This paper analyzes the intricate relationship between courage and shame as presented in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics III.6-9. To cite the most pressing example: citizen-soldiers endure in the face of deadly risk in the hope of gaining honor and avoiding what is “shameful” (1116a29). They act “on account of virtue” and “a desire for what is noble” (1116a27-29). Nevertheless, Aristotle insists that such citizen-soldiers, however admirable, are not truly courageous men. In order to understand both the distinction between, as well as the proximity of, shame and courage, this paper draws on Bernard Williams’s account of shame offered in his Shame and Necessity.
