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This chapter engages with the topic of shame. What does the fact that we feel shame tell us about the nature of self? Does shame testify to the presence of a self-concept, a (failed) self-ideal, and a capacity for critical self-assessment, or does it rather, as some have suggested, point to the fact that the self is in part socially constructed? Should shame primarily be classified as a self-conscious emotion or is it rather a distinct social emotion, or is there something misleading about these alternatives? The chapter explores these questions and discusses whether the experience of shame presupposes a possession of a first-person perspective and a capacity for empathy, and whether it exemplifies an other-mediated form of self-experience and to that extent involves a more complex self than the thin experiential self.

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199590681.003.0014

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