By Shaun Kenney
Can honor set to a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honor hath no skill in surgery, then? No. What is honor? A word. What is in that word “honor”? What is that “honor”? Air. A trim reckoning. Who hath it? He that died o’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. ’Tis insensible, then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore, I’ll none of it. Honor is a mere scutcheon. And so ends my catechism. — William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1, Act 5, Scene 1.
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One of the earliest lessons in honor comes from the Ten Commandments, and it is a lesson that we all learn as young children. Honor thy father and mother.
The concept of honor is something we have lost in society today, held deeply by those who recognize honor’s value and held in utter contempt by those who deem it a relic. To give one’s word was typically held as one’s bond; honor rather than contract bound one another to an agreement — in effect, to hold it in honor.
True, there is a reason why we call justices of the court by the name of honor. Even politicians once held the moniker of “The Honorable” and still do, even if the concept of holding elected officials to standards has gone by the wayside.
Yet in an era of consumerism and egalitarianism, the idea of distinction — to hold a person in esteem — strikes many as anachronistic.
Once upon a time, a man’s honor was worth more than his purse. “Better to die a thousand deaths than wound my honor” was a line from a colonial era play that could be recited almost verbatim by the Founding Fathers. Thomas Jefferson was sincere in the sentiment of pledging their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. Most of the Founders sacrificed a great deal more than their own lives and fortunes defending what was honorable.
Indeed, it is C.S. Lewis who mocks us from above. “We laugh at honor,” he writes in The Abolition of Man, “and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”
Falstaff’s catechism in Henry IV — that honor, having no value, is merely an emblem akin to a coat of arms — has the Shakespearean talent for double meaning. True, honor in and of itself has no value to those who cannot recognize it. Juvenal’s line about those who prefer existence to honor rings true. Yet one’s coat of arms signifies something about the long tradition of family passed down. One’s last name carries a certain oath which is a passport to all others who recognize its value. Honor may not mend an arm, but it might procure a doctor.
So what happens when the doctor requires his fees to be honored after he sets the leg, heals the wound, or applies his skill in surgery? The one who asked to be honored has already received the material benefit — where is the proper and due?
True, there are bastions of it — West Point, Annapolis, and the University of Virginia. A gentlemen does not lie, cheat, or steal nor does he associate with those who do. The Virginia Military Institute will still drum out those who infract the honor code for what those outside of Lexington might consider minor offenses. Nevertheless, the student body commits itself to exhausting every avenue to remove an offender from their midst.
James Bowman is perhaps one of the leading modern thinkers on the topic of honor and what it means in a society that has all but demolished its value. Bowman’s conclusions are that honor is closely linked to manhood, and that honor’s value is to be found in the bonds of conflict — specifically warfare. Generations who do not experience these mutual bonds of conflict and struggle have no conception of honor, which is why the institution prevails almost exclusively in military settings and rarely outside of it.
St. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologiae equates honor with several other virtues: conscience, magnanimity, confidence, assurance, and above all else? The cardinal virtue of fortitude.
The enemies of honor? Presumption, ambition, vainglory, and pusillanimity — the last literally meaning a “very small spirit” by its etymological Latin root. The three former qualities? Pride.
It is no small wonder then that today’s society has different substitutions for honor. Where once we had manners, today we have social justice. Where once we had chivalry, today we have Title IX courts. Where once we had handshakes, today we have contracts.
Where once we had great spirits? Today we have small ones.
I raise this point because the idea of honor is one that holds deep resonance within the history of the West, yet is not exclusive to it. More than this, it is a particularly Catholic idea that has no written book nor legalistic code, but a certain sense of right action in the face of adversity — real or imagined.
One might hate to say it plain, but cowards have no use for honor. If ever there was a generation of cowards, we certainly live in such times today. The antidote for such so-called men are heroes in the Thomistic sense, those who put conscience above gain, confidence above vainglory, assurance above ambition, and magnanimity above a very small spirit.
Today’s society almost seems to bend over backwards to reward dishonorable behavior. Bad debts? Society pushed easy loans on you. Stormy weather? Abandon those duties; the circumstances changed. Going gets tough? Cannibalize and stay weak.
Honor is the moral inheritance parents give to their children — a scutcheon indeed. Our parents and grandparents seemed to know better, if for no other reason than they drew from deeper wells.
The secret to honor? Exodus 20, of course. There is a reason why honor is entwined into understandings of family, if for no other reason than one day, our sons and daughters will have to honor us. Better to raise a Hamlet who wonders about his duties than a Falstaff who abandons them altogether. Rarely is there honor in its breach.
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Of course, I am succeeding (but not replacing) the inestimable Mr. James K. Fitzpatrick for the First Teachers column. Please feel free to send any correspondence for First Teachers to Shaun Kenney, c/o First Teachers, 5289 Venable Rd., Kents Store, VA 23084 — or if it is easier, simply send me an e-mail with First Teachers in the subject line to: svk2cr@virginia.edu.
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