- [UNTITLED]
- Preface
- List of Contributors
- Homeric Ethics
- Plato's Ethics
- Aristotle's Ethics
- Epicurus: Freedom, Death, and Hedonism
- Cynicism and Stoicism
- Ancient Scepticism
- Platonic Ethics in Later Antiquity
- Thomism
- The Franciscans
- Later Christian Ethics
- Nature, Law, and Natural Law
- Seventeenth-Century Moral Philosophy: Self-Help, Self-Knowledge, and the Devil's Mountain
- Rousseau and Ethics
- Utilitarianism: Bentham and Rashdall
- Rationalism
- Rational Intuitionism
- Moral Sense and Sentimentalism
- Butler's Ethics
- Hume's Place in the History of Ethics
- Adam Smith
- Kant's Moral Philosophy
- Kantian Ethics
- Post-Kantianism
- Hegel and Marx
- J. S. Mill
- Sidgwick
- British Idealist Ethics
- Ethics in the Analytic Tradition
- Free Will
- Emotion and the Emotions
- Happiness, Suffering, and Death
- Autonomy
- Egoism, Partiality, and Impartiality
- Conscience, Guilt, and Shame
- Moral Psychology and Virtue
- Justice, Equality, and Rights
- Styles of Moral Relativism: a Critical Family Tree
- Moral Metaphysics
- Constructing Practical Ethics
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter begins by tracing the development of the notion of conscience in the Western philosophical tradition and then addresses questions regarding the supposed authority or normativity of conscience. The relation between the idea of conscience and the notions of guilt and shame is examined, which in turn leads on to the question of whether the concepts of guilt and shame inhabit essentially different ethical landscapes. The chapter concludes by looking at the contribution of psychoanalytic thinking to our modern understanding of the phenomena of conscience, guilt and shame, and by asking why the resulting insights have been so imperfectly assimilated into contemporary anglophone moral philosophy.
Keywords: guilt, shame, conscience, moral philosophy, ethics
John Cottingham is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Reading, UK.
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- [UNTITLED]
- Preface
- List of Contributors
- Homeric Ethics
- Plato's Ethics
- Aristotle's Ethics
- Epicurus: Freedom, Death, and Hedonism
- Cynicism and Stoicism
- Ancient Scepticism
- Platonic Ethics in Later Antiquity
- Thomism
- The Franciscans
- Later Christian Ethics
- Nature, Law, and Natural Law
- Seventeenth-Century Moral Philosophy: Self-Help, Self-Knowledge, and the Devil's Mountain
- Rousseau and Ethics
- Utilitarianism: Bentham and Rashdall
- Rationalism
- Rational Intuitionism
- Moral Sense and Sentimentalism
- Butler's Ethics
- Hume's Place in the History of Ethics
- Adam Smith
- Kant's Moral Philosophy
- Kantian Ethics
- Post-Kantianism
- Hegel and Marx
- J. S. Mill
- Sidgwick
- British Idealist Ethics
- Ethics in the Analytic Tradition
- Free Will
- Emotion and the Emotions
- Happiness, Suffering, and Death
- Autonomy
- Egoism, Partiality, and Impartiality
- Conscience, Guilt, and Shame
- Moral Psychology and Virtue
- Justice, Equality, and Rights
- Styles of Moral Relativism: a Critical Family Tree
- Moral Metaphysics
- Constructing Practical Ethics
- Index
