"Shame can understand guilt, but guilt cannot understand itself. . . ."
"To the modern moral consciousness, guilt seems a more transparent moral emotion than shame. It may seem to, but that is only because, as it presents itself, it is more isolated than shame is from other elements of one's self-image, the rest of one's desires and needs, and because it leaves out a lot even of one's ethical consciousness. It can direct one towards those who have been wronged or damaged, and demand reparation in the name, simply, of what has happened to them. But it cannot by itself help one to understand one's relations to those happenings, or to rebuild the self that has done these things and the world in which that self has to live. Only shame can do that, because it embodies conceptions of what one is and how one is related to others" (Bernard Williams, Shame and Necessity, 93-94).
These issues of the differences between guilt and shame fit into my thinking about 1st/3rd person dynamics in deliberation because the dynamics within each of these emotions are very different. I suspect the differences are just the sort I'm looking for; and this paragraph furthers that suspicion by tying shame to action, to making reparations and "rebuilding the self that has done these things." (On an earlier page he says guilt can narrow to the "desire for punishment.")
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