On The Myth Of Honor And Shame

Origin of the Issue: In the quest for truth by probing into human nature and behavior,self dignity is always held as a center value or center interest of individual. Theimportance of self dignity in terms of individual's existence, personal wholesomeness,and human value is multidimensional and far-flung. Though self dignity is one of themost essential and long standing issues, it is severely under-researched, especially in ascientific and comprehensive sense. Self dignity is usually viewed appreciatively in anarrow sense; but it is herein looked at in a more general sense, referring to therelative evaluation of the importance of oneself to others regarded by the personhimself. Self dignity can be related to a variety of contributing factors and manifestedin many ways. But there is no escaping that it can generate both justified attitudessuch as constructive senses of honor and shame, and deviant holdings such asoverbearing and degrading inclinations. Accordingly, this research is mainly intendedto discuss its expressions as individual attitudes either justified or deviant in general,and detailed distinctions between them in particular. It is believed that suchdistinctions will contribute to the insights into the nature of the self dignity and theclarification of common confusions regarding this issue as well as the development ofwholesome self awareness, and thus the enhancement of humanistic values.Rationale and Methodology: This issue has aroused the concerns of many greatpersonages both in the foreign and domestic histories, yet a consensus has not beenarrived at despite the multitudes of perspectives and theories. In view of this, it isnecessary to construct a commonly acceptable criterion or a general framework thatcaptures the unity of what constitutes the justified attitudes toward self dignity. As aresult, this research is oriented to expounding the categorization of and distinctionbetween justified and deviant attitudes toward self dignity, based on which a tentativeframework with ten categorizing principles are proposed through applications of somemethodology fromsocial science and interdisciplinary approach. After that, thetentative framework is put in various tests, including applications in re-examinationsof representative views and traditions, interpretations of a literary figure and somesocial practices. The findings can be both verifying and falsifying. It has to be also stated that this framework is an abstract generality designed prescriptively on thebasis of some descriptions, and can not be expected to have the accuracy and validityof rules and principles established in natural science; thus it can only be taken as ageneral guide and applied contextually rather than inflexibly.Organization and Conclusion: Starting by introducing the issue in Chapter One,efforts will be made in Chapter Two to define the issue through presentingperspectives and manifestations in a descriptive manner, hoping to arrive at someontology of this issue. After that, a hypothesis is advanced in Chapter Three for thesolution to the issue in question and a theoretical framework is constructed. A furtherstep is taken in Chapter Four to test the soundness or effectiveness of the proposedframework in interpreting the issue under discussion through re-examination of theforegoing representative views. Moreover, in Chapter Five, the soundness of thisframework is further tested in its application to literary as well as cultural studies. InChapter Six, as a conclusion, the findings of the tests will be evaluated and bothimplications and limitations will be pointed out for improvement and furtherresearches. The overall conclusion is that the hypothesis of this research and theframework constructed are basically sound in their arguments and useful ininterpretative applications in spite of their limits in rigor and thoroughness.