Skip to content
Wellsprings
ethics

Aidōs (Shame / Sense of Honor)

αἰδώς

The inner blush that stops a hand mid-reach — the reverent dread of disgrace that the Greeks made the first guardian of decency.

Aidōs is the Greek emotion of shame fused with reverence: the felt restraint that holds you back from a disgraceful act because you cannot bear to be seen, or to see yourself, doing it. In Plato's Protagoras myth, Zeus sends aidōs along with justice to all humankind so that cities can exist at all. Aristotle treats it not as a full virtue but as a praiseworthy feeling proper to the young, who still need its sting; the truly good person, he says, simply does not do the things that warrant shame. Across archaic and classical thought it stands as the chief inner check on hubris.

Where this idea shows up

30 Greek sources

Where to read it