Monday, May 16, 2011
Repentance and Remorse
David Kovacs, The Heroic Muse: Studies in the Hippolytus and Hecuba of Euripides (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), p. 7 (footnote omitted):
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[R]epentance has a different moral valuation for Christians, who regard it as the first step toward amendment of life, from what it has for a classical Greek, for whom metameleia, regret or change of heart, is a sign of instability and the mark of an unsuccessful individual.Id., p. 17:
[W]e, as heirs to Judaism and Christianity, have a favorable view of remorse and repentance that is entirely foreign to pagan sentiment, which regarded repentance and regret as evidence of inconstancy and moral weakness and a sign of the unsuccessful individual.
