Ancient & modern
Prime Minister Blair is trying to restore ‘respect’ to our mean streets. The impossibility of the task may be judged by the observation that no one in government has yet mentioned its vital counterpart — shame.
The concept of shame, aidôs in ancient Greek, plays a central role in the value system of Homeric society, the world in which the West’s first work of literature, Homer’s Iliad, is set (c.700 BC). It covered a spectrum of internalised feelings ranging from ‘awe’ to ‘fear’ (especially fear of punishment) and was aroused in the heart of anyone who acted wrongly, or below their best. Soldiers, for example, are called to put aidôs in their hearts if there is a danger that they may not stand firm in battle; Hector’s sense of aidôs drives him on to face the terrifying Achilles in single combat.
The existence of aidôs implies that, among Homeric heroes, there were generally agreed standards of conduct, shared by the whole community and therefore enforced by it. Aidôs, in other words, was one of the central cooperative virtues binding the community together and keeping people up to the mark.
The most dramatic opponent of such co-operative virtues in the ancient world was Diogenes (400–325 BC), the man who invented the Cynic (‘dog-like’) philosophy. He believed real human nature to be primitive and animal-like, rejected all ties of family and state, and flouted all conventions of behaviour. Like a dog, there was nothing he was too ashamed to do in public. But there was a serious point to all this. Cynics believed happiness to be unconnected with worldly goods, but dependent up on inner resources that could be nurtured only by severe mental and physical discipline. To that extent Diogenes foreshadowed the early Christian fathers like St Antony, cutting off all human contact and retiring into the desert to demonstrate their rejection of society and desire only for closeness to God.
In a world where communities rarely function as such, and screens, magazines and newspapers are filled with celebrities who may as well be dogs for all the sense of shame they exhibit, retiring into the desert may soon be the only option left.
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