When I say honor, what I mean is the idea of every individual being called to answer to everyone else. You know, the kind of thing you see from the Klingons. “You are thirty and unmarried, you bring dishonor to us” or “shame on your family for eternity because you were arrested for terrorism” or “what a disgrace you are for not having the skillset of your parents”. This goes deeper than that though, sometimes it’s more subtle, for example you might run into old classmates and all they want to know is how your brother is doing, or people keep telling you that you should live up to your sister or they might put you in some kind of shadow.
People who defend honor will often say “it is the masses who have spoken, enough said” but do you consider this self-explanatory and why? Because I have many questions sometimes that get no answer that seem to undermine the very justification of honor, for example… what defines a member of an honor culture, is the internet seen as a valid method of manifesting an honor culture, does an honor culture that faces a schism and breaks off from another become a dishonorable honor culture or equally valid, who was the first person to believe in certain ideas from which the honor culture got its conclusions, how did said person justify their ideas, is it dishonorable to find loopholes in the rules of the honor culture, are you dishonored if you save the life of someone who is seppukuing, what if this person happens to be the emperor, etc.
It’s not self explanory. It’s strongly tied to a culture or even a person.
I don’t see anything bad in not being married nor having different skillet than your parents. Let alone honor being used to kill women and in general justify violence from the powerful to the weak
Of course not.
Honor is situational, cultural, and often nebulous.
It can’t be self explanatory. The closest it gets to that is within a given culture, it can be so engrained as to be learned early enough that it seems self explanatory from within.
I’m normally pretty long winded, but that’s really all that needs to be said imo.
When I hear the word “honor” I mostly only conotate it with honor killings where a brother kills his sister or a father his daughter because she dared to date someone they don’t approve off. I’ve not seen it with my own eyes but read about it many articles in Germany and Sweden where Turkish or Afghan migrants did this.
So for me this word has a ver bad conotation.
Expanding on your example I believe “honor” implies that the person doesn’t really believe in anything, doesn’t have an independent system of morality.
They only care about perception among their in-group.
Honor means a lot of different things. And it has been used to commit so many different crimes against minorities.
I think nowadays in the western culture it means individual honor. It means to be trustworthy and to stand by your word. By the classic saying: “A gentleman can settle the bill later”.
The way late stage capitalism goes, honor culture will be left behind. Where every individual is reduced to a number, the concept is disappearing. You pay first before pumping gas. And the only time your wow matters is in the court when you say you won’t lie.
Love the western definition meaning integrity. Loathe the definition meaning group pressure up to violence.
imo honor is roughly a synonym for integrity.
yet integrity means different things to different people.
and people also mistake honor and pride.
is it dishonorable to find loopholes in the rules of the honor culture
Dueling culture in 18th and 19th century Europe was commonly organized around concepts of “gentlemanly honor”. Even back then, people recognized the need for loopholes.
Consider the case of two friends who got drunk at a tavern, each one declaring how much they loved the other. Eventually, one friend goes overboard “I love you more than you know!” to which the response is “But that cannot be, for my love of you is infinite!”. Soon this becomes an argument over who loves the other more, and eventually they have to settle their friendship like gentlemen: With swords at dawn. If they’re smart and sober up in time, their seconds will work out a solution before the fight, but there are cases recorded where the friends kill each other because honor trumps love.
There were also loopholes which worked to favor the person that society already deemed more “honorable” (wealthy, connected, liked, etc). It was generally accepted that a gentleman of certain standing could honorably refuse another’s challenge to duel if their social stations were different. Think a “new money” banker’s son challenging a minor nobleman over a loan that’s due. It simply wouldn’t look good to have some commoner slaying an aristocrat, even if said aristocrat was an asshole.
The mere fact that you felt you needed to explain and define it should be proof that the answer is no.
And I would disagree with OP’s definition entirely. What they describe sounds more like reputation or social standing, not honor.
I think honor is living by the rules one sets upon themselves and others. Especially when shit gets hard. It’s easy to say “I help people” but it’s a lot harder to push a car to the shoulder in the rain because somebody has a flat on a highway. It’s also easy to say people should let you in line because you have two items but do you do that when you have a full cart but really want to get home soon? I try to teach my kids “if you can help, you have to help”. When they do that, they bring honor to themselves and the family.
Ymmv.
Honor is a social construct which is used to promote “pro-social” behavior. It can be useful in the absence of or in concert with other systems of social control (e.g. laws, religion). Of course, “pro-social” is very much a construct of what the creating society considers to be positive. This can include acting in ways which we, in our current social constructs, would consider “anti-social”. Honor ends up getting idolized in media because it often includes an element of self-discipline and self-sacrifice and is usually associated with warrior cultures. Though, it also tends to be conservative and resist changing as social mores change. This has led to some famous consequences as honor based systems tried to cling to social constructs which were no longer tenable. For example, the Satsuma Rebellion saw the existing feudal class seek to maintain it’s grip on power in then face of a changing society.
Ultimately, any system of honor would need to be taught to new adherents. It’s no different from a religion or legal system in that regard. No one comes out of the womb fully indoctrinated to a system of honor. So no, it isn’t really self-explanatory. Like any social construct, you would need to define the system and how it interacts with the society in which is was created. Otherwise, it’s just naming a system for social control and hoping no one notices that it’s a hollow shell.
Slave traders were honored guests in lords’ palaces.
Graeber in Debt has made an interesting point that honor historically meant an ability to reduce freedom of other people.
I associate honor with it being a part of culture and I think of the Japanese way of honor. Like Bushido.
“Japanese chivalry” existed in many forms, many of which were not chivalrous (e.g. it was totally okay for a samurai to strike down someone of a lower class, and to keep heads of their victims as trophies).
The bushido culture that seems pervasive today in their society was derived as part of a nationalist movement in Japan at the time:
Bushido was used as a propaganda tool by the government and military, who doctored it to suit their needs. The original Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors of 1882 uses the word hōkoku (報国), signifying the idea of indebtedness to one’s nation because of one’s birth. Such debt must be repaid through physical or mental exertion. This idea did not exist in earlier bushido.
I consider honor to sorta be the opposite of hypocrisy. Its to lead ones life as one as one espouses and truly believes and be consistant in word and deed. It is not necessarily good but more often sought by good people.
I feel like you’re talking about multiple things that are only loosely related, some of which could be called honour. It’s varied enough that I wouldn’t call it self-explanatory.
Certainly, I could see someone defining honour as, at some point, the respect of military peers. This still exists with honourable or dishonourable discharge, but reaching back in time one could imagine an honourable knight treating his peasants poorly (and certainly less well than how he treats other knights), to say nothing of women specifically.
Likewise, Japanese culture is said to be an “honour culture” but it could be said to be a particular form of Japanese Machismo that has evolved from the Japanese martial classes (an elite) to the modern proletarian salaryman.
But in common modern usage, I see enough “honourable klingon” memes that use honour as a sort of earnestness and respect amongst everyone.
Not saying any of interpretations are correct (or wholly wrong), just that there’s enough of them that are plausible that saying any of them is self-explanatory is a bit of a reach.
Erm, I’m a bit high
To me, honour is being answerable to your duties of being a good citizen. Being honest, being helpful, being civil, having integrity - all that can be part of honour.
Without meaning to push your buttons, you’ve defined honour using concepts that have to be further defined to really explain what honour is. Like you could ask what helpful is exactly, would it be helpful to do xyz, etc, and you could argue over it. But then that answers OP’s question I suppose by demonstrating that it’s not known a priori.
