Aidos: A Hermeneutical Reflection on Modesty, Respect, and the Lost Art of Moral Restraint

There are ancient figures who vanish into archaeology. Then there are figures who continue to whisper into modern life. Aidos is one of them.

She belongs to Greek mythology, yet her presence can still be felt wherever a human being blushes at wrongdoing, feels reverence before something greater than oneself, hesitates before crossing a moral boundary, or chooses dignity over impulse.

Aidos was the goddess—or personified spirit—of modesty, respect, honour, reverence, and the inner shame that restrains a person from what should not be done. She was closely associated with Nemesis, who represented moral balance and indignation against arrogance and injustice. Together they formed an ancient ethical pair: inward restraint and outward justice. 

Aidos

More Than Shame

Modern ears often hear the word shame only negatively. We think of humiliation, toxicity, social cruelty, psychological wounds. And such forms of shame are real.

But Aidos points toward something deeper and more nuanced.

There is a form of shame that protects dignity. A reluctance to betray trust. A hesitation before cruelty. A sense that not everything one can do should be done. Aidos represents that inward sensitivity.

Without such moral feeling, law alone becomes too weak.

The Blush of Conscience

Ancient writers said that Aidos could make the cheeks of a person glow red like an apple. This image is beautiful.

Blushing is involuntary. It happens before calculation. The body itself speaks.

Sometimes conscience arrives before argument.

We know this in life. A careless word escapes us and we feel it instantly. We witness injustice and feel unease. We realize we have treated someone coldly. Before theories begin, something within us has already responded.

Martin Heidegger might say that human beings are not detached observers, but already involved in the world. Moral awareness often comes to us not as doctrine, but as mood, atmosphere, bodily attunement.

Aidos lives in that first trembling awareness.

Aidos and the Need for Limits

Every age celebrates freedom. Yet freedom without inward measure can become destructive.

When no shame exists, exploitation becomes entertainment.
When no reverence exists, everything becomes usable.
When no modesty exists, ego grows without proportion.

The Greeks understood something modern culture often forgets: character requires boundaries that are not merely imposed from outside, but carried within.

Aidos is the guardian of those inner boundaries.

Penelope and the Veil

One of the most moving stories linked to Aidos concerns Penelope. When leaving with Odysseus, her father begged her to remain. Rather than argue publicly, she covered her face with a veil. Her gesture revealed her choice without humiliation or spectacle. In memory of this, an image of Aidos was said to be raised. 

There is wisdom here.

Not every truth must be shouted.
Not every decision requires display.
Some dignity speaks quietly.

Aidos in Human Relationships

During many years of work among people in difficulty, I often saw how relationships survive not through grand declarations, but through modest virtues:

• the apology offered in time
• the word not spoken in anger
• the respect shown when one could dominate
• the ability to feel remorse without collapsing into self-hatred

This too is Aidos.

She does not crush. She corrects.

Gadamer and the Ethics of Reverence

Hans-Georg Gadamer taught that understanding requires openness toward what addresses us. One must allow something other than oneself to speak.

That is close to reverence.

To meet another person, a text, a tradition, or life itself without immediate domination—this is a form of Aidos. It is the opposite of arrogance.

Why Aidos Matters Today

We live in times of exposure, speed, performance, reaction, self-display. Much is shown. Little is veiled. Much is expressed. Little is reflected upon.

Perhaps this is why Aidos feels so relevant.

She reminds us that dignity often grows in restraint.
That honour cannot be purchased.
That conscience is not weakness.
That modesty may be stronger than noise.

A Personal Closing Reflection

With age, I trust less those who never blush, never regret, never hesitate, never revise themselves.

And I trust more those who still carry a living conscience.

Perhaps Aidos has not left the world after all.

Perhaps she simply waits where respect, humility, and moral seriousness are still welcome.

This text is written by me in conversation with OpenAI/ChatGPT, which also made the illustrations 

 

Hermes: A Hermeneutical Reflection on Meaning, Boundaries, and the Human Journey

There are ancient figures who disappear into museums and textbooks. Then there are figures who continue to speak quietly through time. Hermes is one of them.

He belongs to Greek mythology, yet he still moves among us — in language, in misunderstanding, in travel, in transitions, in humor, in ambiguity, and in the difficult art of interpretation.

Hermeneutics is often described as the art of understanding. It concerns how meaning is received, shaped, translated, and lived. Many scholars approach hermeneutics through philosophers such as Hans-Georg Gadamer, Martin Heidegger, or Paul Ricoeur. Yet one may also approach it through myth. And few mythological figures embody the hermeneutical condition more vividly than Hermes.

Hermes

The Messenger Who Changes the Message

Hermes is remembered as the messenger of the gods. He moved between worlds and carried words from one power to another. But every messenger stands in a dangerous place: between sender and receiver.

Does the message arrive unchanged?
Can any message arrive unchanged?

Already here Hermes becomes modern. We know this from daily life. A sentence spoken in one tone becomes something else in another. A memory changes when retold. Advice is heard differently depending on who receives it. Language is never a sealed container.

Hermes symbolizes a truth many still resist: meaning does not travel untouched.

Between Olympus and the Cave

Hermes was the son of Zeus and Maia. He belonged both to the heights of Olympus and to the hidden cave where he was raised. This doubleness matters.

He belongs to light and shadow.
To authority and marginality.
To order and improvisation.

Many human beings know such doubleness. We may carry one identity in public and another in private. We may appear composed while inwardly wrestling with uncertainty. We may stand between social roles, between generations, between cultures, between health and illness, between what was and what may become.

Hermes is at home in thresholds.

The Trickster and the Necessary Disturbance

Hermes was not only noble. He was cunning, playful, deceptive, inventive. He stole, tricked, improvised, crossed boundaries, laughed at rigid systems.

This too contains wisdom.

Every society needs order. But when order hardens into lifeless certainty, something is lost. Then the trickster enters. He asks awkward questions. He unsettles routines. He exposes hypocrisy. He reminds us that not everything legal is just, and not everything respectable is wise.

Socrates did this through questions.
Friedrich Nietzsche did it through critique.
Hermes did it through movement and mischief.

Sometimes truth enters by the side door.

Guide of Travelers

Hermes was also protector of roads, shepherds, and travelers. He knew paths, detours, hidden passages, dangerous crossings.

This image speaks strongly to me.

Life is rarely a straight road. Many of us imagined certainty in youth, only to discover winding paths. Careers change. Loved ones die. Bodies weaken. Relationships transform. New understanding often arrives after wrong turns.

The wise guide is not always the one with the map, but the one who knows how to walk uncertain ground.

Companion of Souls

Hermes was also psychopomp — guide of souls to the underworld. He accompanied the dead.

Ancient myth often knows what modern culture forgets: human beings need companionship in transitions. Birth, illness, grief, aging, death — these are not technical problems alone. They are existential passages.

I worked many years in child welfare and human struggle. Again and again I saw that people do not only need solutions. They need someone to walk beside them through darkness.

Hermes reminds us that guidance is sometimes more important than control.

Hermes and Modern Hermeneutics

Hans-Georg Gadamer taught that understanding happens through dialogue and the meeting of horizons. We never approach truth as empty observers. We come with history, prejudice, wounds, hopes, language.

Hermes would understand this immediately.

There is no pure message outside interpretation. There is only the ongoing encounter between what is said and how it is heard.

Martin Heidegger described human existence as being-in-the-world. We are already involved before we begin to think. Hermes, always moving through roads and relationships, reflects that same insight: meaning is lived before it is theorized.

Why Hermes Still Matters

Today many seek certainty, instant conclusions, fixed labels, final answers with two lines under them.

Hermes offers another path.

He invites attentiveness rather than haste.
Dialogue rather than dogma.
Movement rather than rigidity.
Understanding rather than mere information.

He reminds us that wisdom often appears while walking.

A Personal Closing Reflection

At my age, I trust less in systems that promise total certainty, and more in the slow deepening that comes through experience, conversation, reading, suffering, and reflection.

Perhaps that too is to walk with Hermes.

Not to possess truth like an object, but to remain on the road where meaning gradually reveals itself.

And maybe that road continues until our last breath.

The text is written by me in conversation with OpenAI/ChatGPT, which also made the illustrations 

 

How Can Philosophy Be Practical?

Reflections on Hermeneutics, Dialogue, and the Art of Living

Many people hear the word philosophy and imagine something distant from ordinary life: abstract systems, difficult books, and endless arguments about concepts. Philosophy is often placed on a shelf far away from work, relationships, suffering, responsibility, and the daily task of living. Yet this modern impression would have puzzled the ancient thinkers. For much of history, philosophy was not separate from life. It was a way of living thoughtfully.

To ask whether philosophy can be practical is therefore not a strange question—it is a return to an older and perhaps deeper understanding of what philosophy once was.

Philosophy as a Way of Life

In the classical world, especially in the work of Aristotle, philosophy was divided into forms of knowledge. One of these was practical philosophy—reflection concerned with action, judgment, ethics, politics, and how human beings ought to live together.

Practical philosophy did not mean technical skill or productivity. It did not ask how to make things faster, cheaper, or more efficient. It asked more demanding questions:

• What is the good life?
• How should we treat one another?
• What kind of person should I become?
• What is wise action in a difficult situation?
• How do freedom and responsibility belong together?

Aristotle even writes in Politics that theory itself can be a form of practice. To think deeply is already an action, because thought shapes perception, judgment, and conduct.

This remains true today. Ideas are never merely ideas. They become institutions, laws, habits, relationships, and identities.

Hermeneutics: The Practical Art of Understanding

In modern times, one of the strongest renewals of practical philosophy came through hermeneutics, especially in the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer and his major book Truth and Method.

Hermeneutics is often described as the art of interpretation. But interpretation is not only about books. Human life itself requires interpretation.

We interpret:

• what another person means
• what suffering is asking of us
• what justice requires in a situation
• what our traditions still mean
• what our own lives are trying to tell us

No one meets the world as a blank slate. We all stand within history, language, memory, culture, wounds, hopes, and expectations. Understanding is therefore never mechanical. It is dialogical.

Gadamer used the phrase fusion of horizons: my horizon meets yours, and something new can emerge between us. This is practical philosophy in action.

To understand another person is not simply to gather facts. It is to allow one’s own assumptions to be challenged.

Dialogue as Healing and Recognition

This practical dimension becomes especially clear in human professions: teaching, therapy, medicine, leadership, and social work.

Here Martin Buber becomes essential. In I and Thou he distinguishes between two ways of meeting the world:

• I-It: where the other becomes an object, category, problem, or case
• I-Thou: where the other is encountered as a living person

Much modern society functions through I-It relations. Systems need categories. Bureaucracies need files. Institutions need procedures.

But human beings also need to be seen.

A child in pain, a patient in despair, a lonely elder, a struggling parent, a confused student—none are solved merely by procedure. They need encounter.

That is why practical philosophy matters. It reminds us that no system can replace presence.

Shame, Suffering, and Becoming a Self

My own academic work on shame led me deeply into Søren Kierkegaard and Buber. Shame is not merely an emotion. It can wound identity itself. A person may feel not that they did wrong, but that they are wrong.

Kierkegaard describes the self as a relation that relates to itself. Human beings are not finished objects. We are becoming.

This means that suffering is not only pain—it is often confusion about who one is.

When shame enters deeply, a person may withdraw from self, from others, from hope. Healing then is not simply symptom reduction. Healing can mean becoming able to exist again—to stand in one’s own life with greater truth.

This is why philosophy can be practical. It gives language to inner realities that psychology alone sometimes cannot fully express.

Why Modern Society Still Needs Philosophy

We live in an age rich in information but often poor in wisdom.

We know more facts than previous generations, yet many still ask:

• Why am I restless?
• Why do relationships fail?
• Why does success not satisfy?
• Why is anxiety growing?
• What does responsibility mean now?

Science can explain much. It is indispensable. But science does not by itself tell us what is worth loving, forgiving, protecting, or becoming.

That task belongs partly to philosophy.

Not philosophy as intellectual vanity, but philosophy as disciplined reflection on existence.

Practical Philosophy in Everyday Life

Practical philosophy can happen anywhere:

• in a difficult conversation where one chooses honesty
• in caring for a sick partner with patience
• in questioning one’s own prejudice
• in resisting cruelty
• in learning to listen
• in asking forgiveness
• in choosing dignity over bitterness
• in accepting limits without surrendering hope

No university degree is required for this. Only seriousness toward life.

A Personal Closing Reflection

After many years in social work, research, and life itself, I have come to believe that practical philosophy is not something added to life after the real work is done.

It is part of the real work.

Whenever a human being asks what is right, what is true, what is worthy, what is loving, what is just, or who they are becoming—philosophy has already begun.

And perhaps that is the simplest answer to today’s question:

Philosophy becomes practical the moment it helps a person live more truthfully, more responsibly, and more humanly. 

References

Aristotle. (1998). Politics (C. D. C. Reeve, Trans.). Hackett.

Buber, M. (2006). I and Thou. Hesperides Press. (Original work published 1923)

Gadamer, H.-G. (2004). Truth and Method (2nd rev. ed.). Continuum.

Kierkegaard, S. (1980). The Sickness Unto Death. Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1849)

Pettersen, K. T. (2009). An exploration into the concept and phenomenon of shame within the context of child sexual abuse: An existential-dialogical perspective of social work within the settings of a Norwegian incest centre (Doctoral dissertation, NTNU).

This text is mine, with suggestions from OpenAI(ChatGPT, which also has made the illustrations.

Why Martin Buber Still Matters in a Scientific Age

 

Why Martin Buber Still Matters in a Scientific Age

I have spent time revisiting an older question of mine: How can the philosophy of Martin Buber be used across different scientific fields?

Many years ago, while working on my doctoral research in social work, I discussed this question with the Norwegian philosopher John Lundstøl. At the time, I had been reading books about guilt, mostly from psychology and psychiatry. Much of the literature gave me the impression that guilt was mainly a feeling to be removed through therapy.

I doubted that this was enough.

I had begun reading Buber, especially his reflections on guilt and human relationship, and I sensed that guilt was not only a feeling inside the individual. It was also something that could arise between people.

That insight stayed with me.

An illustration of Buber´s concept of "I - Thou", the world of encounter

A Philosopher Beyond Philosophy

When I searched academic journals, I was surprised by what I found. Buber was being used in many disciplines:

• philosophy
• theology
• medicine
• psychiatry
• nursing
• education
• family therapy
• economics
• sociology
• psychology
• literary studies

This is remarkable. Few philosophers travel so widely.

Why?

Because Buber speaks to a problem that every profession eventually meets:

How do we relate to the human being in front of us?

I-It and I-Thou

Buber’s best-known book, I and Thou, describes two fundamental ways of relating.

I-It

This is the world of objects, categories, functions, measurement, and use.

We need this mode. Science depends on it. Hospitals need diagnoses. Schools need structure. Governments need systems. Researchers need analysis.

I-Thou

This is the world of encounter.

The other person is not reduced to a category. They are met as a living being with dignity, uniqueness, and presence.

We also need this mode.

When I-Thou disappears completely, institutions may become efficient—but cold.

Medicine and Care

In medicine, Buber helps us remember that a patient is more than a diagnosis.

Modern medicine must use science, evidence, and technology. But healing is not only technical. Many people remember not just the treatment they received, but whether they felt seen.

A doctor may cure without meeting.
A nurse may meet even when cure is impossible.

That difference matters.

Therapy and Mental Health

In psychotherapy and psychiatry, Buber reminds us that healing can happen through genuine human contact.

The suffering person does not need only interpretation. Sometimes they need presence, steadiness, and the experience of not being alone.

Many wounds were created in relationship. Some healing also happens in relationship.

Education

Education easily becomes numbers, grades, rankings, and performance.

But real learning often begins when a student meets a teacher who believes in them, challenges them, and treats them seriously.

Knowledge grows best where respect is present.

Social Work

This field was closest to my own life.

Social work can become administration: files, forms, systems, risk assessments, procedures. These are necessary.

But guilt, shame, violence, addiction, fear, loneliness, and hope do not arrive as paperwork. They arrive through human beings.

Without relationship, help becomes procedure.

With relationship, procedure may become humane practice.

Why Buber Still Speaks Today

We live in a scientific and digital age. We measure more than ever. We calculate more than ever. We classify more than ever.

Yet one ancient question remains:

How shall one person meet another?

Artificial intelligence, data systems, and institutions cannot fully answer that question.

It is answered in homes.
In classrooms.
In hospitals.
In conversations.
In moments of courage.
In the quality of attention we give one another.

That is why Martin Buber still matters.

He reminds us that behind every category stands a person.

And between persons there is always a possibility:

Not only I-It
but I-Thou.

Closing Reflection

Perhaps the future will need more science, not less.

But it will also need more humanity.

Buber understood that long ago.

And maybe that is why his old voice still sounds new.

Core Works by Martin Buber 

Dialogical Philosophy

Martin Buber Buber, M. (1970). I and Thou (W. Kaufmann, Trans.). Charles Scribner’s Sons. (Original work published 1923)

Martin Buber Buber, M. (1947). Between Man and Man (R. G. Smith, Trans.). Routledge.

Martin Buber Buber, M. (1965). The Knowledge of Man (M. Friedman, Ed.). Harper & Row.

Ethics / Human Existence / Responsibility

Martin Buber Buber, M. (1967). Schuld und Schuldgefühle [Guilt and Feelings of Guilt]. Minerva. (Norwegian translation)

Martin Buber Buber, M. (1965). The Way of Response. Schocken Books.

Martin Buber Buber, M. (1967). On Judaism. Schocken Books.

Religion / Biblical Thought / Faith

Martin Buber Buber, M. (1952). Images of Good and Evil. Scribner.

Martin Buber Buber, M. (1958). Moses. Harper & Brothers.

Martin Buber Buber, M. (1967). Hasidism and Modern Man. Horizon Press.

Society / Politics / Community

Martin Buber Buber, M. (1958). Paths in Utopia. Beacon Press.

Martin Buber Buber, M. (1969). Pointing the Way. Harper & Row.

Education

Martin Buber Buber, M. (1965). Between Man and Man (contains major essays on education and dialogue).

This text was written by me in conversation with OpenAI/ChatGPT, which also made the illustration