Shame and guilt culture

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The terms shame culture and guilt culture denote opposing concepts that distinguish cultures according to whether they use external ( shame ) or internal ( guilt ) instances to deal with misconduct to resolve conflicts . The juxtaposition of the culture of shame, which is primarily attributed to the Near and Far East , and the culture of guilt, which is ascribed to parts of the western world , was established by Ruth Benedict and is considered controversial. Through the cross-cultural study by Ruth Benedict (1946), the distinction between 'guilt and shame cultures' was introduced into the scientific discussion in social research in the middle of the 20th century. Benedict draws on the preliminary work of Margaret Mead (1937). Which primarily assumed a characterization of forms of interaction in culture-specific processes of socialization and individuation. Even the Oxford classicist Eric Robertson Dodds had in 1951, the distinction between ( ancient Greek () shame cultures English. Shame-culture ), and ( early Christian ) debt cultures (English, guilt-culture ) were introduced.

Cultural attributions of guilt and shame

Benedict, US ethnologist and representative of cultural relativism , assigned the culture of Japan to the cultures of shame in her study The Chrysanthemum and the Sword , published in 1946 after the Pacific War . According to her, “cultures of shame” are based on an external authority that sanctions wrongdoing. Feelings of shame arise as a reaction to criticism or exposure from outside. In a “culture of guilt”, however, this authority is internalized. Feelings of guilt arise in the self , which splits into a guilty and an accusing entity. Eric Robertson Dodds took up this distinction in his 1951 study on "The Greeks and the Irrational" for ancient Greek culture.

More recent studies also divide contemporary cultures into cultures of shame and guilt. Today's cultures of the eastern Mediterranean countries as well as Japan and China are often regarded as cultures of shame, while the United States, Great Britain and other countries influenced by Protestantism are counted among the cultures of guilt. The western “ pattern ” of the sense of guilt stands opposite the eastern “feeling of shame” as a culture-constitutive “pattern” of conflict processing. In “western” thinking, a guilt discourse follows in the event of a violation of a valid moral command . In the event of a violation of a valid moral commandment or applicable law, the acting person is found to be guilty if he knew or should have known the commandment or law and if it was in his power to obey the commandment or law. In moral and legal contexts, the accusation of guilt is considered an essential prerequisite for the attribution of responsibility as well as for an evaluation of actions, for example through praise , blame , reward or punishment .

According to the literary and cultural scholar Claudia Benthien , the distinction between guilt and shame cultures is the question of whether affect can be processed through denomination , penance or imposed sanctions . This is possible in cultures of guilt, but not in cultures of shame. A loss of face was therefore irreversible in ancient Japan. The archaic time of Homer was also a culture of shame, "which was transformed into a culture of guilt by the century of ancient tragedies." According to the classical philologist Eric Robert Dodds, the characters in Homer's epics lived in constant fear of public disapproval. They feared less punishment from the gods than from the social environment. According to Benthien, social prestige is "the greatest value and defamation constitutes existential, often irreversible damage". The Christianity let not clearly assigned, "While the Old Testament is basically shame culture, the New Testament and the modern, particularly based Lutheran theology rather a guilty cultural thinking."

The fact that elements of shame culture were also of great importance in Western societies is shown by the numerous duels that were fought due to defamation . The hurt honor is typically an element of shame.

Evangelical Mission Research

The evangelical theologian Thomas Schirrmacher advocates the thesis that the “Western world is currently experiencing the end of the most comprehensive culture of guilt in history and a relapse into a culture of shame based on the pure external perception of people”. In the culture of guilt, " conscience and a given standard are decisive, in the culture of shame the standard is society". However, every culture of guilt contains elements of the culture of shame and vice versa; a “strict separation of the two” is impossible.

According to the evangelical mission researcher and theologian Klaus W. Müller , guilt and shame orientation are shaped as follows:

guilt-oriented shame-oriented
Starting point of the imprint
Small number of influential people, precisely defined: parents ( nuclear family ) Large number of influential people ( extended family ), imprecisely defined: parents, relatives, strangers; Spirit beings
Structure formation of the behavior standards
Behavioral standards are adopted by the formative people, the conscience develops Behavioral standards are adopted by the formative people, the conscience develops
Manifestation of norms
In oneself, one's own conscience is ( intrinsic ) norm monitoring Other persons or spirits / gods are authorities for (external) monitoring of the norms ( extrinsic )
Reaction in the event of a planned violation of the norm
Signal of conscience that the planned act will constitute a violation of the norm, whereupon a defense mechanism is activated Signal of conscience that the planned act will constitute a violation of the norm, whereupon a defense mechanism is activated
Reaction in the event of an actual violation of the norm
Disturbance of the inner balance from within; a feeling of guilt is immediately experienced, which is also felt as a punishment . In the awareness of this, a relief mechanism is set in motion. Disturbance of the inner balance from the outside in the event that the act appears to others to violate norms. Immediately after becoming aware of this external awareness of the violation of the norm, a feeling of shame is experienced that is felt as a punishment. This in turn activates a defense mechanism that is mainly directed against the external valuation, followed by a relief mechanism.
Result of guilt and shame experiences
A functioning conscience ( superego ) leads back to inner balance. A functioning conscience (superego) leads back to inner balance.

reception

The division into cultures of shame and guilt is controversial in research, partly because of the subliminal evaluations.

The lawyer and philosopher Paul Tiedemann described the distinction between shame and guilt cultures as “highly projective ”. It is based on the "erroneous" assumption that Asian and African cultures are solely guided outside of the individual and do not know any internalization of values ​​or consciences. Benedict had already classified a strict separation of cultures of shame and guilt as an “exaggeration”. It is true that values ​​such as individual self-determination are of great importance in Western culture and that in Eastern cultures "the value of adaptation and harmony with the goals and values ​​of the community is emphasized". Both value systems would, however, be internalized equally . In addition, the assumption that shame does not serve as a principle of sanction in the western world is not tenable. Rather, the strategy of shaming or “shaming” plays a decisive role in the discourse of restorative justice . It is precisely this didactic of shame that can be demonstrated in cultural history in the European theater of the Enlightenment .

See also

literature

  • Ruth Benedict : Chrysanthemum and Sword. Forms of Japanese culture. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 978-3518120149 (original edition The Chrysanthemum and the Sword , 1946).
  • Eric Robertson Dodds : The Greeks and the Irrational. Darmstadt 1970 (original edition: The Greeks and the Irrational , 1951), especially “From Shame Culture to Guilt Culture”, pp. 17–37.
  • Thomas Schirrmacher : Feeling ashamed or guilty? The Christian message in the face of guilt- and shame-oriented consciences and cultures. VKW, Bonn 2005, ISBN 3-938116-06-4 .
  • Stephan Marks : On the function of shame and shame defense in National Socialism. In: Georg Schönbächler (Ed.): The shame in philosophy, cultural anthropology and psychoanalysis (= Collegium Helveticum. Issue 2). Zurich 2006, pp. 51–56.
  • Thomas Schirrmacher , Klaus W. Müller (ed.): Shame and guilt orientation in the discussion: cultural anthropological, missiological and theological insights. VKW, Bonn & VTR, Nuremberg 2 The intersubjective nature of shame.
  • Thomas Schirrmacher: Shame and guilt culture. Cross sections, Volume 14, No. 7, July 2001 [2]
  • Jens L. Tiedemann: The intersubjective nature of shame. Forum der Psychoanalyse Volume (2008) 24, pp. 246-263006, ISBN 3-938116-07-2 .
  • David Wiesche: Shame and Self in Physical Education. Dissertation, Ruhr University Bochum, July 2016 [3]

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ruth Benedict : The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1946 (Reprint and translation Chrysanthemum and Sword: Shapes of Japanese Culture. Suhrkamp, ​​2006).
  2. ^ Margaret Mead : Cooperation and competition among primitive peoples. New York 1937; (Reprinted from Transaction Publications, New Brunswick, Canada 2003, ISBN 0-7658-0935-4 )
  3. ↑ Rita Werden: Shame Culture and Guilt Culture. Revision of a theory. Series Studies of Moral Theology, Vol. 3, Aschendorff, Münster 2015, ISBN 978-3-402-11932-7 , (see also as dissertation, University of Freiburg i. Br. 2013 [1] )
  4. ↑ a b c Claudia Benthien : The power of archaic feelings.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) In: Wiener Zeitung , April 15, 2006.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.wienerzeitung.at
  5. ^ The Greeks and the Irrational (1951)
  6. ↑ Georg Mohr: Guilt and Shame from an Intercultural Perspective. University of Bremen 2007.
  7. ↑ Tomotaka Takeda: Honor as a culture of shame and its criticism in "Leutnant Gustl". (PDF; 631 kB) ( Memento from April 13, 2014 in the Internet Archive ).
  8. ↑ Thomas Schirrmacher: Shame and guilt culture. In: Querschnitte , July 14, 2001, No. 7 (PDF; 136 kB) .
  9. ↑ Elenkik: The doctrine of the shame and guilt-oriented conscience. In: Evangelical Missiology. Vol. 12, 1996, pp. 98-110.
  10. ^ Paul Tiedemann: Human dignity as a legal concept. Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, Berlin 2007, p. 309 .
  11. ↑ John Braithwaite: Crime, Shame and Reintegration. Cambridge 1986.
  12. ↑ Burkhard Meyer-Sickendiek : On the didactics of shame in the theater of sensitivity. In: Simon Bunke (Ed.): Conscience between feeling and reason. Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 2014, pp. 285–302.