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Shame and Necessity, Second Edition

4.17 (184 ratings by Goodreads)

By (author) Bernard Williams , Foreword by A. A. Long

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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' 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. In a new foreword A.A. Long explores the impact of this volume in the context of Williams' stunning career.
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Product details

Format Paperback | 280 pages
Dimensions 152 x 229 x 18mm | 363g
Publication date 15 Apr 2008
Publisher University of California Press
Publication City/Country Berkerley, United States
Language English
Edition Statement 2nd edition
Illustrations note black & white illustrations
ISBN10 0520256433
ISBN13 9780520256439
Bestsellers rank 123,624

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Preface
Foreword to the 2008 Edition

I. The Liberation of Antiquity
II. Centres of Agency
III. Recognising Responsibility
IV. Shame and Autonomy
V. Necessary Identities
VI. Possibility, Freedom, and Power

Notes
Endnote I: Mechanisms of Shame and Guilt
Endnote 2: Phaedra's Distinction:
Euripides Hippolytus 380-87

Bibliography
General Index
Index Locorum
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Review quote

"A dazzlingly clever and agile assault. . . . Williams's treatment of shame is brilliant. . . . Mr Williams's mind is subtle, his reasoning complex. In places this is a difficult book, but always because the argument requires it; essentially, it is a model of philosophical lucidity. And though it is deeply serious, we can often catch an ironic inflection in the author's voice." * New York Times * "Brilliant, demanding, disturbing." * New York Review of Books * "Poets often prove to be much better observers of human thought, character and action than philosophers, historians or psychologists, who are apt to launch into theory and generalisation before they have a good description of what they are setting out to explain. This is what Williams's discussions of the ancient texts bring out in every instance, and what makes his book worth reading, not just for those who are interested in the question whether we have made any real moral progress, but also for those who are interested in the Greeks, or in the varieties of ethical experience." * London Review of Books * "Clearly written, well argued, and carefully documented." * Library Journal *
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About Bernard Williams

Bernard Williams (1929-2003) was one of the most distinguished British philosophers of the twentieth century, White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford University, and Monroe Deutsch Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley.
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184 ratings

4.17 out of 5 stars

5 42% (77)

4 38% (69)

3 17% (32)

2 3% (5)

1 1% (1)

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