ABSTRACT
Inherent in our everyday use of language is a sense that human integrity owes its existence, at a deep level, to the patterns of approval and recognition that we have been attempting to distinguish. For up to the present day, in the self-descriptions of those who see themselves as having been wrongly treated by others, the moral categories that play a dominant role are those-such as 'insult' or 'humiliation'-that refer to forms of disrespect, tiiat is, to the denial of recognition. The most open of our moral feelings is shame-to the extent that it does not refer simply to the evidently deep-seated shyness about having one's body exposed. In the case of shame, it is not fixed from the outset which party to the interaction is responsible for violating the norm, a norm that the subject now lacks, as it were, for the routine continuation of an action.
