Two Ways of Failing to be Honorable

09 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by Ryan Rhodes in honor in the news, philosophy of honor

One aspect of honor that cuts across many issues is the question of what it takes to fail at being honorable. We can fail to be honorable by not living up to the standards of honorable conduct—this is probably the most natural and familiar way of thinking about it. But there is another way of courting dishonor, which I think is important for how we view negative instances of “honor”. By way of parallel, consider Aristotle’s definition of courage. We can fail to be courageous by being cowardly, or we can fail by being reckless. Those might be described as emotive or will-based failures. But significantly, one can also fail to be courageous in another way, which doesn’t depend on our willingness to act or our passion for doing so. One criterion of bravery (and other virtues) which Aristotle stresses is that it must be done for the sake of what is fine. Additionally, what really is fine is something about which people may be correct or mistaken, such that one might fail to be courageous not by failing to act nor by acting too unthinkingly, but by valuing the wrong things and acting in service of them.

A historical example of this sort of question concerned the 9/11 attackers. Bill Maher was subject to a lot of criticism when he famously rejected the idea that the terrorists were cowards—they stayed on the planes and died for their cause, he argued, so how is it accurate to depict them as cowardly? Even if one accepts that view, however, it is important to remember that ‘not-cowardly’ is not equivalent to ‘courageous’. The actions of the terrorists were vicious for many reasons, and they specifically failed to be courageous because they were done for the sake of wicked ends.

Similarly, it is important for us to remember that it is possible to be dishonorable not only through inaction or lack of care, but by having a perverted sense of what honor requires in the first place. It seems to me that in cases such as so-called “honor killings”, or the kind of entitlement and perceived disrespect that seems to have motivated Elliot Rodger’s recent rampage in California, this is the operative issue—a twisted sense of what is valuable, what is owed, what is worth living, dying, or killing for. For those of us who, like myself, conceive of honor in general as a positive framework which can provide grounds and motivation for genuine virtue, this is an important distinction.

Should conscientious writers use scare quotes around the phrase “honor killings”?

07 Saturday Jun 2014

Posted by dan demetriou in anthropology of honor, honor code, honor in contempory media, honor in the news, philosophy of honor

≈ 3 Comments

Pakistani human rights activists protest against the killing of pregnant woman Farzana Parveen for marrying a man she loved. Photo: Getty

Since honor killings are so-called, they present honor theorists interested in rehabilitating honor with perhaps our greatest rhetorical challenge. One strategy would be disassociating honor with honor killings: to say that they are honor killings in name only, but not in fact. As part of that strategy, we might decide to put scare quotes around the phrase “honor killings.” A recent, excellent article on honor killings by Aisha Gill exemplifies this liberal use of the scare quote approach.

[A note for non-writers and students: using quotes to mention a phrase qua term (as I did two sentences ago), and using quotes to draw attention to a term (as I do in the next sentence), are different from using scare quotes, which signal that you’re not endorsing the attitudes that might come with a sincere use of the quoted term.]

So this post isn’t devoted to condemning honor killings so much as making a “meta” point. Suppose a writer

Condemns honor killings,
Finds them even to be dishonorable, and
Wants to communicate both her condemnation of honor killings and yet her endorsement of the importance of being honorable.

Such a writer will inevitably contemplate using scare-quotes around the phrase “honor killing.” I want to argue that the scare-quote approach is incorrect.

My argument is premised on the claim that the word “honor” really is a descriptive term. It is not like “justice,” which is a “morally thick” term that has both descriptive and normative content. “Honor,” at least in the sense being used in the phrase “honor killings” (both in the mouths of those who condemn it and those who approve of it) simply refers to esteem, good standing, respectability. And these things supervene on the opinion of the honor group. Honor killings really are done for honor. Not faux-honor, but actual honor. Thus, using scare quotes around the phrase “honor killings” is not correct, even for a writer of the sort we’re imagining.

Objections and replies

OBJECTION: But these killings are not honorable—in fact, they’re dishonorable!

REPLY: Agreed. But honorableness is not the same as honor. Honor is analogous to wealth, or any other goodie (pleasure, freedom, candy, whatever). A capitalist thinks capitalist principles correctly say how the goodie of money should be gained and distributed. A socialist thinks socialist principles say how the goodie of money should be gained and distributed. They both see money as a goodie, but they disagree about the “ethic” that governs that goodie.

Honorableness concerns the correct way to get and distribute the goodie of honor. Unfortunately, honor theory is undeveloped at this point, and there are no handy names such as “socialism” or “capitalism” to denote different comprehensive and integrated theories about what’s honorable. All you and I know right now is that, whatever the correct theory is, it doesn’t permit honor killings.

Thus, the conscientious writer we’re imagining holds that the ethic governing honor says that honor shouldn’t be given to those who kill helpless, usually already-victimized girls and women. But just as it would be silly for a socialist to announce that, say, managing hedge funds isn’t about money but rather “money,” it would be incorrect, even for the conscientious writer above, to say that an honor killing isn’t about honor but “honor.”

OBJECTION: But we’re trying to shame people out of the practice of honor killings through our writing, and using scare quotes around the phrase helps drive home the message that we condemn honor killings.

REPLY: I think that this strategy perpetuates shallow and ultimately unpersuasive talk about values. No capitalist is (or should be) persuaded out of his capitalist beliefs by calling his money “filthy lucre”: that filthy lucre still pays the bills. And I doubt any proponent of honor killings will be persuaded out of his ancient beliefs by calling honor killings “honor killings,” especially when his honor group continues to honor him for what he does. The debate needs to turn to the ethics of honor. What are the principles that should govern our distribution of honor? Who should we honor, and why? These are questions about the meaning “honorableness”: “honorable,” like “justice” and unlike “honor,” is a morally thick term.

If I’m right about this, here are examples of correct usage:

“According to the U.N., 5,000 women are slain in honor killings every year.”

“These ‘honorable’ killings are often carried out by the victim’s family.”

“The so-and-so believe these acts to be honorable because of such-and-such.” [Acceptable because belief is a propositional attitude, and whatever you put in its scope isn’t an assertion of its truth.]

Rebranding vs. reclaiming vs. rehabilitating “honor”

05 Thursday Jun 2014

Posted by dan demetriou in honor in the news, philosophy of honor

≈ 2 Comments

Richard Martinez, father of Christopher Martinez, who was shot in the UC Santa Barbara spree killing. Photo credit: Jae C. Hong (AP).

A recent blog post by “resilience expert” Ken Druck connects honor to the aftermath of the tragic UC Santa Barbara shooting last month. In applauding the grieving Richard Martinez for meeting Peter Roger, the gunman’s father, Druck says that whereas the old honor code was about revenge and war, the “new honor code” is about “peace and non-violence” and “[m]aking our lives an expression of peace and love.”

The false promise of revenge is that hurting or killing someone will satisfy our deepest sense of grief, loss and violation. Revenge and retribution masquerading as honor is often the popular driving force for justifying war and hatred. […] Making our lives an expression of peace and love, rather than hatred and revenge, may not be an easy thing to do. But it is a good and noble, as well as civil and honorable choice we must learn to make if we’re to break the cycle of unprocessed grief and violence.

The entry was re-posted by the Good Men Project, which seems irresistibly attracted to any content that rebrands honor.

It isn’t at all clear to me what is distinctively “honorable” about peace, non-violence, and healing. That doesn’t mean I’m against those things, of course. It seems that there are many ways something can be good without being honorable. Not being honorable doesn’t make it dishonorable. It’s a good thing that Mr. Martinez and the father of his son’s killer got together to commiserate and discuss ways to prevent future spree shootings. I applaud them for it. I “honor” them for it. It’s certainly not easy to do what they did. But this has nothing to do with honor. We don’t have to associate all good things with honor.

Rebranding is different from reclaiming what philosophers call a morally “thick” term. Reclaiming seems to retain the descriptive content, but replaces the negative evaluative content with a positive spin: “queer” is an example of successful reclaiming. In contrast, rebranding changes the descriptive content of the term in order to redeem it.

Rebranding is also different from rehabilitating. Like some contributors to this blog, I want to rehabilitate honor. But that doesn’t mean changing the meaning of the term. Rehabilitation has a reclaiming aspect—we want to restore the positive spin “honor” used to have. But rehabilitation does this by arguing that honor has always referred to a particular sort of good. So, for instance, I think that honor has always concerned the virtues around ethical agonism: essentially, honor is about doing conflict right. That’s perfectly recognizable as “honorable,” so it’s not rebranding.

I guess I have a conservative streak when it comes to usage. But rebranding “honor” seems to me to be a bad idea for a few reasons I think I can articulate.

First, we have a robust vocabulary for the goodness of peace, non-violence, and healing. Moreover, there are well-established ethical approaches (such as care ethics and Christianity) that speak to these values and give them primacy. Calling peace, non-violence, and healing acts “honorable” adds nothing to our understanding of their goodness.

Second, rebranding “honor” erodes our sense of the distinctive moral contribution of honor. A rebrander of honor is caught in this dilemma: if “honor” denoted a genuinely bad thing in the past (such as revenge killing, etc.), then why rebrand “honor” to mean something that is good? That’d be like taking “cruelty” and rebranding it to mean some good thing. Why on earth would you choose the word “cruelty” out of all the possible words to choose from? On the other hand, if “honor” did denote a genuinely good thing in the past, then why rebrand it to mean some other good thing?

My third reason—and I think this is the explanation for why attempts to rebrand honor are so common—is that people who don’t really care for honor invoke term merely for rhetorical purposes. Would the Good Men Project have re-posted Druck’s blog entry if it used any other word than “honor”? I don’t think so. The word “honor” has become a sort of shibboleth that people utter to invoke a vague moral tone. It’s like background music, which doesn’t say anything so much as create a moral ambiance. If you want to seem caring and cooperative but also “tough” or “masculine,” you toss in a meaningless use of the word “honor.” It’s manipulative and soft-minded, but it works I suppose…