Why Study Honor?

The concept of honor has not received much philosophical discussion. As a result, some explanation is warranted of why the topic deserves to be studied at all.

To possess or attain honor, at least in the primary sense of the word, should be understood to mean the possession or attainment of high status, good reputation, the respect and deference of others, superior social standing and other such social goods. Although the concept of honor in this sense was at one point in time frequently invoked to explain behavior and justify actions, the concept has in modern times been all but eliminated from our conceptual repertoire. All would agree that in modern western societies, we by and large do not take the fact that some course of action would maintain or enhance our honor to be a good justification for performing the action.

Nonetheless, there are clearly certain areas of modern life in which it is natural to explain our behavior in terms of honor. Consider the desire to throw a dinner party that is better, or at least as good as, the one your neighbors invited you to last week. Consider the shame you feel when you fail to hold your own on the basketball court, or when people discover that you didn’t do a satisfactory job on the project you were responsible for. Consider the anger you feel when somebody insults you in public or when another man/woman flirts with your boyfriend/girlfriend right in front of your nose.

At one point in the not so distant past, these familiar experiences would naturally be explained by appeal to concepts like honor, respect and reputation. Today, by contrast, we would pick different words to explain these experiences – perhaps ‘credibility,’ ‘dignity,’ or ‘self-esteem.’ But the underlying fact is that we all still feel the desire to be respected by our peers, the desire not to lose face, the desire to maintain a good reputation, and the seriousness of threats to our pride or public image. (For more on the ways in which the concept of honor is alive and well in modern life, see William Ian Miller’s insightful book Humiliation, Cornell University Press, 1993)

This forces us to ask two difficult but important questions: First, what are the historical reasons that we are no longer willing to invoke the concept of honor to explain and justify our feelings and our behavior towards others? And perhaps even more importantly, was it right to jettison the concept of honor from our thinking in this way? These are questions that, in my view, deserve serious and sustained study.

Any plausible historical explanation for the disappearance of the concept of honor in modern societies would have to be complex. It would also likely appeal to demographic factors like urbanization, economic factors like industrialization and the move away from an agrarian-style economy, as well as cultural factors like the influence of Christianity and the emergence of Enlightenment ideals like egalitarianism universalizable moral rules. (For more on this sort of historical explanation, see Nisbett and Cohen’s Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South 1996, and Peter Berger’s "The Obsolescence of Honor", European Journal of Sociology, 1970, XI, pp. 339-347)

When it comes to the second question, what we are asking is whether there are good philosophical arguments for eliminating the concept of honor from our thinking. Perhaps seeking honor requires that one perform immoral actions. Perhaps the pursuit of honor conflicts with a commitment to egalitarianism. Perhaps it conflicts with the idea that humility is a virtue. Perhaps a society whose members do not think in terms of honor is a safer and more stable society that fosters happier people. Perhaps none of these arguments succeed, and the inhabitants of modern societies are conceptually impoverished and no longer fully equipped to understand their own feelings and behavior. (For more on the second, philosophical question, see Bernard Williams, Shame and Necessity, University of California Press, 1993, and the final section of my paper "What's Wrong With Megalopsychia?", Philosophy, Volume 83, Issue 02, April 2008.)

However it turns out, though, this much is clear: the concept of honor deserves to be the subject of serious and detailed critical investigation.