentally despicable and non-affirmable. By showing how our urge for affirmation fuels and informs our self-perception in shame, the analysis provides a better understanding of the simultaneously interpersonal and personal character of shame. Furthermore, it sheds new light on some central aspects of s…
Who Wants to Be Understood? The Desire for Social Affirmation and the Existential Challenge of Self-Understanding
2019
The guiding thesis of this chapter is that self-understanding is centrally an existential challenge. In particular, the chapter aims to lay bare the massive potential of our desire for social affirmation to influence and distort our self-understanding, mostly in a covert and unacknowledged fashion. To the extent that we are driven by this desire, we are primarily concerned with assessing, in an emotionally charged and self-deceptive manner, the social worth of our self, whereas we lack the will and ability to understand ourselves in an open and unqualified manner. Ultimately, it is argued that whatever the cognitive demands of self-understanding and our ability to meet these demands may be,…