Revolutionary Shame

The incident involves an old pink and silver ribbon that has gone missing. In The Confessions, this is Rousseau’s central admission of shame. Instead of owning up to his crime at the time, he accuses the young cook, Marion, because he “was only afraid of disgrace.” This episode makes for the book’s painful heart, and for the French philosopher Frédéric Gros, the residual power of Rousseau’s story lies in the sublimity of the shame that the narrator professes to fearing, which “prevailed over everything.” Referring to this episode in A Philosophy of Shame (Verso, 2025), Gros writes, “in my own life, I reckon I have experienced shame more often than guilt, and in taking decisions have been more swayed more by the diktats of the former than the injunctions of the latter.”