Welcome Peter Olsthoorn

14 Wednesday Nov 2012

Posted by dan demetriou in announcements

On behalf of honorethics.org, I am pleased to welcome Peter Olsthoorn as a contributor.

Peter Olsthoorn teaches ethics at the Netherlands Defense Academy. He has written several articles on honor in political theory and military ethics, as well as the monograph Military Ethics and Virtues: An Interdisciplinary Approach for the 21st Century (Routledge, 2010).

A description of his Military Ethics and Virtues:

Although long-established military virtues, such as honor, courage and loyalty, are what most armed forces today still use as guiding principles in an effort to enhance the moral behavior of soldiers, much depends on whether the military virtues adhered to by these militaries suit a particular mission or military operation. Clearly, the beneficiaries of these military virtues are the soldiers themselves, fellow-soldiers, and military organizations, yet there is little that regulates the behavior of soldiers towards civilian populations. As a result, troops trained for combat in today’s missions sometimes experience difficulty in adjusting to the less aggressive ways of working needed to win the hearts and minds of local populations after major combat is over. It can be argued that today’s missions call for virtues that are more inclusive than the traditional ones, which are mainly about enhancing military effectiveness, but a convincing case can be made that a lot can already be won by interpreting these traditional virtues in different ways.

This volume offers an integrated approach to the main traditional virtues, exploring their possible relevance and proposing new ways of interpretation that are more in line with the military tasks of the 21st century. The book will be of much interest to students of military ethics, philosophy, and war and conflict in general.

Some of Peter’s articles of special interest to honorethics.org readers would be his:

“Honour, face and reputation in political theory,” European Journal of Political Theory

“Honor and the Military,” International Journal of Applied Philosophy

“Honor as a Motive for Making Sacrifices,” Journal of Military Ethics

Welcome aboard, Peter! We look forward to your contributions.

David Brooks on character: the Western hybrid of honor and Judeo-Christian mores

11 Sunday Nov 2012

Posted by dan demetriou in history of honor, honor code, honor in contempory media, honor in literature, philosophy of honor, stories of honor

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I missed this insightful talk by David Brooks this summer at the Aspen Ideas Festival. The talk is entitled “The Character Code.” Here’s the abstract:

We’re in a world full of good people, but who don’t have a clear vocabulary for character. We don’t have a moral system. Here, David Brooks puts forth Western civilization’s ancient recipe for being a better person—and how we forgot it.

Essentially, Brooks argues that the Western character code is a hybrid of the Greek honor model (excellence, competitiveness, pride) and the Judeo-Christian model (obedience, self-abnegation, humility).

I think he ignores the cultural ubiquity of the honor code. He suggests for instance that chivalry was an attempt to combine classical “Greek” honor values with Christian ones, when in fact a devotion to the honor code was quite indigenous among the Pagan Europeans the medieval Christians were trying to covert, as writers from Tacitus to William Ian Miller and George Fenwick Jones point out. Nonetheless, this is a very interesting talk. You can find the transcript here.