THE METAPHYSICS OF SHAME

The Phenomenon of Sexual Shame and
its Interpretation

   The phenomenon of shame, and of sexual shame in particular, has in recent times attracted the attention of the phenomenologists {M. Scheler, F. Sawicki}. It is a theme which opens up a broad field of observation and which lends itself to analysis in depth. At a first superficial glance it may be said that what we always find in shame is a tendency to concealment, whether of certain external facts or of certain states of mind and emotions. We must not oversimplify the matter by maintaining that people endeavour to conceal only what is regarded as bad -- for we often feel ‘ashamed’ of what is good, of a good deed, for instance. The shame in the case probably relates not to the good itself, but solely to the fact that something which in the intention of the agent should have remained hidden has been made public: when this happens it is the publicity itself which is felt to be bad. We can, then, say that the phenomenon of shame arises when something which of its very nature or in view of its purpose ought to be private passes the bounds of a person’s privacy and somehow becomes public.

   We see from all this that there is an unmistakable connection between shame and the person. We need not discuss at this point whether or not the phenomenon also occurs in the animal world. In my opinion, we should find there only various forms of fear. Fear is a negative emotion always caused by the threat of some evil. This evil must of course be perceived or imagined before fear is felt. Shame is distinct from fear, although externally they may look similar. If a man is ashamed, his shame is accompanied by the fear that what should in his belief remain hidden may come into the open.

   Fear, then, may be linked with shame, but only indirectly, and secondarily. The essence of shame goes beyond such fear. It can only be understood if we heavily emphasize the truth that the existence of the person is an interior one, i.e. that the person possesses an interior peculiarly its own, and that from this arises the need to conceal (that is, to retain internally) certain experiences or values, or else to withdraw with them into itself. Fear does not exhibit this inwardness, it is a simple reaction to an evil perceived, imagined or experienced. No interior is necessary to this reaction, whereas shame cannot be conceived of without it. The need for concealment, characteristic of shame, arises in man because it finds in him, if I may put it this way, a terrain – his inner life – which lends itself to concealment of fear itself, the dissimulation of a psychological reaction, something of which animals too may be capable, whereas shame is bound up with the person, and its development proceeds together with that of the personality.

   We are specifically concerned with sexual shame. Its external manifestations are connected with the body – it is to some degree simply physical shame. Particular objects of shame are those parts and organs of the body which determine its sex. Human beings show an almost universal tendency to conceal them from the gaze of others, and particularly of persons of the other sex. This largely explains the need they feel to avoid nakedness. Obviously other motives are at work here, particularly the organism’s need for protection against cold, which is more or less important in particular climates: in tropical conditions primitive peoples live in partial or total nakedness. Many details in their way of life indicate that nakedness cannot be simply and unambiguously identified with shamelessness. On the contrary, for some primitive peoples, the concealment of parts of the body previously exposed is a manifestation of shamelessness. We doubtless see here the effect of habit, of a collective custom which has evolved under the influence of the prevailing climate. Nakedness assists the adaptation of the organism to climatic conditions and no other intention can easily be found in it, whereas other motives can easily be assigned to concealment of those parts of the body which distinguish male and female. We find that dress may serve not only to conceal but in one way or another to draw attention to these parts of the body. Sexual modesty cannot then in any simple way be identified with the use of clothing, nor shamelessness with the absence of clothing and total or partial nakedness. This is a secondary and variable factor. The most we can say is that a tendency to cover the body and those parts of the body which declare it male or female goes together with sexual shame but is not an essential feature of it.

   What is an essential feature is the tendency to conceal sexual values themselves, particularly in so far as they constitute in the mind of a particular person a potential object of enjoyment for persons of the other sex. For this reason we do not encounter sexual shame in children at an age when the sexual values do not exist for them because their minds are not yet receptive to those values. As they become conscious or are made conscious of the existence of this sphere of values they begin to experience sexual shame – not as something imposed on them from outside, by the milieu in which they live, but as an interior need of an evolving personality. The development of sexual modesty = as we call the constant capacity and readiness to feel shame – follows one course in girls and women and another in boys and men. This is connected with something which we have already stressed in the psychological analysis of love – the rather different structure of psychological forces, and specifically the different relationship between sensuality and emotion in the two sexes. Since sexuality, which is oriented toward the body as an object of enjoyment is in general stronger and more importunate in men, modesty and shame – the tendency to conceal sexual values specifically connected with the body – must be more pronounced in girls and women. At the same time they are less aware of sensuality and of its natural orientation in men, because in them emotion is usually stronger than sensuality, and sensuality tends to be latent in emotion. This is why woman is often said to be ‘purer’ than man. This tells us nothing about the virtue of chastity. Woman is purer in as much as she experiences more powerfully the value of a human being of the other sex, the value of a sort of psychological ‘masculinity’. She is, it is true, greatly influenced by physical masculinity – although the feminine reaction to both forms of masculinity is primarily psychological. But this very trait in her mentality may in a certain sense make modesty more difficult for her. For since a woman does not find in herself the sensuality of which a man as a rule cannot but be aware in himself she does not feel so great a need to conceal the body as a potential object of enjoyment. The evolution of modesty in woman requires some initial insight in the male psychology.

   The nature development of modesty in boys and men generally follows a different course. A man does not have to fear female sensuality as much as a woman must fear the sensuality of the male. He is, however, very keenly aware of his own sensuality, and this for him is the source of shame. For him, sexual values are more closely bound up with the body and sex as potential objects of enjoyment, this is the form in which he becomes aware of them, and experienced in this way they become for him a cause of shame. He is, then, ashamed above all of the way in which he reacts to the sexual value of persons of the other sex. He is equally ashamed of sexual values connected with his own ‘body’. Perhaps this second form of shame is a consequence of the first: he is ashamed of his body because he is ashamed of the reaction to the value ‘body’ which he encounters in himself. Quite independently of this he is obviously ashamed of his own body, and of sexual values connected with it, in what may be called an immanent way, as distinct from the form of shame previously defined, which we might call relative. Shame is not only a response to someone else’s sensual and sexual reaction to the body as an object of use – a reaction to a reaction – it is also, and above all, an immanent need to prevent such reactions to the body in oneself, because they are incompatible with the value of the person. This is the origin of modesty, which is a constant eagerness to avoid what is shameless.

   We see clearly here the intimate connection between the phenomenon of shame and the nature of the person. The person is its own master [sui juris]; no one else except God the Creator has or can have any proprietorial right in relation to it. It is its own property, it has the power of self determination, and no-one can encroach upon its independence. No-one can take possession of the person unless the person permits this, makes a gift of itself from love. This objective inalienability [alteri incommuniabilitas] and inviolability of the person finds expression precisely in the experience of sexual shame. The experience of shame is a natural reflection of the essential nature of the person. And if on the other hand the experience of shame presupposes the inner life of the person as the only terrain on which it can exist if we probe more deeply we see that this experience requires the existence of the person as its natural basis. Only the person can feel shame, because only it of its very nature cannot be an object of use (in either meaning of the verb to use). Sexual shame is to some extent a revelation of the supra-unilitarian character of the person, whether the person is ashamed of the sexual values connected with its own body or of its attitude to such values in persons of the other sex, its fixation on them as mere objects of enjoyment. In the first case, the feeling of shame goes with the realization that one’s person must not be an object for use on account of the sexual values connected with it, whether in fact or only in intention. In the second case, the feeling of shame goes with the realization that a person of the other sex must not be regarded (even in one’s private thoughts) as an object of use.

   We see then that a proper understanding of sexual shame gives us certain guidelines for sexual morality generally. Mere description of the phenomenon, even if it is as perceptive as that of the phenomenologists, is not sufficient here – a metaphysical interpretation of it is also necessary. Sexual ethics may then find an experimental point of departure in the feeling of shame. The person is at the center of this experience and is at the same time its basis. Although the sexual values are the direct object of shame, the immediate content of the feeling, the indirect object is the person, the attitude of one person to another. The function of shame is to exclude – (whether passively, as is usual is with women, or actively, as is more often the case with men) – an attitude to the person incompatible with its essential, supra-utilitarian nature. The danger of such an attitude arises precisely because of the sexual values inherent in the person, and so sexual shame takes the form of a tendency to conceal them. This is a natural and spontaneous tendency. We see clearly here how the moral order is bound up with the existential order, the order of nature. Sexual morality is deeply rooted in the laws of nature.

   This spontaneous urge to conceal sexual values, and the sexual character of certain feelings, which we encounter in men and women has, however, another and deeper meaning. It is not just a matter of hiding anything that might produce a sexual reaction in another person, nor yet of internally hiding from one’s own reaction to a person of the other sex. For this shrinking from reactions to mere sexual values goes together with the longing to inspire love, to inspire a ‘reaction’ to the value of the person, and with the longing to experience love in the same sense – the first perhaps stronger in women, the second in men, but one should not suppose that either is exclusive to either of the sexes. A woman wants to be loved so that she can show love. A man wants to love so that he can be loved. In either case sexual modesty is not a flight from love, but on the contrary the opening of a way towards it. The spontaneous need to conceal mere sexual values bound up with the person is the natural way to the discovery of the value of the person as such. The value of the person is closely connected with its inviolability, its status as ‘something more than an object of use’. Sexual modesty is as it were a defensive reflex, which protects that status and so protects that status and so protects the value of the person. But there is more to it than that. It is a matter not just of protecting but of revealing the value of the person, and of doing so in the context of the sexual values which are simultaneously present in a particular person. Shame does not reveal the value of the person in some abstract way, as a theoretical magnitude which only the intellect can appreciate, but in a live and concrete fashion, bound up with the sexual values and yet superior to them. Hence the feeling of inviolability. (In woman, it expresses itself like this; ‘You must not touch me, not even in your secret carnal thoughts’ and the man like this: ‘I must not touch her, not even with a deeply hidden wish to enjoy her, for she cannot be an object for use’.) this ‘fear of contact’ which is so characteristic of persons who truly love ach other is an indirect way of affirming the value of the person as such, and this as we know is a constituent part of love in the proper, that is the ethical sense of the word.

   There also exists a certain natural shame of love in its physical aspect. The experiences which go with it are rightly described as ‘intimate’. Men and women avoid other people, avoid being seen, when they make love, and any morally sound human being would consider it extremely indecent not to do so. There is here a sort of discrepancy between the objective importance of the act, of which we have spoken before in Chapter 1, and the shame which surrounds it in people’s minds, and which has nothing to do with prudery, or false shame. It is a proper shame, since there are profound reasons for concealing manifestations of love between man and woman, and particularly marital intercourse, from the eyes of other people. Love is a union of persons, brought about in this instance by physical intimacy and intercourse. This last consists in a shared experience of sexual values which makes possible mutual sexual enjoyment for both man and woman. The shared experience of sexual values may be inseparably bound up with love, may find its objective justification and foundation in love (this in fact is the way towards overcoming shame in the persons taking part in the sexual act; we shall speak of this more particularly elsewhere).

   Only they, however are aware of this justification, and it is only for them that love is an ‘interior’ matter of the soul, not just a physical matter. Anyone else would find himself confronted simply by the external manifestations, by the shared response to sexual values, while the union of persons itself, the objective reality of love, remains inaccessible to outsiders. Obviously, if shame endeavours to conceal the sexual values so as to safeguard the value of the person, it must also endeavour to conceal a shared response to sexual values so as to protect the value of love itself – in the fist place for the two people who are experiencing it together. It is then not merely relative but also immanent shame.

   The shared experience of sexual values is always attended by circumstances which demand a measure of concealment. Human beings are in general ashamed of what merely ‘happens’ to them, and is not the result of conscious act of will. They are ashamed, for instance, of passionate outbursts of rage or panic fear, and they are still more ashamed of certain physiological processes which occur independently of their will in specific circumstances – the activity of the will being limited only to creating those conditions or allowing them to arise. We find here confirmation of the spirituality and ‘inwardness’ of the human person, which detects some evil in all that is not sufficiently ‘inwardly’ felt, or spiritual, but only exterior, physical and irrational. Given, then, that when a man and a woman share an experience of sexual values all these external aspects are conspicuous, while their personal union is as it were hidden within each of them and invisible to anyone from outside, we can see why love, in so far as it is a matter of ‘the body and sex’, needs concealment.

Law of the Absorption of Shame by Love

   Externally (i.e. as seen by anyone other than the partner in love) love in its physical aspect is naturally inseparable from shame, but within the relationship between the man and woman concerned, a characteristic phenomenon occurs which we shall call here ‘the absorption of shame by love’. Shame is, as it were, swallowed up by love, dissolved in it, so that the man and the woman are no longer ashamed to be sharing their experience of sexual values. This process is enormously important to sexual morality, for we can derive useful ethical guidance from it. It is a natural process which cannot be understood until we have grasped the relative importance of the value of the person and of sexual values in human beings, and in the love of man and woman.

   In our analysis of sexual shame we came to the conclusion that it is a phenomenon so profoundly personal that it can exist only in the world of persons. Shame has, however, a dual significance; it means flight, the endeavour to conceal sexual values so that they do not obscure the values of the person as such, but it also means the longing to inspire or experience love. (Love between man and woman develops, as we know, on the basis of sexual values, but in the last resort the attitudes of each of them to the value of the person are the decisive factor, since love is a union of persons). Thus, our analysis of sexual shame shows that it clears the way, so to speak, for love.

   To say that shame is ‘absorbed’ by love does not mean that it is eliminated or destroyed. Quite the contrary – it is reinforced, in man and woman, for only where it is preserved intact can love be realized in full. ‘Absorption means only that love fully utilizes for its own purposes that characteristic effects of shame, and specifically that awareness of the proper relationship between the value of the person and sexual values which shame introduces as a natural and spontaneous feeling into the mutual relationship of man and woman. However, this awareness, unless it is cultivated as it should be, may die away, to the detriment of the persons and their mutual love.

   In what, then, does this absorption of shame by love consist, and how is it to be understood? Well, shame is a natural form of self-defense for the person against the danger of descending or being pushed into the position of an object for sexual use. That position – as we have said several times already – is incompatible with the very nature of the person. The person cannot (must not) voluntarily descend to the position of an object of use for another person or persons. Equally, a person must not push any person of the other sex into the position of an object of use. In both parties sexual shame – physical shame, and shame for their emotions – militate against this.

   Love, as we said right at the beginning of this book, is an attitude to another person, which essentially precludes treatment of the person as an object for use, it most certainly does not allow a person to descend to that level, nor yet does it permit on person to reduce another to that status. This is why shame leads so naturally to love.

   What is most essential to love is affirmation of the value of the person; this is the basis on which the will of the loving subject strives for the true good of the beloved person, the entire and perfect good, the absolute good, which is identical with happiness. Such a disposition of the will in a loving person is totally incompatible with any utilitarian inclination. Love, and the tendency to regard a person as an object of use, are mutually exclusive. Where there is love, shame as the natural way of avoiding the utilitarian attitude loses its raison d’étre and gives ground. But only to the extent that a person loved in this way – and this is most important – is equally ready to give himself or herself in love. Let us remember here the conclusions we reached in our analysis of betrothed love. The law of the absorption of shame by love helps us to understand the whole problem of chastity or rather of conjugal modesty at the level of psychology. The fact is, however, that sexual intercourse between spouses is not a form of shamelessness legalized by outside authority, but is felt to be in conformity with the demands of shame (unless the spouses themselves make it shameless by their way of performing it).

   Looking at the problem in it’s entirety (as the integral analysis of love in the last chapter has equipped us to) we are bound to say that only true love, a love which possess in full the ethical essence proper to it, is capable of absorbing shame. This is easily understandable in that shame represents a tendency to conceal sexual values so that the value of the person is not obscured by them, but on the contrary is enhanced. True love is a love in which sexual values are subordinate to the value of the person. The last is dominant and affirmation of it pervades all the experiences born of man’s natural sensuality or sentiment. Of course, these experiences are connected in a natural way with sexual values (sensuality with the value ‘body and sex’, sentiment with the value ‘femininity’ or ‘masculinity’ in an individual of the other sex). True love ensures that these experiences are imbued with affirmation of the value of the person to such an extent that it is impossible for the will to regard the other person as an object for use. In practice, this is where the real strength of love lies – mere theoretical affirmation of the value of the person is not enough.

   Given such an attitude there is no reason for shame, or for concealment of the values of sex, since there is no danger that they might obscure the value of the person or destroy its inalienability (alteri incommunicabilitas) and inviolability, reducing it to the status of an object for use. There is no longer any reason to be ashamed of the body once the positive urge to inspire love which is part of that shame has met with an adequate response. Nor is there any reason to be ashamed of one’s feelings, since there can be no question of regarding the other person as an object for use. Even if sensuality, in its characteristic way, reacts to ‘the body’ as a possible object of use, the will is fixed by love not on the exploitation but on the true good of the other person, which (in marriage) does not exclude physical intercourse, and hence shared sexual enjoyment. The need for shame has been absorbed by mature love for a person; it is no longer necessary for a lover to conceal from the beloved or from himself a disposition to enjoy, since this has been absorbed by true love ruled by the will. Affirmation of the value of the person so thoroughly permeates all the sensual and emotional reactions connected with the sexual values that the will is not threatened by a utilitarian outlook incompatible with the proper attitude to a person. On the contrary, affirmation of the person influences the emotions in such a way that the value of the person is not just abstractly understood but deeply felt. This is the point which love is psychologically complete, and sexual shame can be thoroughly absorbed. A man and a woman can become ‘one flesh’ – in the familiar words of the Book of Genesis (2:24), with which the Creator defined the essence of marriage – and the oneness will not be a form of shamelessness, but only the full realization of the union of persons, which results from reciprocal conjugal love. This has a very direct relevance to the problem of procreation, which will however be discussed separately in Chapter IV.

   We must also point to a danger connected with the phenomenon of the absorption of sexual shame. Shame has its roots deep in the very being of the person, which is why we must look to the metaphysics of the person for a full explanation of it. There is a danger that shame, and its absorption in the regular way by love, may be treated too superficially. Subjectively, of course, shame is a negative feeling, somewhat akin to fear. The feeling of fear is associated in the consciousness with the sexual values, and it yields to the realization that those values are not merely a stimulus to ‘sexual desire’. Fear gradually diminishes as love grows. The feeling of shame inspired in one person by sexual desire for another is, as it were, blurred in the consciousness, where it coexists with a growing emotional attachment which has the power of absorbing, of swallowing up the feeling of shame, the power to liberate the minds of man and woman alike from the feeling of shame. And this emotional-affective process explains the view, so very often expressed or implied, that ‘the emotion (love) itself gives men and women the right to physical intimacy and to sexual intercourse.

   This is a mistaken view, for love as an emotional experience even if it is reciprocated, is very far from being the same as love completed by commitment of the will. This last requires that each of two persons choose the other, on the basis of an unqualified affirmation of the value of the other person, with a view to a lasting union in matrimony, and with a clearly defined attitude to parenthood. Love between persons posses – and must possess – a clear-cut objective purpose. Love as an emotional affective experience often has a purely subjective character, and is from the ethical point of view immature. We have said several times that this is an area in which merely ‘using the material’ must not be confused with creativity, and that transient erotic experiences must not be confused with love.

It follows that the ‘absorption of shame by love’ of which we have spoken must have more than a merely emotional-affective significance. The mere elimination of the feeling of shame by some sort of amorous feeling is not enough, for this contradicts the essential nature of sexual shame properly understood – indeed, we have here a form of shamelessness (shamelessness takes advantage of these transitory emotions to legitimate itself). If the feeling of shame readily yields to the first emotional-affective experience, we have to do with a negation of shame and of sexual modesty. True shame gives way reluctantly (and as a result it does not ultimately leave the person in a shameful situation). True shame can be absorbed only by true love, a love which affirms the value of the person and seeks the greatest good for that person with all its strength. In shame in this sense resides the genuine moral strength of the person. But since there exists a real danger of its impoverishment, for reasons interior (some people seem to be less modest ‘by nature’) or exterior (opinions, lifestyles, modes of behaviour between men and women vary from one milieu to another and from one period to another) there is a need to develop sexual shame by education. This is an inseparable part of the education of love – because, in accordance with the ‘law of absorption’, only true and genuine shame insists upon a true and fully valid love.

The Problem of Shamelessness

   In the light of what has been said above on the themes of sexual shame and the absorption of shame by love let us now try to examine the problem of shamelessness. The word itself refers simply to the absence or negation of shame. In practice they come to the same thing. We encounter various modes of being and behaving in persons of both sexes, and various situations involving them, which we define as shameless, by which we mean that they fall short of the demands of shame, that they clash with the exigencies of sexual modesty. There is certain relativism in the definition of what is shameless. This relativism may be due to differences in the make-up of particular person – a greater or lesser sensual excitability, a higher or lower level of moral culture – or to different ‘world-views’. It may equally be due to differences in external conditions – in climate for instance, as we have said before, and also in prevailing customs, social habits, etc.

   Nevertheless, this relativity in determining whether or not particular manifestations of relations between persons of opposite sex are shameless does not at all mean that shamelessness itself is relative, that there exists no factors in or aspects of human modes of being and behaviour which have constant significance for its evaluation even though variable conditions, internal and external, make different people, or different social formations, vary in their ideas as to what is shameless, and what is consonant with the demands of sexual modesty. Our concern here is not to compare different views as to what is and what is not shameless but to identify the common element in them.

   Shame is a tendency, uniquely characteristic of the human person, to conceal sexual values sufficiently to prevent them from obscuring the value of person as such. The purpose of this tendency is self-defense of the person, which does not wish to be an object to be used by another, whether in practice or merely in intention, but does wish to be an object of love. Since it is particularly likely to become an object of use because of its sexual values, the tendency to conceal them comes into being – but to conceal them only to a certain extent, so that in combination with the value of the person they can still be a point of origin for love. Besides what may be called ‘physical shame’, since the sexual values are externally connected above all with the body, there exists another form, which we have called ‘emotional shame’, since it endeavors to conceal reactions and feelings in which the habit of regarding ‘the body and sex’ as objects for use is in evidence, to conceal them because the body and sex are the property of a human person who cannot be an object for use. This form of shame, like the other, can be effectively absorbed only by love.

   Shamelessness wrecks this whole order of things. By analogy with our distinction between ‘physical shame’ and ‘shame of feelings; we can speak for two corresponding forms of shamelessness. We shall use the term physical shamelessness to describe any mode of being or behaviour on the part of a particular person in which the values of sex as such are given such prominence that they obscure the essential value of the person. The consequence is that the person is put in the position of an object of use, a being which can be treated as something merely to be used (especially in the second meaning of the word), not to be loved. ‘Emotional shamelessness’ consists in the rejection of the healthy tendency to be ashamed of reactions and feelings which make another person merely an object of use because of the sexual values belonging to him or her. Thus for instance a man is shameless in his feelings toward a woman when he feels no inner shame for his urge towards sensual and sexual exploitation, when he refuses to accept that any other attitude is possible, and makes no effort to subordinate this urge to true love for the person, or to make the proper connections between the two things.

   This internal ‘shame of feelings’ has nothing in common with prudery. Prudery consists in concealing one’s real intentions with regard to persons of the other sex, or with regard to sexual matters in general. A prudish person intent on exploitation tries to make it appear that he has no interest at all in such matters – indeed he is prepared to condemn all, even the most natural, manifestations of sex and sexuality. Such behaviour is, however, very often not to be explained as prudery – which is a particular form of hypocrisy, a way of disguising one’s intentions – but by some prejudice or other, perhaps the belief that everything to do with sex can only be an object for use, that sex merely gives the opportunity for sexual release and does not open the way to love between people. This view smacks of Manicheanism, and is incompatible with the view of physical and sexual matters found in the Book of Genesis, and more particularly in the New Testament. True emotional shame cannot possibly be identified with prudishness. Emotional shame is a healthy reaction within a person against any attitude to another person which disregards that person’s essential value, degrading him or her to the level of an object for sexual use. Christ protested against this attitude to the person in the well-known words already quoted above: ‘Everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart’ (Matthew 5:28). This refers, obviously, to an interior act. Prudery is often, perhaps generally, linked with shameless intentions. This is different from shamelessness of feelings. We have already mentioned relativism in the classification of phenomena, especially external phenomena, ways of living and behaving, as shameless. A special problem arises when we come to decide whether or not an interior act, a way of thinking of, or appreciating sexual values, a way of reacting to them – is shameless. In this matter there is no exact similarity in the behaviour of particular people, even if they live in the same age and the same society. There is, above all, no precise correspondence between the views and feelings of men and those of women. Very often, a woman does not regard a particular way of dressing as shameless (we are speaking her of ‘physical shamelessness’) although some man, or indeed many men, may find it so. Conversely, a particular man may internally have shameless feelings towards a woman, or towards several women (here we are speaking of emotional shamelessness), although they have done nothing to provoke him by shameless conduct – by dressing or dance improperly, for instance.

   All the same, there is here a certain correlation: ‘physical shame’ is necessary because it is possible to be ashamed of one’s feelings – and particularly it would appear, for a woman to be ashamed of her feelings towards a man. Conversely, ‘emotional shame’ is necessary – and this applies particularly to the feelings of men towards women – because physical shame exists as a possibility. It is however difficult to discern the connection in any particular case. That is why we must accept that the possibilities of shamelessness on both sides are greater than at first appears. The development of healthy customs in the context of sexual relations, or rather in different sectors of the life of men and women together, depend on our doing so. ‘Healthy customs’, however, have nothing in common with puritanism in sexual matters. For exaggeration easily results in prudery.

   We have already touched on the question of dress. It is one of the matters concerning which problems of modesty and shamelessness most frequently arise. It is difficult for us to go into details or to discuss the nuances of fashion in male and female dress. These matters certainly have a bearing on the problem of modesty and shamelessness, though the connection is perhaps not that which is commonly thought to exist. Dress can, of course, help to accentuate the sexual values in different ways – in different ways on different occasions, irrespective of the congenital or acquired dispositions of a particular individual. This accentuation of sexual values by dress is inevitable, and is not necessarily incompatible with sexual modesty. What is truly immodest in dress is that which frankly contributes to the deliberate displacement of the true value of the person by sexual values, that which is bound to elicit a reaction to the person as to a ‘possible means of obtaining sexual enjoyment’ and not ‘a possible object of love by reason of his or her personal value’.

   The principal is simple and obvious, but its application in specific cases depends upon the individual, the milieu, the society. Dress is always a social question, a function of (healthy or unhealthy) social customs. We must simply stress that although considerations of an aesthetic nature may seem to be decisive here they are not and cannot be the only ones; considerations of an ethical nature exist side by side with them. Man, alas, is not such a perfect being that the sight of the body of another person, especially a person of the other sex, can arouse in him merely a disinterested liking which develops into an innocent affection. In practice it also arouses concupiscence, or a wish to enjoy concentrated on sexual values with no regard for the value of the person. And this must be taken into account.

This does not, however, mean that physical shamelessness is to be simply and exclusively identified with complete or partial nakedness. There are circumstances in which nakedness is not immodest. If someone takes advantage of such an occasion to treat the person as an object of enjoyment, (even if his action is purely internal) it is only he who is guilty of shamelessness (immodesty of feeling), not the other. Nakedness as such is not to be equated with physical shamelessness. Immodesty is present only when nakedness plays a negative role with regard to the value of the person, when its aim is to arouse concupiscence, as a result of which the person is put in the position of an object for enjoyment. What happens then may be called depersonalization by sexualization. But this is not inevitable. Even when nakedness goes with mutual sexual enjoyment respect for the dignity of the person can be fully preserved. This is how it must be in marriage, where there exists the objective conditions for the genuine absorption of shame by love. We shall return to this in the next chapter. In any case, unless we take this view of the role of the body in love between persons, we cannot think or speak of modesty and purity in married life, though these are permanent and fundamental importance in Catholic teaching.

   Although physical immodesty cannot be identified in a simple way with nakedness as such, it none the less requires a real internal effort to refrain from reacting to the naked body in an immodest way. It should however be added that there is a difference between immodesty in feelings on the one hand and reflex sensual reactions to the body and sex as a ‘possible object of enjoyment’ on the other. The human body is not in itself shameful, nor for the same reasons are sensual reactions, and human sensuality in general. Shamelessness (just like shame and modesty) is a function of the interior of a person, and specifically of the will, which too easily accepts the sensual reaction and reduces another person, because of the person’s ‘body and sex’, to the role of an object for enjoyment.

   While we are on the subject of dress and its relevance to the problem of modesty and immodesty it is worth drawing attention to the functional significance of differences in attire. There are certain objective situations of differences in attire. There are certain objective situations in which even total nudity of the body is not immodest, since the proper function of nakedness in this context is not to provoke a reaction to the person as an object for enjoyment, and in just the same way the functions of particular forms of attire may vary. Thus, the body may be particular forms of attire may vary. Thus, the body may be partially bared for physical labour, for bathing, or for a medical examination. If then we wish to pass a moral judgment on particular forms of dress we have to start from the particular functions which they serve. When a person uses such a form of dress in accordance with its objective function we cannot claim to see anything immodest in it, even if it involves partial nudity. Whereas the use of such a costume outside its proper context is immodest, and is inevitably felt to be so. For example, there is nothing immodest about the use of a bathing costume at a bathing place, but to wear it in the street or while out for a walk is contrary to the dictates of modesty.

   It would be wrong not to refer here, if only cursorily, to another particular problem, that of pornography (or shamelessness) in art. It is a very broad problem, and extremely complex on detailed examination, because of the diversity of the arts. I am concerned for the present only to define the gist of the problem. An artist communicates in his work his own thoughts, feelings, and attitudes, but his work does not only serve this purpose. It serves the truth, in that it must capture and transmit some fragment of reality in a beautiful way. Aesthetic beauty is the most distinctive characteristic of a work of art. A fragment of reality which artists very frequently try to capture is the love of man and woman, and in the plastic arts the human body. This incidentally shows how important and attractive this theme is in the totality of human life. Art has a right and a duty, for the sake of realism, to reproduce the human body, and the love of man and woman, as they are in reality, to speak the whole truth about them. The human body is an authentic part of the truth about man, just as its sensual and sexual aspects are an authentic part of the truth about human love. But it would be wrong to let this part obscure the whole – and this is what often happens in art.

   However, the essence of what we call pornography in art is further to seek. Pornography is a marked tendency to accentuate the sexual element when reproducing the human body or human love in a work of art, with the object of inducing the reader or view to believe that sexual values are the only real values of the person, and that love is nothing more than the experience, individual or shared, of those values alone. This tendency is harmful, for it destroys the integral image of that important fragment of human reality which is love between man and woman. For the truth about human love consists always in reproducing the interpersonal relationship, however large sexual values may loom in that relationship. Just as truth about man is that he is a person, however conspicuous sexual values are in his or her physical appearance.

   A work of art must get at this truth, no matter how deeply it has to go into sexual matters. If it shows a tendency to distort this it can only give a distorted picture of reality. But pornography is not just a lapse or an error. It is a deliberate trend. If a distorted image is endowed with the power and prestige of artistic beauty there is a still greater likelihood that it will take root and establish itself in the mind and the will of those who contemplate it. For the human will often shows a great susceptibility to deformed images of reality. But for this very reason, when we condemn pornography we should often put the blame on immaturity and impurity, the absence of ‘emotional shame’ in those responsible for it.