Shame and Necessity - Softcover

Williams, Bernard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520088301 ISBN 13: 9780520088306

Publisher: University of California Press, 1994

Synopsis

We tend to suppose that the ancient Greeks had primitive ideas of the self, of responsibility, freedom, and shame, and that now humanity has advanced from these to a more refined moral consciousness. Bernard Williams's original and radical book questions this picture of Western history. While we are in many ways different from the Greeks, Williams claims that the differences are not to be traced to a shift in these basic conceptions of ethical life. We are more like the ancients than we are prepared to acknowledge, and only when this is understood can we properly grasp our most important differences from them, such as our rejection of slavery.

The author is a philosopher, but much of his book is directed to writers such as Homer and the tragedians, whom he discusses as poets and not just as materials for philosophy. At the center of his study is the question of how we can understand Greek tragedy at all, when its world is so far from ours.

Williams explains how it is that when the ancients speak, they do not merely tell us about themselves, but about ourselves. Shame and Necessity gives a new account of our relations to the Greeks, and helps us to see what ethical ideas we need in order to live in the modern world.

About this title

About the Author:

Bernard Williams (1929-2003) was White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford University, and Monroe Deutsch Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. His previous books include Descartes: The Project of Pure Inquiry (1979), Moral Luck (1981), and Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (1985).

From Library Journal:

This book is about ancient Greek ethical ideas, primarily of Homer and the tragedians. Denying that modern ethical understanding is merely a progressive version of Greek thought, Williams contends that the ancients' ideas can illuminate our own. His question is how to respond to a view grounded in supernatural conceptions we have long since discarded. He examines Greek ideas of agency, intention, practical deliberation, akrasia ("weakness of will"), necessity, and so forth, analyzing which motivations the Greeks found admirable and, especially, how shame, guilt, regret, and forgiveness interrelate. Significant contrasts concern whether the moral self is characterless, what warrants self-respect, and how to regard unintentionally caused suffering. Clearly written, well argued, and carefully documented, the book should interest classicists and philosophers alike.
- Robert Hoffman, York Coll.,
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0520088301
• ISBN 13: 9780520088306
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 254