Shame
idea · 2 works · 2 mentions · 2 anchored passages
shame · ashamed · shamelessness · the moderator of desire
in the texts
Nicomachean Ethics
The emotional response to shameful action, argued to be characteristic of base rather than virtuous persons.
Shame is a mark of a base man, and springs from a character capable of doing a shameful act.
And though shamelessness and not shrinking from shameful actions is base, this does not prove that to be ashamed when one a does shameful acts is virtuous— any more than Self-restraint is a virtue, and not rather a mixture of virtue and vice.
On Moral Ends
The moral faculty that restrains desire
nor is this proved from the parts of the mind alone — in which there is the memory of countless things (in you indeed boundless), in which there is conjecture of things to come not far differing from divination, in which there is shame, the moderator of desire, in which there is the faithful guardianship of justice for human fellowship, in which there is, in enduring toils and undergoing dangers, …