Aidos

the present study focuses on those who have, through artistic representation, something to show us about aidos and those whose moral and political doctrines have something to tell us about aidos.

Cairns frames his monograph as the definitive study of aidos across Greek literature and philosophy, treating it as both a psychological and an ethical phenomenon requiring sustained interdisciplinary analysis.

Douglas L. Cairns, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, 1993thesis

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In Homer, where aidos and its relatives occur frequently, ‘aidos is always prospective and inhibitory’ (Cairns 1993): ‘it does not approximate to our notion of the retrospective dread or guilty conscience.’ More crisply, Cairns affirms ‘aidos is not shame’ (1993: 14).

Konstan rehearses and endorses Cairns’s foundational distinction: aidos is prospective and inhibitory, not a retrospective emotion akin to guilt, and must not be conflated with the English ‘shame.’

David Konstan, The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature, 2006thesis

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a sense of shame before others (aidos) will be gone… Aidos involves a sense of shame concerning one’s own behaviour with others: these should be honourable. We see here an association of dike, aidos, and nemesis, all seen as positive forces that make it possible for human beings to live together in harmony.

Sullivan, reading Hesiod, establishes aidos as one of three interdependent social-ethical forces—alongside dike and nemesis—whose disappearance signals the terminal dissolution of human community.

Sullivan, Shirley Darcus, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995thesis

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Those who deserve this designation, people before whom one feels aidos (the ‘I respect’ usage, aidos for the direct recipient of one’s actions) fall into three broad categories: those before whom one feels inferior, who fill one with a sense of awe; those with whom one has a tie of philotes; and those who are helpless or who throw themselves on one’s mercy.

Cairns identifies three structural categories of persons who command aidos in Homer, demonstrating that the emotion is relational and hierarchically structured rather than purely internal.

Douglas L. Cairns, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, 1993thesis

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The relationship between aidos and nemesis is so close that many instances of the latter will be considered individually in the main discussion below… Aidos and nemesis frequently occur as a pair.

Cairns argues that aidos and nemesis function as a constitutive pair in Homeric ethics, the first representing inner inhibition and the second the social sanction of indignation that enforces moral norms.

Douglas L. Cairns, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, 1993thesis

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without aidos Achilles has become virtually a beast, and he ‘knows wild things, like a lion’… the lack of aidos against which Apollo threatens nemesis (24. 53) is not only a lack of compunction for Hector, but a lack of regard for the normal limits of human conduct.

Cairns reads Achilles’ transgression as the paradigmatic Homeric case of aidos’s loss, showing that without it the hero descends to bestiality and invites divine nemesis as the corrective sanction.

Douglas L. Cairns, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, 1993thesis

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aidos is felt, when active, to prevent breaches of the co-operative virtues and that the suitors are without such aidos—they are described as anaidos throughout the poem; but the important point here is that lack of aidos in the co-operative sphere can be seen as the perpetration of aischea.

Cairns demonstrates that aidos functions as the psychological mechanism upholding co-operative social virtues, and that its absence—anaideia—manifests directly as shameful, honour-violating deeds.

Douglas L. Cairns, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, 1993thesis

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Aristotle at one point in the Nicomachean Ethics (1128b12-13) says of aidos: ‘It is defined as a kind of fear [phobos] of disgrace [adoxia]’… it is one that looks to future rather than to past or present events.

Konstan examines Aristotle’s ambiguous classification of aidos as a fear-like emotion directed at future disgrace, noting that this prospective orientation distinguishes it from aiskhune and complicates its status as a pathos.

David Konstan, The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature, 2006thesis

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it is now apparent that Aristotle has some difficulty in fitting aidos into his scheme… aidos is identified as a mean it is also specifically said to be a pathos.

Cairns exposes the internal tension in Aristotle’s treatment of aidos, which resists consistent classification as either a pathos or a hexis while simultaneously being identified as both a mean and an affect.

Douglas L. Cairns, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, 1993thesis

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there are two Greek words that are typically rendered as ‘shame’ in English: aidos, which has received some scholarly attention recently (notably Cairns 1993), and aiskhune… it is a weakness in Bernard Williams’s fine book on shame in Greek antiquity (1993) that he lumps aidos and aiskhune together.

Konstan argues that the conflation of aidos and aiskhune is a persistent scholarly error with real interpretive consequences, and that their distinction must be maintained for accurate analysis of Greek moral psychology.

David Konstan, The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature, 2006thesis

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His choice, then, is not between giving in to aidos or rejecting it, but between the demands of two different sorts of aidos—aidos for the suppliants… inhibits rejection of the appeal, and aidos based on the king’s responsibility to his people… inhibits both acceptance and rejection.

Cairns shows through Pelasgus in Aeschylus’s Suppliants that aidos can generate genuine moral paralysis when competing obligations each independently command the emotion, revealing its structural complexity.

Douglas L. Cairns, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, 1993supporting

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A desire not to overstep the bounds of good manners in the host-guest relationship seems also to explain Odysseus’ aidos at Odyssey 8. 85-6, where, moved by the bard’s song, he hides his face in order that his hosts should not see him weep.

Cairns reads Odysseus’ concealment of grief as an instance of aidos governing conduct within the xenia relationship, demonstrating that the emotion regulates not only combat and honour but also domestic hospitality.

Douglas L. Cairns, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, 1993supporting

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aidos was a proper reaction towards one’s philoi… it is a basic duty of the agathos to accord his philoi aidos… The complaint that a favour has not been returned, and that aidos has been ignored, is a frequent one in the corpus.

Cairns traces aidos in Hesiod and the Theognid corpus as the affective obligation binding the agathos to reciprocal philotes, showing the emotion’s role in sustaining aristocratic friendship networks.

Douglas L. Cairns, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, 1993supporting

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the gods are to imbue, by means of this ‘breath’, the inhabitants of Argos with a disposition towards aidos. The active use of the adjective has hitherto been rare, but in this play it frequently coexists beside the passive.

Cairns analyses Aeschylus’s Suppliants to show that aidos operates both as a disposition imparted by divine influence and as an active moral quality manifested in the community’s reception of suppliants.

Douglas L. Cairns, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, 1993supporting

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since ‘showing aidos’ is a regular description of the act of accepting supplication, Theseus’ conduct could presumably be so construed, but, equally, his concern for another human being might also be described as aidos; aidos would thus be relevant as an act-description and as a motive.

Cairns argues in his reading of Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus that aidos functions simultaneously as a behavioural description of accepting supplication and as an internal motivating disposition, collapsing the act/motive distinction.

Douglas L. Cairns, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, 1993supporting

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Aristotle tends to treat aidos in the ethical works as an emotional temperament or dunamis, and speaks in these contexts of ho aidemon or ‘a man given to feeling aidos.’ The sense of aidos as ‘chastity’ comes particularly close to that of sophrosune in erotic contexts.

Konstan maps Aristotle’s variable treatments of aidos—as dunamis, as pathos, as quasi-virtue—and notes its semantic overlap with sophrosune in erotic contexts, illustrating the term’s conceptual versatility in Hellenistic reception.

David Konstan, The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature, 2006supporting

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‘Aidos is shame that derives from reverence, whereas aiskhune is shame that derives from immorality.’ More recently, Melvin Lansky (1996: 769) notes that English ‘shame’ can refer to a desire to ‘disappear from view’ or to ‘comportment that would avoid the emotion.’

Konstan traces the post-classical reception of the aidos/aiskhune distinction, showing that Renaissance and modern commentators alike have preserved the fundamental differentiation between reverence-based and guilt-based shame.

David Konstan, The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature, 2006supporting

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Shipp endorses Dodds’s hypothesis of a development from shame culture to guilt culture in Greece, which he sees reflected in the shift from aidos to aiskhune.

Konstan critically registers Dodds’s influential shame-culture/guilt-culture thesis and its lexical correlate—the historical displacement of aidos by aiskhune—while noting the interpretive risks of such developmental narratives.

David Konstan, The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature, 2006supporting

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in other passages some feature of the particular relationship in which aidos is felt appropriate is used as the object of the verb in place of a personal object… aidos is also a feature of this type of philotes. In Iliad 24, for example, Zeus informs Thetis that his wish in assigning Achilles kudos (glory) is to preserve the aidos and philotes which bind Thetis to him.

Cairns demonstrates through syntactic and narrative analysis that the grammatical objects of aidos-verbs encode the relational context of the emotion, linking divine and human instances of the philotes bond.

Douglas L. Cairns, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, 1993supporting

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aidos clearly emerges as an attractive and desirable personal attribute, an important social asset. By virtue of this association with charis, aidos clearly emerges as an attractive and desirable personal attribute, an important social asset.

Cairns connects aidos to charis in the Odyssey, arguing that the emotion is not merely inhibitory but constitutively attractive—a social good that generates reciprocal esteem and marks the person as civilized.

Douglas L. Cairns, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, 1993supporting

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to commit perjury is to ignore aidos (Hes. fr. 204. 82 MW) and to manifest one’s anaideia… an altar can be regarded as an object invested with time, and its possession of time is inseparable from its sanctity.

Cairns extends aidos into the domains of oath-taking and sacred objects, showing that the emotion underpins the sanctity of ritual institutions by linking timê, perjury, and the transgression of anaideia.

Douglas L. Cairns, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, 1993supporting

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Aidos, as we have seen, is important in the Suppliants simply by virtue of that play’s nature as a suppliant drama, but it is in the play’s central decision scene… that aidos plays its most significant part in the action.

Cairns argues that the suppliant drama as a genre is structurally organized around aidos, and that Aeschylus’s Suppliants is the paradigmatic literary instantiation of the emotion’s role in political decision-making.

Douglas L. Cairns, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, 1993supporting

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it does not seem too far-fetched to suggest that this feeling of awe, of uncertainty, towards a suppliant of somewhat ambivalent status might be related at least to one aspect of the aidos which is appropriate to the situation.

Cairns links the Homeric emotion of thambos (astonishment) before a suppliant to the aidos appropriate to supplication, suggesting awe and moral inhibition share a psychological substrate in Greek emotional life.

Douglas L. Cairns, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, 1993supporting

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This is not the place to investigate in detail the Homeric idea of aidos and aideisthai, but I should like to suggest that aidos is not simply a response to social norms, but also a way of invoking their application: one adopts a posture.

Konstan briefly advances an original claim that aidos is not merely reactive to social norms but is itself a performative gesture that invokes and activates those norms in social interaction.

David Konstan, The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature, 2006aside

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various offences against propriety, symptoms of the driving out of aidos by anaideia, are described as erga adika, and if it is adikon to maltreat guests, etc., it must be a demand of dike to protect them.

Cairns traces the connection between aidos and dike in Hesiod’s Works and Days, arguing that the displacement of aidos by anaideia is simultaneously a violation of the principle of dike governing interpersonal conduct.

Douglas L. Cairns, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, 1993aside

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