29
openness to the world. In the Republic, Plato uses the notion of mimesis as both an
aesthetic and a psychological principle. Accordingly, he uses it in the sense of producing
a model, copy or likeness of a thing in artistic reproduction and in the sense of acting as if
or imitating the actions of another in order to become like that other. As Jonathan Lear
argues, “It is a though imitation blurs the boundary between inside and outside. Through
imitation we get outside ourselves imaginatively, but psychologically we take the outside
in. By pretending to be these characters, we unconsciously shape our characters around
them.”
28
Similarly, with an emotion like shame we take on the perspective of the other as
a way of transforming ourselves in the process of installing within our psyche a new
model or ego-ideal by which we then judge our actions. In this mimetic relationship to
the world it is not so much that the psychic phenomenon of an emotion like shame
mirrors the practices of shaming in society, but rather that it allows the psyche to be
continually re-modeled in the very process of taking in or assenting to the gaze and
judgment of the other.
And, of course, being attuned to the perspective or gaze of the other can itself
have a very democratic potential in the notion of representative thinking articulated by
Hannah Arendt. According to Arendt, in order to engage in political deliberation we
must transcend or enlarge our egoistic thinking by taking on the perspective of others.
In this case shame or the ability to see and judge oneself from the perspective of the other
is absolutely essential to the very notion of democratic deliberation. This kind of
political engagement consists not in assimilating to a standard or norm of active
28
Lear (1999), p. 240.
Convention