Metameleia and Friends
Remorse and Repentance in Fifth- and Fourth-Century Athenian Oratory
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3939977 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Laurel Fulkerson (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2004 |
| Volume | 58 |
| Issue | 3/4 |
| Pages | 241 |
| Publication date | 2004-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Phoenix (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0031-8299 • E-ISSN: 1929-4883 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/4135168 |
| OpenAlex | W1987040226 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 9 |
D ESPITE A BURGEONING INTEREST IN THE PASSIONS IN ANTIQUITY, certain of the emotions remain underexplored. This article, following precedents set by K. J. Dover for the use of the orators to discover popular morality,' will attempt to broaden the discussion about the emotion designated by the Greeks as metameleia. This emotion, which I will provisionally call remorse or repentance, has been neglected for what seem to be three reasons.2 The first derives from an only recently discarded belief that the Greeks, as participants in a shame-culture, did not feel emotions like remorse, but were solely motivated in their actions by considerations of utility and external display (i.e., they were concerned with possible punishment rather than ethics).3 Although there remains profitable discussion of the ways in which shame-cultures and guilt-cultures might differ, and there is clearly some truth in the sentiment I have put so baldly about ancient Greeks and shame, there is no longer a belief that it was impossible for an Athenian to feel something like repentance.4 A second reason for the neglect of remorse, as Cairns and Konstan note, is that the places modern parallels might lead us to look for it, namely Athenian forensic speeches, yield poor results.5 In modern criminal cases, offenders can plea-bargain
Art · Epistemology · Forgiveness · Greeks · Literature · Morality · Parallels · Passions · Psychoanalysis · Punishment (psychology · Remorse · Repentance · Shame · Theology · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classics · Emotions and Moral Behavior · History · Philosophy · Psychology · Psychology of Social Influence · Social Psychology
| Citations per year | 0.11 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2008 - 2023 (16) |
| Highly cited | No |