Shame and Philosophy is an engaging philosophical effort to explore reflection about emotion with its relevant connection to personhood. Phil Hutchinson offers a careful reflection that establishes a dialogue among current research both from the analytical and the continental traditions. This novel approach to philosophy of emotions provides, just like Hutchinson wants, a conceptual network for a better understanding of how emotions make up our world. 

The first two chapters focus on the philosophical approaches to emotion pointing out some of the conceptual confusion underlying philosophical discussion about emotion. While the first chapter points out the limitations of the use of a philosophy of language to support an adequate analysis of emotion processes, the second chapter examines how the post-Heideggerian tradition with Girogio Agamben discusses the notion of shame placing it in a wider historical political framework and confronts his analysis with testimonies of the Holocaust survivors. From the first chapter we obtain a set of current issues in philosophy of emotion through a detailed discussion of Paul Griffiths proposals showing how his attempt of bringing philosophical reflection closer to scientific research on emotion with the aid of a  substitution of language does not fulfill what it sets out to do. With the second chapter, Hutchinson shows that while Agamben's a project is promising, as it moves away from the scientist abstraction, it fails its philosophical task for it does not make emotional expression intelligible because it holds a misrepresentation of the expression of shame. 

Chapter three is the heart of Hutchinson's book as it sets up the stage to launch the center of his inquiry, namely that he wants to understand shame in order to understand its place in human life such as to gain some insight about the nature of personhood. In order to do that, Hutchinson pursues two tasks in this chapter: first he gives us a picture of cognitive theories of emotions, their reasons, and the objections of their opponents; secondly, he puts forward a "world-taking cognitivism", which he thinks avoids the problems of other cognitive approaches, and provides a way to see emotion such that the notion of a person is central to emotional understanding. Accordingly Hutchinson begins by reviewing the distinction between reflex and affect for examining one of the classic problems of cognitive theories of emotion namely that one can have a non conceptual emotion arguing that there is not much reason to hold such view. To then provide three possible types of cognitivism which are all world-taking cognitivism. Finally, Hutchinson discusses Gabriele Taylor account of shame to then move on to comparing the world taking cognitivism he proposes with Prinz non-cognitivist theory of embodied appraisals. Among other interesting points of this chapter, Hutchinson unravels the complexity of shame showing how shame is a two stage process.

The last chapter on "Shame and the World" addresses current discussions on emotions providing a philosophical test to his own proposal in which Hutchinson moves on to a deeper discussion of shame paying particular attention to the metaphor of the audience and the issue of heteronomy. Beginning with the issue of intentionality and reviewing the proposal of world-taking cognitivism in order to overcome possible objections, Hutchinson provides a good presentation of John Deigh's analysis of the problems facing theories of emotion. Giving an interesting discussion about the nature of intentionality, which is a central commitment of cognitive theories of emotions, we obtain a clearer understanding of what we should understand by intentionality. Then Hutchinson establishes the limits of conceptual contradiction while analyzing shame showing that what are sometimes considered competing ways of explaining shame are not by examining a discussion of shame given by psychologist Paul Gilbert. At this point the book focuses on the relationship between shame and audience to then compare it with Bernard William's discussion on the same topic. Looking at the internal relationships of experiences of shame, Hutchinson begins by identifying what is meant by shame and then analyses what survival guilt reveals about the nature of shame. The chapter ends with an overview of the ethical and psychological literature on shame and shows how it has often been presented as a negative and regressive emotion even though, Hutchinson argues, this is not always the case. The chapter ends by reiterating the purpose of the book stating how the book has tried to overcome the philosophical prejudice which leads to confusion and propensity to abstraction by discussing shame in its connection to personhood and observing analysis of concrete instances of shame.

Shame and Philosophy is a book written with care, which is visible not only in the way in which throughout the book Hutchinson offers an explanation of the structure and provides a detailed description of all sections at the beginning of each chapter, but also how Hutchinson takes care of explaining in a detailed fashion the line of arguments of other philosophers and avoids focusing on one philosophical trend in his literary review of the topics.  It worth mentioning that Hutchinson lives up to his important claim that independently of accepting a theory of emotion, philosophers must struggle to also provide ways for people to make sense of the struggle with emotions.

© 2009 Dina Mendonça

Dina Mendonça, Ph.D. Instituto de Filosofia da Linguagem, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Keywords: philosophy