Shame

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From How to Deal with Angry People (2023)

  CHAPTER 4 THE CONTAGIOUSNESS OF ANGER “I Absolutely Snapped” In May of 2010, a group came together in Columbus, Ohio to protest the Affordable Care Act (ACA), President Obama’s signature healthcare initiative (often referred to as Obamacare). The protest itself was one of many happening across the United States and wouldn’t necessarily have been noteworthy on its own had it not been for a viral video that captured a particular person behaving very badly. Like a lot of these protests, a group of counter-protesters arrived as well and this particular counter-protest included a man named Robert Letcher who was holding a sign that read “Got Parkinson’s? I do and you might. Thanks for your help.” Letcher is sitting down in front of the anti-ACA protesters when a man leans down and lectures him, condescendingly, “If you’re looking for a handout, you’re in the wrong end of town. There’s nothing for free over here. You have to work for everything you get.” Meanwhile, another man comes over and says, “No, no, I’ll pay for this guy. Here you go.” He tries to hand Letcher money, which Letcher doesn’t take, so he drops the bill on him. “Start a pot,” he says, “I’ll pay for you.” He then starts to walk away, but turns back and yells, “I’ll decide when to give you money.” He then crumples up another bill and throws it at Letcher, yelling even louder, “No more handout!” The crowd behind them seems to be egging him on, applauding his hostility and calling Letcher a communist. Taken together, what you have is a particularly troubling sight where a large

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  The patristic tradition often contrasts Cain with two other figures, Eve and David, who both recognized their fault. In the same second Homily on penance, Saint John Chrysostom evokes, after Cain’s silence, the confessions of David. In fact he draws up, around each of these two figures, two cycles of truth and the transgression that opposes it term by term. Cain knew his sin; David, claims Chrysostom, was not aware of his; and to establish this fact, which is not justified by anything in the Bible, he evokes a “philosophical” conception of passion: the soul must direct the body like the soul directs the chariot; if it is dazzled by some passion, or if it is inebriated, or even if it is just distracted, it no longer knows where it is going, and the chariot tips over in the mud. It was this way with David who, drunk with passion, did not know that he was in the process of sinning. Another difference: it is God who presents himself to Cain, the all-powerful God whom nothing escapes; it is only Nathan who presents himself to David. Nathan is a prophet like David, he has no preeminence over him. One imagines a physician who wants to treat another physician; and David might very well have rebuffed him, saying: “Who are you? Who sent you…? What audacity is pushing you…?” No authority in any case, no coercion, could force David to speak in spite of himself. Better: Cain had to reply to the question that already pointed to his crime: Where is Abel? David, for his part, hears himself being offered a fable: to spare his own flock, a rich man kills one of the sheep of a poor man who had only that one possession. The fable, as one understands it according to Chrysostom, had two functions: a test of the king’s judgment, an apologue to decipher to identify the guilty one. So tested, David replies by rendering the sentence himself: “The man who did that deserves death.” As for the enigma, it is Nathan who solves it: you are the man who did that; but David immediately accepts the designation and with the admission occupies the place that Nathan assigns him: “I have sinned against the Eternal One.” In his two responses, to the test and to the enigma, David stands in contrast to Cain. The latter had negated the law that joined him [to his brother] (I am not his keeper); and when he had ended up recognizing the magnitude of his crime and asked for the death sentence himself, it was not at the right moment—en kairô—it was after the fact, once the voice of the blood had denounced him. David, on the other hand, had begun by stating the law, delivering the sentence, and condemning himself without knowing it yet; then, once the truth was discovered, he had placed himself under the sentence that he had just pronounced. Made in this way, David’s avowal appears with its two faces—that of the formulated and accepted sentence and that of the admitted fault, and with all the more merit as it was not a matter of reducing the severity of a sentence one had oneself decided in advance. Thus analyzed through David’s adultery, or rather the carefully altered version that Saint John Chrysostom gives of it, the avowal appears as being not just the recognition that he’s committed a transgression, but the profound adherence to the sentence that condemns him.90 In accordance with a thematic essential to Christian penance, the sinner who confesses like David is both his own accuser and his own judge: “You have had the greatness of soul to admit your fault…You have formulated your own sentence.” If the pardon responds immediately to the avowal, this is because the latter is not simply an accurate statement of the facts, it’s also because it incorporates the constituent elements of a judicial procedure. Truth-telling, “veridiction,” involves its effects of remission in a relation to “juridiction”—a relation that shifts the agency that accuses and the one that judges onto the subject.

• From How to Deal with Angry People (2023)

  Why? Threats to Our Self-Identity Like most emotional experiences, defensiveness is about self-protection. Being accused of an error is perceived as a threat to our wellbeing or our identity, and we react with distress. That distress motivates us to seek some sort of comfort and resolution. If we were able to think rationally in that moment, the comfort and resolution would come from owning the mistake and addressing it. But when we can’t think rationally, we seek resolution by denying the mistake or trying to refocus the conflict on the other person. “I’m sorry I forgot to do the dishes” turns into “Yeah, well you never put the laundry away like you’re supposed to!” ANGER FACT Defensiveness is a natural emotional reaction to having identity threatened. It’s protective in the same way other emotions are protective, but it can still interfere with progress. It’s even more of a threat when the error is inconsistent with your self-identity. If someone accused me being a bad fisherman, I wouldn’t care. I don’t identify as being good at this activity so being told I’m bad at it doesn’t feel like a threat to my identity. If, though, someone accused me of being, or implied I was, a bad teacher, parent, or spouse, I would care. I want to be, and work really hard to be, good at those things, so the implication that I’m not doing them well is hurtful to me. When someone notices I made an error – no matter how small – that suggests I’m not doing a good job in one of these roles, it serves as a threat to an important part of my self-identity, and it hurts. It may not be as obvious as the examples here. Our identity can be broad and diffuse and challenged in all sorts of vague and unexpected ways. A great basketball player may feel attacked when challenged about some other sport simply because they identify as an athlete. The challenge feels like an attack on their natural athletic ability. A person who values kindness may feel threatened when told they came across as rude or impolite during an interaction. They see the feedback as a threat to their identity as a kind and considerate person.* There are a number of personal characteristics that might make you more likely to become defensive when someone is angry with you. You might be insecure or lack confidence. You might be anxious or have difficulty asserting yourself when challenged. You might have a history of trauma or abuse that makes these situations more emotionally taxing for you. You may have had defensiveness modeled for you in the same way other emotional expressions are modeled and it became a learned behavior.

• From Paul and Palestinian Judaism (40th Anniversary Edition) (2017)

  We include in the 'man and God' category the sexual sins prohibited by the author, since those specified - certain forms of incest and nakedness - do not involve the abuse of another person, but are more in the nature of taboos. This emphasis fits the author's concern to distinguish the Israelites from the Gentiles, for it is these commandments which serve to set Israel apart. Thus they are to keep the Sabbath (2. 18), cover their nakedness (3.31, so as not to be like the Gentiles; not an explicit biblical commandment); observe a period of uncleanness after childbirth (3.8-11), 3] Jubilees refrain from eating meat with the blood in it (6.10; 21.18 and elsewhere), observe the Feast of Weeks (6.17), 5 tithe (13.24), circumcise their sons (15.25ff.), observe the Feast of Tabernacles (16.29), not to give the younger daughter in marriage before the elder (28.6, a ha1akah unknown elsewhere), not to intermarry (30.7), not to commit incest (33.10) 6 and to observe the Passover (49.8). The only 'commandment between man and his fellow' which is especially emphasized as are the preceding commandments between man and God is the commandment to love one's brother (36.8-11). In the context of Jubilees' narration of the biblical history, the commandment is given to Esau and Jacob by Isaac, but it is apparently meant to refer to the Israelites' love for one another. 7 Negatively put, the members of the covenant are not to behave like the Gentiles, particularly by avoiding idolatry, but also by avoiding the 'un- cleanness' of the Gentiles, which refers not only to idolatry, but also to other transgressions, especially sexual ones. 8 Thus idolatry is warned against or forbidden: 1.9 (the uncleanness, shame and idolatry of the Gentiles); 1 1.4 (the transgression and uncleanness of idolatry); 11. 16 ('went astray after graven images and after uncleanness'); 12.2; 20.7 ('walk not after their idols, and after their uncleannesses'); 22.22; 36.5. Sexual sins are frequently warned against without being specified: 16.4-6 (the Sodomites and others 'defile themselves and commit fornication in their flesh, and work unclean- ness on the earth'); 20.3-5 (Israelites should refrain 'from all fornication and uncleanness'); 25.7 (Jacob says that 'with regard to lust and fornication, Abraham, my father, gave me many commandments'); 50.5 (Israel will eventually be cleansed 'from all guilt of fornication, and uncleanness, and pollution, and sin, and error'). While we cannot always be sure just where the fault of 'fornication' lies (except in the case of incest), the author's repeated emphasis on avoiding it may be based on his desire for Israel not to mingle with the Gentiles. That is, 'fornication' in Jubilees may refer to any unlawful union, but especially to intercourse with Gentiles.

• From How to Deal with Angry People (2023)

  Essentially, the implication here is that there is something wrong with the person’s personality in a way that causes emotional, behavioral, and social problems. We see this pattern in the way people think, feel, and interact with others. Examples of personality disorders include narcissistic personality disorder, paranoid personality disorder, and antisocial personality disorder. This last one, antisocial personality disorder, tends to jump out to students as particularly interesting. People with antisocial personality disorder have a habit of disregarding and violating the rights of others. They harm people both physically and verbally. They lie to people and exploit them for financial gain. They routinely get into physical fights and they often show very little remorse for any of these wrongdoings. For students this disorder is interesting because their minds often jump to topics of serial killing and other examples of violent offenders they’ve been exposed to through the media.* This is, of course, fascinating to me too, but I’m more intrigued by this disorder because it’s one of just a handful of places in the DSM where anger or a synonym for anger is listed as a symptom of a disorder.† In this case, it’s “irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by frequent physical fights or assaults.” What students inevitably want to talk about with this or any personality disorder (including borderline personality disorder, which is another place in the DSM that includes anger as a symptom) is what causes them. They want to know if a person is born antisocial or if it’s a product of their upbringing and environment. It’s a great question with an exceedingly complicated answer. These disorders, like many others, are pervasive and all encompassing. Essentially, the question students are asking is “What causes our personality?” and there isn’t just one answer to that question. Case Study: Nathan – “I don’t want to be a tyrant” A one-time client of mine, Nathan‡ , was working with me to address his own anger problems. The pattern for him was fairly predictable. Most of the time, he wasn’t an angry guy. In fact, he was relatively laid back. He was a successful college student at the time, had a lot of friends who seemed to like him and get along with him, and he was always very pleasant in our therapy sessions. I never once saw him angry in our interactions. The predictable pattern, though, was that he would go out on weekends with his girlfriend, get angry over something she did, and snap at her. He was never physically abusive to her, but he was undeniably verbally and emotionally abusive. He admitted all of this, telling me that he would yell at her, say cruel things to her, and yell at her friends when they tried to intervene. Sometimes alcohol was a catalyst here, but not always.

• From How to Deal with Angry People (2023)

  hard to be, good at those things, so the implication that I’m not doing them well is hurtful to me. When someone notices I made an error – no matter how small – that suggests I’m not doing a good job in one of these roles, it serves as a threat to an important part of my self-identity, and it hurts. It may not be as obvious as the examples here. Our identity can be broad and diffuse and challenged in all sorts of vague and unexpected ways. A great basketball player may feel attacked when challenged about some other sport simply because they identify as an athlete. The challenge feels like an attack on their natural athletic ability. A person who values kindness may feel threatened when told they came across as rude or impolite during an interaction. They see the feedback as a threat to their identity as a kind and considerate person.* There are a number of personal characteristics that might make you more likely to become defensive when someone is angry with you. You might be insecure or lack confidence. You might be anxious or have difficulty asserting yourself when challenged. You might have a history of trauma or abuse that makes these situations more emotionally taxing for you. You may have had defensiveness modeled for you in the same way other emotional expressions are modeled and it became a learned behavior. Just like any emotional experience, the roots of defensiveness can be complicated and extend beyond the specific thing that provoked it. Of course, where the feedback is coming from matters too, and so does the environment in which you get the feedback. Take, for instance, a 2019 study by Levi Adelman and Nilanjana Dasgupta that explored how people react to “ingroup criticism.” 60 Ingroup criticism is negative feedback that comes from inside. It’s when a teammate, spouse, or colleague tells you that you need to do something differently. In this paper, which includes three separate studies, the authors explored how people took in criticism under different sets of circumstances. Participants were assigned to a “threat” or a “no-threat” group. The “threat” group read an article about how the economy was stagnating and how this could lead to lower wages and a worse quality of life. Within those two groups, participants also read an article about how the stagnating economy was the result of American’s poor work ethic (so the participants, who were all

• From Another Country (1962)

  She sighed and put one hand to her face. “Oh. I don’t know, I really don’t know what I was thinking. Sometimes I’d leave Ellis and I’d come and find you here—like my dog or my cat, I used to think sometimes, just waiting. And I’d be afraid you’d be here and I’d be afraid you’d gone out, afraid you’d ask me, really ask me where I’d been, and afraid you wouldn’t. Sometimes you’d try, but I could always stop you, I could see in your eyes when you were frightened. I hated that look and I hated me and I hated you. I could see how white men got that look they so often had when they looked at me; somebody had beat the shit out of them, had scared the shit out of them, long ago. And now I was doing it to you. And it made it hard for me when you touched me, especially—” She stopped, picked up her drink, tasted it, set it down. “I couldn’t stand Ellis. You don’t know what it’s like, to have a man’s body over you if you can’t stand that body. And it was worse now, since I’d been with you, than it had ever been before. Before, I used to watch them wriggle and listen to them grunt, and, God, they were so solemn about it, sweating yellow pigs, and so vain, like that sad little piece of meat was making miracles happen, and I guess it was, for them—and I wasn’t touched at all, I just wished I could make them come down lower. Oh, yes, I found out all about white people, that’s what they were like, alone, where only a black girl could see them, and the black girl might as well have been blind as far as they were concerned. Because they knew they were white, baby, and they ruled the world. But now it was different, sometimes when Ellis put his hands on me, it was all I could do not to scream, not to vomit. It had got to me, it had got to me, and I felt that I was being pumped full of—I don’t know what, not poison exactly, but dirt, waste, filth, and I’d never be able to get it out of me, never be able to get that stink out of me. And sometimes, sometimes, sometimes—” She covered her mouth, her tears spilled down over her hand, over the red ring. He could not move. “Oh, Lord Jesus. I’ve done terrible things. Oh, Lord. Sometimes. And then I’d come home to you. He always had that funny little smile when I finally left him, that smile he has, I’ve seen it many times now, when he’s outsmarted somebody who doesn’t know it yet. He can’t help it, that’s him, it was as though he were saying, ‘Now that I’m through with you, have a nice time with Vivaldo. And give him my regards.’ And, funny, funny—I couldn’t hate him. I saw what he was doing, but I couldn’t hate him. I wondered what it felt like, to be like that, not to have any real feelings at all, except to say, Well, now, let’s do this and now let’s do that and now let’s eat and now let’s fuck and now let’s go. And do that all your life. And then I’d come home and look at you. But I’d bring him with me. It was as though I was dirty, and you had to wash me, each time. And I knew you never could, no matter how hard we tried, and I didn’t hate him but I hated you. And I hated me.”

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  So one can define that “something” which, with the fall, modified the innocent use of sex that would have been possible in paradise. It is not a new organ—the differentiation of the sexes already existed and the transgression did not render it bad;28 it was not an act—it already had its place, its function, and it still preserves that function. The involuntary form of a movement is what makes the sexual organ the subject of an insurrection and the object of the eye’s gaze. Visible and unpredictable erection. Let us note, of course, the fact that libido conceived in this way is characterized essentially by male genitality, its forms and its properties. It is phallic from the origin. Augustine is quite aware of the possible objection and he tries to find the counterpart, in the woman, of the indecent motion that shames the man by pointing out her internal rebellion, and hence her fall from grace. “It was not a visible movement the woman covered, when in the same members she experienced something hidden but comparable to what the man experienced; both of them covered what each one felt at the sight of the other.” And perhaps because he sensed what was artificial in this symmetry that had the woman covering what was invisible to her, and no doubt also to preserve the already evoked theme of modesty in regard to mutual desire, Augustine adds in the same passage: “The man and the woman blushed, either each for each, or the one for the other.”29 In any case, the visibility of the male organ is at the center of things. And it has to be noted, moreover, that this interplay manifests man’s entry into the reign of death. Death relative to the grace that God has withdrawn from him; death also in this world, since death now becomes a fatal illness; death, finally, as we’ll see, since it is through the indispensable role of sexual union in childbirth that the original sin is passed down from generation to generation. In the involuntary movement of the sex organ and the visibility connected with it, man must recognize death: “For in the first stirring of the disobedient motion which was felt in the flesh of the disobedient soul, and which caused our first parents to cover their shame, one death indeed is experienced, that, namely, which occurs when God forsakes the soul.”30 Before, most exegetes saw in physical death the explanation if not for the first appearance of the two sexes, at least for their use. For Augustine, the sexual act didn’t have to wait for the passing away of the generations to be practiced, but the involuntariness that now haunts it signifies a spiritual death of which the end of earthly existences, one after the other, is also a manifestation. The body that escapes man’s will is also a body that dies. The withdrawal of grace both removes this control and actualizes death.31

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  First of all, regarding the causal chain, Cassian underscores the fact that the vices are not independent of each other, even if each of them can be attacked, more specifically, through one of the others.70 A causal vector links them together: it begins with gluttony, which originates with the body and kindles fornication; then this first pair engenders avarice, understood as attachment to earthly goods; which gives rise to rivalries, disputes, and anger; from which is produced the dejection of sadness, which provokes disgust with the whole monastic life and the listlessness of acedia. Such a concatenation assumes that one will never be able to vanquish a vice without triumphing over the one on which it depends. “If we always overcome the earlier ones, the later ones will be checked; and through the extermination of those that lead the way, the rest of our passions will die down without difficulty.”71 At the origin of the others, the gluttony-fornication pair, like “a tall spreading tree,”72 must be uprooted—whence the ascetic importance of fasting as a means of defeating gluttony and cutting off fornication. It’s where the ascetic exercise has its basis, because it is the beginning of the causal chain. The spirit of fornication is also in a singular dialectical position in relation to the last vices listed, and pride in particular. Actually, for Cassian, pride and vainglory don’t belong to the causal chain of the other vices. Far from being engendered by those, they are produced by the victory that one wins over them:73 “carnal” pride toward others through the show that one makes of one’s fasts, one’s chastity, one’s poverty, and the like, and “spiritual” pride that makes one think that this progress is due solely to one’s own merits.74 A vice connected with the defeat of vices, precipitating a fall all the heavier as it comes from on high. And fornication, the most shameful of all the vices, the most humiliating, is the consequence of pride—a punishment but also a temptation, a test that God sends to the presumptuous to remind them that the weakness of the flesh always threatens them if grace does not come to one’s rescue. “Because one has long enjoyed purity of heart and body, as a natural consequence […] deep inside oneself, one glorifies oneself to a certain extent […] but, for one’s good, the Lord acts as if he has abandoned him: the purity that gave him so much assurance begins to be clouded; in the midst of spiritual prosperity, he sees himself falter.”75 In the great cycle of combats, at the moment when the soul no longer has to struggle against itself, the goads of the flesh are felt anew, marking the necessary incompletion of this struggle and threatening it with a perpetual recommencement.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  Because Adam and Eve had this shame that is not ashamed to confess, their fault is not irremissible. And if their fault resulted in the fall of men, their modesty, which uncovers in concealing, is like the first form of what will appear as redemption. As against the serpent and Cain, who belong to the race of malediction, Adam and Eve, like David, are placed on the genealogical tree of salvation. And by their confession, in this exegesis by Chrysostom, this doubtless fundamental idea in Christianity emerges very clearly: that sin, at the very moment it contravenes God’s will or breaks his law, makes an obligation of truth come into effect. The latter has two aspects: one must recognize oneself as the author of the committed act and recognize that this act is evil. It is this obligation of truth that Cain evaded with his “I don’t know,” which added a truth crime against God to the blood crime against his brother. It is this obligation that Adam, Eve, and David submitted themselves to, thus redeeming the disobedience of the law through obedience to the principle of truth-telling. At the core of the economy of sin, Christianity placed the duty of truth-telling. But the exegeses of John Chrysostom, which are there only as examples and a first indication, make it clear that this duty of truth doesn’t simply have an instrumental role in the procedure of forgiveness: a way to obtain it, or to lessen the penalty. The crime scarcely committed, a debt of truth is contracted with God. This debt is so essential, so fundamental, that if one settles it, even the gravest sin can be pardoned; but if one shirks it, not only does the committed transgression remain, but one commits another one that is necessarily more serious, since it is pointed directly at God. It is significant that Saint Ambrose, commenting on the same passage of Genesis (4:9–15) as Saint John Chrysostom, affirms like him that in Cain, God punished the man who didn’t tell the truth more than the man who killed his brother. “Non tam majori crimine parricidii quam sacrilegii.”91 Where Chrysostom spoke of impudence, Ambrose speaks of sacrilege. Not that there is any difference of severity between them. Anaideia, in Chrysostom, designated the violation of the relation of “modesty” which the sin causes the sinners to contract with God; it is this infraction that Ambrose, in the juridical Latin vocabulary, designates as a sacrilegium. A little later, Saint Augustine will give Cain’s non-avowal an apparently quite different meaning. He also stresses that the question posed by God is nothing more than a test offered to Cain so that he might possibly save himself; for God knew exactly what had been done. But by answering “I don’t know” Cain gave in a sense the first figure of the Jews’ refusal to hear the Savior. Cain rejects the call to recognize the truth of his crime; the Jews will reject the call to recognize the truth of the Gospel. One mendaciously says that he doesn’t know what the voice of blood is crying out and what God recalls. The others mendaciously deny what the blood of Christ is crying and what the Scripture had heralded. “Fallax ignoratio, falsa negatio.”92 But by thus shifting the lesson of Cain from the avowal of faults to faith in the Gospel, Saint Augustine doesn’t modify anything basic in what the Homilies on penance and De paradiso were saying. He strongly and explicitly links together what Chrysostom and Ambrose, in the text in question, left implicit: namely that the obligation of truth in relation to transgressions is deeply connected to the obligation of truth in relation to the Revelation. Truth-telling and believing, veridiction in regard to oneself, and faith in the Word are or should be inseparable. The duty of truth, as belief and as confession, is at the center of Christianity. The two traditional meanings of the word “confession” include these two aspects. In a general way, “confession” is the recognition of the duty of truth.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  However, while one doesn’t have to become a penitent as well after becoming a monk, some elements of the penitential rites are utilized in the monastic life. Cassian’s texts, and especially the Institutes which refer to the practices of the cenobium, are very clear on this point: forms specific to public penance are described in that work, and the expression publice paenitere reappears several times, without it being a matter of assuming the status of penitent, of course. Thus Pafnutius, who accepts, in a spirit of humility, being wrongfully accused of a serious sin, is subjected to a treatment just like one that could be evoked by Tertullian, Ambrose, or Jerome in regard to public penances: “And when he had immediately left the Church […] he continually shed tears at his prayers, and fasted thrice as often as before, and prostrated himself in the sight of men […] with all humility of mind. But when he had thus submitted himself with all contrition of flesh and spirit for almost a fortnight, so that he came early on the morning of Saturday and Sunday not to receive the Holy Communion but to prostrate himself on the threshold of the Church and humbly ask for pardon.”3 But short of these great manifestations meant to atone for serious sins, one finds a record of other practices, intermediate between the confession of temptation and the solemn and long-lasting exomologesis. Moreover, Cassian lists a series of transgressions that call for a precise penitential act, determined in advance: accidentally breaking an earthenware jar; hesitating even slightly in chanting a psalm; replying roughly, unnecessarily, impertinently; obeying carelessly; preferring reading to working; lingering after the service instead of going back to one’s cell; talking with someone from the world outside the presence of the elder, and so on.4 Cassian employs the expression “public penance” to designate the prescribed sanction, although it seems that this involves only a certain number of elements borrowed from the great dramaturgy of canonical penance: separation from the community, gesture of supplication, attitude of humility5 (“when all the brethren are assembled for service he must lie on the ground and ask for absolution until the service of the prayers is finished; and will obtain it when by the Abbot’s command he is bidden to rise from the ground”6). There we have a sketch of a whole monastic discipline combining the ostentatious manifestations of penitential rites and the control of gestures and thoughts in a continual and unconditional relation of obedience. The importance of this juxtaposition is twofold.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  Later, in De Genesi ad litteram, Augustine insists on the necessity of not simply giving this opening of the eyes the figurative interpretation of a loss of innocence. It should be understood that, by means of a preexisting gaze, there was the discovery of a physical reality; and this reality was new, owing its existence only to the fall. This “something,” a penalty for the sin and a first manifestation of its countless consequences, was obviously not sex, already there and already seen; it was its urges, whose involuntary spontaneity they had never experienced. Such urges are linked to the gaze in two ways: provoked by it and a spectacle for it. “Once they had violated the precept, totally stripped of that interior grace which they had offended through an arrogant act and a prideful love of their own power, they cast their eyes on their bodies (membra) and felt a rush of concupiscence that was unknown to them (eaque motu eo quem non noverant, concupiverunt).”22 And they couldn’t help but blush from this movement, because it was the same “carnal urge that pushes animals to copulate,” because it is the manifestation which now “the law of the members opposes to the law of the spirit”23 and it is the “consequence of the transgression of the precept.”24 This interpretation of the opening of the eyes as the perception of a new reality is taken up again in the later texts. Book 14 of The City of God is explicit on this point. It must not be imagined that the humans before the sin were blind. Hadn’t Eve herself seen “that the fruit was good to eat” and pleasant to look at? They were capable, therefore, of seeing their own bodies. But must we accept that they did direct their gazes to their sex? No, for the latter was clothed in a “vestment of grace”—a vestment that, on the one hand, prevented their members from rebelling against their will and to which, on the other hand and consequently, they didn’t pay any attention and didn’t seek to know what this clothing might conceal.25 But with the transgression and the withdrawal of grace, the punishment is revealed: it is the “disobedience in return,” physical reproduction, in the body and very precisely through the sexual members, against the human will to insurrection by which man had risen up against God. Now, this revolt draws the gaze and the attention to it: “When they were stripped of this grace, that their disobedience by reciprocity (recioproca inobedientia) might be punished, there occurred a completely new and shameless movement of their members that made their nakedness indecent, made them observant, and filled them with confusion (fecit adtentos redditque confuses).”26 Under the regime of grace, the inattention of the gaze and the voluntary use of sex were connected, making it so that the latter was visible without ever risking being naked. The fall, on the other hand, connects the eye’s attention and the involuntary character of the movement so that sex is naked, but such a degree of shame, such a feeling of humiliation after so deceptive a pride, that one tries to make this pride the sign and effect of the physically invisible rebellion. In short, sex “springs forth,” arisen in its insurrection and offered to the gaze.27 It is for man what man is for God: a rebel. Like Adam, God’s creature, this creature of man, risen up before him and against him, sensed that it should hide itself after its disobedience.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  15 For even if you were to have ten thousand teachers [to guide you] in Christ, yet you would not have many fathers [who led you to Christ and assumed responsibility for you], for I became your father in Christ Jesus through the good news [of salvation]. 16 So I urge you, be imitators of me [just as a child imitates his father]. 17 For this reason I have sent Timothy to you, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, and he will remind you of my way of life in Christ [my conduct and my precepts for godly living], just as I teach everywhere in every church. 18 Now some of you have become arrogant and pretentious, as though I were not coming to see you. 19 But I will come to you soon, if the Lord is willing, and I will find out not just the talk of these arrogant people, but [evaluate] their [spiritual] power [whether they live up to their own claims]. 20 For the kingdom of God is not based on talk but on power. 21 Which do you prefer? Shall I come to you with a rod [of discipline and correction], or with love and a gentle spirit? 1 Corinthians 5 Immorality Rebuked 1 I T IS actually reported [everywhere] that there is sexual immorality among you, a kind of immorality that is condemned even among the [unbelieving] Gentiles: that someone a has [an intimate relationship with] his father’s wife. [Deut 22:30 ; 27:20 ] 2 And you are proud and arrogant! You should have mourned in shame so that the man who has done this [disgraceful] thing would be removed from your fellowship! 3 For I, though absent [from you] in body but present in spirit, have already passed judgment on him who has committed this [act], as if I were present. 4 In the name of our Lord Jesus, when you are assembled, and I am with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, 5 you are to b hand over this man to Satan for the destruction of his body, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. 6 Your boasting [over the supposed spirituality of your church] is not good [indeed, it is vulgar and inappropriate]. c Do you not know that [just] a little leaven ferments the whole batch [of dough, just as a little sin corrupts a person or an entire church]? 7 d Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new batch, just as you are, still unleavened. For Christ our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed. 8 Therefore, let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with leaven of vice and malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and [untainted] truth.

• From The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  And what did it profit me, that all the books I could procure of the so-called liberal arts, I, the vile slave of vile affections, read by myself, and understood? And I delighted in them, but knew not whence came all, that therein was true or certain. For I had my back to the light, and my face to the things enlightened; whence my face, with which I discerned the things enlightened, itself was not enlightened. Whatever was written, either on rhetoric, or logic, geometry, music, and arithmetic, by myself without much difficulty or any instructor, I understood, Thou knowest, O Lord my God; because both quickness of understanding, and acuteness in discerning, is Thy gift: yet did I not thence sacrifice to Thee. So then it served not to my use, but rather to my perdition, since I went about to get so good a portion of my substance into my own keeping; and I kept not my strength for Thee, but wandered from Thee into a far country, to spend it upon harlotries. For what profited me good abilities, not employed to good uses? For I felt not that those arts were attained with great difficulty, even by the studious and talented, until I attempted to explain them to such; when he most excelled in them who followed me not altogether slowly. But what did this further me, imagining that Thou, O Lord God, the Truth, wert a vast and bright body, and I a fragment of that body? Perverseness too great! But such was I. Nor do I blush, O my God, to confess to Thee Thy mercies towards me, and to call upon Thee, who blushed not then to profess to men my blasphemies, and to bark against Thee. What profited me then my nimble wit in those sciences and all those most knotty volumes, unravelied by me, without aid from human instruction; seeing I erred so foully, and with such sacrilegious shamefulness, in the doctrine of piety? Or what hindrance was a far slower wit to Thy little ones, since they departed not far from Thee, that in the nest of Thy Church they might securely be fledged, and nourish the wings of charity, by the food of a sound faith. O Lord our God, under the shadow of Thy wings let us hope; protect us, and carry us. Thou wilt carry us both when little, and even to hoar hairs wilt Thou carry us; for our firmness, when it is Thou, then is it firmness; but when our own, it is infirmity. Our good ever lives with Thee; from which when we turn away, we are turned aside. Let us now, O Lord, return, that we may not be overturned, because with Thee our good lives without any decay, which good art Thou; nor need we fear, lest there be no place whither to return, because we fell from it: for through our absence, our mansion fell not—Thy eternity. Book V

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  The practice of penance and the exercises of the ascetic life organize relations between “wrong-doing” and “truth-telling”; they bundle together relations to oneself, to evil and to truth, in a way that is doubtless much more innovative and much more determinant than this or that degree of severity added or subtracted from the code. What is at issue, in fact, is the form of subjectivity: the exercise of oneself upon oneself, knowledge of oneself, the constitution of oneself as an object of investigation and discourse, the liberation or purification of oneself and salvation by means of operations that carry light to one’s innermost being, and drive one’s deepest secrets up to the light of redemptive exposure. It is a form of experience—understood both as a mode of presence to oneself and a program for self-transformation—that was developed in that period. And it is this form that gradually placed the problem of the “flesh” at the center of its apparatus (dispositif). And instead of having a regimen of sexual relations, or aphrodisia, that blends into the general rule of a righteous life, one will have a fundamental relationship with the flesh that runs through one’s whole life and serves as a ground for the rules that are imposed on it. The “flesh” should be understood as a mode of experience—that is, as a mode of knowledge and transformation of oneself by oneself, depending on a certain relationship between a nullification of evil and a manifestation of truth. With Christianity, one didn’t go from a code that was tolerant of sexual acts to a code that was severe, restrictive, and repressive. We need to think differently about the processes and their articulations: the construction of a sexual code, organized around marriage and procreation, was largely begun before Christianity: outside it, then alongside it. Christianity essentially took charge of it. And during the course of its later developments and through the formation of certain technologies of the individual—penitential discipline, monastic asceticism—a form of experience was constituted that activated a new modality of the code and caused it to be embodied, in a totally different way, in the behavior of individuals.*5 And in order to write the history of this formation, it’s necessary to analyze the practices that established it. Not that the aim here is to retrace the genesis of these extremely complex institutions. It’s a matter of attempting to bring out the relations that developed between the forgiveness of wrongdoing, the manifestation of truth, and the “discovery” of the self. Skip Notes *1 Typescript: childbirth as desire’s reason for being. *2 Translator’s note: To clarify, Clement was not himself a gnostic, but apparently that brand of dualism was popular in his day and he used some of its vocabulary to appeal to its adherents.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  • The direction consists in an obedience training, understood as a renunciation of one’s own wishes through submission to another’s will: “And his concern and the chief part of his instruction [referring to the teacher of the novices]—through which the juniors brought to him may be able, in due course, to mount to the greatest heights of perfection—will be to teach them first to conquer their own wishes; and, anxiously and diligently practicing them in this, he will of set purpose contrive to give them such orders as he knows to be contrary to their liking.”48 • And to achieve this perfect and exhaustive obedience, so that this game of nullification-replacement (nullification of one’s own will, substitution of another’s will) can take place, an exercise is essential: constant examination of oneself and perpetual confession. “And, that they may easily arrive at this [perfect obedience and humility of the heart], they are next taught not to conceal by a false shame any itching thoughts in their hearts, but, as soon as ever such arise, to lay them bare to the senior, and, in forming a judgment about them, not to trust anything to their own discretion, but to take it on trust that that is good or bad which is considered and pronounced so by the examination of the senior.”49 II. The Rule of ObedienceThat direction presupposes the disciple’s exact obedience to the master is obviously not a principle peculiar to Christian monasticism. In the philosophical life of antiquity, the master had to be listened to faithfully. But that obedience was instrumental, targeted, and limited. It had a definite object: it was meant to help one break free of a passion, overcome a mourning or a sorrow, escape a phase of uncertainty (this was the case with Serenus consulting Seneca), or attain a certain state (of tranquility, of self-control, of independence with respect to external events). To achieve this end, the director would utilize tailored means, and the obedience required of the disciple was limited to those necessary forms. Moreover, it was a temporary submission that would cease as soon as the goal was reached. It was just one of the tools employed by the direction, according to a strict economy that limited it solely to the moment and the objectives for which it could be useful. Monastic obedience is of a different type altogether.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  • The axis of the objective and the subjective. On one side one finds the designation of the sin, at least in its essential elements; on the other, what the major practices of exomologesis have to manifest is not so much the sin itself in its particularity as the state of the sinner himself, or rather the states that in him are superimposed, intertwined, and in competition. He does have to display himself as a sinner, symbolically covered with filth and the defilement of sin, sunk into this life of sin that is the way of death. But the visible intensity of penitential acts also has the goal of certifying that he is already freeing himself from that life and that he renounces it; the tears he sheds onto his breast are washing it away; he purifies himself by means of the filth he covers himself with; by humiliating himself he shows that he is raising himself back up and is worthy of being raised.68 The manifestations of exomologesis don’t aim to make [the sin] appear in the form that it was truly committed: their purpose is to make the penitent himself emerge into the light and just as he is: at once truly a sinner and already no longer truly one. We can say, then, that truth procedures in the ecclesiastical penance of the first centuries are grouped around two poles: one is that of the verbal and private formulation, which has the role of defining the sin with the characteristics by which it can be assessed, making it possible to determine how its forgiveness can be granted; the other, which is that of general and public expression, has the role of manifesting, as dramatically as possible, both the sinfulness of the sinner and the movement that delivers him from his sin. Of course, these are the two poles between which the different ways, in penance, of manifesting the truth of the sinner and of his sin are distributed. They are not two independent institutions, or two practices utterly foreign to each other; they coexist, interfere with each other, and sometimes merge together: it’s clear that there were extreme fasts and exomologesis conducted in private;69 and we also have accounts of public and verbal declarations of wrongs committed by this or that member of the community.70 But nevertheless, one can recognize the existence of [two] types of practice, two ways of making the truth appear: telling the truth about the sin and manifesting the being-true of the sinner.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  This is the meaning that seems to emerge from a passage in Saint Ambrose’s De sacramentis: “When you gave your name [to be baptized], the priest took mud and smeared it over your eyes. What does this signify? That you confessed your sin (fatereris), that you examined your conscience (conscientiam recognoscere), that you performed penance for your sins, that is, that you recognized (agnoscere) the lot of human generation. For, even if he who comes to baptism does not confess sin, nevertheless by this very fact he fulfills the confession of all sins, in that he seeks to be baptized so as to be justified, that is, so as to pass from fault to grace […] No man is without sin. He who takes refuge in the baptism of Christ recognizes himself as human.”58 An important text. First, because it allows us to see the breadth of meaning that the word confession conveys: from the act by which one actually confesses a specific sin to the recognition of the fact that as a human being one cannot help but be a sinner. But also in its pointing out that the passage from sinfulness to grace—which is the purpose of baptism—cannot be accomplished without a certain “truth act.” A “deliberate” act in the sense that the catechumen is urged to explicitly manifest, in the form of an avowal, his recognition of being a sinner. There is no remission, no saving access to the light, without an act in which he affirms the truth of his sinning soul, an act that also serves as a veridical mark of his determination to stop being a sinner. Telling-the-truth-about-oneself is essential in this game of purification and salvation. In a general way, from the end of the second century onward one sees the growing place occupied, in the economy of every soul’s salvation, by the manifestation of one’s own truth: in the form of an “investigation” where the individual is the respondent of a questionnaire or the object of testimony; in the form of a purificatory trial where he is the target of an exorcism; in the form, finally, of a “confession,” where he is both the subject who speaks and the object of which he speaks, but where it’s a matter of attesting that one knows oneself to be a sinner rather than drawing up an exact list of sins to be forgiven. But it is clear that the form and evolution of baptismal confession can be understood only in relation to the extremely important development of the “second penance”—starting in this same close of the second century.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  The historians who contested the existence of a defined ritual of exomologesis, between the acts of penance and the reconciliation, were mistaken, no doubt, in light of testimonies such as those of Saint Cyprian. But they were not wrong when they emphasized that the entire life of the penitent—through the different obligations they were under—must have played a confessional role. The penitent must “profess” his repentance. No penance without acts that had the dual function of constituting punishments that one inflicts on oneself and of manifesting the truth of this repentance. Tertullian employed a meaningful expression to designate this exomologesis that was inherent in the penitential process: publicatio sui.67 One sees, then, that forgiveness of serious sins committed after baptism and the return to communion of those who fell away cannot be obtained without the implementation of a whole set of truth procedures. Procedures more numerous and more complex than those prescribed in connection with baptism. Their range is wide, since they go from declarations the sinner may make when soliciting penance to great expressions of humility and supplication that take place at the threshold of the church, before the final reconciliation. All these procedures can be distributed along different axes. • The axis of the public and the private. On the private side we must place the secret things the sinner confides to the bishop or the priest when he asks to be granted the status of penitent; on the public side, all the acts by which the penitent must show himself to others in sackcloth and ashes, prostrate in tears begging their intercession on his behalf, and calling the faithful to weep and moan with him. Thus understood, penance is a public and collective rite. • The axis of the verbal and the non-verbal. On one side there is the necessarily oral disclosure which the penitent must make to the one who will admit him into penance; and on the other the series of gestures, attitudes, tears, garments, and cries by which the one who has sinned shows his repentance. Perhaps he proclaims the nature of his sin—but this utterance itself belongs to a whole ensemble of expressions in which the entire body is the main element. • The axis of the juridical and the dramatic. On one side, the penance must begin with an account, albeit brief, of the wrong committed—of what characterizes it and of the circumstances that may alter its seriousness; in this way it can be determined whether penance is called for, and how long it should last before the reconciliation. But at the other pole there are dramatic and intense manifestations that don’t obey any calculation of economy and don’t seek an adjustment, made in the strictest possible way, to the gravity of the sin committed; they obey on the contrary a principle of emphasis; they must be as vigorous as possible.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  But what is more enigmatic—from the standpoint of the history of the experience of the self—is the way one thought of and justified the sinner’s obligation to speak the truth—or rather to manifest himself in his truth—in order to obtain forgiveness for his sins. This obligation is affirmed, in fact, over and over again. No pardon if there was no exomologesis, no recognition by the sinner of his sin, no outward, explicit, visible manifestation of that recognition: “He that confesses his sin is released from servitude […] not only free but also just, for justice is in liberty and liberty in confession. As soon as a man shall confess he is absolved.”71 And Saint John Chrysostom, in short: “Declare your sin: you will destroy your sin.”72 This is the general principle underlying the exegeses that Saint Ambrose and Saint John Chrysostom make of the curse of Cain. His sin, as grave as it was, was not unpardonable. When God [asked him] what he had done with his brother, it was not that God didn’t know, of course; it was to give him the possibility of confessing. And what made it unpardonable was that he replied: I don’t know. This is the principle of eternal damnation. Graver than the fratricide was this lie, which Saint Ambrose calls a “sacrilege.”73 The “I don’t know” of the criminal, the refusal of truth is, on the part of the sinner, the gravest possible offense: it cannot be atoned for. In contrast to Cain, David confesses his sins spontaneously; he-who-was-just is the image of the penitent: the truth he professes saves him.74 And if Adam and Eve are not damned for Eternity, it’s because they, too, confessed; according to Chrysostom, they even confessed to their crimes twice: verbally, by replying to God; and in their gestures and their bodies, by hiding their nakedness.75 Long before the institution of sacramental penance and the organization of auricular confession, the Christian Church posited the fundamental character of the truth obligation for anyone who has sinned and as a precondition for possible redemption. Speaking the truth about one’s sin—or rather manifesting in its truth one’s state as a sinner—is indispensable if the sin is to be forgiven. Manifestation of what is true is a necessary condition for what is true to be erased. To think this relation through and to explain this necessity, ancient Christianity had recourse to several models. —