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No Regrets: Remorse in Classical Antiquity

Online ISBN:
9780191751219
Print ISBN:
9780199668892
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

No Regrets: Remorse in Classical Antiquity

Laurel Fulkerson
Laurel Fulkerson
Associate Professor of Classics, The Florida State University
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Published online:
26 September 2013
Published in print:
20 June 2013
Online ISBN:
9780191751219
Print ISBN:
9780199668892
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

This book is based on the premise that remorse (metameleia in Greek, paenitentia in Latin, more or less) plays a significant role in ancient classical literature, and therefore, in ancient ethical life. Its importance has not previously been noted because it has rather different roles to play in ancient and modern cultures. In general, the modern Western viewpoint esteems feelings of remorse as a part of a beneficial rethinking and learning process. Their occurrence shows that one has made moral progress, is a better person. The ancients have a different intuition, believing that one should refrain from doing in the first place things that one will later need to regret. So the remorseful individual in antiquity is, first and foremost, a person who has failed to act well rather than one who has learned something through acting wrongly. Both aspects of remorse, the negative “cause” and the ameliorative “effect”, are always present in any individual instance, but where the modern observer is likely to emphasize progress over mistake, the ancient observer sees the initial fault much more vividly than the lesson. Allowing oneself to change seems in antiquity to entail displaying weakness, so accusations of variability are much more prevalent in our sources than first-person admissions of it. This apparent prohibition against change, as we might expect, goes hand in hand with a high valuation of stability. After the Introduction, the book contains nine case studies of remorse in action, derived mostly from poetic and historical sources, followed by a Conclusion.

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