The most extraordinary thing about Andrew Mountbatten Windsor is that he seems to have no sense of shame. That word in Greek was aidôs, which covered everything from a sense of shame, inhibiting one’s own behaviour, to respect, i.e. sensitivity to the feelings, status and claims of others. ‘When I consider that I am doing wrong, I feel aidôs to look my friends in the face’ (Agathon) is a typical example.
This feeling is a major feature of Greek literature. In Homer’s Iliad, Hector the Trojan hero challenges the Greeks to single combat, but ‘they felt aidôs to refuse, but were afraid to accept’. They knew what society expected of them but were afraid to do it. On the other hand, in the heat of battle, it was often enough for the leader simply to cry ‘Aidôs!’ (‘For shame!’) for men to rally themselves, especially if the cry was attached with appeals to remember their children, their wives, their homes, their parents. Their individual honour as soldiers was at stake, and with it the security of the whole community.
Conflicts over aidôs are at the heart of many Greek tragedies. In one play the chorus sings of the varied natures of mortals, ‘but the really good man stands out, and educated upbringing is a great contribution to his goodness. For aidôs is wisdom which, combined with intelligence, offers the key to discerning what is right. The ensuing reputation endows you with an ageless fame.’
Philosophers too discussed it. For Plato, aidôs was an essential feature of the soul: a man lacking it entirely was not fit to live. For Aristotle, aidôs held men back from hubris, the intentional physical, social or mental humiliation of others.
But let Democritus have the last say: ‘One should not experience aidôs before other people to any greater extent than one does before oneself… One should feel aidôs above all for oneself and let this be established as a law in the soul, so as to do nothing inappropriate.’
One might have hoped Mr Mountbatten Windsor had absorbed something of that. Now emplebbed, will he care even less about it?
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