Il pudore fallito?

Abstract

The author clearly distinguishes between shame and modesty. Unlike shame, the intentional correlate of modesty is something positive. One could even define modesty as the shame of the positive, where one still needs to clarify why one should be ashamed of the positive. A hypothesis could be that there is modesty because there is an excess of the positive that one does not know where to situate. This thesis is supported by an analysis of Hölderlin’s hymn Der Einzige, which shows how modesty is not simply an exit strategy from anonymity, as Scheler would have it, but also a citation of anonymity in the very heart of the Name. As such, modesty is an addition of space.