We know shame can be a morally valuable emotion that helps us to realize when we fail to be the kinds of people we aspire to be. We feel shame when we fail to live up to the norms, standards, and ideals that we value as part of a virtuous life. But the lived reality of shame is far more complex and far darker than this -- the gut-level experience of shame that has little to do with failing to reach our ideals. We feel shame viscerally about nudity, sex, our bodies, and weaknesses or flaws that we can't control. Shame can cause self-destructive and violent behavior, and chronic shame can cause painful psychological damage. Is shame a valuable moral emotion, or would we be better off without it? In Naked, Krista K. Thomason takes a hard look at the reality of shame. The experience of it, she argues, involves a tension between identity and self-conception: namely, what causes me shame both overshadows me (my self-conception) and yet is me (my identity). We are liable to feelings of shame
