Honour and Shame, Douglas Cains

8/10/2019 Honour and Shame, Douglas Cains

1/20

DOUGLAS CAIRNS

Honour and shame:

modern controversies and

ancient values

When I began to work on honour and shame in ancient Greece in the

late 1980s, the predominant view of honour among classicists was onedrawn from studies of modern Mediterranean societies.1 On this view,honour was a scarce non-material commodity, pursued mainly by menin small-scale, face-to-face communities in more or less aggressiveforms of zero-sum competition. For men, honour was intimately boundup with assertive, traditional forms of masculinity, and so wasfundamentally related to female chastity, the source of such honouras women possessed and a crucial conduit through which mens

honour was vulnerable. This model was felt to be typical of traditionalMediterranean societies, both Christian and Muslim. It put all theemphasis on the standards of society, on the public, visible nature ofones actions and their evaluation by their audience. Bourdieus classicformulation was typical: The point of honour is the basis of a moralcode of an individual who sees himself always through the eyes ofothers, who has need of others for his existence, because the image hehas of himself is indistinguishable from that presented to him by other

people.2

On this view, honour has very specific normative character-istics; it belongs with values of a specific sort; it is characteristic only ofsome forms of social organisation; and it is associated with certainspecific types of action, motivation, and personality.

This approach to Mediterranean sociology no longer seems to enjoymuch currency in its own field. But the view of honour that itpromulgated lives on. An egregious example of the tendency toassociate honour with a very specific set of values and behaviour is a

2006 volume by James Bowman.

3

For Bowman, honour is an essentiallyprimitive phenomenon: a matter of bravery, indomitability and thereadiness to avenge insults for men and chastity for women it is


2/20

hardly changed or developed for millennia and remain different onlyin detail from the primitive cultures studied by anthropologists.5

In the West, on the other hand, the notion of honour has gone through a

series of transformations: in the earliest works of the Western literarycanon, the Homeric poems, it exists in something like the primitiveform still found in Muslim societies, but a tradition of scepticismabout honour arose in classical Greek and Roman thought, andChristianity exerted a strong pressure to moralise the notion thatbecame increasingly strong in the Renaissance and reached its zenith inthe nineteenth century, when honour had at its core an attachment toChristian morality, to personal integrity, to ideals of fair play, to good

manners, and to patriotism. All this was fatally undermined by theFirst World War (regarded in retrospect as having been fought forreasons of national honour), and was finally destroyed by the 1960sand the Vietnam War. Honour is now the motive that dares not speakits name, to the extent that (in the US) attachments to ideals of honourallegedly now survive only in countercultural contexts such as inner-city gangs,6 where people are excluded from or do not aspire to join thedominant anti-honour culture of mainstream society. As a result,

Bowman argues, US leaders were unable to acknowledge what was infact the true motive for the second Gulf War, namely that Americaneeded to restore its national honour after 9/11 and to demonstrate awill to do what it takes to deter further aggression by attacking a nationthat, though uninvolved, could plausibly be regarded as sympathisingwith that atrocity. Instead, a moral reason for going to war, the elusiveWeapons of Mass Destruction, had to be supplied. In Bowmans view,this deplorable state of affairs leaves America vulnerable to the threats

posed by two primitive honor cultures, one Islamic and military andthe other native or immigrant and criminal, which challenge itshegemony in ways that may require it to do something more thandenounce them as unenlightened.7 The remedy, he argues, is forAmerica to recover its sense of national honour and its virility. This isto be achieved,interalia,by means of a new acceptance of old forms ofinequality as a way of encouraging merit.8 But the real challenge,Bowman thinks, will be turning back the tide of womens rights9 as a

way of giving free play to that masculine pride that is fundamental topatterns of dominance not only between men but between nations.10

In fact the role of honour in the foreign policy of modern nation

24 Critical Quarterly,vol. 53, no. 1


3/20

so easily dismissed. As a history of the notion of honour in the West,and especially in the modern novel, it has substantial strengths. Morebroadly, the increasing polarisation between liberal and conservative

standpoints in the US that it reflects is an issue for us all. No doubt oneof the least worrying aspects of Bowmans worldview is hischaracterisation of honour as a fundamentally primitive thing,surviving only in countercultural and regressive contexts; but this isthe point on which I want to focus, for it typifies a dominant strand incontemporary attitudes to the concept.

There are, however, other strands. Frank Henderson Stewart notonly gives a multifaceted account of the variety of forms, senses, and

manifestations of honour (with a particular emphasis on its appearancein the law codes of a range of different societies), but alsodemonstrates, in his account of the institutionalisation of honouramong the Bedouin of the Sinai, the historical development, complex-ity, and sophistication of that notion in at least one set of Muslimcommunities.13 Sharon Krause attempts a rapprochement betweenhonour and liberal democratic politics that goes back to the politicaltheory and ethics of the Enlightenment.14 Most recently, Alexander

Welsh has offered a wide-ranging account of the pervasiveness ofhonour as a significant issue in the literature and thought of the Westfrom Homer to the present day.15 Welsh defines honour as the respectthat motivates or constrains members of a peer group.16 As the valuesof groups differ, so honour will relate to whatever norms or values thegroup holds dear. Though he does on occasion17 refer to somethingcalled true honor, Welsh is much less inclined to limit honour to aspecific range of values and behaviours. The wide range of evidence he

cites bears out his contention that the values to which honour relatesvary with the nature of the group to which one belongs (e.g. p. 189).Welsh sees the attachment to honour as a function of socialisation in awide range of groups and societies (esp. p. 97); it develops as theobedience to the standards inculcated by parents is replaced byemulation of the standards of the peer groups that one joins as onecomes of age. With this relation to group standards, honours relationto morality is not something that develops in particular (unusual)

historical circumstances, but rather a central function of the indivi-duals identification with the group. This identification is not just amatter of prudent accommodation to other peoples standards

Honour and shame: modern controversies and ancient values 25


4/20

notions of honour is (in the literature reviewed by Welsh) typically afeature not of slavish conformists, but of proud, independent figures,people who, having made the standards of the group their own, feel

able to use their position to counsel, cajole, and even defy it. Most ofWelshs evidence comes from the literature and philosophy of theRenaissance and Enlightenment periods (precisely those in whichBowman alleges that the moralisation of honour was at its height); buthe himself is in no doubt that what he is describing is what AdamSmith saw as the natural desire of all human beings for the esteem oftheir fellows.19

This view is supported in a fascinating study by an economist and a

philosopher, Geoffrey Brennan and Philip Pettit.20

Their notion of aneconomy of esteem is not a metaphor. On the assumption that theesteem of others is a good that most human beings desire, theyconstruct a series of abstract models that show how variations in itssupply and demand exhibit the characteristic features of an economy,in which individual actions produce aggregate patterns that feed backinto individuals choices in [a] distinctively self-organizing manner.21

There is too much here to summarise in detail; but one point in

particular deserves attention. Brennan and Pettit acknowledge thatsome scholars believe that concern for honour or esteem is not a featureof all societies or of all levels of a society (that it is found only in small-scale, face-to-face societies, that it is purely aristocratic, or that it is afeature only of marginalised countercultural groups); but they regardthis as a grievous error.22 In particular, their model explains how theconcern for esteem that pervades a whole society can produceconcentrations of esteem-seeking behaviour in socially marginalised

groups. By virtue of the diminishing marginal utility of all goods,esteem will mean more to people who have less of it. So other thingsbeing equal, an agent will work harder to avoid disesteem than to gainpositive esteem: shame is the stronger force for anyone who cares aboutesteem.23 Those who have considerable reserves of esteem will be mostconcerned to avoid the risks of losing, perhaps even in a moment, whatthey have spent considerable time and effort in building up,24 whilethose who have little or none will be risk-takers. In addition, because a

basic condition for esteem is that ones actions (even ones existence)should be recognised, those at the bottom have significant incentives toseek recognition even by means of activities that do not in the eyes of

26 Critical Quarterly, vol. 53, no. 1


5/20

the group itself, and these will thus be groups in which peer-pressure ismost intense. The model predicts that the violence and anti-socialbehaviour of inner-city gangs, far from representing the isolated

survival of a concern for honour that no longer pervades the rest ofsociety, are in fact a function of a wider economy of esteem in which allmembers of a society are implicated.27

The empirical evidence that this is so comes from the work ofepidemiologists such as Michael Marmot and Richard Wilkinson.28

Marmot was first alerted to the effects of status on health by hisextensive longitudinal studies (the Whitehall I and II studies) of UKcivil servants. In this extremely hierarchical organisation morbidity and

mortality rates were found to be closely correlated with ones positionin the hierarchy. Differences in lifestyle (smoking, consumption ofalcohol, etc.) did not explain (all of) the difference, which Marmotattributes to the chronic stress induced by lack of control over oneswork and the sense of being regarded as inferior to others further upthe hierarchy. These findings exist against the background of a widerphenomenon, an important feature of which is the so-called epide-miological transition, a label applied to the process by which, in the

developed world, the diseases and conditions which were onceconfined to the rich (obesity, type-2 diabetes, cancer, heart disease)become more prevalent among the poor as absolute poverty and itsassociated ills are eradicated. Marmot and Wilkinson are perhaps themost prominent among a number of scientists and scholars who haverelated this shift and the prevalence of the diseases concerned toincome inequality. It is now well established that rates of morbidity andmortality in developed economies are closely correlated with income

inequality. But ill health and early mortality are not the only social illsof which this is true: also correlated with income inequality aredifferentials in homicide rates, in the incidence of teenage motherhood,in the prevalence of mental health problems, in levels of drug abuse, ineducational performance, in the size of prison populations, in theextent to which individuals invest in the lives of their communities,and in self-reported levels of happiness and satisfaction.29 The societieswith the smaller discrepancies between the highest and lowest earners

do better on all these measures in a pattern that is stronger than chanceand cannot be attributed to other factors. The same patterns on thesame measures are seen among US states and the international and



6/20

better than the best outcomes in the less equal, and so on at all levels,though the gap is smaller at the top of the scale than it is at the bottom);these are not things that affect only the (relatively) poor or that depend

only on the number of relatively poor people in a given society; (2) indeveloped economies, in which absolute poverty is rare and many ofthose on less than half the average income have access to the standardcommodities of consumer society, income inequality is to a large extenta matter of status, of what ones wealth and the things one can buywith it say about ones standing relative to others, and of the extent towhich one can participate in the social contexts in which esteem isachieved. In this regard, the relativity of status is crucial. We are

occasionally urged to ignore relative inequality in societies in whichabsolute poverty is rare or in which standards of living are risingoverall. But when enough is never enough for the rich, it isunderstandably not enough for the less well off either. Dissatisfactionwith ones own relative status intensifies as discrepancies increase.30

The notion that greater disparities in wealth and income drive thestruggle to increase ones status relative to others, and thus contributeto a variety of social ills, is not a new one, but a basic insight of ancient

political thought. Platos proposal, that the richest citizen should be nomore than four times wealthier than the poorest, recognises that, evenafter basic economic needs are met, relative levels of wealth still matteras measures of status. The programme of balancing the interests of therich and the poor that we find not only in the Politics of Aristotle butalready in the fragments of the sixth-century Athenian statesman Solonis as much a matter of honour and status (time) as of the distribution ofwealth.31

The findings of Wilkinson and others with regard to homicide ratesare particularly relevant. Homicides main catalyst is disrespect, and itis above all committed by young men: the distribution curve by age ofperpetrator is similar in all societies, showing a sharp rise in the rate atages 1014, followed by a peak at ages 2024, and falling off sharplythereafter.32 But differences in annual rates between countriescorrespond to their relative levels of income inequality. These findingsconfirm Brennans and Pettits predictions: in societies in which

discrepancies in esteem are large, those at the bottom of the range,for whom a little esteem matters most, will take the biggest risks, evenof their own lives and liberty to gain the respect of their peers and the



7/20

pervades the rest of society. The honour of allegedly paradigmatichonour societies such as inner-city gangs is related to a wider set ofphenomena rooted in human sociality and reflexivity, to a general

human attachment to esteem that is capable of taking a wide variety offorms.

This has implications for the study of honour in other cultures andin past societies: concern for honour and shame is not a phenomenonthat we should approach from the outside looking in. Though honour-words are clearly attached to different ideals in different societies, andthough honour (and its analogues) may take on specific senses atdifferent periods and in different contexts, still there is a general sense

in which what mattered to (for example) Homers heroes is a reflex ofsomething that still matters to us. We need to pay attention to theparticular, but to avoid letting particular differences obscure generalsimilarities. We need to look at honour both more closely (at what itreally is) and more widely (beyond the salient and paradigmatic casesin the ghetto, the Mafia, and the Mediterranean).

To conclude this discussion, I want to focus on what has often beenseen as the paradigm of the primitive honour society, that of the

Homeric poems.33

The study of honour and shame in Homer needs tobe informed by the study of honour as a cross-cultural phenomenon,but should also in its turn inform that study. In particular, develop-mental or teleological views of honour in the West and primitivistviews of honour as a limited and highly specific phenomenon shouldbe precluded by an appreciation that in the Homeric poems, too,honour is a complex, dynamic, and inclusive thing.

Honour is a stock translation of the Greektime, which denotes both

ones value in ones own and others eyes and the esteem conferred byothers. The value of an individual may rest on a wide variety ofqualities, such as prowess in warfare (Iliad9. 319, 12. 31021, etc.), rank(Iliad1. 278), wealth (Odyssey14. 2056), noble birth (Iliad9. 2379), age(Iliad9. 16061), special skill or profession (Odyssey8. 480,Iliad5. 78, 16.605), kinship (Iliad13. 176), being a good wife (Odyssey7. 669), being agood slave (Odyssey1. 432), and friendship (Iliad 9. 63031, 17. 5767,22. 2335, Odyssey 19. 2478). Equally, esteem may be expressed in a

wide variety of ways: in the form of material goods, such as the gera(prizes or marks of distinction) awarded from the spoils of war tosuccessful and high ranking warriors (the issue in Achilles quarrel



8/20

(Iliad12. 312,Odyssey7. 71, 8. 173), verbal greetings (Odyssey7. 72), thebest seat at table (Iliad 12. 311), or carrying out an order (Odyssey 16.3047); and the showing of respect is a fundamental feature of Homeric

etiquette in all its forms. The set of honourable qualities and the rangeof honorific behaviour are highly inclusive.

The same is true of the subjective sense of honour (Greek aidos).Aidos has two related but distinct senses in Homer.34 First, it is theemotion which focuses on actions and states of affairs which are ugly,unseemly, or which are said to excite others indignation (nemesis); inthis sense it is normally translated shame. The range of thesecategories is wide: it includes personal failure, especially in battle, but

also failures in ones obligations to others. In its second sense(translated respect), aidos can directly express these obligations: tosay I feel aidos for you is a way of saying I honour you.

If a proper sense of honour requires the limitation of ones ownclaims out of respect for those of others, there is an expectation thatlegitimate claims to honour will be recognised: references to allottedshares of timeor to the time that one ought to receive show that timemay be a prerogative or entitlement; people complain indignantly

when denied the honour they feel they deserve; and failure to showhonour where it is due is condemned (e.g. ashybris).35 This entitlementto honour is widely distributed. A prime category is that of ones philoi(members of a cooperating group). But the entitlement can also beextended to outsiders, such as strangers, beggars, and suppliants, all ofwhom fall under the Odysseys category of aidoioi (respectworthy).36

The degree to which a community honours its obligations to suchpeople is regularly presented as an index of its civilisation (Odyssey 9.

1756, 1889; cf. 17. 487, 19. 3334).Finally, the obligations to behave honourably and to respect thehonour of others can be internalised and generalised: in Homer, theemotion ofnemesis (indignation) functions as the correlative ofaidos its target is shameless or disrespectful behaviour. Characters regularlyobserve that one should not oneself do things that excite ones ownnemesis when others do them (Iliad 23. 494; Odyssey 6. 286, 15. 6971),and the nemesis that individuals feel over others shameful behaviour

can also be directed at the self (Iliad16. 5446, 17. 2545,Odyssey1. 11920, 2. 64, 4. 1589). Honour in Homer is an ethic of specificinterpersonal obligations enforced by popular disapproval and



9/20

some salient situations. First, Nestors attempt to defuse the quarrel ofAchilles and Agamemnon in Iliad 1 (ll. 24553, 27584):

Thus spoke Peleus son and dashed to the ground the sceptrestudded with golden nails, and sat down again. But Atreidesraged still on the other side, and between them Nestorthe fair-spoken rose up, the lucid speaker of Pylos,from whose lips the streams of words ran sweeter than honey.In his time two generations of mortal men had perished,those who had grown up with him and they who had been born tothese in sacred Pylos, and he was king in the third age.He in kind intention toward both stood forth and addressed them:

You, great man that you are, yet do not take the girl awaybut let her be, a prize as the sons of the Achaians gave herfirst. Nor, son of Peleus, think to match your strength withthe king, since never equal with the rest is the portion of honourof the sceptred king to whom Zeus gives magnificence. Eventhough you are the stronger man, and the mother who bore you was

immortal,yet is this man greater who is lord over more than you rule.Son of Atreus, give up your anger; even I entreat you

to give over your bitterness against Achilleus, he whostands as a great bulwark of battle over all the Achaians.38

The first thing one notices is the care with which both the poet andNestor himself establish his right to give advice. This is a function ofhis status (i.e. his honour); it derives not just from his age, but from thewisdom and eloquence that his experience has given him. This statusgives his words authority and allows him to pronounce impartially

upon the quarrel. Nestor is upholding group values to whichAgamemnon and Achilles should subscribe, and his authority derivesfrom the honour in which he is held by the group, but that authority initself allows him the independence of mind to tell two powerful figureswhat neither of them wants to hear. In honouring Nestor as acounsellor, this independence, the willingness to speak out andpersuade others that they are wrong, is precisely what the groupwants; this is why he is valued.

Next, we notice Nestors diagnosis of the grounds of the quarrel:behind the dispute over women-as-prizes (i.e. the relative status ofAchilles and Agamemnon as mirrored by the marks of esteem



10/20

others claims their due. This idea, that there are entitlements to honourthat it is right to acknowledge is specifically identified as an aspect ofjustice by Odysseus in Book 19 (ll. 1813):

And you, son of Atreus, after this be more righteous [dikaioteros] toanother

man. For there is no fault when even one who is a kingappeases a man, when the king was the first one to be angry.

These are the final words of a speech in which Odysseus prescribes the

ceremonies, both public and private, that will finally and formallybring an end to the estrangement of Achilles and Agamemnon. Thelink between honour, rights, and morality is not something thatemerges only as the putative Western notion of honour develops; it isright there, in the supposedly primitive honour culture of Homer.Honour in the Iliad is not something a man can pursue without limit;and the limit is imposed by the honour, the duty of respect, that heowes others.

For his part, Achilles becomes embroiled in a quarrel withAgamemnon in order to champion group values against arbitrarymanipulation by a powerful individual; he then finds the power of thatindividual turned, arbitrarily, against himself. From that point on, hisstrategy involves a series of interlocking negotiations of individualclaims and group standards. On one level, Achilles stance resemblesthat of Nestor: he uses his status within the group in an attempt topersuade the group to see things his way. His withdrawal from the

fighting is in one sense a demonstration of his independence, so that inBook 9 he can say, in response to Phoenix (an older retainer who isacting as an intermediary on Agamemnons behalf), that he does notneed the time that the Achaeans can offer him, but can rely on thehonour he derives from Zeus (9. 6078). But Phoenix has just pointedout (6025) that the community can withhold timeeven from a warriorwho fights well, if that warrior does not fight on their terms; andAchilles own appeal to Zeus is itself part of a strategy designed to

achieve public acknowledgement of the status that Agamemnon failedto respect. Achilles view of himself is most certainly not dependent onthe view that others have of him; but he does need others to endorse



11/20

Achilles grievances (in Books 1 and 9) turn on norms that arewidely shared. His complaint is not just about disrespect, but about adenial of due respect that negates the reciprocity that should obtain

among peers. There is principle as well as pride behind his stance, anda notion of group standards that should apply equally to all. But ofcourse it matters that hewas the victim not just because we all put ahigher value on social norms when we are the ones who suffer fromtheir breach, but because achieving glory at Troy is a fundamental partof what it is to be Achilles. This is the life he has chosen (Iliad 9. 400416):

For notworth the value of my life are all the possessions they fablewere won for Ilion, that strong-founded citadel, in the old dayswhen there was peace, before the coming of the sons of the Achaians;not all that the stone doorsill of the Archer holds fast within it,of Phoibos Apollo in Pytho of the rocks. Of possessionscattle and fat sheep are things to be had for the lifting,and tripods can be won, and the tawny high heads of horses,but a mans life cannot come back again, it cannot be lifted

nor captured again by force, once it has crossed the teeths barrier.For my mother Thetis the goddess of the silver feet tells meI carry two sorts of destiny toward the day of my death. Either,if I stay here and fight beside the city of the Trojans,my return home is gone, but my glory shall be everlasting;but if I return home to the beloved land of my fathers,the excellence of my glory is gone, but there will be a long lifeleft for me, and my end in death will not come to me quickly.

This apparently total identification of himself with the everlasting fameof martial glory goes some way to explaining why Achilles seesAgamemnons actions as a complete negation of his status anybodywho would put up with such treatment is a nobody (he says at 1. 231,293); Agamemnon has treated him like a rootless refugee, someonecompletely without honour (9. 648, 16. 59). Agamemnon showsdisrespect for all that Achilles has invested, not just in the Trojanwar, but in being Achilles. Achilles prodigious, quasi-divine fury

indicates his commitment to this identity: he is someone for whomkleos(fame) is definitive and who will go to enormous lengths to punishdisrespect In the Achaean economy of esteem both Achilles and



12/20

of acquisition. At the same time, however, Nestors intervention inIliad1 (above) reminds us that, in a sense, there is more at stake for Achillesthan for Agamemnon. Agamemnons honour derives to a substantial

extent from his rank, whereas Achilles depends much more on whathe can achieve by his own prowess as a warrior doomed, if he is toachieve honour at all, to die young. The high stakes in his own case areat the core of his argument in Book 9 and a large part of the explanationfor the extremity of his response.

Because he is determined to demonstrate to all that Agamemnoncannot get away with his offence (1. 23944, 40812), to makeAgamemnon pay in full for the outrage (e.g. 9. 3867), Achilles decides

that the attempt to make amends in Book 9 is not good enough. But theAmbassadors remind him of other aspects of Iliadic honour, inparticular of the honour he owes his friends. Ajax, the last of the threeto speak, observes (Iliad9. 63031): He is hard, and does not rememberthat friends affection/ wherein we honoured him by the ships, farbeyond all others. He concludes with a direct appeal (64042):

Respect your own house; see, we are under the same roof with you,

from the multitude of the Danaans, we who desire beyond allothers to have your honour and love, out of all the Achaians.

Like King Lear, Achilles discovers that he has taken too little care ofthis with the loss of his best friend, Patroclus. When his mother, Thetis,observes that Zeus has fulfilled his promise to honour him byfavouring the Trojans against the Achaeans, Achilles laments (Iliad18. 7983, 88104):

My mother, all these things the Olympian brought to accomplishment.But what pleasure is this to me, since my dear companion has perished,Patroklos, whom I loved beyond all other companions,as well as my own life. I have lost him, and Hektor, who killed him,has stripped away that gigantic armour . . .. . .As it is, there must be on your heart a numberless sorrowfor your sons death, since you can never again receive himwon home again to his country; since the spirit within does not drive me

to go on living and be among men, except on conditionthat Hektor first be beaten down under my spear, lose his lifeand pay the price for stripping Patroklos the son of Menoitios



13/20

he has perished, and lacked my fighting strength to defend him.Now, since I am not going back to the beloved land of my fathers,since I was no light of safety to Patroklos, nor to my other

companions, who in their numbers went down before glorious Hektor,but sit here beside my ships, a useless weight on the good land . . .

Friendship in Homer is a matter of mutual respect, a reciprocal relationof honour, and Achilles now feels that he has letall his philoidown. Hesays, almost in so many words, that the honour he expected once hisvalue as a warrior had been demonstrated now means nothing to him.His life is now wholly invested in revenge: the honour that he willattain in avenging Patrocluss death (and thereby assuaging his ownshame) matters more to him than his own life. There is no suggestionhere that the approbation of others matters at all. What matters isAchilles own belated realisation of the duty that a man of honour oweshis friends.

But this is not the end of the story. Achilles final Iliadic exploit isalso explicitly a matter of honour, as Zeus first indicates whenarranging the return of Hectors body (Iliad 24. 10910):

[The other gods] keep urging clear-sighted Argephontes to steal thebody,

but I am going to attach this glory [kudos] to Achilleus [i.e. of returningthe body voluntarily].

Priam confirms that his appeal is fundamentally directed towardsAchilles sense of honour (Iliad 24. 4867, 5034):

Achilleus like the gods, remember your father, one whois of years like mine, and on the door-sill of sorrowful old age . . .. . .Honour then the gods, Achilleus, and take pity upon meremembering your father, yet I am still more pitiful.

In accepting Priams supplication Achilles honours an individualwhose special status is underwritten by the gods, but he also (onPriams encouragement) generalises from the duty of respect that sons

owe their fathers (Priams words unleash a passion of grieving for hisown father, 24. 5078; the two weep, Priam in memory of Hector,Achilles in memory of his own father and Patroclus 25 509 12)



14/20

110. At every stage, Achilles conduct reflects ideals and practices ofhonour; but at no stage is it simply a matter of male competition forprestige. Ethical norms, themselves aspects of the complex of honour,

impinge from the outset, and the varieties of the respect that a manowes others play as big a role as the esteem that he seeks for himself.

Finally, we turn to Hector: if theIliadis the tragedy of Hector (as wellas of Achilles), then much of that tragedy lies in the inclusivity ofHomeric notions of honour.39 Hectorcoulddefend Troy from the walls,as advised by Andromache in Book 6; hecouldreturn to the city after anunprecedented day of success, as advised by Polydamas in Books 12and 18; he could save himself for another day and think first of those

who most need his protection, as advised by his mother and father inBook 22. But he does not in all cases because of his desire for honourand his sense of shame. He cares acutely for his honour and hisreputation, but he is self-willed, independent, and determined in doingwhat he thinks honour demands.

Hector refers twice to the sense of shame that motivates him (Iliad6.44065, 22. 99110). In the first passage, he rejects his wifes advice tobehave in a way that, though perhaps prudent, could be construed as

cowardly (6. 44046):

Then tall Hektor of the shining helm answered her: All thesethings are in my mind also, lady; yet I would feel deep shamebefore the Trojans, and the Trojan women with trailing garments,if like a coward I were to shrink aside from the fighting;and the spirit will not let me, since I have learned to be valiantand to fight always among the foremost ranks of the Trojans,winning for my own self great glory, and for my father.

Hector is explicitly concerned with what people will say of his conduct,but the imagined judgement of others wholly coincides with his ownchoice his spirit will not let him contemplate any other course; he haslearned to be brave. Bravery, winning glory for himself and his father,has become an end in itself, part of what it is to be Hector. Yet Hectoralso realises that the honour he craves entails an element of shame, thatthe glory of bravery is only a second best if bravery fails to protect

ones dependants, especially ones wife (6. 44165):

For I know this thing well in my heart and my mind knows it:



15/20

as troubles me the thought of you, when some bronze-armouredAchaian leads you off, taking away your day of liberty,in tears; and in Argos you must work at the loom of another,

and carry water from the spring Messeis or Hypereia,all unwilling, but strong will be the necessity upon you;and some day seeing you shedding tears a man will say of you:This is the wife of Hektor, who was ever the bravest fighterof the Trojans, breakers of horses, in the days when they fought about

Ilion.So will one speak of you; and for you it will be yet a fresh grief,to be widowed of such a man who could fight off the day of your slavery.But may I be dead and the piled earth hide me under before Ihear you crying and know by this that they drag you captive.

Society makes martial glory an end in itself for those who pursue it, butinculcates that end as a means to its own protection. Hector realisesthat this is something that he will ultimately fail to provide. The tensionbetween the simple norm that only cowards retreat and its wider socialimplications is quite clearly not one between honour and somethingelse, but within the notion of honour itself.

A similar tension emerges in the second passage, where Hector

confronts the fact that his desire for military glory has led to a failure toprotect his people; he had been advised (in Book 18) to retreat, and asin Book 6 had rejected the prudent course in favour of the prospect ofglory. But Hector does not just regret his failure to prevail in battle; norhas he merely realised that the pursuit of honour can be misguided.The shame that Hector feels focuses not (as in Book 6) on theimputation of cowardice, but on the duties of leadership and care thathe owes his people (22. 99110):

Ah me! If I go now inside the wall and the gateway,Poulydamas will be first to put a reproach upon me,since he tried to make me lead the Trojans inside the cityon that accursed night when brilliant Achilleus rose up,and I would not obey him, but that would have been far better.Now, since by my own recklessness I have ruined my people,I feel shame before the Trojans and the Trojan women with trailingrobes, that someone who is less of a man than I will say of me:Hektor believed in his own strength and ruined his people.

Thus they will speak; and as for me, it would be much betterat that time, to go against Achilleus, and slay him, and come back,or else be killed by him in glory in front of the city



16/20

people, I feel shame, 1045). His projection of the fantasy audience isan aspect of the way that he now views his own conduct he knows hehas failed, by his own standards. And so the only life worth living is

the short one in which he faces Achilles and tries to redeem some of hislost honour by a noble death. Hectors sense of honour, like that ofAchilles, is part of his very being, central to his view of who he is socentral that it assumes a higher value than existence itself. But also as inAchilles case, limited perspectives on honour are brought into explicitconfrontation with wider aspects of a more inclusive concept.

In the extreme cases of the greatest heroes, such as Achilles andHector, honour is so far from being just one external good among many

that it can be regarded as preferable to life itself. Each invests his beingand identity in the pursuit of honour, yet each becomes aware thathonour is a more complicated thing than he had thought, especiallywhen the individualistic pursuit of military glory is brought intorelation with the reciprocal negotiations of respect that characteriserelations with others. Already in theIliadtensions and contradictions inthe notion of honour are being probed presumably to appeal toaudiences for whom the life of honour was likewise not a simplistic

notion. Homeric honour is neither unidimensional nor primitive. Itinvolves complicated and multifaceted negotiations between indivi-dual claims and others recognition and invokes the full range of normsand values by which Homeric society operates. There is much evidencefor self-assertive masculinity, but also for a great deal else besides. Theassociation between honour and morality, identity, and integrity isthere already in Homer. Yet, though Homers heroes are proud andindependent, their pursuit of honour implies a community with both

the power to judge them and the ability to enlist individuals honour insupport of the security and cohesion of the group. Individual identity isintimately bound up with group membership. Self-esteem depends onthe esteem of others. This is the only way it can be.

Notes

1 See esp. John George Peristiany (ed.), Honour and Shame: The Values of

Mediterranean Society(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1965); David D.Gilmore (ed.), Honor and Shame and the Unity of the Mediterranean



17/20

(19312010), Professor of Greek in the University of Glasgow from 1971 to2001, the last and one of the most distinguished holders of a chairestablished in 1704. This article is dedicated to his memory. I should also

like to thank my colleague Dr Martin Chick for much helpful advice andthe Leverhulme Trust for funding the research project from which thisarticle derives.

2 Pierre Bourdieu, The Sentiment of Honour in Kabyle Society, inPeristiany, Honour, 191241 at 211; cf., with reference to the world ofHomer, Arthur W. H. Adkins, Merit and Responsibility (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1960), 49: the heros self only has the value which otherpeople put upon it.

3 James Bowman, Honor: A History(New York: Encounter, 2006).

4 Ibid., 21 and 22.5 Ibid., 40.6 Ibid., 265 and 286.7 Ibid., 287; cf. 323.8 Ibid., 31213.9 Ibid., 31723.

10 Ibid., 320.11 See Donald Kagan, Honor, Interest, and Nation State, in Elliott Abrams

(ed.), Honor among Nations: Intangible Interests and Foreign Policy

(Washington DC: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1998), 116.12 See Bertram Wyatt-Brown, The Ethic of Honor in National Crises: The Civil

War, Vietnam, Iraq, and the Southern Factor,Journal of the Historical Society,5:4 (2005), 43160. Wyatt-Brown recognises that the motive of honour inboth foreign policy matters and martial affairs . . . applies to nearly all othernations armed services and diplomatic staffs to a greater or lesser degree(pp. 4323), but also regards the persistence of a culture of honour in thesouthern USA as a contributory factor in the US context. For the southern USas a paradigmatic honour culture, cf. James E. Nisbett and Dov Cohen,

Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South (Boulder CO:Westview, 1996); also Dov Cohen, Joseph Vandello, and Adrian K. Rantilla,The Sacred and the Social: Cultures of Honor and Violence, in Paul Gilbertand Bernice Andrews (eds), Shame: Interpersonal Behavior, Psychopathology,and Culture(Oxford: Oxford University Press), 26182.

13 Frank Henderson Stewart, Honor (Chicago IL: University of ChicagoPress, 1994).

14 Sharon Krause, Liberalism with Honor (Cambridge MA: Harvard Uni-versity Press, 2002).

15 Alexander Welsh, What is Honor? A Question of Moral Imperatives (NewHaven CT: Yale University Press, 2008).



18/20

we need to demystify honor and treat it as one kind of motivation that allare subject to.

20 Geoffrey Brennan and Philip Pettit, The Economy of Esteem (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2004). Cf. also (on esteem as a factor in both giftexchange and market economies) Avner Offer, Between the Gift and theMarket: The Economy of Regard, Economic History Review, 50:3 (1997),45076.

21 Brennan and Pettit, The Economy of Esteem, 66.22 Ibid., 8.23 Ibid., 156.24 Thus, regarding honour as in other respects, people are loss-averse: they

hate a loss more than they value an equal gain (Richard Layard,

Happiness: Lessons from a New Science(London: Allen Lane, 2005), 141; cf.Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions aboutHealth, Wealth, and Happiness (London: Penguin, 2009), 367).

25 Brennan and Pettit, The Economy of Esteem, 187.26 Ibid., 2236.27 For the relation between subcultures in which violence is driven by the

pursuit of respect and inequalities of esteem in society in general, cf.Michael Marmot, Status Syndrome: How Your Social Standing DirectlyAffects Your Health (London: Bloomsbury, 2004), 102; Richard Wilkinson

The Impact of Inequality (London: Routledge, 2005), 222, 226; RichardWilkinson and Kate E. Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal SocietiesAlmost Always Do Better(London: Allen Lane, 2009), 134, 14041.

28 See previous note.29 For the data, cf.www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidence. For UK trends

since the 1980s, see Alissa Goodman, Paul Johnson, and Steven Webb,Inequality in the UK (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); John Hillsand Kitty Stewart (eds), A More Equal Society: New Labour, Poverty,Inequality, and Exclusion (Bristol: Policy Press, 2005); John Hills, Tom

Sefton, and Kitty Stewart (eds), Towards a More Equal Society? Poverty,Inequality and Policy since 1997(Bristol: Policy Press, 2009); and now JohnHills, An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK: Report of the NationalEquality Panel(January 2010, available at http://www.equalities.gov.uk/national_equality_panel/publications.aspx). Cf. also Daniel Dorling,Injustice: Why Social Inequality Persists (Bristol: Policy Press, 2010).

30 On the ways in which growing discrepancies in income lead to increasedcompetition for positional goods and increased dissatisfaction evenamong those who may be comfortably off in material terms, see RobertFrank, Falling Behind: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class(Berkeley and Los Angeles CA: University of California Press, 2007); cf.

http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidencehttp://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidencehttp://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidencehttp://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidencehttp://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidencehttp://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidencehttp://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidencehttp://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidencehttp://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidencehttp://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidencehttp://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidencehttp://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidencehttp://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidencehttp://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidencehttp://www.equalities.gov.uk/national_equality_panel/publications.aspxhttp://www.equalities.gov.uk/national_equality_panel/publications.aspxhttp://www.equalities.gov.uk/national_equality_panel/publications.aspxhttp://www.equalities.gov.uk/national_equality_panel/publications.aspxhttp://www.equalities.gov.uk/national_equality_panel/publications.aspxhttp://www.equalities.gov.uk/national_equality_panel/publications.aspxhttp://www.equalities.gov.uk/national_equality_panel/publications.aspxhttp://www.equalities.gov.uk/national_equality_panel/publications.aspxhttp://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidencehttp://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidencehttp://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidencehttp://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidencehttp://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidencehttp://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidencehttp://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidencehttp://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidence


19/20

for a brief discussion of classical Greek attitudes to income and statusinequality, see H. Phelps Brown, Egalitarianism and the Generation ofInequality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 1821.

32 See Richard Wilkinson, Why is Violence More Common Where Inequal-ity is Greater?,Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1036 (2004), 112; Wilkinson,Impact, 14567; Wilkinson and Pickett, Spirit Level, 12944;Pickett, Jessica Mookherjee, and Wilkinson, Adolescent Birth Rates, TotalHomicides, and Income Inequality in Rich Countries, American Journal ofPublic Health, 95:7 (2005), 11813; cf. Margo Wilson and Martin Daly,Competitiveness, Risk-taking, and Violence: The Young Male Syndrome,Ethology and Sociobiology, 6 (1985), 5973; Martin Daly and Margo Wilson,Homicide (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1988); Helena Cronin, The Ant

and the Peacock: Altruism and Sexual Selection from Darwin to Today(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 3313, 3424; MartinDaly, Margo Wilson, and Shawn Vasdev, Income Inequality andHomicide Rates in Canada and the United States, Canadian Journal ofCriminology, 43 (2001), 21936.

33 See Bowman,Honor, 456; cf. G. Taylor,Pride, Shame, and Guilt: Emotions ofSelf-Assessment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 547. Both drawon the classic study of E. R. Dodds,The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeleyand Los Angeles CA: University of California Press, 1951), whose own

characterisation of Homeric society as a paradigmatic shame-culturewas influenced by Ruth Benedicts The Chrysanthemum and the Sword:Patterns of Japanese Culture (London: Secker and Warburg, 1947).

34 For shame, see e.g.Iliad 22. 1057 (discussed below); respect, see e.g.Iliad 9. 640 (ditto). Cf. Jean-Claude Riedinger, Les Deux Aidos chezHomere,Revue de Philologie, 54 (1980), 6279; Cairns, Aidos, passim.

35 Allotted shares:Iliad1. 278, 9. 608, 15. 189, Odyssey5. 335, 8. 480, 11. 302,338; duetime: e.g.Iliad1. 353, 23. 649; complaints: e.g.Iliad23. 571,Odyssey2. 5567; condemnation of those who do not honour others: Odyssey 22.

41415, 23. 656; hybris: Agamemnon, Iliad 1. 203, the Suitors, Odyssey 1.368, etc. Cf. Stewart,Honor, passim,on honour as right. Onhybris, see NickFisher, Hybris: A Study in the Values of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greece(Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1992).

36 See e.g.Iliad9. 63032, 640 (in-group);Odyssey7. 165, 9. 271, 15. 373, cf. 14.568 (strangers, beggars, and suppliants, qua respectworthy).

37 On the varieties of impartiality, cf. Bernard Williams,Ethics and the Limitsof Philosophy(London: Collins, 1985), 60, 825, 92, 115; Thomas Nagel,TheLast Word (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 11225; AmartyaSen, The Idea of Justice (London: Allen Lane, 2009), 11452, 15573, 194207, 2924.



20/20

Copyright of Critical Quarterly is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed

to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However,

users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

Honour and Shame, Douglas Cains

Documents

Transcript of Honour and Shame, Douglas Cains