The rape of Lucretia: an ancient dilemma of honor

18 Thursday Jun 2015

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

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Moral dilemmas make for compelling stories. Should we nuke this city to stop the virus from spreading? Should we derail the train to save our child caught on the tracks? Honor-dilemmas used to be a favorite type of moral quandary. One legendary honor-dilemma in particular has inspired artists and storytellers for millennia: the rape of Lucretia.

The Roman noblewoman Lucretia lived in 6th century B.C., in the final days of the Roman Kingdom. As Livy tells the tale, she welcomed the Roman prince Sextus Tarquinius into her home while her husband and father were away at war. Taken by her beauty, Tarquinius stole into her bedroom in the middle of the night and begged Lucretia to sleep with him. She refused. He threatened to kill her, but she remained unmoved. At last Tarquinius threatened to kill Lucretia and a male slave, arranging their bodies so that she “might be said to have been put to death in adultery with a man of base condition.” As this threat touches Lucretia’s reputation, she accedes.

After Tarquinius leaves, “exulting in his conquest of a woman’s honour,” Lucretia calls her husband and father back from battle, and in tears tells them how she “lost her honour” to the prince and that they, “if they are men,” will avenge her. The men swear to punish Tarquinius and they do their best to support Lucretia, assuring her that her honor hasn’t been besmirched. But Lucretia is disconsolate and declares,

“Though I acquit myself of the sin, I do not absolve myself from punishment; not in time to come shall ever unchaste woman live through the example of Lucretia,”

at which point she brandishes a hidden dagger and stabs herself to death (as depicted in the banner art of this blog). Appalled, inspired, and outraged, Lucretia’s menfolk revolt against the ruling family and help found the Roman Republic. Continue reading →

Frequency of “honour” and other moral terms in Shakespeare

16 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by dan demetriou in honor in literature, stories of honor

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Shakespeare

I once met a philosopher who remarked that the world of honor seemed foreign to him. Since he was English, I was momentarily taken aback, but my eventual reply focused on the importance of honor in Shakespeare’s plays. My answer was qualitative, in that I highlighted a couple of plot lines. But a quantitative measure would have added a sort of undeniability. So since that exchange I resolved do a word-search of “honour” in Shakespeare’s corpus. I played around a little with that today, and thought I’d share what I found.

“Tattooed Shakespeare” by Mathew McFarren

According to OpenSourceShakespeare.org, “honour” and its inflections (“honourable,” “dishonour,” etc.) appear 888 times in Shakespeare’s writings. Inflections of “contempt” show up 54 times, “contemn” 12 times; forms of “shame” appear 390 times, and “sham’d” nine times.

How does that stack up with other moral terms?

Let’s start with “just,” which includes the inflections “justice,” “unjust,” “justly,” etc.: 392 occurrences. Keep in mind this includes numerous (I’m too lazy to count) uses of the homonym “just” as in “My mother told me just how he would woo.” The word “anger,” which we’ll generously categorize as a response to injustice alone, appears 58 times (I had to look for it exactly, to avoid “danger” and such from being listed). “Angry” appears 102 times, “anger’d” eight times. “Guilt” and its inflections show up 139 times.

Thus, it seems like honor-based terms are at least twice as common in Shakespeare’s corpus as justice-based ones. This ignores virtue terms such as “coward” (147 inflected uses), “glory” (93 instances), and “dignity” (44), which, in context, usually concern honor.

The word “fair” wasn’t a moral term in Shakespeare’s day. Almost all its uses mean the same as “lovely” or “beautiful.” Some form of “kind” appears 513 times, but many of those occurrences are the non-moral “kind” synonymous with “type.” I would estimate about 450 of instances of “kind” refer to kindness and unkindness, etc., and I’d guess that kindness was the second-most frequently invoked moral quality.

What about terms concerning authority or loyalty? Very surprisingly to me, “loyalty,” “disloyal,” etc. showed up only 75 times. “Obedien-” and its inflections only 89 times. “Faithful,” 50 times. A careful analysis would have to pick through all the uses of “faith” to separate out the moral uses meaning trust, which I can’t do right now.

How about “sin” in general? I count 157 uses of “sin,” two uses of “sinned,” four of “sinn’d,” eight of “sinner,” four “sinners,” and one of “sinning” (“I am a man/More sinn’d against than sinning”). I suppose there are more inflections of “sin,” but it’s fair to say that even all sin combined isn’t as topical as honor is in Shakespeare.

Again, I realize this is obviously the crudest possible way to approach the question of honor in Shakespeare (a more scholarly treatment is Norman Council’s When Honour’s at the Stake (1973/2014)). But sometimes numbers speak louder than words.

Honor & Loss

12 Tuesday May 2015

Posted by tonycuinneagain in honor and war, honor in literature, stories of honor, Uncategorized

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Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North tells the tale of Australian prisoners of war building the Burma railway under such brutal conditions in WWII. At one point in the story, one of the most resilient and charismatic prisoners suffers a horrendous beating from the Japanese guards, and his fellow prisoners are forced to stand at attention and witness it the relentless cruelty. That night, the badly injured Darky Gardiner slips into the primitive camp latrine and drowns. After the war, some of his comrades are out for a night of drinking in Hobart, Tasmania, and they come upon Nikitaris’ fish shop. They remember how Darky used to carry on about how much he loved to take his girlfriend to Nikitaris’ for a night out, and how someday he wished to return and free the fish from the tank in the window. Remembering their friend, they break the window, scoop out the fish into slop buckets, and free them in the harbor. The next evening, remorseful for the damages they caused, they visit the fish shop to pay for the repairs, and then something unexpected happens. When they go to explain their actions to Mr. Nikitaris, the old man senses something and brings them up short.

“He was your cobber?”

Not only does Mr. Nikitaris refuse their money, but he feeds them and gives them wine, and soon enough, they realize that the old man lost a son in the war in New Guinea in 1943. And then they are a just a group of men sharing their losses without speaking directly about them, sharing their company long into the night.

“It was hard to explain how good that fried fish and chips and cheap red wine felt inside them. It tasted right. The old Greek made his own coffee for them—little cups, thick, black, and sweet—and he gave them walnut pastries his daughter had made. Everything was strange and welcoming at the same time. The simple chairs felt easy, and the place, too, felt right, and the people felt good, and, for as long as that night lasted, thought Jimmy Bigelow, there was nowhere else in the world he wished to be.”

The scene is an exquisite example of a profound sense of honor—brothers-in-arms honoring the memory of a fallen comrade, an old man honoring their loss, a group of wounded men honoring his loss in kind, and all of them finding some solace together in the deep meaning of what they have suffered and lost.

Honorable Gestures

10 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by tonycuinneagain in honor and war, stories of honor, Uncategorized

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Civil War, honor, John Gordon, Joshua Chamberlain, surrender at Appomattox, Ulysses S. Grant

This month marks the 150 anniversary of the end of the American Civil War. After Lee’s surrender at Appomattox on April 9th, 1865, Ulysses S. Grant charged Joshua Chamberlain, the former Bowdoin College professor and hero of Gettysburg, with the duty of conducting the formal arrangements of the surrender ceremony. Chamberlain thought long and hard about the formalities. He knew that three brigades would line the sides of a long road and that the Army of Northern Virginia would pass until they came to an open field to stack their arms and relinquish their battle flags. Chamberlain guessed that more than 25,000 men would pass and that the ceremony would take the better part of the entire day. Once it was over, the rebels would have their parole papers guaranteeing them safe passage home in exchange for their pledge to bind themselves in peace to the Union. Chamberlain badly wanted to do justice to the solemn occasion.

At six o’clock on the morning of April 12th, 1865, the line of gray started in silence past the Federal troops with General John Gordon leading the march astride a white horse. He had taken a disfiguring wound below the left eye at Sharpsburg and he must have cut a forlorn figure at the head of the procession. His men marched behind him, defiant even in their famished weariness and defeat. Keeping their eyes to the front, they refused to return the stares of Federal soldiers who craned their necks to catch a glimpse of the men that had tried so hard for so long to kill them.

As Gordon came even with him, Chamberlain gave the order for a call to carry arms, the marching salute. Catching the sound of shifting arms in the ranks of blue, Gordon recognized the gesture as a show of respect from one army to another. In reply, Gordon put a spur to his horse, wheeling him about toward Chamberlain, rearing slightly as he did so. In one graceful motion, Gordon drew his sword and brought it to the tip of his boot as man and horse bowed their heads to acknowledge the tribute. As Gordon moved off to the side, he sent word along the line of gray to answer honor with honor.

Think for a moment about the terms of this poignant scene. These were men who had lost a great deal, both the “winners” and the “losers.” They had suffered horribly at each others hands in a war where the technology of killing vastly outstripped the antiquated military tactics. War had a new face, and these men had seen it. In that moment, Joshua Chamberlain rose to Lincoln’s call to find the “better angels of our nature” by honoring the shared losses and sufferings of that terrible struggle. Gestures can be little things, but I suspect that on that day and at that moment, Joshua Chamberlain’s gesture meant a great deal to a great many.

Honor for introduction to ethics courses

20 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by dan demetriou in honor system, philosophy of honor, stories of honor

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introduction to honor ethics

This blog is meant to be a resource for bouncing ideas around and alerting honor researchers to new work on the topic. In that spirit, I just completed a working draft of this Freshman-level introduction to honor ethics, and I thought I’d share it here.

It’s written somewhat in the style of Russ Shafer-Landau’s Fundamentals of Ethics, which I use as a textbook. Like many contemporary introductory ethics texts, this piece focuses on ideas, principles, and intuitions and ignores scholarly figures and intellectual history.

Please note that it’s an “opinionated” introduction, as it reflects the agonistic conception of honor I favor. It distinguishes between honor as a good and honor as a deontological moral theory. It connects the agonistic elements to honor’s associations with integrity, anti-bullying, and forceful resistance.

I’d certainly welcome any suggestions for improvement. Also, please let me know if it is of any use to you in your courses.

Ajume Wingo: Source of Mandela’s greatness is that he gave up power

09 Monday Dec 2013

Posted by dan demetriou in announcements, history of honor, honor and the law, honor in contempory media, honor in the news, philosophy of honor, political science of honor, stories of honor

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mandela and honor

Honorethics.org contributor Ajume Wingo had a great letter published in the Denver Post yesterday on Nelson Mandela. It discusses an important point almost totally ignored in the encomia we are hearing about the South African president: how unique and important it was that Mandela gave up power.

The true source of Mandela’s greatness is how he gave up that power. It was his exit — dignified and orderly — more than anything else that sets him apart. His exit from office at the height of his power, popularity and health put him in the company of Cincinnatus of ancient Rome and George Washington — exemplars of the rule of law and the ideals of leadership in a republic.

I know Ajume has been thinking and writing on the theme of rulership and liberalism for some time. In the developed West, we have grown accustomed to our leaders stepping down when their tenure is up, but of course there is little reason to make the same assumption in many parts of the world. Figuring out how to persuade leaders to give up power—especially when the populace will let them get away with keeping it—would be huge accomplishment for the cause of liberalism and rule of law.

Could leaders be persuaded by money? Maybe. However, as Wingo’s piece notes, African billionaire Mo Ibrahim has funded a foundation offering $5 million, and an annual stipend of $200,000, to African leaders who (among other things) “serve their constitutionally mandated term.” The prize seems to be an insufficient incentive. Maybe the prize cannot compare to the richer spoils of electing oneself president for life. However, we do have some historical precedent on the matter. As Ajume notes, Washington and Cincinnatus also refused sorts of kingship.

Beyond their non-pecuniary motives, I cannot say much about Cincinnatus’ or Mandela’s motives. But in the case of Washington, some historians argue that concern for honor was key. Douglass Adair, Lorrraine Smith Pangle and Thomas Pangle, Joanne Freeman, and Gordon Wood all speak to the concern Washington had for his honor and reputation. Continue reading →

Jews and honor in literature, pt. 1

31 Friday May 2013

Posted by dan demetriou in honor code, honor in literature, honor system, stories of honor

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The relationship of Jews to honor should be discussed more (it’s broached here and there by William Ian Miller, but I don’t know of a sustained discussion of the topic). Anyway, I thought I’d take note of a couple fictional episodes that deal with the issue. I’m not sure how much they shed light on Jewish themes in particular, but they do illuminate the characteristic way honor (at least on my way of looking at honor) understands respecting another person. They also show how honor is particularly good at overriding ingroup/outgroup, us/them mental frameworks, which of course play such a big role in anti-Semitism.

The first episode comes from The H.M.S. Surprise, the third novel in Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series (of Master and Commander fame). Our protagonist, Stephen Maturin, is in love with the mistress of a wealthy Jewish merchant, Richard Canning, and proposes marriage to her. Canning overhears and, in a fit of jealous rage, deals Maturin a savage open-handed blow. The offense is not apologized for and Maturin, although bearing no animus toward Canning as a person, asks a Marine captain to be his second and demand satisfaction on his behalf.

Continue reading →

Lord Jim and the Costa Concordia disaster

12 Wednesday Dec 2012

Posted by Peter Olsthoorn in history of honor, honor code, honor in literature, honor in the news, philosophy of honor, stories of honor

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Next month it will be a year ago that the cruise ship Costa Concordia sank (resulting in the death of 30 passengers), and that Captain Francesco Schettino was arrested for abandoning his passengers. “It’s a matter of honor that the master is the last to leave. Nothing less will do in this profession,” said Jorgen Loren, chairman of the Swedish Maritime Officer’s Association, in a reaction. I am certainly not the first to see a similarity between the unhappy captain and the story of Jim and his lost honor in Joseph Conrad’s novel Lord Jim (1900). Continue reading →