This dissertation explores the moral and spiritual role of the self-assessing emotions of shame and pride in the works of Abu Hamid al-Ghazālī (c. 1058-1111) and Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). In my analysis of their ethical and religious views on these topics, I demonstrate their great debt to Aristotle’s treatment and his ethics and moral psychology more broadly. Nevertheless, I also point to ways in which they adapted Aristotle’s views on shame and pride to their religious commitments. Aristotle understood shame as an emotion that, while praiseworthy, cannot be considered a virtue in the full sense since it presupposes wrongdoing. The virtuous do nothing wrong and, therefore, have nothing of which to feel ashamed. Pride or, more precisely great-souledness, is for Aristotle “the crown of the virtues,” since to be great-souled is to be great in every virtue and to think oneself worthy of great honor. By contrast, both al-Ghazālī and Aquinas describe shame not only as a praiseworthy emotion but also as a religious virtue. That is, as an emotion felt before God, shame is a good disposition of the soul that results in good actions. Furthermore, they described pride as a sinful emotion and trait of the vicious.
I argue that the dissimilarities between al-Ghazālī and Aquinas’s views and those of Aristotle on these self-assessing emotions result from their different metaphysical frameworks. More specifically, I argue that the three main metaphysical frameworks sustaining their respective views of shame as a virtue and pride as a vice are 1) a Big God Theory; 2) a deflationary account of the self; and 3) acknowledgement of Theistic causal moral luck. By showing the link between metaphysical/religious frameworks and the valence of self-assessing emotions such as shame and pride, this dissertation contributes to contemporary discussions on the influence of religion on moral commitments in general and on views on moral emotions, more specifically. It also points to ways of understanding shame as a virtue within a Western secular society. Properly defined, the virtue of shame speaks to a widely held intuition that accurate moral self-assessment, in both positive and negative senses, contributes significantly to a life of moral integrity. / 2024-11-07T00:00:00Z
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/45317 |
| Date | 07 November 2022 |
| Creators | Garner, Marina Fabris |
| Contributors | Decosimo, David |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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