Monthly Archives: October 2011

Welcome Paul Robinson

24 Monday Oct 2011

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On behalf of honorethics.org, I’m pleased to announce that Paul Robinson has graciously accepted our invitation to join us as a contributor.

Paul has written a great deal on honor, and I would direct visitors especially to his Military Honour and the Conduct of War, which discusses Western forms of military honor from Ancient Greece through today.

Paul Robinson holds an MA in Russian and Eastern European Studies from the University of Toronto and a D. Phil. in Modern History from the University of Oxford. Prior to his graduate studies, he served as a regular officer in the British Army Intelligence Corps from 1989 to 1994, and as a reserve officer in the Canadian Forces from 1994 to 1996. He also worked as a media research executive in Moscow in 1995. Having published six books, he has also written widely for the international press on political issues. His research focuses generally on military affairs. In recent years, he has worked on Russian history, military history, defence policy, and military ethics.

Tales of honor!

21 Friday Oct 2011

Posted by in anthropology of honor, history of honor, honor in literature, stories of honor

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Honor theorists need examples of honor-typical behavior. Rehabilitationists (honor theorists who want to revive honor) especially need positive stories of honor-typical behavior. For instance, Sharon Krause, in her excellent Liberalism with Honor, makes important use of various positive examples of honor, including the refusal of the Viscount de Orte to follow Charles IX’s orders to slaughter Huguenots (p. 44ff).

In light of this, I thought it would be beneficial to start a thread where people can share stories that represent distinctively honorable deeds.

Guidelines:

  1. Stories, not sayings.
  2. May be fictional or non-fictional.
  3. Stories should represent (what you see as) paradigmatically honor-typical behavior. That is, the story/circumstances should make clear why this is a tale of honor especially, as opposed to some other value or virtue.
  4. Stories should represent (what you see as) “truly” honorable behavior–that is, behavior that you endorse or come very close to endorsing, as opposed to behavior that is merely “honor-typical” but that you wouldn’t endorse. For example, you might be of the opinion that Achilles’ sulking in his tent because he was insulted is honor-typical, but not something that is actually honorable. If so, then this wouldn’t be the right sort of story to post in this thread.

I’ll start with a perhaps controversial example…

Continue reading →

What’s the Problem of Honor?

18 Tuesday Oct 2011

Posted by in history of honor, honor system, philosophy of honor, Uncategorized

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I welcome the opportunity to contribute to Honor Ethics. By way of brief introduction, I have published only one article on honor, in the local Sewanee alumni magazine, but I have taught a course, “Ethics of Honor” for years. That class has become for me a philosophical “laboratory” for thinking about this under-discussed notion. I welcome the chance to explore the ethics of honor with those who have had more to write about this than I have.

One section of my class on honor has students read editorials and articles on the 1906 founding of Sewanee’s Honor System.  From then until now, Sewanee has had a student-run honor code.  It has changed over time. What one at first an informal code, based on agreement of the small student body of around 200 students about what it means to be a gentleman, has become increasingly formal, with no more reference to the grounding ideal of being a gentleman, but with an increasing focus on the intricacies of due process governing honor trials. Since 1906 faculty have the sole responsibility of reporting possible infractions to the Honor Council. Even today, only the student Honor Council can determine that an honor violation has taken place.

When I examine in the school newspaper, The Sewanee Purple, early articles and editorials  on the newly formed Honor System, I see a world that no longer exists at Sewanee, despite our perpetuation of the Honor system.

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About the pictures in the banner…

18 Tuesday Oct 2011

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I was asked about the pictures on the banner. They were chosen to represent various facets of honor.

The first is of an unnamed Bedouin warrior, taken in Jerusalem around the turn of the century.  Thanks to Frank Stewart’s seminal Honor, every student of honor knows a little about how important honor is to the Bedouin. This picture also represents the pre-Islamic honor traditions that pervade the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia.

The second is of Lucretia, by Lucas Cranach the Younger. Her story represents the way honor so often was—and still is—used to justify strict demands on female chastity. Her story also evokes honor’s role in motivating people to overthrow leaders who fail to respect the dignity of those they rule.

The third picture is of Admiral Nelson. As remarkable for his self-promotion as for his bravery, he represents the last gasps of an older war ethic that saw battle as a means to winning distinction and glory.

The fourth picture is of a Norman Rockwell painting called “I Will Do My Best.” It represents a historically recent, “straight-laced” and “pro-social” sort of honor we associate with the Boy Scouts: honor as integrity, self-sacrifice, loyalty, and scrupulous honesty.

Finally, we have Robert E. Lee, who suggests the tradition of honor scholarship that focuses on the American South’s spiritedness, martial heritage, aristocratic structure, and propensity for violence.

Call for papers: “Honor and Ethics” mini-conference at University of Minnesota-Morris

12 Wednesday Oct 2011

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Call for proposals/papers:

Honor has attracted an enormous amount of interest in recent decades from scholars working in a variety of disciplines. Yet this value, so treasured by mankind throughout time and space, has barely been explored by contemporary philosophers.

To help address this problem, the Philosophy department of the University of Minnesota-Morris invites submissions for the first conference on honor in analytic philosophy.

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The “Honor System” discussed on Tonight Show

07 Friday Oct 2011

Posted by in honor in contempory media, honor system, philosophy of honor

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Last night’s Tonight Show featured an entertaining discussion of competitive bird watching’s “honor system.” [start watching at 24:40…]

[http://www.hulu.com/watch/286743/the-tonight-show-with-jay-leno-thu-oct-6-2011#s-p1-so-i0]

In general, it seems an appeal to the “honor system” is appropriate just when

  • participants can unfairly profit from an arrangement
  • with impunity
  • because there is no oversight.

As I see it, an honor theorist must address at least these three puzzles the “honor system” raises: Continue reading →

Adequacy conditions for a theory of honor?

05 Wednesday Oct 2011

Posted by in philosophy of honor

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The first invitations to join honorethics.org as a moderator/contributor are being sent out today. To get the ball rolling, I thought we might start a discussion about the nature of honor.

When researching the question of honor’s nature, one is struck by the seemingly fundamental disagreements about the nature of honor. Some authors focus on traits related to integrity. Others on traits related to status and esteem. Others on violent responses to insult. One way to sidestep the issue is to say that one is talking about one “type” of honor, and provide an analysis of that. But suppose we tried to advance a theory of honor that made sense of all our commonplaces about it–in other words, a theory that would describe the interests of anyone who might read or write for this blog. What are the adequacy conditions that any theory of honor thus described must satisfy?

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Welcome

03 Monday Oct 2011

Posted by in announcements, what this blog is about

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Well, we’re ready to get down to business and get this honor ethics project off the ground! We will have lots of exciting developments in the next few weeks, including the announcement of the first ever conference on honor and ethics (to be hosted by the University of Minnesota-Morris). This announcement will coincide with my invitations to scholars of honor from across the disciplines to join me as contributors to honorethics.org.

In the meantime, let me point your attention to two scholars who will be delivering keynotes at the above conference: Laurie Johnson (Kansas State) and Lad Sessions (Washington and Lee). Laurie Johnson, a political scientist, is the author of Thomas Hobbes: Turning Point for Honor (2010). Lad Sessions, a philosopher, is the author of Honor for Us: A Philosophical Analysis, Interpretation and Defense (2010).