Honour... and other catastrophes?

Is there a place for an ethics of honour in Christians conceptions of how to live righteously? Or does a notion of honour corrupt Christian ethics?

Critics of the honour ethic have a very ancient heritage indeed: Plato himself posited the citizen’s reason above the military value of honour as the ground for the highest kind of life.[1] The Stoics, too, spoke strongly against the desire for honour because they held that it put value in mere appearance. Since the Enlightenment, honour has largely been a suppressed discourse because it does not fit well with the romantic ethic of personal authenticity or the rationalist/utilitarian appeal to ‘reason’. That is, it would be allowing others’ opinions too much influence to speak of the self in terms of what is honourable. What is more, it is viewed as being undemocratic. It is an ethic of kings in an age of parliaments.

For his part, Charles Taylor argues that the modern notion of ‘dignity’ ought to replace ‘honour’ in modern democratic society. He argues that honour differs from dignity in that honour is what only exceptional men achieve, whereas dignity can be ascribed to all. It is the importance of the assertion of the will that the two hold in common.[2] Recognition is, for Taylor, absolutely vital and inescapable as a necessary constituent of identity; and a democratic society has no business recognizing some of its citizens more than others, which is what the honour ethic at least seems to promote.

However, honour does have its contemporary advocates, such as Sharon Krause[3] and Michael Walzer.[4] Walzer has argued that honour is not incompatible at all with a modern liberal democratic society, especially if it is viewed as a quality of character. On his account of honour, it would seem not corrosive of equal recognition at all if some, albeit fixed, concept of desert for honourable behaviour were to be held within a democratic society. In particular these standards could relate to particular types of activity, such as voluntary organizations – vocational and professional associations, political parties, advocacy groups and even families. These groups are vital sources of shared identity and by dint of their voluntary nature allow a domain appropriate for a code of honour. These groups are resources for inspiring honour: for motivating virtuous activity from which the whole community and indeed the political order benefits. Krause writes:

The power of honour lies in the fact that it is a mixed motive. It builds on the particular attachments and private desires that make us who we are and move us to act. It channels and directs personal ambitions, rather than suppressing them in the name of a comprehensive common good or a universal standpoint. Nor does it require the state to cultivate character, or submerge diverse identities into a homogenous collective one.

One problem for Krause and Walzer is that the 'fixed' codes are only arbitrarily fixed: honour, as they admit can be cruel or tyrannical if bound by the wrong code. Think of so called 'honour killings' after all...

[1] Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press., 1989), p. 20. Aristotle for his part saw honour as the goal and completion of the virtuous life: Nicomachean Ethics 1115b13.
[2] Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), p. 46-7
[3] Sharon Krause, "The Politics of Distinction and Disobedience: Honor and the Defense of Liberty in Montesquieu," Polity 31, no. 3 (1999)
[4] Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defence of Pluralism and Equality (Oxford: Robertson, 1983)