Honor: A Phenomenology

Robert L. Oprisko

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136274183
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Internationale Beziehungen

Honor is misunderstood in the social sciences. The literature lacks both accuracy and precision in its conceptual development such that we no longer say what we mean because we have no idea what we're saying. We use many terms to mean honor and mean many different ideas when we refer to honor.

Honor: A Phenomenology is designed to fix all of these problems.A ground-breaking examination of honor as a metaphenomenon, this book incorporates various structures of social control including prestige, face, shame and affiliated honor and the rejection of said structures by dignified individuals and groups. It shows honor to be a concept that encompasses a number of processes that operate together in order to structure society. Honor is how we are inscribed with social value by others and the means by which we inscribe others with social honor. Because it is the means by which individuals fit in and function with society, the main divisions internal (within the psyche of the individual and external (within the norms and institutions of society). Honor is the glue that holds groups together and the wedge that forces them apart; it defines who is us and who them. It accounts for the continuity and change in socio-political systems.

Part I

An Introduction to Honor

1 Introduction

“Human beings do not normally attend to the deeper levels of the self … because consciousness … substitutes the symbol for the reality, or perceives the reality only through the symbol.”¹

IN MEDIAS RES

Honor is a multiphenomenal category of concepts that, as a system, hierarchically structures society when an Other inscribes value onto an individual. To study honor, one must study value, virtue, law, and all of the social sciences. It is a subtle concept whose influential tendrils extend well beyond its understanding in common usage. Honor, when elevated to a wholly inclusive level of abstraction, binds individuals together and forms society, but it also tears them apart. Honor provides a novel lens through which politics can be viewed and interpreted, but it is actively being diminished within the academy.

Recent literature on honor strongly suggests that social science is looking for some other concept to replace it. Honor’s evolution as a concept has instilled it with qualities that are politically incorrect, display some of the less flattering qualities of humanity, and perpetuate inequality. Why doth social science protest so much? Evicting honor as a concept of critical inquiry does not produce a politically correct global social environment, it would not eliminate the more base qualities of humanity, and it would not eradicate inequality. Honor is a social fact, even if some would choose to ignore it.

The question now becomes “Is honor interesting enough to merit a comprehensive scholarly examination?” By thinking in terms of what is owed honor, we are valuing the concept and evaluating it within larger contexts. Compared to other concepts, how does it rate? Does honor belong within a theoretical monograph? Furthermore, we are objectifying honor and claiming dominion over it by judging it and granting it social value merely by questioning how much social value it has. We are judging whether or not we should honor honor.

Perhaps we should not. Honor evokes a multitude of images, few of which fit into the early 21^st century American world. Hearing the word honor suggests blood mixed with irrationality: men killing their wives to prevent family dishonor, knights slaying dragons to win enough honor to marry a princess, and one thousand Greek ships sailing to Troy (and staying for ten years) to bring back a wife who ran away with a dashing young man. But if honor is a social fact, it must be all around us. Does everyday, ordinary honor matter when there are no dragons left to slay and no beauties left to reclaim? Are we left only with the insanity of blood feuds and egoism? That will depend on how one chooses to examine honor. Sometimes the journey is the key to understand the destination.

Honor has lost its way. The primary methodological difficulty within the study of honor is that the word means many things and that, because it means many things, its value as a word becomes relatively meaningless. We use multiple concepts interchangeably when speaking about honor, disregarding conceptual differences. By aggregating related but unique concepts together as one, the academic discourse on honor is mired in absurdity. Our discourse on honor has been weakened by our lack of specificity in dealing with honor as experienced universally. Many honor studies focus on particularities of individual honor cultures rather than showing procedural trends in honor’s manifestation throughout cultures, societies, peoples, and groups.²

This study begins, therefore, in the middle of things—a great many things. The literature of honor is expansive and connective, which means that a holistic undertaking of honor must also be expansive and connective. It is my hope that this project does so, yet meets Dahl’s requirements that theory should be both comprehensive and parsimonious.³ I conceptualize honor as the category of related processes that structure social reality by inscribing value onto persons and groups. These processes are both internal and external to individuals.

Honoring is an action between two (or more) parties, typically an individual and a group. However, an individual can affiliate with or have membership in multiple groups simultaneously. He or she honors and is honored based upon relational identities within these groups. His or her identity can be discrete, or nested, such as being a citizen of Indianapolis, Indiana, and of the United States. All are accurate, but the importance of each identity depends upon the level of analysis within an inquiry. Honor structures society, including politics, and accounts for corporatized agency from individual to group to state to system. To fully erect a general understanding of the process of honor, we must examine the pieces directly and indirectly engaged. First there is a relationship between at least two parties: the honoree and the honoring-agent. Almost assuredly the group(s) to which these parties belong are involved as witnesses to the honor processes. There is an act on behalf of the honoree either of being, having, or doing. This act is recognized by the honoring-agent as having value that reaches a threshold of exceptionality that the group designates for public notation. The bestowal of honor is the inscription of a value upon a party by an Other. The honoring process is continuous; it sets new precedence and requires maintenance.

Because honoring is the process whereby a group confers a value upon the individual, it represents nothing less than the means by which individuals and groups bind themselves, and it incorporates the assumption and divesting of sovereignty. Through the action of conferral, the honoring agent is claiming sovereignty over the individual, granting a distinction of, if nothing else, exceptionalism, typically referred to as excellence. The individual divests him- or herself of personal sovereignty in order to gain and maintain social value according to rules and rituals that represent the sacred and bind the parties together. This is not always a happy and unchallenged process.

Insofar as the conferral is a value placed upon the individual, that individual becomes exceptional or excellent in a particular way according to the group and is treated as such. This valuation becomes real for the members of the designating group. More appropriately, the individual members of the group accept the particular value-designation as fact. The sovereign character of the group manifests itself through the inscription of value upon the individual regardless of the individual’s will. The acceptance and promulgation of this value by other members of the group result in the reality of this social valuation regardless of whether the individual desires to be so designated. The individual may resist either the designation or the sovereignty of the honoring-agent in a particular social sphere. There are many parties (individuals and groups), each of which may make claims of sovereignty. The areas of overlap, where claims to sovereignty are multiple and challenged, present real points of contestation in social life.

Honoring is, therefore, a process of altering social reality through the medium of value. The process affects not only the honoring agent or the honoree, but also the other individual members under the sovereignty of the honoring agent. Honor must be borne by the honoree, bestowed by the honoring agent, and observed by others for honoring to be effective.⁴ The use of value is important as value includes absolute, relative, and ideal forms. Positive valuations of actions and qualities can generally be considered “good” and can increase honor. Negative valuations of actions and qualities may be deemed “bad” and can either decrease honor or increase shame.⁵ The degree to which a particular quality or action approaches the ideal is its excellence.

The process of honoring is continuous; it is the manner in which reality is socially constructed because it is the means by which value is conferred by the sovereign and accepted by the group. It creates, destroys, and alters norms through the maintenance and revision of the social status quo. Instances of honoring may be limited in time, space, and content, but an individual’s honor is constantly under revision and interpretation. As honor is the real manifestation of social value for individuals and groups, it is only avoided either through revision of the value system or by a political contestation with the group.⁶ The designation of actions as “good” or “excellent” doesn’t alter the characteristics or actions themselves, merely the value attached to said characteristics and actions. Because of this, it is accurate to state that honor is a timeless and universal phenomenon that represents the axiological total social fact.

The primary goal of this project is to provide a conceptual precision that is currently lacking in the literature. Therefore, this study will define the concepts of honor based upon the distinct relational processes. I begin with a procedural division between processes of social intercourse between individuals and groups (external honor) and those that occur within an individual’s psyche (internal honor). Rather than getting bogged down by using the word “honor” and a descriptive modifier, I use key terms that are mostly concepts that functionally relate to one another and have already been examined within the literature. The following are core concepts that form external honor:

1. Prestige is the process of honor by which an individual party gains social value for qualities, characteristics, and actions that are deemed excellent and are valued as “good” by a group to which h or she affiliates or of which he or she is a member. Prestige increases an individual’s hierarchical position vis-à-vis others in a group.

2. Shame is the counterpart to prestige and is the process by which an individual party gains social value for qualities, characteristics, and actions that are deemed excellent, but are valued as “bad” by the group. Shame decreases an individual’s hierarchical position vis-à-vis others in a group.

3. Face is the process of honor by which an individual party maintains his or her position as an honor-peer in a particular honor-group. Face is the honor process that exists between social equals and is exceptionally fragile. Matters of face concern access to valued social identities. Saving face refers to a party resisting either the loss of a particular identity or a lower, or less valued, position within a peer group, effectively nullifying peer status.

4. Esteem is a process of honor by which an individual (or group) is given social value by an individual or group for excelling in an honor-system, even though it is not a system that both parties share. Neither party need accept the value system or obey the honor code of the other. Esteem merely recognizes that an Other is considered socially valuable and has attained honor within a known, though foreign, honor-system.

5. Affiliated Honor is the circuitous process by which an individual member and his or her group gain social value from their mutual association. Membership in a group is an identity that accords honor to the individual based upon the value of the group’s reputation. Concordantly, the value of a group’s reputation is based upon the aggregate value of its members and their average contribution. Deriving social value through affiliated honor is a double-edged sword; a party may gain prestige and distinction from membership, but can also be dishonored or shamed.

6. Glory is the combination of fame and honor. This process of honor echoes across time and space. Glory possesses a sacred quality and elevates a societal exemplar to become a transcendent exemplar par excellence of a particular quality or action. Glory manifests itself in myths and legends.

Honor is also internal, it includes people’s self-reflective evaluation not only about where they does stand, but where they should stand based upon how they value Others in their life-world. There are two primary internal processes of honor:

1. Honorableness is the process whereby an individual incorporates honor as a valued quality of his or her self. It has depth that increases as the individual’s feeling of attachment increases. The honorableness of an individual ranges from the nonexistent to the absolute. Honorableness measures the depth of people’s commitment to how they are socially valued.

2. Dignity is the process whereby people inscribe themselves with social value. They do so by establishing a personal honor code that, for them, is absolutely binding and non-negotiable, to which they are the exemplar par excellence. Personal dignity is a direct challenge to the authority of external valuation.

The tension between external and internal processes of honor provides the dynamic between anarchy and world order. ...