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Aristotle on Shame and Learning to Be Good
OXFORD ARISTOTLE STUDIES
General Editor
Lindsay Judson
    
Doing and Being
An Interpretation of Aristotle’s Metaphysics Theta
Jonathan Beere
Aristotle on the Sources of the Ethical Life
Sylvia Berryman
Aristotle on Knowledge and Learning
The Posterior Analytics
David Bronstein
Aristotle and the Eleatic One
Timothy Clarke
Time for Aristotle
Physics IV. 10–14
Ursula Coope
Passions and Persuasion in Aristotle’s Rhetoric
Jamie Dow
Teleology, First Principles, and Scientific Method in Aristotle’s Biology
Allan Gotthelf
Aristotle on the Common Sense
Pavel Gregoric
The Powers of Aristotle’s Soul
Thomas Kjeller Johansen
Aristotle on Teleology
Monte Ransome Johnson
How Aristotle gets by in Metaphysics Zeta
Frank A. Lewis
Aristotle on the Apparent Good
Perception, Phantasia, Thought, and Desire
Jessica Moss
Priority in Aristotle’s Metaphysics
Michail Peramatzis
Aristotle’s Theory of Bodies
Christian Pfeiffer
Aristotle on Shame and
Learning to Be Good
MARTA JIMENEZ

1
 3
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To my grandfather, Mateo Agustín, who was a citizen soldier in the
Spanish civil war. And to my parents, who taught me about it.
 Acknowledgments

This book is a distant descendant of a doctoral thesis that I completed at the

University of Toronto. My gratitude is due first and foremost to my supervisor
and friend, Jennifer Whiting. I could not have hoped for a better person to guide
my work and help me during my early academic life. I am extremely grateful for
her continued support, encouragement, and challenge. Rachel Barney and Brad
Inwood were also part of the original conception of this project and helped me to
shape many of the central ideas. I thank them for challenging many of my initial
thoughts on the matter, for fruitful discussions, and for their extensive feedback.
This project has been in gestation for such a long time that I have incurred
many large debts of gratitude. It is a great pleasure to acknowledge the help of
those friends, mentors, and colleagues who gave me comments on parts or
sections of the material (whether in conversation or via written feedback) or
helped me through discussion on particular matters at various points: Julia
Annas, Samuel Baker, Juan Pablo Bermúdez, Alessandro Bonello, Sarah Broadie,
David Bronstein, Klaus Corcilius, Willie Costello, Jamie Dow, Zoli Filotas, Emily
Fletcher, Alessandra Fussi, Corinne Gartner, Paula Gottlieb, Devin Henry,
Sukaina Hirji, Douglas S. Hutchinson, Dhananjay Jagannathan, Monte Johnson,
Rusty Jones, Rachana Kamtekar, Aryeh Kosman, Danielle Layne, Stephen
Leighton, Mariska Leunissen, Patricia Marechal, Jessica Moss, Tim O’Keefe,
Chistiana Olfert, Richard Patterson, Francesca Pedriali, Christof Rapp, Gurpreet
Rattan, Krisanna Scheiter, Clerk Shaw, Brooks Sommerville, Matt Strohl, Jacob
Stump, Jan Szaif, Iakovos Vasiliou, David Wolfsdorf, and Joel Yurdin. Their
questions, objections, and comments at different stages of the project have been
essential for improving the final result and for helping me bring it to conclusion.
I especially wish to thank those who made comments or raised objections after
presentations which I gave about parts of the book at the University of Toronto,
the Humboldt University, Princeton University, the University of Vermont-
Burlington, Wellesley College, the University of California-Riverside, the
University of Tennessee-Knoxville, the University of Arizona, Haverford
College, and Virginia Tech University, and to the audiences of my talks on topics
from the book at general meetings of the American Philosophical Society, the
Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy, the Ancient Philosophy Society, the
Canadian Philosophical Association, and the European Philosophical Society for
the Study of Emotions.
I am particularly grateful to the participants of the Institute for the History of
Philosophy Summer Workshop that I co-organized with Christoph Rapp at
x 

Emory University in June 2015 on “Aristotle on the Emotions”: Jamie Dow, Craig
Henchey, Corinne Gartner, Paula Gottlieb, Stephen Leighton, Hendrik Lorenz,
Jozef Müller, Tim O’Keefe, Rachel Parsons, Clerk Shaw, Krisanna Scheiter,
Melpomeni Vogiatzi, and Marco Zingano. This workshop provided an ideal
environment to test some of my ideas about the role of emotions in Aristotle’s
ethics and to discuss my main view about the centrality of shame. More recently
I owe also thanks to Lucas Angioni for generously organizing in May 2018 a
workshop on a penultimate version of my manuscript at the University of
Campinas in São Paulo, Brazil, where I received insightful comments from
Lucas, João Hobuss, Fernando Mendonça, Inara Zanuzzi, and Raphael Zillig.
I sincerely thank the participants in this workshop for their valuable comments
and questions, and Lucas in particular for his warm hospitality and for many
stimulating exchanges about topics from the book.
Special thanks are due to Julia Annas and David Konstan, who generously read
whole drafts of this book and provided me with invaluable comments and
suggestions.
I worked out many of the ideas in this book while teaching courses on
Aristotle’s ethics and emotion theory at Emory University. I am grateful to my
students for their interest, their questions, and their insight as we worked together
through Aristotle’s texts and the work of modern commentators.
I would like to extend my gratitude also to my colleagues at the philosophy
department of Emory University for their encouragement and support. A Junior
Post Fourth-Year Review Leave from Emory allowed me to focus exclusively on
my research during the Spring and Fall semesters of 2016. I am grateful to the
university for this generous support.
Thanks are due for the many useful comments of anonymous reviewers at Oxford
University Press and, before that, for the comments of the anonymous reviewers
and editors of the journals where parts of these chapters first appeared as articles.
I also thank the editors at Oxford University Press for their guidance and patience.
I thank my research assistants and good friends, Chad Horne and Jacob Stump,
whose comments on the final drafts helped me clarify some key ideas and saved me
from several mistakes. John Proios and Andrew Culbreth provided last-minute vital
assistance compiling the indexes. I am of course responsible for any errors.
Lastly, I thank my parents, Joaquín Jiménez and Isabel Rodríguez-Valdés, to
whom this book is dedicated, and my wife, Stu Marvel, without whom I would not
have been able to finish anything and to whom I owe it all.
Chapter 1 is a revised version of my paper “Aristotle on Becoming Virtuous by
Doing Virtuous Actions,” Phronesis 61.1 (2016): 3–32. I thank Koninklijke Brill
NV for permission to reprint this material.
Parts of Chapter 2 draw on sections from my paper “Aristotle on ‘Steering the
Young by Pleasure and Pain’,” Journal of Speculative Philosophy 29.2 (2015):
137–164. I thank Penn State University Press for permission to reprint this
material.
 Introduction

Shame is a complex and multifaceted emotion and its contribution to our ethical
lives is difficult to pin down. For some, shame is a valuable emotion that helps us
to improve our character, motivating individuals and even communities to
achieve higher moral standards. But shame is also often seen as a feeling we are
better off without, insofar as it is a painful experience that can be used as a tool for
social manipulation or oppression, and it can be paralyzing or even lead to self-
destructive behavior.¹ This ambivalence about shame is on display not only in
contemporary discussions, but also in a good portion of the ancient Greek
literature.² In many ancient Greek texts, shame (aidōs, aischunē) appears to be
used in at least two senses, typically including both a good sense of shame as
virtue, or at the very least as a stepping-stone to virtue, and a bad sense of shame as
an oppressive emotion that unduly limits our agency.³ In Aristotle’s ethical
writings we also find both positive and negative aspects of shame: it is praise-
worthy in young people and crucial to their moral development, while it is alien to
the virtuous because it is linked to moral failure and excessively dependent on
what others think. My aim in this book is to show how Aristotle reconciles these
apparently conflicting aspects of shame in a single unified account, and to dispel
shame’s bad name by exploring Aristotle’s views on the nature of shame and its
positive role in our early ethical lives.
My central claim is that shame for Aristotle is not just a helpful aid to learning
to be good, but an essential part of that process. Shame is, I contend, the proto-

¹ Contemporary philosophical discussions of shame often open with remarks about the multifaceted
and ambivalent character of this emotion—see e.g. Kekes 1998; Calhoun 2004; Nussbaum 2004; Mason
2010; Tarnopolsky 2010; Deonna et al. 2012; and Thomason 2018. Among contemporary authors who
deal with shame, some underscore shame’s moral relevance and its potential to encourage moral
improvement—see e.g. Aldrich 1939; Rawls 1971, §67: “Self-Respect, Excellences, and Shame” (440–6);
Taylor 1985; Williams 1993; Elster 1999 (149–64); Calhoun 2004; Manion 2002; Arneson 2007; Mason
2010; Tarnopolsky 2010; Appiah 2010; Deonna et al. 2012; Lebron 2013; Fussi 2015; and Ramirez 2017.
Others, in turn, argue against its moral relevance—see e.g. Deigh 1983; while many others warn us against
shame’s potentially damaging effects—see e.g. Adkins 1960; Kekes 1998; Nussbaum 1980 and 2004 (esp.
ch. 4: “Inscribing the Face: Shame and Stigma”); and Thomason 2018.
² An essential study of the complex character of shame in ancient Greek thought, from Homer to
Aristotle, is Cairns 1993. See also Von Erffa 1937; Fisher 1992; Williams 1993; and Konstan 2006 ch. 4
(91–110). North’s 1966 study on sōphrosunē is also relevant.
³ See Chapter 5, Section 5.3, for a brief discussion of this distinction and the ways in which it has
been attributed to Aristotle. Cairns 1993 offers a thorough study of these two senses of shame in ancient
Greek literature and provides numerous examples.

Aristotle on Shame and Learning to Be Good. Marta Jimenez, Oxford University Press (2020). © Marta Jimenez.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198829683.003.0001
2 

virtue of those learning to be good (I shall call them “learners”),⁴ since it is the
emotion that equips learners with the seeds of virtue. Other emotions such as
friendliness (philia), righteous indignation (nemesis), emulation (zēlos), hope
(elpis), and even spiritedness (thumos) may play important roles on the road to
virtue. However, shame is the only one that Aristotle repeatedly associates with
moral progress. The reason, as I argue, is that shame can move young agents to
perform good actions and avoid bad ones in ways that appropriately resemble not
only the external behaviors of virtue, but also the orientation and receptivity to
moral value characteristic of virtuous people.
What, then, is shame, and how can it be seen to figure in our moral develop-
ment? Although shame is not a virtue for Aristotle, it has three connected features
that make it indispensable for the development of a good character: self-
reflectivity, other-relatedness, and responsiveness to moral considerations beyond
pleasures and gains. First, shame promotes our awareness of the connection
betweeen the inside and outside aspects of the self. Specifically, shame focuses
on the intimate connection between the praiseworthiness (or blameworthiness) of
our actions and the praiseworthiness (or blameworthiness) of our character—it
gets us to see our external behavior and, in general, how we seem to be, as a
reflection of who we are. Secondly, shame makes us receptive to the moral
opinions of others and thus enables us to listen to moral reasons. And finally,
third, shame makes agents responsive to a kind of value beyond mere pleasure
(hēdonē) and mere gain (kerdos). More precisely, shame makes agents responsive
to the value of the kalon (noble, admirable, beautiful, or fine), which is the
characteristic goal of virtue.⁵ By turning the agents’ attention to considerations
about honor (timē) and praise (epainos), and thus—as I will argue—turning their
attention to considerations about the perceived nobility and praiseworthiness of
their own actions and character, shame places young people on the path to
becoming good.
Beyond Aristotle, also in contemporary discussions shame is typically charac-
terized as a self-reflective and other-related emotion. Shame tends to be classified,

⁴ This idea echoes the claim in Burnyeat 1980 that shame is for Aristotle “the semi-virtue of the
learner” (78). Deonna et al. 2012 also use the expression “semi-virtue” in their explanation of shame’s
function in contemporary terms (178). I prefer “proto-virtue” because it has the connotations of being a
precursor of virtue, which I think is more accurate, as it preserves the Aristotelian point that shame puts
learners on the path towards virtue.
⁵ I will translate kalon for the most part as “noble,” but occasionally as “admirable,” “beautiful,” or
“fine,” or will leave it untranslated as seems most appropriate to the context. See note 11 in Chapter 1,
Section 1.2, below for the list of texts where Aristotle claims that doing virtuous actions “for the sake of
the noble” (tou kalou heneka) is characteristic of virtue. Some relevant discussions of the notion of the
kalon in Aristotle are Owens 1981; Rogers 1993; Cooper 1996; Richardson Lear 2006; Irwin 2010; Kraut
2013; and Crisp 2014.
  3

like pride and guilt, as one of the self-conscious or self-reflective emotions.⁶ The
self-reflectivity of shame is special, however, because it always includes a reference
to the gaze of the other. Central to any episode of shame is the apprehension,
imaginary or actual, of oneself as being seen or exposed in a negative light, as being
inadequate or failing in some way.⁷ Thus, shame is a response to the kind of
exposure that leads to loss of esteem in the eyes of others, as when we fail to
conform to social norms and ideals. The other-relatedness of shame is due to its
direct connection to our common human concern with status, respect, and
recognition—a concern that is also behind our appreciation of honor, reputation,
and praise and behind our aversion to contempt, disrepute, and blame. But shame
is also a self-reflective response to the exposure (or potential exposure) of our
failing to achieve goals and ideals that we ourselves think important and insepar-
able from what we are or what we aspire to be in life.
The self-reflectivity of shame, then, directly involves self-evaluation, and is
closely associated with self-esteem.⁸ Specifically, shame is an emotional response
to a kind of unwanted exposure that directly affects our sense of self-worth by
reminding us of the connection between who we are and who we seem to be
through our actions and, in general, through what is visible of us. This explains
why shame is relevant to moral development—especially for someone who, such
as Aristotle, holds that we learn to be good by doing good actions. If our sense of
shame is appropriately cultivated, it will motivate us to avoid doing what is
shameful and pursue instead what is genuinely noble and praiseworthy by tapping
into our aspirations to be the best we can.
From Bernard Williams’ Shame and Necessity (1993) to Anthony Appiah’s The
Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen (2010), and Chris Lebron’s The
Color of Our Shame: Race and Justice in Our Time (2013), shame has been at the

⁶ For the self-reflective or self-conscious character of shame see e.g. Taylor 1985; Tangney et al.
1995; Elster 1999; Calhoun 2004; Manion 2002; Nussbaum 2004; Deonna et al. 2012; and
Thomason 2018.
⁷ The locus classicus for the connection between shame and exposure is Sartre’s famous analysis of
the shame one experiences at being discovered in an embarrassing situation (Sartre 1956, Part 3, ch. 1).
More recent discussions of the connection between shame and exposure are e.g. Williams 1993, who
holds that “the root of shame lies in exposure . . . in being at a disadvantage: in . . . a loss of power” (220);
Velleman 2001, for whom the key events that provokes shame are failures of privacy and “unintentional
self-exposure” (38). Sherman 2016 reminds us that the Greek etymology of aidōs (shame), which is
related to aidoia, genitals, underscores this connection between shame and exposure; as she puts it “to
be ashamed is to be caught without your fig leaf” (128). For the connection between shame and failure
see e.g. Deigh 1983 (following Piers 1953): “shame is occasioned when one fails to achieve a goal or an
ideal that is integral to one’s self-conception. [ . . . ] Shame is felt over shortcomings, guilt over wrong-
doings” (225).
⁸ The self-evaluative character of shame is discussed by e.g. Taylor 1985 (who calls pride, shame, and
guilt “emotions of self-assessment”); Tangney et al. 1995 and 2007 (who claim that shame, guilt, and
embarrassment are “evoked by self-reflection and self-evaluation,” 347); Elster 1999; Manion 2002;
Nussbaum 2004; Deonna et al. 2012; and Thomason 2018 (who characterizes shame as “an experience
of tension between one’s identity and one’s self- conception,” 11). A classic defense of the connection
between shame and self-esteem appears in Rawls 1971 (440–6), while Deigh 1983 argues against the
existence of such a connection.
4 

center of different important proposals on how to reformulate modern ethics

which have brought to the fore the relevance of moral emotions. My book is a
contribution to this conversation. I think that the views of Williams, Appiah, and
Lebron concerning the potential transformative powers of shame are in line with
Aristotle’s understanding of the role of this emotion in moral development.⁹ From
very different angles, these authors converge in seeing that by mobilizing people’s
concern for how they look, how they appear, and whether they are living up to
some ideal, shame (and, for Appiah, love of honor) can encourage people to act in
ways that more closely correspond to their individual and social standards of
decency, and ultimately to live better lives and be better.
Many modern readers, however, are suspicious of shame and maintain that we
do better without it, particularly in the context of a theory of moral formation.¹⁰
Shame’s connection with honor and praise (and with contempt and blame), plus
shame’s concern with how we appear in the eyes of others, provokes two worries:
heteronomy and superficiality. According to the first worry, insofar as shame
makes us depend on the opinions of others, it may seem that shame is an obstacle
to the development of moral autonomy. Agents who respond to shame are seen as
moved by external incentives and societal pressures instead of being guided by
their own internal motivations and reasons, and consequently they are seen as
excessively heteronomous.¹¹ According to the second worry, insofar as shame
tracks how we appear to others, it seems superficial—concerned with reputation
and mere appearance rather than reality.¹² These reservations tend to undermine
or obscure the positive aspects of shame that Aristotle identifies. How can we
square the central role of shame in Aristotle’s theory of moral development with
these more questionable features?
Part of the aim of this book is to argue that the complex nature of shame, its
responsiveness to the moral views of others, and its direct responsiveness to praise
and blame, are precisely the features that make shame a good catalyst for moral
development. Both the self-reflective and the other-related aspects of shame are
key in our progress towards virtue. Against the heteronomy objection, I argue that
shame’s connection with love of honor, reputation, and praise, and with aversion
to disrepute, disgrace, and reproach, is not an obstacle to the development of

⁹ In fact, both Appiah 2010 and Lebron 2013 emphasisize the Aristotelian roots of their views.
Appiah 2010 claims that his study of the relevance of honor in a successful human life “is a contribution
to ethics in Aristotle’s sense” (xiv), while Lebron 2013 appeals to Neo-Aristotelian virtue theory, and
concretely cites the work of Sherman 1989 and Hursthouse 2001 in support of his analysis of how
shame is relevant to contemporary politics (see “Shame and Politics?,” 22–6, and notes 8–9 at 170).
¹⁰ See e.g. Adkins 1960; Kekes 1988; Nussbaum 1980 and 2004; Baron 2017; and Thomason 2018.
Tarnopolsky 2010 presents an insightful review of some of these critics in her Introduction at 2–4 and
discusses the views in more detail in Chapters 5 and 6.
¹¹ See a list of commentators who hold the view that shame is a potential obstacle to autonomy and
my arguments against it in Chapters 4 and 6.
¹² See my characterization of the classic attack on shame (and “shame culture”) and my arguments
against it in Chapter 4 (especially section 4.3).
  5

autonomy. Rather, the attention to other people’s views explains why shame can
help us acquire the intellectual and affective maturity of autonomous moral
agents, who live in a social context where giving and taking reasons for one’s
behavior and choices is part of moral life.¹³ Against the superficiality objection,
I argue that shame’s connection with love of honor and responsiveness to praise
and blame does not entail a superficial concern with appearance over reality. For
Aristotle, love of honor and concern with praise and blame are not just based on
the joy of merely appearing to be good in the eyes of others, but on the joy of
getting others to truly see virtue (or the potential for virtue) in oneself through
one’s actions. Because of its self-reflective character, shame turns our attention to
the intimate link that connects the things we do, and how those things make us
appear in our social world, with the kind of people that we are (or will become). As a
consequence, the aversion to what is shameful, as well as the aspiration to shine in
the eyes of others, are typically indications that learners are attending to consider-
ations about the nobility or shamefulness of their actions as a reflection of who they
are (or who they will become), and have a true interest in doing what is right.
As Aristotle reminds us in Rhetoric (Rhet) II 6, 1383b13–1385a15, the kinds of
things that produce shame are those that are “due to bad character” (apo kakias,
1383b18) or those actions that are generally “signs” (sēmeia) of defective traits of
character (1383b29–1384a4 and 1384b17–20).¹⁴ By producing in us aversion to
displaying signs of bad character or vice, and by making us alert to those signs and
their connection with true vice, shame makes us veer away from the kinds of
actions that make us worse precisely because they make us worse (as opposed to
veering away from bad actions on account of the mere fear of the potential harms
or unpleasant consequences that might follow). Consequently, shame puts learn-
ers on the right path towards true virtue. Far from moving learners to simply fake
virtue until they acquire stable virtuous dispositions of character, shame makes
learners genuinely responsive to the value of the noble, and to how that value is
expressed in what they do and what they are.
Although it is not controversial that shame plays a relevant role in Aristotle’s
theory of ethical formation, the texts that explicitly support this claim are scarce
and scattered throughout the ethical treatises, so any attempt to specify the role of
shame must confront substantial obstacles. Aristotle himself does not provide us
with a direct and detailed explanation of the process of moral development; rather,
in his ethical treatises he offers a schematic account. Thus the reader is left to
decipher the nature of the practices that lead learners to become virtuous agents

¹³ See e.g. Calhoun 2004 and Sher 2006 for insightful discussions of this point. In agreement with
these authors, Aristotle’s view is—as I argue throughout this book, and especially in Chapter 4 below—
that responsiveness to shame equips learners with a sensitivity to blame (and praise) which is clear
expression of a concern with moral issues and an aspiration to getting things right.
¹⁴ Unless otherwise noted, all translations of passages from Aristotle’s Rhetoric are from Rhys
Roberts (in Barnes 1984), sometimes substantially modified, and the Greek text used is Ross 1959.
6 

from a limited number of remarks on habituation and good upbringing.

Moreover, although Aristotle devotes two long discussions to shame—at
Nicomachean Ethics (NE) IV 9, 1128b10–35, and Rhet II 6, 1383b12–1385a15—
both are incomplete and fragmentary, and fail to spell out the details of how
shame is an integral part of young people’s transition into mature moral agents.
To build a more complete and unified account of the role of shame in moral
development, then, we will have to look beyond these texts. Some of the crucial
passages that help build a deeper story about shame are the discussions of moral
development and the relationship between actions and dispositions at NE II 1–4
and Eudemian Ethics (EE) II 1; the characterization of shame as one of the
emotional praiseworthy means between extremes at NE II 7, 1108a30–35, and
EE III 7, 1233b16–1234a34; the treatment of voluntariness and praise in NE III
1–5, 1109b30–1115a3, and EE II 6–11, 1222b15–1228a19; the discussions of the
pseudo-courage based on shame at NE III 8, 1116a15–29, and EE III 1,
1230a16–33; and the final remarks on the ideal audience of ethical lessons at NE
X 9, 1179b4–16, where Aristotle directly associates shame with receptivity to
ethical arguments. As I will show, these passages offer sufficient textual evidence
to establish shame’s relevance to the question of moral education in Aristotle and
to make apparent how shame equips us with the necessary orientation for learning
to be good.

0.1 The “Moral Upbringing Gap” and Shame

as the Bridge to Virtue

Let me start by presenting the problem that the proposal of shame as the proto-
virtue of the learner is designed to solve. Aristotle offers an account in the NE of
how we become good that seems, at first sight, relatively straightforward. He
famously claims that we become just, temperate, and courageous by performing
just, temperate, and courageous actions, and in general, that we become virtuous
agents by doing virtuous actions; I call this the learning-by-doing thesis. Yet
Aristotle also makes clear that virtuous actions performed virtuously, i.e. virtuous
actions done in the right way or as the virtuous person does them, must be
performed both with knowledge and with a proper aim, which he often expresses
as “for the sake of the noble” (tou kalou heneka).¹⁵ The tension between these
claims produces a serious difficulty: How can learners be expected to perform
virtuous actions in the right way—and thereby learn virtue “by doing”—unless

¹⁵ The claim that doing virtuous actions “for the sake of the noble” (tou kalou heneka) is charac-
teristic of virtue (and virtuous people) is expressed by Aristotle on numerous occasions throughout the
discussion of the particular virtues of character in NE III 6 to IV 8, 1115a6–1128b9. See Chapter 1, note
11 for a list of passages where Aristotle makes this claim.
 “  ”        7

they are already virtuous? For if learners are already in such condition as to be able
to do virtuously-performed virtuous actions, then they would have the kind of
knowledge and motivational tendencies that characteristically belong to virtuous
people. The answer is, I propose, that learners are not blank slates, but have
instead proto-virtuous resources that allow them to perform virtuous actions in
the right way before having the relevant dispositions. And crucially, I argue, the
emotion of shame is the key proto-virtuous resource for learners to be able to do
virtuous actions aiming at the right goal.
Aristotle’s solution to the learning-by-doing puzzle in NE II 4 is cryptic, and as
I show in Chapter 1, it has been read in many ways. Some interpretations take the
actions of the learners of virtue to be merely externally similar to those of virtuous
people—this is sometimes called the “mechanical view,” according to which
learners perform the actions in an unthinking and almost automatic way.¹⁶ This
view, as many modern commentators recognize, is unsatisfactory because it fails
to provide the relevant continuity between the actions of the learners and the
dispositions that those actions produce. Specifically, it leaves us with the need to
bridge the gap between the learners’ mechanically performed virtuous actions and
the reliably virtuous dispositions that such actions are supposed to produce—this
is what I call “the moral upbringing gap.”
To achieve continuity in the process of learning by doing—i.e. to make the
learners’ actions truly conducive to virtue—it is required not only that the learners’
actions are virtuous (in the sense of being the right thing to do in the circumstances),
but also that they are done in the right way, i.e. exercising the relevant capacities. The
reason is that, the weaker the link between the manner in which the actions of
learners are performed and the manner in which truly virtuous agents act, the more
difficult it will be to understand how the repeated performance of the learners’
actions can produce genuinely virtuous dispositions of character.
Attention to this requirement of continuity has led most contemporary com-
mentators to agree that habituation is not a mindless process and that learners
must exercise the relevant cognitive capacities in their practices towards virtue.
Concretely, learners must not just perform actions that are right in the circum-
stances, but must also do them with awareness of what they are doing and
involvement of their perceptive and deliberative capacities. By adding this “know-
ledge requirement” to the practices of the learners, most recent interpretations
succeed in maintaining a sufficient continuity in the development of the cognitive
powers relevant to the exercise of virtue.
For many of these commentators, however, the actions of the learners still differ
from those of virtuous people because, they assume, learners do not perform
virtuous actions with virtuous motivation—or more precisely, they do not

¹⁶ See a discussion of this view and a list of authors who defend it in Chapter 1, Section 1.2.
8 

do virtuous actions for the sake of the noble. Unfortunately, as I argue, this
deflationary interpretation of the actions of the learners—this time, deflationary
regarding their goal—leaves Aristotle’s view open to a second problem of discon-
tinuity like the one found in the mechanical view. To fully close this second gap
and provide continuity to the process of moral development, learners must also
have the ability to perform virtuous actions in the right way with regard to their
motivation. Their actions must contribute not only to the formation of cognitive
capacities that enable them to adequately deliberate about practical situations, but
must also lead to the formation of a reliable motivational tendency to orient their
behavior towards the noble and consistently act for the sake of the noble.
Put briefly, not all instances of virtuous actions are conducive to virtue, but only
those that engage both the relevant cognitive capacities and the relevant affective
tendencies in the learner. To be successful, then, learners will have not only to
learn how to determine what kind of behavior is appropriate to each practical
situation, but also to practice the proper ways of being affected, since the goal is to
become the kind of person who not only reliably does virtuous actions, but does
them out of the right stable disposition, i.e. virtue.
For Aristotle, as I will argue, when learners of virtue behave reactively, just
following orders, out of mere familiarity, enticed by the prospect of rewards, or
simply to avoid punishments, they fail to exercise the relevant ethical capacities,
even if they do the right thing; instead, they learn to attend to situational features
that distract their attention from the noble and the good. When people are guided
by their fears or their appetites, they attend to considerations about self-
preservation or self-satisfaction that often take them away from aiming at the
noble and the good. In contrast, the feeling of shame turns agents towards
considerations about the public recognition (approval or disapproval) of their
actions, and thus it tracks a value that is different from pleasure or gain—a value
that, as I will argue, is directly related to nobility and praiseworthiness. Moreover,
when learners are guided by their sense of shame, they focus on how their actions
reveal their character, and consequently they can exercise their agency more fully,
and strive to act in ways that are expressive of nobility and goodness, avoiding to
act in ways that express baseness.
Although behavior moved by shame might appear externally similar to behavior
moved by fear, appetite, etc., there is in fact a significant difference regarding the
cognitive and affective capacities being exercised in each case, and a significant
difference in the kind of character being built. By focusing on questions about the
perceived nobility and praiseworthiness of their actions, or about how to avoid
shameful conduct, learners guided by their sense of shame exercise a capacity for
responsive awareness to the ethically relevant features of their situations. Thus, as
the emotion that spurs agents to perform actions because of their nobility and
praiseworthyness and to avoid those actions that are shameful or reprehensible,
shame provides learners with the sort of malleable pre-habituated orientation
       -    9

towards the noble that allows them to perform virtuous actions with the relevant
motive before they have acquired practical wisdom or stable virtuous dispositions.
This is why shame is crucial to solving our initial puzzle about moral
development.

0.2 Finding Space for Shame as the Proto-Virtue of the Learner

Since the early 1980s there have been numerous attempts to understand Aristotle’s
account of moral upbringing and to determine the steps that, according to
Aristotle, lead towards the acquisition of virtue, with particular attention to the
interplay of cognitive and non-cognitive elements.¹⁷ Thanks to Myles Burnyeat‘s
seminal paper, “Aristotle on Learning to be Good” (1980), much attention has
been paid to two important features of Aristotle’s theory of moral development:
first, the claim from NE II 1 that practice, not teaching, generates virtue of
character; and second, Aristotle’s contention, against Socratic intellectualism,
that moral development requires attention to both cognitive and affective factors.¹⁸
These two basic Aristotelian tenets, which I call the learning-by-doing thesis and the
non-intellectualist thesis respectively, occupy a central place in most modern
accounts of Aristotle’s theory of moral education and are at the core of the argument
of this book.
A third basic tenet that Burnyeat’s interpretation stresses is that there is an
intimate connection between Aristotle’s understanding of the process of acquisi-
tion of virtue and his conception of virtue. As Nancy Sherman puts it, “if full
virtue is to meet certain conditions, then this must be reflected in the educational
process.”¹⁹ Aristotle himself expresses a similar thought in NE II 3, when he states

¹⁷ Much of the literature aims at rethinking the contrast between cognitive and non-cognitive
elements (sometimes expressed in terms of “rational” vs. “non-rational”) and highlight the intertwined
character of those elements. See e.g. Sorabji 1973–4; Burnyeat 1980; Kosman 1980; Engberg-Pedersen
1983; Hursthouse 1984, 1988, and 2001; Sherman 1989 (esp. ch. 5), 1997 and 1999a; Broadie 1991 (esp.
ch. 2); Cooper 1996; McDowell 1996; Vasiliou 1996 and 2007; Kraut 1998 and 2012; Achtenberg 2002;
Curzer 2002 and 2012; Fossheim 2006; Kristjánsson 2006; Lorenz 2009; Lawrence 2009 and 2011; Moss
2011, 2012 (esp. ch. 8), and 2014; and Coope 2012. (This interest in the non-rational and in the role of
emotions in our moral psychology is reinforced by a renewed interest in Aristotle’s theory of emotions
and their role in persuasion as it appears the Rhetoric (see e.g. Fortenbaugh 1970 and 1992; Leighton
1982/1996; Cooper 1993 and 1996b; Striker 1996; Nussbaum 1996; Rapp 2002 and 2012; and Dow
2007, 2009, 2011, and 2015.)
¹⁸ The so-called “Socratic intellectualism,” a label used to indicate that Socrates underestimates the
importance of the affective side of human nature and focuses solely on the intellectual, is probably an
exaggeration that we owe to Aristotle, who sometimes aims at characterizing his view as radically
opposed to that of Socrates in this regard. Although this interpretation of Socrates has been dominant
until recently, an emerging consensus is that at least the Socrates from Plato’s dialogues pays close
attention to the effects of emotions in our intellectual and moral development. See Nehamas 1999 and
Segvic 2000 for careful discussions of the history and the limits of the interpretation of Socrates as a
model of intellectualism, and Blank 1993 for an insightful overview on the relevance of emotions in the
Socratic conversations.
¹⁹ Sherman 1989, 159. See also Burnyeat 1980, 69.
10 

that “the actions from which [virtue] arises (ex hōn egeneto) are those in which
[virtue] actualizes itself (peri tauta kai energei)”²⁰ (1105a15–16). And in EE II 1,
1220a29–32: “Virtue, then, is a disposition of this kind, which is brought about
(ginetai) by the best movements of the soul and which produces (prattetai) the
best functions and affections of the soul.”²¹ This rule, which I call the continuity
principle, is the third main precept behind the argument of this book, and will be
crucial to explain the role that shame plays in our moral development.
One of the fortunate consequences of paying close attention to the details of
Aristotle’s learning-by-doing thesis has been the total abandonment of the old
mechanical view of habituation, according to which the practices of the learners of
virtue are understood simply as the mechanical repetition of behavior that exter-
nally resembles the actions of virtuous people. By contrast, contemporary inter-
pretations highlight that the practices which lead towards the acquisition of virtue
are not mere drills but in fact engage the learners at a cognitive level.
In relation to Aristotle’s non-intellectualist stance, Burnyeat famously points
out that perhaps the most remarkable feature of the Aristotelian account of ethical
upbringing lies in the fact that Aristotle, unlike Socrates, allows non-rational
factors to occupy a preferential place in moral development. For Aristotle,
Burnyeat claims, these non-rational factors are “the fabric of moral character”
(1980, 80).²² This overturning of the Socratic intellectualistic model means, as
Burnyeat puts it, that Aristotle achieves a “grasp of the truth that morality comes
in a sequence of stages with both cognitive and emotional dimensions” (1980, 70–1).
In brief, Aristotle’s learners of virtue find themselves at an intermediate stage in
which both rational and non-rational factors play an important role.
Thus, a second auspicious consequence of Burnyeat’s intervention in the debate
has been a focus on the role of the emotions. Nancy Sherman’s The Fabric of
Character (1989), which offers a general study of Aristotle’s views on the non-
rational sources of virtue, represents a good example of this trend, with a remark-
able attempt to take seriously the role of emotions in moral education.²³ However,
since the main goal of Sherman’s account of moral development is to argue for a
conception of habituation as “reflective and critical,” her focus remains primarily

²⁰ καὶ ὅτι ἐξ ὧν ἐγένετο, περὶ ταῦτα καὶ ἐνεργεῖ. (Unless otherwise noted, all translations of passages
from the NE are from Ross-Urmson (in Barnes 1984), sometimes substantially modified, and the Greek
text used is Bywater 1894.)
²¹ καὶ ἡ ἀρετὴ ἄρα ἡ τοιαύτη διάθεσις ἐστίν, ἣ γίνεταί τε ὑπὸ τῶν ἀρίστων περὶ ψυχὴν κινήσεων καὶ
ἀφ’ ἧς πράττεται τὰ ἄριστα τῆς ψυχῆς ἔργα καὶ πάθη. (Unless otherwise noted, translations of the EE are
from Inwood-Woolf 2013, sometimes substantially modified, and the Greek text used is from Susemihl
1884.) See also NE II 2, 1103b29–31 and 1104a27–29; NE II 3, 1104b19–21; and NE III 5, 1114a6–7, all
quoted in Chapter 1. Section 1.3 below.
²² This phrase would later be the title of Sherman’s 1989 monograph on Aristotle’s theory of virtue.
²³ See especially Sherman 1989, 44–50. See also e.g. Fortenbaugh 1969 (repr. 2006); Kosman 1980;
and Sherman 1997 and 1999a. For a treatment of this issue from a broader perspective see
Kristjánsson 2007.
       -    11

on “how we refine the discriminatory capacities included in the emotions”

(1989, 160).
My goal here is to contribute to this study of the emotional dimension of moral
development by offering an account of the role of shame as the emotion that
provides the minimal starting conditions that make moral progress possible. On
my interpretation, shame, which was considered to be a fundamental civic virtue
in the tradition from Homer to Plato, does not lose its force and relevance in the
works of Aristotle. Although Aristotle, like Plato, partly breaks with the tradition
that precedes him by giving shame a reduced role in the life of the virtuous person,
his strategy is to transfer the central role of shame from the virtuous life to earlier
stages in moral development, and to regard it as a requirement for the acquisition
of mature virtue.²⁴ Shame, then, is not less important in Aristotle’s work than it
was in the work of his predecessors; on the contrary, for Aristotle shame is an
indispensable notion in the explanation of how the acquisition of full virtue is
possible.
Contemporary commentators often reject that shame can play a positive role in
moral development because they assume that Aristotle understands shame as a
desire for mere reputation and a fear of mere disrepute.²⁵ For them, Aristotle has
strong reasons to reject shame’s role in the development of a fully virtuous agent
because shame’s dependence on the opinion of others and its concern with
appearance make it incompatible with the sort of orientation towards the noble
that is characteristic of a virtuous agent. In other words, they attribute to Aristotle
the heteronomy and superficiality worries that we find in contemporary literature
about shame. My goal is to show that for Aristotle shame is directly linked with a
concern with nobility and praiseworthiness—a concern with being seen as noble
and expressing nobility (or avoiding shamefulness) in one’s actions because one
aspires to genuine nobility and goodness—and I argue that such a link places
shame at the center of Aristotle’s understanding of our moral development.
There are some scholars who recently, and as part of the renewed interest in the
role of emotions in our intellectual and moral lives, have taken a more sympa-
thetic conception of the relationship between shame, virtue, and the noble in
Aristotle’s work.²⁶ Some of them have opened promising avenues for a positive

²⁴ Thus, views like that of Irwin 1999, who sees in the fact that Aristotle denies to shame the
condition of being a virtue a sign that he “rejects a long Greek tradition” (347) are exaggerated in my
opinion. On the contrary, I hold that Aristotle does not reject the long tradition that considers shame a
central element in the regulation of moral conduct. He merely refines this view by limiting the positive
role of shame to the sphere of moral development rather than moral maturity.
²⁵ Some representative examples of this negative interpretation of Aristotle’s view of shame (as
excessively other-dependent and superficial) are Irwin 1999; Broadie 1993; Richardson Lear 2004;
Taylor 2006; and Hitz 2012. This view will be discussed in detail in Chapter 4 below.
²⁶ This is particularly the case since Burnyeat 1980. Other authors who explicitly acknowledge that
shame has an important place in Aristotle’s account of moral development are: Cairns 1993; Curzer
2002 and 2012; Grönroos 2007; and Raymond 2017. For challenging arguments against this strategy see
Hitz 2012.
12 

role of shame in moral development, and the approach that I propose in this book
is greatly influenced by their insights.
My view on the centrality of shame in moral progress is most indebted to
Burnyeat’s account of habituation and learning to be good in Aristotle, and a
major part of this book can be seen as a development and defense of his view. For
Burnyeat, shame is crucial in moral progress because it is the emotion that turns
learners towards the noble by initiating them in the proper appreciation of the
pleasures of the noble. Concretely, Burnyeat underscores how shame helps to
transform the learners’ motivational outlook by shifting their attention from
appetitive pleasures to the pleasures of noble activities. I believe Burnyeat’s
account is fundamentally right and provides the right clue to solve the problem
of the gap in moral development: the learners’ ability to feel shame—which
Burnyeat calls “the semi-virtue of the learner” (78)—is precisely what gives
them initial access to the new pleasures of the noble. What I set as my goal to
explain, is exactly how shame does that.
My view aims at complementing Burnyeat’s initial proposal by explaining how
shame gives learners access to the value of the noble through a more basic concern
with honor, reputation, and praise. This concern with honor, reputation, and
praise performs a double function: on the one hand, it turns the agents’ attention
away from the lure of mere pleasure and mere advantage, and makes them able to
resist the temptation of shameful pleasures and gains; on the other hand, it turns
agents towards considerations of praiseworthiness and blameworthiness, and thus
puts them on the track of the noble and away from the shameful.
My defense of shame, then, requires that we pay close attention to Aristotle’s
crucial distinction between three objects of choice at NE II 3, 1104b30–31, namely
the noble, the advantageous, and the pleasant, and that we acknowledge that while
these objects of choice are often aligned in the eyes of virtuous people, agents can
be motivated by each of them separately from early on in life. Crucially, young
people can be moved by the motive of the noble before they have been fully
formed in virtue, and this capacity enables them to perform virtuous actions in the
right way and to choose the noble over the merely pleasant and the advantageous
in ways that have a transformative effect on their character.
A second wave of inspiration comes from some of Burnyeat’s critics (such as
Curzer 2012) who propose models of moral education that focus on conditioning
strategies, where the weight is placed in associating pleasures or pains to the right
objects. I show that these models fail to confer sufficient continuity to the process
and are unable to explain how actions guided by appetitive pleasures and pains
can yield dispositions to act for the sake of the noble and in avoidance of the
shameful. Instead, I argue that young people have from the start a basic appreci-
ation of nobility and a repulsion towards the shameful and that moral upbringing
consists in the cultivation of that initial appreciation of the noble—especially
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sound
sounded
sounder
sounding
Soundings
soundness
sounds
source
sources
Sousse
Soutcheou
south
southeast
southeasterly
southeastern
southeastward
southerly
southern
southernmost
Southgate
southward
southwardly
southwards
Southwark
SOUTHWEST
southwesterly
southwestern
southwestward
southwestwards
Southworth
souvenir
souvenirs
Sovereign
sovereigns
sovereignties
Sovereignty
sow
sown
Soziale
space
spaces
spacious
spade
spadeful
Spain
span
Spaniard
Spaniards
Spanish
spanned
spare
spared
sparing
sparingly
spark
sparkling
sparks
sparred
spars
sparse
sparsely
spasmodic
Spaulding
speak
speakee
speaker
speakers
Speaking
speaks
spear
spearmen
spears
special
SPECIALISTS
specialized
specially
specialties
specie
species
specific
specifically
specification
specifications
specified
specify
specimen
specimens
specious
spectacle
Spectator
spectators
spectra
spectre
spectroscopic
Spectrum
speculation
speculative
speculators
Speech
speeches
speechless
speed
speedier
speedily
speeds
speedy
spelt
Spencer
spend
spending
spendthrifts
spent
Speranza
sperm
spermato
Sphakia
sphere
Spheres
spherical
spice
spiders
spies
spill
spilt
spinal
spindle
Spine
spinning
SPION
spirit
spirited
spiritedly
spirits
Spiritual
spiritualistic
spirituous
Spiritus
Spirogyra
spit
spite
Spitzbergen
Spitzkop
splashing
spleen
splendid
splendidly
splendor
splendour
splenic
splints
split
splitting
spoil
spoiled
spoilers
SPOILS
spoilsmen
spoke
spoken
spokesman
spokesmen
spoliation
spongy
sponsor
sponsors
spontaneous
spontaneously
spool
spoon
Spooner
sporadic
spore
spores