As an exegesist and commentary of Aristotle, Sebastian Petrycy of Pilzno takes on
his model of ethics. He does not restrict himself to the reconstruction of the Ancient
model, but reshapes it. Remaining in the already-established arethologic paradigm, he
inscribes his own text in it. One of the distinctive features of Petrycy’s arethology is the
inclusion of shame to the number of virtues. The importance of external goods was
strongly emphasized in his code; each of the virtues was shown from the perspective of reward, fame. Shame, which was called here fear of disgrace, plays in a sense a supervisory
role in this context. I f worship and fame are the aim of practicing virtues, shame as
fear of defamation, as a stable condition, must accompany each value. In systems which
treat this feature as an autotelic value, as in the case of Stoics, there is no room for shame
as it is the sign of weakness and, paradoxically, we should be ashamed of it
