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.

Page 247 of 267 · 20 per page

• From The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure (1984)

  But it is likely that the principle of honor and maintenance of “superiority” refers—beyond a few precise prescriptions—to a kind of general style: it was not good (especially in the eyes of public opinion) for a boy to behave “passively,” to let himself be manipulated and dominated, to yield without resistance, to become an obliging partner in the sensual pleasures of the other, to indulge his whims, and to offer his body to whomever it pleased and however it pleased them, out of weakness, lust, or self-interest. This was what dishonored boys who accepted the first comer, who showed off unscrupulously, who passed from hand to hand, who granted everything to the highest bidder. This was what Epicrates did not and would not do, mindful as he was of the opinion people had of him, of the rank he would have to hold, and of the useful relations he might enter into. 5. I would like just to mention again briefly the role that the author of the Erotic Essay has philosophy play in this safeguarding of honor and these contests of superiority by which the boy is invited to test himself in a manner that befits his age. This philosophy, whose content is not specified apart from a reference to the Socratic theme of epimeleia heautou, “care of the self,”22 and to the necessity, also Socratic, of combining knowledge and exercise (epistēmē, meletē)—this philosophy is not presented as a guide for leading a different life, nor for abstaining from all the pleasures. It is invoked by Demosthenes as an indispensable complement of the other tests: “Reflect that … of all things the most irrational is to be ambitious for wealth, bodily strength, and such things, and for their sake to submit to many tests … but not to aim at the improvement of the mind, which has supervision over all other powers.”23 What philosophy can show, in fact, is how to become “stronger than oneself and when one has become so, it also enables one to prevail over others. It is by nature a leadership principle since it alone is capable of directing thought: “Of the powers residing in human beings we shall find that thought leads all the rest and that philosophy alone is capable of directing it rightly and training it.”24 It is clear that philosophy is an asset that is necessary for the young man’s wise conduct; not, however, in order to guide him toward another form of life, but to enable him to exercise self-mastery and to triumph over others in the difficult game of ordeals to be undergone and honor to be safeguarded.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  Leaving the room was Beth’s safety behavior. Yours might be to chug down a couple of drinks as soon as you walk into a party, cling to your close friend throughout lunch with new acquaintances, look at the floor, or hover on the edge of groups. Safety behaviors are the actions we take to conceal our perceived inadequacies—those things the Inner Critic says are wrong with us. But they are the very reason our fear remains. The things we’re doing to save ourselves are keeping us mired. It’s ironic, like being held underwater by a life preserver. Why do we keep using safety behaviors? When we do, there is a sense that we are hiding, which makes us feel safer. But instead of truly hiding, we are hiding in plain sight. Even though we feel like we are concealing our flaws, people can see us. I know that sounds obvious, but while we’re busy trying to keep ourselves safe we’re actually sending an entirely different message. We rehearse what to say in order to come across as well-spoken but end up appearing preoccupied. We pepper others with questions to avoid talking about ourselves but leave our conversational partner feeling interrogated. We agree with everything our boss says, which makes her wonder if we’re even listening. As Dr. Alden puts it, “Every behavior sends a message to others. People with social anxiety can forget that; they think they’re erasing themselves.” But in reality, safety behaviors send a loud and clear message, and it’s exactly the opposite of what we’re trying to do. We accidentally send the message of I’m aloof, I’m distant, I’m snobby, I’m prickly, when nothing could be further from the truth. Dr. Alden’s client Beth thought that by leaving the room she’d be safe from her crush. But of course he could see her. And she realized that it came off as cold and stuck-up. With Dr. Alden’s help, Beth learned to stay in the room, where she got the chance to realize not only was her crush friendly, but also she was safe without her safety behavior after all. Her life preserver had indeed been keeping her underwater. Through the years, Drs. Alden and Taylor have seen this happen again and again. Their clients’ greatest lightbulb moments come when they start to see their safety behaviors from the point of view of others. Indeed, imagine how you might respond to someone wearing sunglasses indoors, scrolling through their smartphone, looking at the floor with their arms crossed, or vamoosing whenever you walked in the room. You would assume they didn’t want to talk with you or, worse, that they didn’t like you. I remember my own lightbulb moment: in high school, one particularly tactless but honest boy signed my yearbook with the comment that he found me “aloof but likable,” which jump-started my growing comprehension that working hard to keep my anxiety at bay was also keeping others at a distance.

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  She began to shout a feeble and grateful apology to her father, but it was hard to manage with the wind and the rain. You couldn’t hear. On Valley Road, an emergency snow truck lumbered past them, hissing and spitting sand on the accumulating slush. Its yellow strobe lamp swiveled on top. Wendy’s father took her arm roughly at the shoulder. —Baby doll, he called, and his voice seemed to come from some beyond. —Baby doll, don’t worry about it. I really don’t care. I’m just not sure he’s good enough, that’s all. We can keep this between us. She didn’t get where he was coming from. She could hear the apology. —Huh? —I mean, he’s a joker. He’s not serious. He’ll end up living off Janey and Jim, you watch. He’s just not worth it. And that’s not a family you want to be part of. —Dad. They walked in cinnamon slush. They sank deeply into it. The precipitation fell with a relentless uniformity. On nearby communities with less affluent tax bases—Stamford and Norwalk—as well as on New Canaan’s wealthy. The sleet ruined Wendy’s toe socks and her father’s cordovan loafers and at the same time, across town, it ruined the orthopedic shoes of Dan Holmes’s sister, Sarah Joe, one of the special-education kids at Saxe Junior High. Sarah Joe’s heart was all battered and worn, and she seemed to know it. But she managed to trudge along. The kids said that she would sleep with anyone. Wendy wondered if Sarah Joe had any instincts about positions and sex, if she knew about the myth of the vaginal orgasm, or if she felt somehow intuitively that her sexual fumblings were more gratifying with someone she loved. Sarah Joe, laboring up Brushy Ridge Road herself, through the slush, walking up that hill that all the boys careened down in tenth gear. Somewhere the popular girls were trapped indoors with their ephemeral crushes, the infatuations they shared with no one. And elsewhere the half-dozen poor boys of New Canaan High, whose fathers would have to go out into the snow and run the plows, watched TV from couches covered in flame-retardant vinyl. The sleet and snow turned the last light a sullen yellow. The sky looked awful, nauseating. Wendy wanted to know why conversations failed and how to teach compassion and why people fell out of love and she wanted to know it all by the time she got back to the house. She wanted her father to crusade for less peer pressure in the high school and to oppose the bombing of faraway neutral countries and to support limits on presidential power and to devise a plan whereby each kid under eighteen in New Canaan had to spend one afternoon a week with Dan Holmes’s sister, Sarah Joe, or with that other kid, Will Fuller, whom everybody called faggot . Wendy wanted her father to make restitution for his own confusion and estrangement and drunkenness.

• From The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure (1984)

  But it was especially in the sphere of amorous conduct that the distinction between what was honorable and what was shameful operated. On this point, we may note first of all that the author—and this is what makes the text both a eulogy of love and praise of a young man—criticizes the opinion that would tie a boy’s honor to the systematic rejection of suitors: doubtless certain lovers defile the relation itself (lymainesthai tōi pragmati),13 but one should not put them in the same class as those admirers who show moderation. The text does not draw the boundary line of honor between those who spurn their suitors and those who accept them. For a Greek youth, to be pursued by would-be lovers was obviously not a dishonor: it was, rather, the visible mark of his qualities; the number of admirers could be an object of legitimate pride, and sometimes an object of vainglory. But to accept the love relation, to enter the game (even if one did not play exactly the game the lover proposed) was not considered to be a disgrace either. The man who praises Epicrates explains to him that being beautiful and being loved constitute a double stroke of fortune (eutychia);14 it only remains for him to make the right use (orthōs chrēsthai) of it. It is this point that the text emphasizes and makes a “point of honor,” so to speak: these things (ta pragmata) are not, in themselves and absolutely, good or bad; they vary according to who practices them (para tous chrōmenous).15 It is “use” that determines their moral value, according to a principle that one sees often formulated elsewhere; in any case, we find quite similar expressions in the Symposium: “The truth of the matter I believe to be this. There is, as I stated at first, no absolute right and wrong in love, but everything depends upon the circumstances; to yield to a bad man in a bad way is wrong, but to yield to a worthy man in a right way is right.”16

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  In the fifties, back in Hartford, Conn., where his father’s insurance business had temporarily been located, and where Hood’s testes had first erupted, he had been able to ejaculate simply over the word bosom . He had also managed to fashion an orifice for himself out of a pliable old feather pillow. The pillow took him all the way to college, where the abundance of breasts lingered in his imagination like some divinely inspired thought, like the perfection of harmony and meter. But then he had fallen on hard times. In the company of the marriage neither breast nor ass nor the vesuvian moisture of down below on its own moved him. The contemplation of body parts was no more fascinating than a grocery list. At last, in his early thirties, only true pornography would do it. Solitary orgasms were like sneezes or yawns. He imagined women in hot pants and leather goods. He kept Playboy around. (In this month’s issue there was a first-rate short story by Tennessee Williams.) He imagined devices. His cheeks flushed. What a blessing when oblivion descended on these exercises. Masturbation was a falling sickness, with the emphasis, these days, on the sickness part. But at least he didn’t have to think. At least he was granted a moment without Benjamin Paul Hood and his fiscal responsibilities, without the lawn, the boat, the dog, the medical bills, credit card and utility bills, without the situation in the Mideast and in Indochina, without Kissinger and Ehrlichman or Jaworski or that Harvard asshole, Archibald Cox. Just a little peace. He groaned dully as he issued forth, firing with unusual range and payload onto the shag throw rug, as well as onto the garter belt itself. With the soiled garment, he swabbed and dabbed at the spot on the rug where he had splattered. Sighing, he refixed his trousers. Sighing, he unlocked the door. Where to stow the evidence? The garter belt was an empty snakeskin, a stately and somber artifact of his failure, a sort of Shroud of Turin. In the hall, with it balled in his fist, he turned first left and then right. Like a ghost, he ventured into Janey and Jim’s bedroom and gazed sadly upon the pacific waters of their waterbed. He thought to set it right upon their pillow, but he couldn’t do it. Scruples. In the hall, though, he found himself again at Mike’s door. Impulsively, he entered with his death shroud, with Mike’s mother’s soiled garter belt, and stuffed it in the back of Mike’s closet. The kid would never even know he had been framed. Then with a lightness of heart, a relief at folly alleviated, Hood started down the stairs. He thought about riding the banister, but the newel post had a sort of asparagus bulb at the top of it, one that must have neutered generations of banister-riders. Unable to leave the premises, he toured the first floor. Possession was the larger part of ownership.

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  TI. [חפר]‎ vb. be 812881100, ashamed (x חפר‎ Pr 13°, SIIBM2 one causing shame Pr19”; Syr. sau, esp. Aph. be ashamed, put to shame; Ar. 545 be bashful, | 2% shy, bashful ; Eth. "44.2: be ashamed, blush) —Qal Pf. 3 fs. MAN 16 50%; MAM consec. Is 24%; MAM Je 15°; NAN ש‎ 717; NBM consec. Mi 3’; Jmpf. MEM 35*+ 4 t.; MBM / 34°; MBM 70 6”; תַחְפרוּ‎ Is 1°;—be abashed, ashamed, said of face 34° (avoided by looking to ”*); else- where always || ברש‎ , of enemies of righteousness wv 71% 35°" 40°= לסל‎ 835; of idolaters Is1”; diviners Mi3‘; of distressed Jerusalem Je15°; so of Babylon 50%; of moon 182 4%; be put to shame (disappointment), of caravans looking for water Jb 6”. Hiph. Pf V5 Is 33°; Impf. 3M Pr 13°; “PENA Is 54% Pt. END Pr 19” ;—display shame, fig. of Lebanon Is 33° (|| ra ‘dried up’ Che); of Israel Is 5.4‘ (|| בוש‎ Qal); of an unfilial son, cause shame Pr 19” (|| 29); 61. Pr 13° of wicked (|| באש .ז : יבאיש‎ Hiph. supr. p. 93). Tyran n.pr.m. Aries reigned in Egypt alone, B.C. "589- 570 and with Amasis 570-564; named as פרעה ח' מָלְֶּימְצְרַיִם‎ Je 44% Pharaoh Hophra‘ king of Egypt (v. ny rs); 4th king of 26th dynasty; G Ovadpy; Manetho Ovadpis ; Egypt. Monum. Uah-dbra, Wiedemann**** Gesch. 602, 636 ff.; Gesch. Agypt. ae Gk. *Ampins Herodot. ii 161 ete. (v. Wied Herodot’s 2tes Buch, ah, Diodor! ®; "Arpias Ctesias (Athen. 13°"). MIEN +. sub 1. .חפר‎ TWD] vb. search (3° חפ‎ dig, seek; Pal. Syr. dig (Schw); perh. As. éppésu, étpésu, sensible, Lyon") _Qal Impf. 2 ms. sf. mYENA Pr ot; WEN ץ‎ 647; NVEN La 3°; Pt. הפש‎ Pr 20%:— search, search out, fig.; 1. search for, obj. 122 666. Pr 2* (|| wpa). 2. =think out, devise, c. acc. עולות‎ unjust acts שי‎ 647 (cf. also sub Pu.) 3. search = test, La 3* (obj. ,(חקר || ; דרכינו‎ Pr 20%. Niph. Pf. WEN Ob’ subj. WY coll.; searched out = exposed and plundered (|| *235$! 5393). Pi. 2 וְחִפַּשָתִּי‎ 1S 23%; WEN 1 K 20°; ]עו‎ VEN Gn31*+4 2%.; YEON Am 9° Zp 1”; Jv. 344

• From Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition (2004)

  58 Lecture 11: Sophocles addition, the gods in Sophocles’s plays are remote and unreachable. Sophocles focuses the audience’s attention on the human condition, without the direct intervention of gods. Of Sophocles’s seven extant plays, only one is named for its chorus; the rest take their names from their protagonists, who are characterized by a kind of heroic isolation. Bernard Knox points out that the plots of these six plays fi t one basic pattern. The main character is faced with a crisis in which disaster can be averted only by a compromise that would constitute betrayal of something that the protagonist holds to be supremely important. The protagonist refuses to compromise, despite being urged to by persuasive speeches, threats, or violence or all three. The protagonist remains steadfast, and the end result is usually his or her destruction. Aeschylus’s characters often face crises or dilemmas. But in Aeschylus’s extant plays, the protagonist cannot fi nd a way out through compromise. Although Aeschylus’s work portrays human beings struggling under terrible circumstances, it does not foreground the isolation of the characters as the plays of Sophocles do. Aeschylus’s characters may be isolated through the force of circumstance, but Sophocles’s characters choose and maintain their isolation. The isolated protagonist is already observable in Ajax, probably Sophocles’s earliest extant play. The play dramatizes the story of Ajax’s suicide. Ajax was the second greatest Greek warrior in the Trojan War; the only greater fi ghter was Achilles. After Achilles’s death, the Greeks voted to decide who Sophocles (496–406 B.C.), Athenian tragedian. Of his many works, seven survive today. The Teaching Company Collection.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  It is unfortunately now impossible to compare the facial features and hairstyles of those two statues in Thessaloniki. But the common seminudity and body pose emphasize one very important point. Augustus, of course, was four ways divine, by ancestral descent from Venus and Anchises, by miraculous conception from Apollo and Atia, by paternal adoption from the divine Julius Caesar, and by official decree from the Roman Senate. But all that divinity was not just personal and individual charisma. It flowed from him and continued after him, first as a dynastic privilege, and then as an imperial prerogative. Within the Julio-Claudian line, it survived Caligula and Nero. Then, after a year of renewed civil war, it continued into the Flavian dynasty of Vespasian and Titus, surviving even that dynasty’s disastrous Domitian. The Augustan revolution held firm, and the similarity of those two Thessalonian statutes emphasized their continuity across time from before to during (and, of course, after) Paul’s life. Imperial divinity was, quite simply, the ideology that held the Roman Empire together and the theology that allowed Greek pride and tradition gracefully to accept Roman law and order. In any case, that divine charisma was still relatively fresh when Paul reached Thessalonica under the emperor Claudius. “In Spite of Great Opposition” Paul went from Asia to Europe across the northern Aegean, earlier Homer’s wine-dark sea, later Yeats’s dolphin-torn and gong-tormented sea. On his way from Philippi to Thessalonica, he “passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia” according to Acts 17:1. (A footnote. There is an inscription in Amphipolis’s museum dedicated to “Imperator Caesar, God, Son of God, Augustus, Savior, and Builder of the City”). Those two places were the regular overnight stops for a traveler making almost 30 miles per day on the Via Egnatia, a fast pace in good weather on a great road. The scenery was beautiful; past Mt. Pangaion to the Strymon River at Amphipolis and then on to the Chalkidike peninsula’s northern lakes at Apollonia. But our text of 1 Thessalonians indicates that Paul’s mind was probably not on vista, but on violence along that three-day journey. As he recalls to the Thessalonians later, “Though we had already suffered and been shamefully mistreated at Philippi, as you know, we had courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in spite of great opposition” (1 Thess. 2:2). But what happened at Philippi was repeated at Thessalonica. Paul and his colleagues were finally forced to flee Macedonia and take refuge to the south in the adjoining Roman province of Achaia. Notice that such a flight across provincial boundaries suggests opposition primarily from Roman authority. From there he sent Timothy back to the Thessalonian community for news of its situation, and, as he recalls to them later, the news was very good.

• From The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure (1984)

  2. But in regard to the Greek boy, the importance of his honor did not concern—as it would later in the case of the European girl—his future marriage; rather, it related to his status, his eventual place in the city. Of course, there is abundant evidence that boys of dubious reputation could exercise the highest political functions; but there is also evidence that this very thing could be held against them—without counting the substantial judicial consequences that certain kinds of misconduct might produce: the Timarchus affair makes this clear. The author of the Erotic Essay points it out to the young Epicrates; part of his future, including the rank he will be able to occupy in the city, depends this very day on the manner, honorable or not, in which he conducts himself: considering that the city cannot call upon just anyone, it will have to take account of established reputations;10 and the man who scoffs at good advice will be punished all his life for his blindness. Two things are necessary, therefore: to mind one’s own conduct when one is still very young, but also to look after the honor of younger men, when one has grown older. This transitional age, when the young man was so desirable and his honor so fragile, thus constituted a trial period: a time when his worth was tested, in the sense that it had to be formed, exercised, and measured all at the same time. A few lines at the end of the text point up the testlike characteristics that the boy’s behavior assumed in this period of his life. In exhorting Epicrates, the author of the encomium reminds him that he will be put to the test (agōn), and that the debate will be a dokimasia:11 this was the word that designated the examination upon whose completion young men were enrolled among the ephebi or citizens were admitted to certain magistracies. The young man’s conduct owed its importance and the attention that everyone needed to give it, to the fact that everyone saw it as a qualifying test. The text says this plainly, moreover: “I think … that the city will appoint you to be in charge of some department of her business, and in proportion as your natural gifts are more conspicuous it will judge you worthy of greater responsibilities and will the sooner desire to make trial of your abilities.”12 3. What exactly was being tested? And with respect to what type of behavior was Epicrates supposed to draw the line between that which was honorable and that which was disgraceful? The test pertained to the familiar points of Greek education: the demeanor of the body (carefully avoid rhathymia, the sluggishness which was always a defamatory sign); one’s gaze (in which aidōs, dignity, could be read), one’s way of talking (don’t take the easy option of silence, but be able to mix serious talk with casual talk); and the quality of one’s acquaintances.

• From The Triumph of Christianity (2018)

  Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial that has come upon you as if it is something unexpected, but insofar as you share in the sufferings of Christ, rejoice, so that you may also rejoice and find joy when he is revealed in glory. You are blessed if you are reproached for the name of Christ... . None of you ought to suffer as a murderer, thief, evil-doer, or mischief-maker. But if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but glorify God by this name. (1 Peter 4:12—14) The author is vague concerning what this suffering entailed. It is clear, in any event, that it was awful: he calls it a “fiery ordeal.” And it could come upon the community simply because it was Christian. This kind of suffering was acceptable and pleasing to God, whereas criminal and mischievous activity obviously was not. Some light may be cast on this “ordeal” by an earlier comment in which the author tells his readers they are no longer to live according to “human passions but by the will of God.” The Christians’ friends and neighbors do not appreciate this kind of new lifestyle. But the author insists: The past time is sufficient for doing what the gentiles prefer, going about in licentiousness, desires, addiction to wine, reveling, carousing, and lawless idolatry. They are surprised when you no longer accompany them in wild profligacy and they verbally attack you. (1 Peter 4:3- 4) It may well be that in the early stages of the Christian movement, as converts moved their allegiance from families, friends, and neighbors to their new Christian community, they upset and angered those left behind, who then abused them for it. It is hard to know exactly how this might have led to corporal punishment, but it may be that the secretive meetings of Christians and their antisocial behavior began not only to upset individual members of the wider community but also drew the attention of local magistrates, who suspected nefarious activities. Questions of legitimacy eventually concerned not only the ethical and social activities of the Christians but even more their religious cult itself, the worship of just one god and the refusal to participate in the religious life of the larger community. That this became the salient issue in pagan opposition to the Christian community becomes crystal clear from sources outside the New Testament. THE PERSECUTION OF PLINY The first detailed account of a Roman judicial proceeding against Christians foreshadows what was occasionally to happen in subsequent years. It comes to us in the early-second-century letters of Pliny the Younger, Roman governor of the province of Bithynia-Pontus in northwest Asia Minor.

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  I’m shocked to think you’re so misguided, that this seems to you like the best way to spend the Thanksgiving holidays. This is just shameful, you kids, shameful. Mike wasn’t going to take this last speech too well, Wendy could see this. She knew him well enough. He was considering some harsh rejoinder. It was fight or flight time. If it developed into a fight, she figured that she would root for Mike. Because her dad outweighed him by probably 140 pounds. It was only fair to back the underdog. But Mike hung his head with barely concealed rage. He didn’t say anything. —Young lady? Her father looked her over. —Talking to me, Dad? —Who else would I be talking to? —Well, then forget all this stern dad stuff. —I’m not interested in your smart-ass remarks right now, lady. Let’s go. Right now. You and I can discuss it on the walk home. At the mention of the walk home, at the mention of pedestrian conveyance, Wendy began to crack. The regret began to creep in like the bad colors in a bad sunset. She started to feel ashamed. She had curled her hands around Mikey’s almost concave stomach as she rode up on the back of his bike and it had been a cool ride. Something about the fact that her father was here without a car, that they were gonna have to walk back to their house, walk along the roads of New Canaan, in the heaviest weather, like people who couldn’t manage car payments, it embarrassed her. And she would have to defend her virginity to him. It was a burn , as they said at Saxe Junior High School. This was a burn. It was going to be an awful weekend. It was going to be a holiday weekend. There were going to be lectures and long, cruel silences. It would never end. She curled her tresses around an index finger—as she stood silently next to Mikey—and squelched tears. —Well, her father said. She joined him, didn’t say anything, looked back one last time at Mikey. In his haste, Mike had zipped his shirt-tail up in his fly. She thought of his beautiful red and brown pubic hair, the color and consistency of a baby’s first tangles, and her worries diminished. Love was bittersweet. Then, on the way by, she thrust a hand into one of the packing boxes and came up with a half-dozen loose pieces of Bazooka. —Services rendered, she called back to Mike. Her father sighed. They closed the Williamses’ front door behind them. Evidence of night was everywhere. The freezing rain fell horizontally. It was ten or fifteen degrees cooler than when Wendy had waited down at Silver Meadow. Sleet and freezing rain. The mixture fell threateningly on her and her father as they made their way, skidding and cursing, down the walk and into the driveway.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. Compared with the holiness of John, who is there that can think himself righteous? As a white garment if placed near snow would seem foul by the contrast; so compared with John every man would seem impure; therefore they confessed their sins. Confession of sin is the testimony of a conscience fearing God. And perfect fear takes away all shame. But there is seen the shame of confession where there is no fear of the judgment to come. But as shame itself is a heavy punishment, God therefore bids us confess our sins that we may suffer this shame as punishment; for that itself is a part of the judgment. RABANUS. Rightly are they who are to be baptized said to go out to the Prophet; for unless one depart from sin, and renounce the pomp of the Devil, and the temptations of the world, he cannot receive a healing baptism. Rightly also in Jordan, which means their descent, because they descended from the pride of life to the humility of an honest confession. Thus early was an example given to them that are to be baptized of confessing their sins and professing amendment. 3:7–107. But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8. Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance: 9. And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. 10. And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. GREGORY. (De Cur. Past. iii. in prol.) The words of the teachers should be fitted to the quality of the hearers, that in each particular it should agree with itself and yet never depart from the fortress of general edification. GLOSS. (non occ.) It was necessary that after the teaching which he used to the common people, the Evangelist should give an example of the doctrine he delivered to the more advanced; therefore he says, Seeing many of the Pharisees, &c. ISIDORE. (Orig. viii. 4.) The Pharisees and Sadducees opposed to one another; Pharisee in the Hebrew signifies ‘divided;’ because choosing the justification of traditions and observances they were ‘divided’ or ‘separated’ from the people by this righteousness. Sadducee in the Hebrew means ‘just;’ for these laid claim to be what they were not, denied the resurrection of the body, and taught that the soul perished with the body; they only received the Pentateuch, and rejected the Prophets. GLOSS. (non occ.) When John saw those who seemed to be of great consideration among the Jews come to his baptism, he said to them, O generation of vipers, &c.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  the men that had worn it. One of its monks, Hincmar, author of a partly fictitious account of the abbey’s relationship to the crown, was promoted Archbishop of Reims, where he made the Abbey of St Bertin the leading centre for the writing of French, especially royal, history and records. Such work might stretch the capacities of a fine mind. Hincmar, from 861–82, turned the terse and bare Annals of St Bertin into a full and colourful account; and, like Bede before him, used all the resources of the Church to get information which was scattered over the realm of Francis. But there was no real attempt to turn even history into a speculative, creative, or interpretive art; its writing was firmly limited by biblical and classical conventions, and by certain outstanding Latin models. The leading abbeys were the universities of the Dark Ages. But the curriculum was limited and the intellectual purpose humble. John Cassian, who did so much to determine the cultural perspectives of western monasticism, had argued that the era of creative exploration of Christian doctrine was over; all that remained to be done was a tidying-up process. There could be no question of another Jerome or Augustine. This conviction arose partly from the feeling that the work had already been done; partly, also, from an immense sense of inferiority towards the classical world which had now vanished. Eighth- and ninth- century monks believed that under the Romans mankind had possessed virtually the sum of ascertainable human knowledge, nearly all of which had since been lost; the most that they could do was to transmit faithfully what had been preserved. Augustine, writing on the brink of catastrophe, had allotted an essentially humble and unenquiring role for the human mind in the total Christian society. In destroying Pelagianism he had snapped the tradition of speculating on first principles, and banned the practice of critical reexamination of accepted conclusions. ‘Rome has spoken; the debate is over’ – those were his very words. The impact of his teaching was to apply the phrase in a much wider context than he had, perhaps, intended. His message to the Dark Ages was seen as: ‘The ancient world and the Fathers have spoken: the debate is over’; and by debate was understood the whole process of acquiring knowledge by thought and experiment. It was not for monks, however able, to challenge the conclusions of the past: merely to transmit and where necessary translate them. It can be argued that, in the long run, civilization has benefited from the intellectual self-abasement of these centuries. Much of the ancient world survived because of the intense reverence of a handful of men for the literary relics of the past.

• From The History of Sexuality, Vol. 3: The Care of the Self (1984)

  On the other hand, it seems that Musonius Rufus undertakes a thorough conjugalization of sexual activity since he condemns all sexual intercourse that does not take place within marriage and with a view to the latter’s particular objectives. The passage of the treatise on the aphrodisia that is preserved in Stobaeus opens with a customary criticism of the life of debauchery: a life that, being incapable of exercising the necessary mastery over itself, gets caught up in the pursuit of rare and affected pleasures and “shameful intimacies.” Now, to this banal condemnation, Musonius adds as a positive prescription a definition of what must be considered as aphrodisia dikaia, legitimate pleasures: these, he says, are pleasures that the partners enjoy together in marriage and for the purpose of begetting children (ta en gamōi kai epi genesei paidōn synteloumena). And Musonius then states precisely the two hypotheses that can emerge: either extramarital relations are sought in adultery (moicheia), and nothing could be more unlawful (paranomōtatai); or one obtains them without any adultery. Yet from the moment they are “without that which makes them lawful,” they are themselves shameful and have their origin in self-indulgence.7 Conjugality is for sexual activity the condition of its legitimate exercise.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  AUGUSTINE. (iii. 2. de Con. Evan) Though all the Evangelists say that the Lord foretold that Peter was to deny before the cock crew, Mark alone has related it more minutely, wherefore some from inattention suppose that he does not agree with the others. For the whole of Peter’s denial is threefold; if it had begun altogether after the cock crew, the other three Evangelists would seem to have spoken falsely, in saying, that before the cock crew, he would deny him thrice. Again, if he had finished the entire threefold denial before the cock began to crow, Mark would in the person of the Lord seem to have said needlessly, Before the cock crow twice, thou shall deny me thrice. But because that threefold denial began before the first cock-crowing, the other three did not notice when Peter was to finish it, but how great it was to be, that is, threefold, and when it was to begin, that is, before the cock crew, although the whole was conceived in his mind, even before the first cock crew; but Mark has related more plainly the interval between his words themselves. THEOPHYLACT. We are to understand that it happened thus; Peter denied once, then the cock crew, but after he had made two more denials, then the cock crew for the second time. PSEUDO-JEROME. Who is the cock, the harbinger of day, but the Holy Ghost? by whose voice in prophecy, and in the Apostles, we are roused from our threefold denial, to most bitter tears after our fall, for we have thought evil of God, spoken evil of our neighbours, and done evil to ourselves. BEDE. (ubi sup.) The faith of the Apostle Peter, and his burning love for our Lord, is shewn in what follows. For it goes on: But he spake the more vehemently, If I should die with thee, I will not deny thee in any wise. THEOPHYLACT. The other disciples also shewed a fearless zeal. For there follows, Likewise also said they all, but nevertheless they acted against the truth, which Christ had prophesied. 14:32–4232. And they came to a place which was named Gethsemane: and he saith to his disciples, Sit ye here, while I shall pray. 33. And he taketh with him Peter and James and John, and began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy; 34. And saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry ye here, and watch. 35. And he went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. 36. And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt. 37. And he cometh, and findeth them sleeping, and saith unto Peter, Simon, sleepest thou? couldest not thou watch one hour?

• From The History of Sexuality, Vol. 3: The Care of the Self (1984)

  Between the ancient theme that the overly intense pursuit of pleasure goes against the necessary self-mastery and the principle that there can be legitimate pleasure only in the context of the matrimonial institution, there is an important threshold that Musonius crosses. He draws the consequence this necessarily implies, even if it may have seemed paradoxical to many of his contemporaries. Moreover, he himself presents the inference in connection with a possible objection: Should one regard as culpable, sexual relations that would occur between two free persons not bound by the ties of marriage? “The man who has relations with a courtesan or a woman who has no husband wrongs no one for he does not destroy anyone’s hope of children.” Even in these circumstances, one commits an offense—just as a man can commit an offense and an injustice without doing wrong to anyone around him: he defiles himself, and “like swine, rejoices in his own vileness.”8 One must also count among the implications of this conception of the essential relationship between marriage and sexual activity the objection raised by Musonius to contraceptive practices. These practices, he says, in a text devoted to the question of whether all children must be raised, transgress the laws of cities that take care to maintain their population. They are harmful to individuals as well since it is useful to have descendants. They also violate the universal order that was willed by the gods: “How could we not be sinning against our ancestral gods and against Zeus, protector of the family, when we do such things? For just as he who mistreats a guest sins against Zeus, the protector of the rights of hospitality, and he who acts unrighteously to a friend, against Zeus, the god of friendship, even so whoever acts unrighteously toward his family line sins against his ancestral gods and against Zeus, protector of the family.”9

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  In the rest of this book, I follow Cooper’s lead by looking for the variety of ways that the other Black women thinkers under examination—women like Mary Church Terrell, Fannie Barrier Williams, and Pauli Murray—invoke notions of embodiment as part of their theoretical production. By looking for the appearance of Black women’s bodies, we can track the variety of ways that race women asserted their own ideas about what it means to be Black women intellectuals despite, and often in light of, the precarities of Black female embodiment. Doing so has important theoretical and methodological implications. Focusing on the ways that Black women discuss embodied experience in their social theorizing reminds us that Black women did not only seek to make Black female bodies respectable. Beyond strategic investments in dissemblance and respectability as practices that allowed for safer movement through public space, the study of race women’s intellectual production suggests that, through the choice to write their bodies into texts and to use Black female embodiment as the zero point of their theorizing, they were interested in other approaches to understanding and ameliorating the precarity of Black women’s lives. Though many Black women practiced a culture of dissemblance in public, in their textual work and on the lecture stage, they frequently pulled back the cloak of Black female pain and frustration, exposing the personal nature of the struggles they experienced, even as they worked to make the world safer for Black women. Ida B. Wells was mortified when she cried the first time she gave an antilynching address. The audacity to talk about how they felt about racism indexes an implicit belief that Black women’s embodied and affective experiences of racism and patriarchy mattered in the project of Black female knowledge production. The audacity, conversely, to discuss in fleeting moments feelings of pleasure, despite daily contention with extreme racial repression, again challenges overdetermined readings of race women being obsessed in every moment with being respectable. Attending to embodiment through the tracking of embodied discourse reminds us that we cannot study Black women’s theoretical production or tell Black women’s intellectual history without knowing something of their lives.

• From The History of Sexuality, Vol. 3: The Care of the Self (1984)

  Yet, contrary to and alongside of this traditional characterization of adultery, one finds, in certain reflections on married life, exigencies that are much more rigorous, in the double sense that they tend to bring more and more into play a principle of symmetry between the man and the woman, and that they justify this principle by referring to the respect owed to the personal bond between the two spouses. Concerning those “salutary truths,” which one knows at a distance but which, not having been sufficiently dwelled upon, are not really capable of governing conduct, Seneca evokes the obligations of friendship together with those of a strictly symmetrical conjugal fidelity: “You know that friendship should be scrupulously honored, and yet you do not hold it in honor. You know that a man does wrong in requiring chastity of his wife while he himself is intriguing with the wives of other men; you know that, as your wife should have no dealings with a lover, neither should you yourself with a mistress.”14

• From The History of Sexuality, Vol. 3: The Care of the Self (1984)

  1. It is doubtless rare to see formulated the principle that all sexual relations are culpable if they do not take place in a relationship of marriage that makes them legitimate. Provided that he exhibits personal moderation and respect for customs, laws, and the rights of others, an unmarried man may very well enjoy his pleasure as he sees fit. It would be very difficult, even within this austere ethics, to oblige him to abstain completely so long as he has not contracted a marriage. It was owing to a great personal virtue that the son of Marcia, by Seneca’s account, rejected the advances of the women who desired him, even going so far as to blush at the thought of pleasing them, as if this were a fault (quasi peccasset).2 We may also remark that Dio of Prusa shows himself to be very severe with regard to prostitution and the way it is organized: first, because he sees it as a form of “loveless love,” and a kind of union that is foreign to Aphrodite; second, because its victims are nonconsenting human beings. Though he hopes that a truly well-governed city will abolish these institutions, he does not expect such an inveterate evil to be eliminated at once.3 Marcus Aurelius expresses pride in his own sobriety in matters of sexual pleasure: he has “preserved [his] adolescence,” he “did not become a man before the proper time,” he “even took a little longer.” Now these statements show very clearly that the point of virtue is not in the fact that he has reserved his pleasures only for marriage, but that he has managed to master himself well enough to wait, longer than men usually do, for the right time to taste the pleasures of sex.4 Epictetus also evokes the ideal of sexual intercourse not taking place prior to the marriage tie, but he makes it the object of a piece of advice that one gives. This advice is to be followed if one can, but there is no reason to make an arrogant precept of this sort of chastity: “Before marriage guard yourself with all your ability from illicit intercourse with women; yet be not uncharitable or severe to those who are led into this, nor boast frequently that you yourself do otherwise.”5 Epictetus does not justify the extreme reserve that he demands in the sexual relationship by the form of marriage, by the rights and duties it establishes and which must be rendered to the wife; he explains it by saying that one owes it to oneself since one is a fragment of God, that one must honor this principle which dwells for a time in the body, and that one must respect it over the entire course of one’s everyday existence. Mindfulness of one’s own nature, rather than consciousness of one’s ties with others, should serve as the permanent basis of austerity: “Will you not remember, when you eat, who you are that eat, and whom you are feeding, and the same in your relations with women? When you take part in society, or training, or conversation, do you not know that it is God you are nourishing and training?… Yet when God himself is present within you and sees and hears all things, you are not ashamed of thinking and acting thus: so slow to understand your nature, and estranged from God!”6

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  5. St. Augustine thus comments on the words: “if amy man will not work,” etc.: “The servants of God ought to do some work, whereby they may earn a livelihood; so that they may not be compelled by necessity to beg.” Thus, we see that they are bound to manual labour rather than to mendicancy. 6. St. Jerome writes to Nepotian: “Let us never ask, and but rarely accept when we are pressed to do so. For it is more blessed to give than to receive.” The servants of God ought then neither to beg for, nor to accept the necessities of life. 7. The more severe the penalty inflicted, the more heinous, evidently, is the offence committed. This is laid down XXIV. q, I, “Let us not use unequal scales.” According to civil law, a sturdy beggar, if discovered, is sorely punished. For if he is of a servile condition, he is given over to be the slave of his accuser; if he is a freeman, he is condemned to be his perpetual servant (De mendicant. valid., lib. unica). Religious in robust health, therefore, sin by begging. 8. St. Augustine, in De opere monachorum, speaks thus of mendicant religious: “Our crafty enemy sends out hypocrites who, in the monastic habit, roam from province to province. They bear no commission. They settle nowhere, and are never at rest. They beg for everything. They exact all things, either as the requirements of their lucrative poverty, or as the reward of their pretended sanctity.” 9. That which naturally causes shame in man, is intrinsically disgraceful. For, as St. John Damascene says, we only blush for what is shameful. Now men are instinctively ashamed of begging; and the nobler a mans’s nature, the more acutely he feels the disgrace of mendicancy. Thus St. Ambrose says (lib. de offic.) that shame at begging proves the nobility of a man. And Aristotle (V Ethics) says that a freeman is “not prone to beg.” Mendicity then is in itself disgraceful; and no one ought to resort to it who can live by any other means. 10. The Gloss, on the words: “God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor. ix.), runs as follows: “He who gives in order to rid himself of the importunity of a beggar rather than to relieve the need of a poor man loses the merit of his alms. But charity is often thus bestowed on beggars; for they weary men by their persistence.” Our opponents likewise try to prove that even religious who preach ought not to beg nor to live on alms.