A Bridge Between Nussbaum and the DeWolf's

Reading the chapter in The Drowned and the Saved, I was struck by this passage on the bottom of page 72-73.

“It was the same shame which we knew so well… the shame which the just man experiences when confronted by a crime committed by another, and he feels remorse because of its existence, because of its having been irrevocably introduced into the world of existing things, and because his will has proved nonexistent or feeble and was incapable of putting up a good defense.”

To me, this made me think of a type of shame that bridges the shame described between the family shame described by the DeWolf’s in Traces of the Trade and the human vulnerability based shame that Nussbaum describes. I think that Levi describes a shame by association of the entire human race. In this passage, he describes the shame that liberators felt upon releasing the prisoners from the concentration camps – people that had not done anything wrong, but felt the immorality of being associated with other humans that have.

I haven’t really thought about this idea before, but it is an extension of the familial blame that covers the range that Nussbaum’s blame covers (in that it applies to all human beings). Human beings can feel shame because even if they did not do something, they are associated with the actions of other human beings. In this sense, shame is a feeling derived from human beings, as a whole, not presenting themselves as how human beings should (to benefit society).

I think this is an interesting concept, and I think it could apply to hate crime cases like Nussbaum explains and the Tyler Clementi case. We feel shame when we hear about discriminating individuals who inflict hate crimes by association. We are shameful that we share our human-ness with these people who so obviously conduct themselves badly.