The Heteronomy of Shame

On page 81, Williams asserts that it is problematic to hold that view that “the shame system is immaturely heteronomous, in the sense that it supposedly pins the individual’s sense of what should be done merely on to expectations of what others will think of him or her.” To support his claim, Williams provides two defenses for why being caught by another person isn’t actually a necessity for shame. The first is the “imagined other;” even if nobody is going to catch you, you are able to imagine what it would feel like to be caught, and resultantly you become imbued with shame. The second is the idea that being seen in general may not perturb you, but being caught by a person with a particular viewpoint will. While I agree with Williams’s original assertion, I don’t think his two defenses adequately justify his viewpoint and I will try to illustrate why with a case.

Suppose person X is a relatively new driver and on one occasion, while parking her car, she bumps it against another and causes damage to both. The other car is parked and its owner is not present. In a moment of panic, X backs out of her parking space and flees the scene, not wanting to pay the damages of both cars or risk getting elevated insurance fees or points on her license.

In the moments that X hits the car and panics, she may feel shame simply for hitting the car. This sort of shame is certainly affected by the imaginary audience—if other people saw X hit the car, they would presume she was an unskilled or irresponsible driver, and there need not actually be people around for her to feel this paranoid embarrassment. Furthermore, even if she is not ashamed by bystanders witnessing the incident, she would certainly be terrified if the owner were to suddenly be walking toward his car and see what she has done before she is able to get away. In this respect, both of Williams’s defenses are valid.

However, suppose that after a successful getaway, X has had time to calm down and think, and she begins to feel very disappointed in herself—not for hitting the car, but for fleeing the scene afterwards. I believe that the shame she feels does not rest on either of Williams’s defenses of his assertion. Instead, she has fallen short of her own standards for what constitutes good moral character, and that is the root of her shame. I don’t think that the imaginary audience applies here because X’s guilt could reasonably even lead her to confide in others about her moral shortcomings even though she does not have to—she has gotten away with it and nobody has to know. Whether or not the people she tells will consequently judge her for being a bad driver becomes irrelevant, and the guilt that fuels her confession shows that she is no longer even concerned with being viewed by others as a bad person for leaving. If X is not even afraid to tell actual people what she has done, she is certainly no longer worried about how an imaginary audience might react.

But what if she were to have to face the owner after fleeing the scene? While I’m sure that this would present a new level of stress and anxiety for X, I believe that this is because she would be yelled at, have charges filed against her, have to pay damages, etc., and this is inherently stressful. The shame she already feels for falling short of her own moral standards, however, would not be affected. Being confronted by the owner whose car she has damaged is not going to reveal anything new to her about herself and her moral shortcomings, which is the basis of her shame. Morally, X may even feel as though she deserves to be faced by the owner—the person who will hate her most in the world for what she has done.

Without the support of either of Williams’s defenses, I believe I have still presented a sound case in which X appropriately feels shame. Thus, I feel as though Williams needs to add additional defenses in order to be inclusive of cases of shame such as this one, as his first two cannot always stand on their own.