What Is Honor? 9780300148305

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
Plan of This Book
Acknowledgments
1. On Moralities of Obedience and Respect
2. Help from Anthropology and Psychology
3. Respect in the Ethics of Aristotle
4. Cicero’s Mediation of the Same
5. Shakespeare’s Recourse to Roman Honor
6. His Antony, Cleopatra, and Coriolanus
7. Honor by That Name in Mandeville and Montesquieu
8. Leveling Down in Enlightenment Fiction
9. Coming of Age in Neoclassical Drama
10. And How Rousseau’s Emile Comes of Age
11. Kant’s Engagement with Honor
12. Parallels to Kant’s Moral Philosophy
13. Respect and Adam Smith’s Impartial Spectator
14. Adam Smith and Recent Social Science
15. Coming to Terms with Honor in Philosophy
Works Cited
Index

Citation preview

What Is Honor?

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ALEXANDER WELSH

What Is Honor? A QUESTION OF M O R A L I M P E R AT I V E S

Yale University Press New Haven & London

Copyright ∫ 2008 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Set in Sabon type by Keystone Typesetting, Inc., Orwigsburg, Pennsylvania. Printed in the United States of America by Thomson-Shore, Inc., Dexter, Michigan. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Welsh, Alexander. What is honor? : a question of moral imperatives / Alexander Welsh. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-300-12564-1 (alk. paper) 1. Honor. 2. Conduct of life. I. Title. bj1533.h8w45 2008 170—dc22

2007041561

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Thus the measure of what is every where called and esteemed Virtue and Vice is this approbation or dislike, praise or blame, which by a secret and tacit consent establishes it self in the several Societies, Tribes, and Clubs of Men in the World: whereby several actions come to find Credit or Disgrace amongst them, according to the Judgment, Maxims, or Fashions of that place. —John Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding

A youth must already know something of what is proper, but not so a child; the latter can only be told: that is not what is done. A youth must already be aware of the duties of civil society. Here he acquires the concept of steadiness, and of the love of man; now he is already capable of principles; from this point on religion and morality are cultivated; and by then he is already refining himself, and can be disciplined by honour, whereas a child is disciplined only by obedience. —Immanuel Kant, Lectures of Professor Kant, 1784–85

Ranks mix and privileges are abolished. The members of the nation becoming again similar and equal, their interests and needs become identical, and all the peculiar notions which each class styled honor begin successively to disappear. The particular needs of the nation itself become the only source of honor, and that honor stands for the peculiar individual character of that nation before the world. —Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

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Contents

Preface ix Plan of This Book xv Acknowledgments xxi 1.

On Moralities of Obedience and Respect 1

2.

Help from Anthropology and Psychology 9

3.

Respect in the Ethics of Aristotle 23

4.

Cicero’s Mediation of the Same 40

5.

Shakespeare’s Recourse to Roman Honor 50

6.

His Antony, Cleopatra, and Coriolanus 67

7.

Honor by That Name in Mandeville and Montesquieu 84

8.

Leveling Down in Enlightenment Fiction 97

9.

Coming of Age in Neoclassical Drama 114

10.

And How Rousseau’s Emile Comes of Age 127

11.

Kant’s Engagement with Honor 138

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12.

Parallels to Kant’s Moral Philosophy 151

13.

Respect and Adam Smith’s Impartial Spectator 168

14.

Adam Smith and Recent Social Science 183

15.

Coming to Terms with Honor in Philosophy 199 Works Cited 213 Index 223

Preface

I first started thinking seriously about honor years ago when writing about the hero in Walter Scott’s novels. For me Scott was not a romantic but a conservative, with a political position akin to that of Edmund Burke, respect for the law heightened by his training as an advocate in Edinburgh, and humor both native and Shakespearean. My book was virtually finished and pride of first authorship hovering when it struck me that something more was needed: namely, a chapter on honor as it affected the behavior of even such passive young representatives of civil society as Waverley and the others. As for the word honor, that was as common in novels of the time as it had been in the Renaissance and was just something twentieth-century readers of old books had to get used to. But quite evidently there were also things Scott’s heroes would or would not do because of their honor (1963, 134–54). This sense of honor not merely as a measure of fame or status but as a kind of moral imperative was new to me, because in truth we rarely use the word that way anymore. The need to come to terms with this motive, at least for a student of literature, was evident by the role honor would continue to play in novels, not only by the immediate followers of Scott, but by such major English novelists as Thackeray and Trollope, who regularly featured gentlemen heroes and, famously at the end of the nineteenth century, Conrad, the Pole who adopted the

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English language as his own and wrote novels exposing the corrupt weaknesses of just about any imperialist other than British. In truth Scott’s main impact on the nineteenth-century novel—and on historicism itself, it might be added—fell outside the British Isles. Though he did not invent the historical novel, he practiced that genre so successfully from 1814 until his death in 1832 that he set a standard for serious writers for a century to come. Cooper in America and Manzoni in Italy adopted the form while Scott was still living; Balzac’s historical fiction and Tolstoy’s War and Peace would have been almost unthinkable without his example; Fontane’s Berlin novels and Faulkner’s excavations of the American South still confessed to his influence. In all these notable fictions certain principal characters act as they do because of their sense of what honor demands. And when one casts an eye over Western literature before Scott, in narrative and drama back all the way to Homer, the same holds. Then the real problem becomes this: how many of these avid representations were—or remain—true to life? I am a great believer in literary study precisely for the history of desire that it affords. There wouldn’t be much need to study invented fictions, after all, if it were not that they afford a picture of how lives might work out as we wished or deserved; and the desires literature acts upon and strives to fulfill include not only pleasures but moral ends. Thus, story and drama, those all too human inventions, provide a special and invaluable kind of history. Still, the very word honor, as applied to behavior, is troublesome because it is now largely archaic and when still current had different, limited denotations. The h-word, as I may call it, tended to depart from private life in the West when the rise of nationalism generalized loyalty across an entire population, at the very time when urbanization, industrialization, and population growth induced far greater anonymity. Even for standing armies and military service, the machine guns and artillery of World War I opened a mass grave for honor. Our best recourse therefore is to take up equivalent words that are still current: words like respect and self-respect, or personal identity and meaningful integrity. If you think of honor as respect, self-respect, and kinds of motivation dependent on respect, then it should be evident that it is not just some relic of the past. I tried this experiment out some thirty years ago in an essay on Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (1975), by explicating Brutus’s motives in terms of Erik Erikson’s work on male identities. The senior Shakespearean in my department pronounced the argument of the essay not new, so I must have been on the right track. It is a mistake to think of the motive itself as archaic—or primitive, as that idea all too easily translates; and the subject needn’t after all be left to classicists and well-traveled anthropologists, or students of Renaissance and neo-

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classical drama, useful and important as their findings may be. According to the moment and the relevant group, honor can exact quite different kinds of behavior. That may be why it is easier to descry in cultures other than our own: Tacitus on the Germans, Shakespeare on the Romans. The best guide here may be Alexis de Tocqueville writing on Americans—not merely because he was a Frenchman, but because of the heightened sense of historical change shared by his contemporaries. For Tocqueville, honor can only be a set of rules that apply in a particular time and place. ‘‘Every time men come together to form a particular society, a conception of honor is immediately established among them, that is to say, a collection of opinions peculiar to themselves about what should be praised or blamed’’ (1835, 620). He provided some examples of behavior allowed to be honorable in the United States that might be considered shameful elsewhere; nor would they necessarily meet the approval of all Americans today. A good many historians believe that because honor was an aristocratic code it pretty much ceased to matter once aristocracies in the West significantly lost political power. But whereas that past career of honor can readily be documented, we need to acknowledge that there are hidden—and not-so-hidden— aristocracies all around us, one or more of which we are almost certain to belong to ourselves. At the end of the eighteenth century, Immanuel Kant made an exception of sorts in his practical philosophy for killings that occurred in duels between military officers, such as he was personally acquainted with in Königsberg. His sensitivity to honor, however, was just as likely instilled by his father’s pride of membership in the guild of harness makers. In the United States today, where aristocrats are supposedly scarce, to ‘‘dis’’ others is to disrespect them and dissociate oneself from them. So perhaps craft guilds and hip-hop should be thought of as aristocracies. Let us keep an open mind about honor groups and not confine them to the distant past and desert regions. What empowers members of a group, after all, is not just belonging but the consciousness that others do not belong: when you come right down to it, elitism is simply a function of small numbers. Of course it is well to be born into a titled aristocracy or be admitted to the National Academy of Sciences, but many more honor groups than these have existed and will continue to appear over time. Fortunately, there are signs that scholars from a number of fields are newly persuaded of honor’s importance. The late Bernard Williams’s Shame and Necessity is a learned study of ancient Greek texts, but not for the purpose of showing how different from ours was the behavior expected of people in those days. Williams concedes that values change and that our forebears may have been more wary of incurring shame. ‘‘But shame continues to work for us, as it

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worked for the Greeks, in essential ways. By giving through the emotions a sense of who one is and of what one hopes to be, it mediates between act, character, and consequence, and also between ethical demands and the rest of life’’ (1993, 102). Douglas L. Cairns’s Aidos ¯ (1993) also makes wider claims than those of the close literary analysis that provides its authority; Cairns too seeks to break down the conventional distinction between shame and guilt cultures. These two books are complementary: Williams arguing that honor and shame still work for us, and Cairns that what we think of as conscience worked for the ancient Greeks. A short book called simply Honor, by the anthropologist Frank Henderson Stewart (1994), sorts out a compendium of definitions from a wide variety of sources, novels as well as field studies of the more traditional kind. In American history there has come a welcome change. Honor has often been celebrated—and sometimes derided, by the likes of Mark Twain—as a force to be reckoned with in the South before, during, and after the Civil War. Lately historians have been pointing to what may be a much more significant involvement with honor during the founding of the United States (Adair, 1974; McNamara, 1999; Freeman, 2001). Without recourse to honor, it seems, we cannot readily understand what motivated the founders. Gordon S. Wood (2006) has now added his authority to this persuasion, while at the same time carefully distinguishing among the personalities associated with perhaps the most successful revolution of modern times. But Wood concludes that by the early nineteenth century gentlemanly ways were overtaken by coarser public opinion. I have been especially encouraged by Sharon R. Krause’s Liberalism with Honor (2002), which begins with Enlightenment political theory, especially Montesquieu, and works forward through the period of the founding, the reactions of Tocqueville, the Southern case, and on to the present. Quite appropriately, Krause finds honor an imposing force in nonviolent movements such as women’s suffrage and the civil rights marches. Since she holds out the promise of a positive role for honor in our communities, this is a prescriptive as well as descriptive account of the subject. Ironically, for those who insist that honor is a class thing—read upper class—there have been ongoing studies of street gangs in American cities that have to be reckoned with (Horowitz, 1983; Jankowski, 1991). Among Spanish-speaking Chicano gangs the very word honor can still be heard. Honor is indeed a class thing, in that it is a group thing. At least one group of conservative scholars and officeholders today, persuaded that the United States’ posture in the world should be far more aggressive in word and deed, has openly come out with the h-word once again (Abrams, 1998). Very likely On the Origins of War by Donald Kagan (1995) provided the inspiration here. Kagan uses what might be called world wars of ancient Greek and Roman times, the Peloponnesian (his specialty) and Punic

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wars, to analyze World Wars I and II of the twentieth century and how they might have been prevented. National honor figures as one highly subjective reason for going to war, but basically Kagan stresses military preparedness and the will to commit to force early on. Out of these discussions has now come James Bowman’s Honor: A History, which focuses on domestic culture but has in the end the same general purport. Bowman accepts that males of our species have an instinct to fight back, but that the leanings and inhibitions of our culture have changed over time. The siphoning off of honor into nationalism is part of the problem, and perhaps democracy another. Bowman devotes a couple of chapters to the development and modernization of an honor culture in the West. ‘‘The man who did the most to resuscitate honor for the modern era was Sir Walter Scott’’ (2006, 75)—and how can I quarrel with that? He then analyzes in greater depth the peacetime intervals of twentiethcentury America, including films and novels of the time. The danger is that we may have become too effete to deal effectively with an opposing ‘‘Islamic honor culture.’’ One gets the impression from these books that some such agitations of honor may have lodged in the minds of our leaders in Washington at the commencement of this new century, in which case it might be wise to try to comprehend what our actions and vaunting mean to the other side and, if a revived honor culture can truly serve us, whether it shall rival the terrorists’ in murderousness. ‘‘O wad some Power the giftie gie us,’’ rhymed a famous contemporary of Scott, ‘‘To see oursels as ithers see us!’’ Meanwhile, far from the street or fields of war, it seems the fortunes of British empirical science were first advanced within an honor group. In A Social History of Truth, Steven Shapin uses Robert Boyle, he of Boyle’s law of 1662 and other discoveries, as a telling case study. The argument is that Boyle’s being a gentleman (his father made the family’s fortune) not only afforded him the means and leisure to engage in science but also importantly provided an ethic of sticking to the truth and telling it as it was. For there were two ‘‘repertoires’’ available to gentlemen of the time, according to Shapin: ‘‘One repertoire . . . defiantly identified gentility with ‘pleasure,’ recognizing a gentleman by his birth, wealth, repute, and quarrelsomeness, and the traditional avocations (hunting, hawking, gambling, visiting) structuring his day. Another repertoire celebrated knowledge and its presumed product, virtue’’ (1994, 171). But knowledge independent of received opinion, note, and shared trustfully with other members of a set who generations later would be known as scientists. To lie about one’s experimental findings would prove not only unproductive but dishonorable. Shapin concludes his book with observations about honor—though not the word—among practicing scientists today. It remains the case that finding and testing truth require trust. And there turns out to be an older book by Arthur O. Lovejoy, innocuously

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entitled Reflections on Human Nature (1961), which I never came upon until a year ago and is not to be missed. The book originated as seven lectures drawing upon Lovejoy’s unmatched knowledge of sixteenth- through eighteenthcentury intellectual history. The reflections are more specifically on what he called approbativeness—‘‘Approbativeness as the Universal, Distinctive, and Dominant Passion of Man,’’ to borrow the title of one of the lectures. Lovejoy was a philosopher as well as historian of ideas and, as was customary, formally classifies honor as a passion, even though it is apparently so dominant in humanity as to overrule every other passion, including the passion to stay alive, if there is such a thing. The evidence he brings to bear confirms my increasing conviction that honor was crucial to the secular instigation of the Enlightenment and notably to its moral philosophy as well as its politics and literature. Lovejoy as it happens gave these lectures at Swarthmore College in 1941, two or three years after his retirement from teaching at Johns Hopkins University. The lectures did not appear in published form until a year before his death at age eighty-nine. Aristotle to the contrary notwithstanding, honor is of more concern to the young and the old than it is to middle age.

Plan of This Book

Even when the word was more common, honor could be used in a good many different ways. I have to begin therefore by stipulating what I mean by honor as a motive and familiarizing this as a relationship characterized by respect, which always looks two ways. Both words serve as verbs as well as nouns. Without the process of reciprocal regard, I suggest, it would be hard to account for any felt obligation to act one way or another. Let honor, then, be the respect that motivates or constrains members of a peer group. Respect is first generated among individuals and is never static. There would be no such thing as personal honor if there were only one man or woman in the world. There would be no such thing as family honor if there were only one family. In rigidly hierarchical societies, it is all the more evident that each group has a certain level. In competition for excellence and distinction, whether Nobel prizes or amateur sports, it is assumed that the playing fields are level. Qualifications and membership are important: the group characteristically defines itself against those who are not in it. Disrespect is a judgment, expressed or unexpressed—perhaps only imagined by the individual in question—on the part of a group. Historically, needless to say, women have never been regarded as members, except that their chastity was enforceable by fathers, brothers, or husbands. But historically that has also been changing. My understanding here is that honor influences the behavior of men and women both.

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But not those who are very young, for honor awaits coming of age before it decisively affects behavior. The respect of the peer group—this may go without saying for any parent of teenagers—makes itself felt as distinct from that of elders. There need not, of course, be radically different values established by this new influence; but acting from a sense of honor feels very different from obeying the commands of a superior, including the directives of parents, elders in the family, officers or managers in the workplace. Yet the vaunted independence of a person of honor cannot be conferred by a peer group operating in and of itself; sheer imitation of others—often scorned by such a person— merely results in doing as others do. Initiation into the group has first to provide a contrasting and sometimes conflicting motive from that of obedience. Coming of age confers a different status from that of childhood, and this difference confers a sense of autonomy. Humans take a good many years to achieve full stature, and growing up confirms the possession of one’s own body. Whereas fathers and mothers mostly counsel prudence, this new posture outside the family opens itself to risk-taking. Young male members of a group explicitly or implicitly dare one another to take risks, the ultimate test of which is the willingness to endure harm. Whether in an aggressive or a passive mode, honor’s pledges typically put one’s body on the line. The purpose of my introductory chapter, then, is to set forth a number of hypotheses, the first two of which are deliberately provocative: (1) that moral obligations founded on obedience on the one hand or respect on the other may be all we have to guide us; (2) that honor should not be confused with hierarchical command, since as a moral force it essentially originates with a peer group; and (3) that honor requires the moral agent’s coming of age, because otherwise we could not account for the personal autonomy claimed by individual members of such groups. Although I cannot pretend to support these hypotheses with any new data, the second chapter briefly reviews some twentieth-century anthropology and social science that does purport to be based on empirical studies. Obviously, some caveats are called for here. Honor often sits comfortably side by side with obedience—especially obedience to a leader recognized by the group or to laws implicitly approved by a social contract. Respect and selfrespect come more consciously into play when these relations conflict with routine obedience, or when rules and commands do not apply or provide answers. Like the two most common strands of contemporary moral philosophy, the Kantian and Aristotelian, honor’s directives are agent-relative—not concerned at heart with weighing consequences. Yet surely, in decision making of most kinds, we also do well to think of outcome and results before we act. A third difficulty with honor as a moral imperative is that it resides with a group,

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and groups differ. Thus it is perennially associated with warfare, a condition under which honor can motivate opposing groups. For most philosophers, such morality yields nothing but relativism. Even honor groups themselves cannot consistently construe their codes of behavior as universal, because then there would be nothing to set them apart from others. Many of us, for example, would like to do away with the age-old idea that men belong and women don’t, but as feminists have sometimes observed, if we are all just one big group, we lose some of our identity. There is no shortage of materials, in the history and literature of the West, for studying honor as a moral imperative and testing the hypotheses that our own experiences suggest. There are materials galore. But there is no centuriesold tradition of systematic reasoning about honor, such as one might readily consult in philosophy, theology, and the sciences. My design in the succeeding chapters, therefore, is to reconstruct a genealogy of this imperative. The genealogy is selective but certainly defensible, since I have singled out for examination some of the most influential texts of Western moral philosophy that we have—secular texts, that is: in the Abrahamic tradition, God the father commands a morality of obedience, and codes of honor in the West have always borne an uneasy relation to the Christian church. Aristotle and Cicero, however, were not only outstanding voices in ancient times but probably the most influential of all for the Renaissance and Enlightenment. I have no hesitation in letting Shakespeare stand in for early modern views of honor, since it seems Shakespeare couldn’t help dramatizing the conflicting sides of every issue. The plays featured here, those based on Plutarch’s Lives, themselves testify to the classical leanings of honor in Shakespeare’s time. For the Enlightenment, I touch briefly on drama and the novel but turn mainly to philosophy, whose potential for recovering honor motives has largely been ignored. Once Enlightenment philosophy began to treat the discrimination of right from wrong actions as humanly determined rather than divinely ordained, it would seem that a morality founded on respect was in the air. In the same era, imperatives of honor also had a way of coinciding with political revolution. All the philosophers whose writings are examined here were careful to distinguish honor, when asked, from morality as such. This practice is curiously illustrated by the language surrounding the first epigraph of the present book. In the first edition of his Essay concerning Human Understanding, Locke not only conflated virtue and vice with ‘‘approbation or dislike, praise or blame’’ but characterized the study of the same as ‘‘philosophical Law,’’ whereas in subsequent editions, as we shall see, he quickly beat a retreat and revised this to the ‘‘Law of Opinion or Reputation.’’ From the time of Aristotle onward, philosophers clearly wanted to believe in something higher than the

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respect of their fellow beings, even respect of the best and brightest among them. It thus became conventional to classify honor as a passion, when it was formally treated at all. I don’t dispute these facts, or wish to confuse my own readers, when I proceed to lay out the affinities and analogies between classic texts of moral philosophy and honor as a morality inhering in mutual respect. Is the need for respect just another passion, or something that often makes us act against our personal wishes and for the community? And what else can morality import, short of obedience, short of religion? Etymologically, in the Greek and Latin from which they respectively derive, our two words ethics and morals originally meant the standards of behavior endorsed by the community. So without trying to mislead anyone about our philosophers’ formal stances, the readings in these chapters search out parallels to traditional honor codes, tendencies toward a morality of respect. Just as distinguished philosophers to this day contribute important insights on literature, literary historians may have some ideas about what philosophical texts are trying to do, as we trace in this sequence of illustrious texts a history of human desires. There are sound reasons for concentrating on the Enlightenment. Not only have political historians begun to rethink the role honor played in the eighteenth century, but significant historical works by philosophers have appeared, such as Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self (1989) and J.B. Schneewind’s The Invention of Autonomy (1998), that bear importantly on this period. The best reason has to be the awareness of honor among the philosophes themselves, to say nothing of the consciousness of schoolboys regularly exposed to the writings of Cicero and Plutarch. From its own perspective, indeed, the Enlightenment was a sort of coming of age of humanity; the public sphere coming into being would be like nothing so much as a collectivity of rational adults; and obedience to questionable earlier authorities was out of the question. If post-Darwinian theory later reveled in the ways that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, this earlier period of intellectual emancipation found satisfaction in the idea that the history of civilization was akin to the process of an individual’s growing up. Kant, pursuing an imaginative flight by Rousseau, was quite explicit about this analogy. In truth, every social contract theory of the time posited one or more stages of growth before the achievement of present-day society. The focus on the Enlightenment here extends to Adam Smith, who believed modern society had evolved from hunting and pastoral ways but also that it was still evolving. Smith was an active observer of the world about him, a multiform world that is still recognizable, with commercial and agricultural interests, new means of production and investment of capital, increasing urbanization. His loyalties, so to speak, were to Glasgow rather than to Edin-

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burgh. The Wealth of Nations (1784) is not just about the division of labor but about the different values and behavior exhibited in different sectors of the economy, social classes, and definable sects within the larger population; and the variety of data obviously stimulates rather than fazes its author. A similar empiricism informed his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). This earlier work provided a plausible account of how moral obligation can be learned from exchanges of respect. We observe how the people we respect behave and hope to gain their respect in turn: yet the process and moral imperative accompanying it do not remain wholly external, dependent on others’ keeping an eye upon us, because they become internalized as the figure Smith famously called ‘‘the impartial spectator.’’ Thus his theory is still adaptable today, I believe, and also harks back to a Renaissance commonplace about mirrors of honor— more occasions for looking back and forth. This close reading of Adam Smith concludes my selective genealogy. My last chapters are basically an invitation to students of social science and philosophy, as well as history and literature, to carry on with it. All citations of modern writers and conscious indebtedness to secondary sources in this book have been handled just as they are here, in parentheses, with the year of first publication and page numbers when relevant. Passages from ancient texts are cited in the customary ways. Please consult the Works Cited for editions or translations actually quoted, and also the headnote to that list. I have not allowed myself any footnotes, for where would I stop once I had started on a subject like this? But the mildly unorthodox method of supplying in parentheses the year of first publication of a given text makes it possible for readers both to identify the source from the list and to hold a minimal chronology in hand.

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Acknowledgments

Three wonderful friends, colleagues at different universities over the years, read the earliest version of this book and helped me to see what might be made of it. Jerry Schneewind, Herbert Morris, and David Quint generously devoted their time and notable talents to the task, saved me from a good number of gaffes, and fired me to rewrite the whole, cutting in many places and adding new chapters. Other friends—Chris Miller, David Bromwich, Gabriel Richardson, and Michelle Mason—read one or more chapters early on, made first-rate suggestions, and put me in touch with some relevant scholarship. Larry Manley and Blair Hoxby encouraged me to give a lecture on Shakespeare’s contribution to the subject; Joe Roach had already pitched in during the year we lectured together on Shakespeare to undergraduates. Thanks also to Graham Bradshaw for inviting me to write on Coriolanus for the Shakespearean International Yearbook, and to Ashgate Publishing Ltd for permission to reprint part of that essay here. I am much indebted to the anonymous readers of the Yale University Press for their different points of view and shrewd advice for improvement, and to the helpful staff of the Press for moving things along. Thanks are also due to Diane Repak for typing much of that earlier draft and to Ann Twombly for expert and challenging copyediting of the present book. On a subject that has

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occupied me as long as the moral force of honor, it would be hard to estimate how many editors, writers and readers, teachers and students have contributed in one way or another. For thirty years Ruth Bernard Yeazell has chided me about matters of writing both great and minute. With love and a prayer I dedicate this book about honor to Ruth.

What Is Honor?

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1

On Moralities of Obedience and Respect

What is honor? If we limit ourselves to the ways in which the word is ordinarily used today, this is not a difficult question. Honor is a measure of esteem and commendation, often a formal award for higher-than-usual achievement. To honor individuals is to single them out on the grounds of merit or because of the position they hold. But this is not an easy question to answer if by honor is meant a compelling motive to take action, or to refrain from certain actions, as the word was often used until, say, about the time of World War I. This meaning of honor—the subject of the present book—has largely been forgotten except in military usage and sometimes diplomatic contexts that borrow from warfare. Moreover, the two meanings can become intertwined, or even deliberately slurred, whether in acting or avoiding action. As we shall recall when reviewing Shakespeare’s thinking on the subject, ‘‘What is honor?’’ is one of Falstaff’s questions. Mainly Falstaff is ducking his role in combat, for as he claims, discretion is the better part of valor. But his speech also ridicules the notion that honor in the first sense—a little passing fame—provides adequate compensation for being wounded or killed in battle. What must be kept in mind is an important difference between honor and fame, even though the words are often linked together. The boldest statement of the difference may be that of Arthur Schopenhauer toward the end of his career, in an era when honor as a compelling motive was quite consciously

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experienced and spoken about. I cannot agree with everything Schopenhauer wrote about honor in Parerga and Paralipomena—let alone the wretched things he wrote about women—but this distinction is certainly pertinent: ‘‘Honor is not the opinion people have of particular qualities which a man may happen to possess exclusively: it is rather the opinion they have of qualities which a man may be expected to exhibit, and to which he should not prove false. Honor, therefore, means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is. Fame is something which must be won; honor, only something that must not be lost. The absence of fame is obscurity . . . but loss of honor is shame.’’ The last section of Schopenhauer’s long essay was devoted outright to fame and pretended to take satisfaction that at least philosophers did not have to suffer ‘‘the onslaught of envy’’ experienced by popular writers. ‘‘Honor is something which we are able and ready to share with everyone; fame suffers encroachment and is rendered more unattainable in proportion as more people come by it’’ (1851, 56–57, 91). And in the midst of a growing information revolution —nowadays an explosion—Schopenhauer was probably right: the more people who are able to attract notice, the more ephemeral such notice becomes. In a compelling book on some key institutional bearings of this subject, The Decent Society, Avishai Margalit distinguishes essentially the same two meanings of honor. The first he calls social honor—a measure of distinction that can be credited to this person and that. ‘‘The concept of social honor that is available for distribution is a graded concept. Social honor given equally to everyone would be empty.’’ The difficulty is that Margalit does not have a single name for the other kind of honor, and surely any kind of honor is social. He calls the other ‘‘human dignity,’’ something a person cannot do without. This dignity corresponds to what Schopenhauer meant by honor as ‘‘something that must not be lost.’’ Both writers have to point to inhibitions or avoidance to define their meaning. The theme Margalit returns to again and again is humiliation, to which a decent society is utterly opposed. Such inhibitions—avoidance of shame, steering away from humiliation—characterize the honor that moves one with the force of a moral imperative. Margalit also astutely singles out one reason the two possible meanings of honor have been hard to separate: ‘‘the concept of human dignity evolved historically out of the idea of social honor. . . . but the priority is only historical, not conceptual’’ (1996, 41–44). I rather believe that these two concepts go back at least to classical times; but historically it is certainly true that all master-slave societies and feudal societies boasted and promulgated a graded distribution of honor where possible. Another way of distinguishing these two functions of honor—and the difference between fame and honor—is to conceive of graphing either one on a

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vertical axis reflecting a continuum of factors affecting a given individual’s reputation. Imagine first an ascending scale of achievement that represents fame, or indeed Margalit’s ‘‘graded concept’’ of social honor. In theory, any named tennis player, war hero, or English professor can be located on such a scale at any given time. As time passes, his or her reputation and corresponding position on the scale will have shifted up or down. Let zero on the vertical axis represent the position of a person whose reputation goes completely unnoticed. Reputation may still descend below this point, as fame falls into infamy. Then, even centuries later, someone may come along and write a biography that again lifts—or further sinks—our hero. But honor in the other sense, honor that moves people to act even against their interest, has to be charted differently. Such honor is also a function of reputation, of what is expected of us. Below the zero point on a scale of criteria deemed relevant, however, honor in this sense makes no showing at all. It does not decrease or descend along the path of infamy but falls off the scale altogether into disgrace and humiliation, a non-belonging that might as well be non-being. The moral agent’s very identity is at stake, and he or she knows that. Because the word honor in this compelling or constraining sense is admittedly archaic, I urge my reader to think of the force still inherent in the words respect and self-respect. These terms are also Latin in origin and have also been used for centuries now in both English and the Romance languages, sometimes in lieu of appealing to honor. The relation of respect to self-respect is a truth spelled out in Adam Smith’s moral philosophy, for example, whereas in the rare times that Smith invokes honor by that name, he merely reveals that he was a man of his own time instead of speaking, as he surely does, to ours as well. The term respect is important for my purposes because one of its principal uses conveys the idea—or the process—of reciprocation. Etymologically this word derives from Latin respicere, to look back, hence to look back and forth in a social context. But, of course, that is not the only meaning of respect either. From this potential confusion, one can appeal to a well-known essay—well known among philosophers, at least—by Stephen Darwall on two kinds of respect (1977). The first, which Darwall calls recognition respect, ‘‘consists in giving appropriate consideration or recognition to some feature of its object in deliberating about what to do.’’ The second kind, appraisal respect, is directed toward others and could be directed toward oneself (as I understand him) but is not tied up with any decision to act: it is simply a positive assessment of merit. Thus Darwall occasionally refers to the first kind as ‘‘moral recognition respect.’’ This is the kind of respect that I shall be invoking in the present argument, since the difference here corresponds to that which obtains in dis-

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course about honor over the ages. To be sure, people often mean by honor merit, distinction, prize-worthiness of one sort or another; but that’s different from honor as a moral imperative, or honor as a sticking point. It’s the difference again between honor and fame, and there is in fact a long tradition, notably mediated for modern times by Cicero’s stoicism, of persons of honor who scorn fame. These definitions are crucial to my argument, and—thus far, anyway— there is nothing very radical about them. But setting out to reexamine the whole question of honor as a moral imperative inevitably commits the author to positions that most readers will not accept without an argument, either because they already entertain contrary religious or philosophical beliefs, or because they just instinctively feel that morals are something else again. Let me begin by pointing out that honor and morals can both induce a sense of obligation that overrides both immediate desires and long-term interests. As Kant was constrained to argue with some pains, if you are a person who is inclined to do good, just doing it is not the issue. You have to will to be good, and the proof of that will lies in being able to overcome some inclination or passion that the action in question contravenes. Similarly, to do the honorable thing entails a readiness to forgo personal interests or desires. For men to join in battle is generally thought to be honorable, but not if they are so situated as to be able to kill others without exposing themselves to any danger whatever. On the contrary, the willingness to risk one’s life—it could be in an act of passive resistance—comes as the test of honor we most often hear invoked. The imperatives of honor are typically categorical, strictly opposed, in Kant’s terms, to hypothetical imperatives that anticipate some other desired end. That is why, to the purist, engaging in battle in order to achieve fame is not true honor at all. Of course, Kant never confused honor with his idea of pure morality. Yet the uncompromising absoluteness of his practical philosophy resembles nothing so much as the absoluteness of Rodrigue and Chimène—or any of the other characters, for that matter—in Corneille’s famous play, The Cid. In the Enlightenment, as I hope to show, the recuperation of honor significantly contributed to the belief in personal autonomy, not only in literature and politics but in moral philosophy itself. So if anything, honor is more akin to agent-relative morality. Of two kinds of motivation, ‘‘the desire for ends of action and the desire for qualities or adjectives as agent,’’ A.O. Lovejoy speculated that the latter—call it approbativeness or call it honor—was usually stronger. The trouble is that the two are ‘‘irreducible to one another’’ (1961, 81). Accordingly, honor represents a certain range of decision making—even as strict Kantian morality has to be said to have a limited range. Honor that obliges one to fight to the death cannot

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and does not cope very well with the onerous business of planning and weighing the consequences of various actions. Persons of honor have not traditionally prided themselves on their practical abilities, and therefore honor is never going to resolve all their practical decisions. Yet it seems indisputable that sound judgments about what actions to take have at some point to weigh likely results as well as felt obligations. ‘‘Every choice is two choices,’’ in Thomas Nagel’s words, since actions and states of the world both have to be taken into account (1986, 183). Therefore, although I am claiming a role for honor that still weighs heavily with us today, I am not claiming that it suffices to give direction to our whole lives. The truly radical move—though not entirely unprecedented—will be to divide the phenomena of morality into two broad categories characterized by obedience on the one hand and respect on the other, the latter to be identified with honor. To my way of thinking, these broad categories follow from two different sources of moral obligations. That is, we should begin by asking where we come upon such obligations, how we learn what is expected of us. It seems unlikely that anyone is born a moral being. To be sure, herd instincts may explain a good deal of human behavior, including traditional gender roles and different leadership styles. I don’t mean to deny that human dispositions to act in certain ways may still be evolving, as Edward O. Wilson (1975) and others have tried to explain by mapping evolutionary biology on the realm of human behavior. For example, almost any imaginable code of honor calls for courage, and many species besides homo sapiens exhibit impressive courage. Human courage can be admirable even in a cause judged to be immoral or useless (Kateb, 2004), and for that reason it actually needs to be distinguished from honor as an imperative to action. Courage as a more or less developed instinct can readily be seen as part of our biological heritage. The full range of dos and don’ts in our lives, however—to say nothing of numerous exceptions to rules at any given time and place—would seem to have to be learned, together with some of the predictable sanctions that render them obligatory. How then do young people or newcomers to a society come to adopt a given code of behavior? Judging by what we hear and see going on around us over lifetimes, we have two ways of recognizing and then adopting moral imperatives: either someone in authority commands us to behave in a certain way, or there is a consensus on how to behave that we want to be a part of. I shall call the kind of morality that accepts the force of a command obedience, and the morality dependent on consensus, respect. The dictates of these two moralities often coincide, but they may also conflict. I believe that we are all varyingly subject to both over time. That there is nevertheless a clear difference between the two has long been recognized, and in the next chapter I shall cite half a

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dozen twentieth-century authorities for them. The division of the sources of obligation can be thought of as the first working hypothesis behind the argument that honor does indeed operate as a moral imperative and deserves study as such. This hypothesis is obviously reductive, but it may for that very reason challenge my readers also to consult the classical and modern texts revisited here, as well as their own experience. Without it, I cannot begin to think how we might locate and account for a sense of honor that has the force of moral obligation. Without some implicit notion of internalized sanctions, moreover, I find it hard to conceive of why a felt obligation should be compelling. For the first of the two sources of felt obligation, I am stressing obedience rather than command itself because obedience is what lies with the moral agent. Neither a God delivering commandments, nor an absolute monarch, nor a lot of people giving orders can effect a moral or even an orderly society without obedience, whether we define this as following orders or as internalizing orders. Continuous whipping of bodies into action is asking for failure even in a master-slave society. Nevertheless, the sanction brought to bear by this kind of morality is punishment or the threat of punishment; and the condition accompanying disobedience is known as guilt, whether explicitly declared, as in a criminal law proceeding, or mentally experienced, as with undisclosed or would-be transgressions. The second source of felt obligation derives from the process of gaining and sharing respect. It is here, often at critical moments opposed to obedience, that I would locate the imperatives of honor. One can speak of virtue and goodness and law abiding without invoking respect, but never of honor. Respect readily accounts for the frequently remarked external nature of honor’s demands. The etymology of the word itself continually resurfaces in the literature on honor, since the root meaning is that of seeing and exchanging looks. I shall contend that the respect that is operative in this process is mutual, looking neither up with awe nor down with contempt, but directly toward one’s perceived equals. Let this then be our second working hypothesis: the sense of honor that moves a person to act or refrain from acting in a given case is generated within a real or imagined peer group. Like commands, respect from others can also be internalized and acted upon. To lose that respect, however, threatens shame rather than guilt. The lexical problems with honor are notorious (Stewart, 1994, 30–46). At least ancient Greek had a variety of terms at its disposal. Tim¯e, for honor or esteem, and aret¯e, for excellence, have only positive connotations. But aidos, ¯ the basic word for honor that motivates, often also needs to be translated as shame. In Homer ‘‘aidos ¯ is a vulnerability to the expressed ideal norm of the society; the ideal norm is directly experienced within the self, as a man inter-

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nalizes the anticipated judgments of others on himself’’ (Redfield, 1975, 116). The Latin pudor shares this twofold meaning of shame, as the awareness of others that guides behavior and the stamp of failure to be so guided (Barton, 2001, 199–269). Respect for others may not always be returned; or respect may be mutual until one of the parties loses it. The ultimate sanction that enforces the morality of respect is not strictly punishment but loss of membership in the group. It is often claimed that honor lost cannot be recovered, and such is the case unless the errant member is somehow readmitted. I am not contending that there exist two kinds of morality for two kinds of people. On the contrary, obedience and respect ordinarily coexist in the same individual, who can well distinguish between them, though motives derived from one or the other may predominate at a given time. Similarly, anthropologists have largely given up characterizing whole peoples as belonging to guilt cultures or shame cultures. But that doesn’t mean that the distinction between shame and guilt is not recognizable and useful. The operation of these sanctions is perhaps the best handle we have on the nature of felt obligations to act. Gerhart Piers drafted this adroit summary of the difference between shame and guilt some fifty years ago: Both shame and guilt are highly important mechanisms to insure socialization of the individual. Guilt transfers the demands of society through the early primitive parental images. Social conformity achieved through guilt will be essentially one of submission. Shame can be brought to the individual more readily in the process of comparing and competing with the peers (siblings, schoolmates, gang, professional group, social class, etc.). Social conformity achieved through shame will be essentially one of identification. (Piers and Singer, 1953, 53)

Whereas Piers appealed to processes of submission and identification, I prefer obedience and respect as more inclusive terms that also have stronger moral connotations. As Bernard Williams reminded us even before his lectures on classical literature published as Shame and Necessity, ‘‘it is a mistake to suppose that guilt can be distinguished as a mature and autonomous reaction that has a place in ethical experience, whereas shame is a more primitive reaction that does not. Morality tends to deceive itself about its relation to shame’’ (1985, 223n; citing Morris, 1976, 59–63). Of the two kinds of felt obligation, individuals typically learn obedience before they come to share in respect. Professionals trained in psychoanalysis may dispute the precedence, but scarcely with any relevance to the present argument. It takes a long while for children to attain the physical stature of adults, and during those years of growth they sooner or later encounter dis-

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respect and seek to win respect. That is why honor is so importantly entwined with creditably coming of age as a mature person. Obedience is learned early, almost with the first consciousness of being in a family, with a big person or persons in charge, and as Piers defined it, guilt regularly makes itself felt before shame. For obedience to elders is almost a given in life, whereas respect and its promptings take over unmistakably with the discovery of a peer group. That experience does not put an end to obedience (whatever parents think). Both sorts of felt obligation can be operative throughout a lifetime and frequently coincide. And that brings me to the third working hypothesis, which will be explored further in the next chapter with the help of early twentieth-century psychology. Out of the conflict of these two sources of moral commitments, especially the initial conflict experienced with coming of age, arise the penchant for risktaking and the sense of autonomy associated with honor. When one comes of age, respect becomes crucial. Without fresh identification with others, the individual will tend to submit to authority indefinitely. Hence, there are political analogues to these individual ontogenies. A habit of utter obedience is, so to speak, congenial with the absolute rule of one; a practice of mutual respect, with shared power among equals. Commands, whether from tyrants or those who are merely older and believe themselves wise, are one thing to cope with, the demands of a peer group another. Rebellion and indeed the demand for justice have a long history of association with honor.

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To flesh out these working hypotheses, we can do well to turn to anthropologists who have made honor the subject of their research, albeit usually among other peoples. Thus, Julian Pitt-Rivers began an important anthropological overview of the subject, ‘‘Honour is the value of a person in his own eyes, but also in the eyes of his society’’ (1965, 21). That’s my emphasis on his metaphor in the first part of his predicate; in the second the eyes of the group are both metaphorical and functioning organs of sight. Everything hinges on that also—so much so that I would state the matter in the reverse order. How one appears to the group affects how one looks to oneself. Pitt-Rivers picks up the reciprocal sense when he defines honors, the word we use for ceremonial rewards. Note that even in such attempts to assign and fix honors, the respect on which they are based is not static but continuing: ‘‘The argument goes like this: the sentiment of honour inspires conduct which is honourable, the conduct receives recognition and establishes reputation, and reputation is finally sanctified by the bestowal of honours. Honour felt becomes honour claimed and honour claimed becomes honour paid.’’ When formalized as a code of behavior for the management of reputation or of insult, as in dueling, the external aspect of honor is still more apparent, since one is ‘‘only irrevocably committed by attitudes expressed in the presence of witnesses.’’ The status of the individuals concerned is clearly important (and sometimes asserted by honorable behavior), but whether high or not so high, the status is fundamen9

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tally that of equals—that is, members of a peer group. As Pitt-Rivers remarks, ‘‘The combatants in a duel must recognize equality since they stand on equal terms in it’’; and more generally, ‘‘a man is answerable for his honour only to his social equals, that is to say, to those with whom he can conceptually compete’’ (1965, 22, 27, 31). The peer relationship is also brought out by Frank Henderson Stewart in his excellent introduction to the subject. ‘‘Personal honor,’’ according to Stewart, can be ‘‘described roughly as a right to respect’’; and he adds that ‘‘the respect in question is of the kind that is due to an equal (in contrast, for instance, to the respect to which a father, in many societies, has a right from his children).’’ Both the reciprocal effect and the implicit equality of those involved are evident in Stewart’s ‘‘honor group’’: ‘‘a set of people who follow the same code of honor and who recognize each other as doing so.’’ His term ‘‘honor right’’ is then defined as ‘‘the right to be treated as a full or equal member of the honor group.’’ Similarly, on the basis of his fieldwork, he reports that the Bedouins of the Sinai treat ‘‘all adult men’’ as equal members of the group, regardless of marked differences in wealth (1994, 54, 132). Honor is conferred by a determinate group. From a planetary view of humanity, the picture is that of constantly differentiating peer groups sharing mutual respect among themselves. Typically, each group boasts superiority to some other group, if only because it is more pleasant for its members to dwell on their own advantages rather than disadvantages as compared to others’. To those who insist that moral obligations are universal, it may seem therefore that honor doesn’t qualify as a kind of morality. But the morality of obedience is not universal either, unless or until all peoples obey the same god, commander, or laws. And when Kant, for example, envisions a kingdom of ends, is it really a Reich or more like an honor group that has come to include all rational beings? What it may come down to is which values are most widely shared, and which groups’ behavior is most attractive to others. And a morality of respect may hold out more hope of understanding, of imagining ourselves in the other gang’s place, than blind obedience to warring bosses. Let honor be the respect that motivates and constrains members of a peer group. In his brief but comprehensive review of the subject, Stewart summarizes a good many definitions that would at first seem to contravene this one. By way of a couple of Sherlock Holmes stories, in fact, he initially distinguishes between ‘‘outer or external ’’ honor and that which is ‘‘inner or internal ’’ (1994, 12)—and, needless to say, he has other authorities to back him on this distinction. But Stewart acknowledges that despite the antonyms, ‘‘the relationship [of the two kinds] is a close one,’’ and most motives of honor that he cites in other connections would seem to reflect externally derived motives.

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In a more economical theory, so-called internal honor should be thought of as the internalization of respect. Though there are significant historical as well as geographical differences to be taken into account, the internalization of collective values takes place easily and is very common. As I have noted, obedience is also a product of internalization, though of commands rather than consensus. In contemporary English usage, self-respect is the best term going for the internal sense of honor and inner persuasion that one is honorable. Self-respect entails an imaginative act of getting outside oneself to look back; it cannot exist within a set of human beings numbering but one, who could have no idea of what to look for. Self-respect is not the same thing as conscience, which makes a different use of a real or imagined not-me: that of a being who is in a position to command. Bernard Williams offers a similar observation about internalization in the supposed shame culture of Homer’s Greeks (1993, 81– 85). Pierre Bourdieu writes of internalization of the external process of respect among the Kabyles of North Africa in the twentieth century: ‘‘The point of honour is the basis of the moral code of an individual who sees himself always through the eyes of others, who has need of others for his existence, because the image he has of himself is indistinguishable from that presented to him by other people. ‘Man is man through men; God alone,’ the proverb runs, ‘is God through himself.’ . . . Respectability, the reverse of shame, is the characteristic of a person who needs other people in order to grasp his own identity and whose conscience is a kind of interiorization of others, since these fulfil for him the role of witness and judge.’’ Bourdieu adds that in such a society ‘‘the individual learns the truth about himself through the intermediary of others; and . . . the being and the truth about a person are identical with the being and truth that others acknowledge in him’’ (1965, 211–12). There cannot be much doubt that the external process of respect is primary in the honor culture and that even claims to self-sufficiency may be internalizations of the process. It is always possible for a proud man to conclude that only he is qualified to judge his own actions—or especially his capabilities—but to reach that conclusion, he has already sorted out in his mind the views of some relevant comparison group, if only to override these. In spite of what Rousseau and Kant contend (as we shall see), self-respect, no matter how sized, is always already respect. Sometimes changes in the perception of the group have to be allowed for. If an individual adheres to the values endorsed by the group and behaves accordingly, but by accident—or by slander—is perceived not to do so, he may be held by some to be honorable in spite of the latest stories about him. That situation, which is common enough, does not imply that he is honorable by some sovereign standard of his own rather than that of the group. More likely, within the group, interpretations of his behavior differ.

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Stewart also distinguishes between horizontal honor and vertical honor. The former concurs well enough with our second working hypothesis; the latter would seem to have adapted to social hierarchies. Vertical honor Stewart defines as ‘‘the right to special respect enjoyed by those who are superior, whether by virtue of their abilities, their rank, their services to the community, their sex, their kin relationship, their office, or anything else’’ (1994, 59). Here, of course, Stewart is in good company, can cite numerous authorities, and is supported by common usage—as in honor paid to the gods, or ‘‘Honor thy father and thy mother.’’ In a very influential essay, Peter Berger virtually identified honor with hierarchical societies. In modern times, therefore, it survives best in groups ‘‘such as the nobility, the military, and traditional professions like law and medicine.’’ But Berger does not seem to be saying that the vertical relations across ranks are what influence individual behavior: on the contrary, honor within these same groups provides ‘‘a source of solidarity among social equals and a demarcation line against social inferiors,’’ and ‘‘the full code of honor only applies among those who share the same status in the hierarchy’’ (1970, 174). So which is operative here, the vertical or the horizontal relation? It should be said that demarcations of rank mainly reinforce the sense of equality and solidarity within each rank. Those familiar metaphors, the vertical versus horizontal relations among people, are nearly impossible to avoid. ‘‘Superior’’ itself is such a metaphor: one’s leader’s office is not necessarily on the floor above. ‘‘Level’’ is another: one’s equals may very well work on the floor below. Although it is possible, even healthy, to respect one’s superiors, and for them to respect their inferiors, I would go further and suggest that strictly speaking we truly respect those who respect us. Respect in short is horizontal, irrespective of other relations— wealth or power, gender difference, birth order, and so on—that may obtain among the persons in question. When Stewart qualifies vertical honor as ‘‘the right to special respect,’’ he means something like look up to as well as respect. Note that respect between superiors and inferiors in rank always allows for some qualities they have in common. For a general accounting of honor as a moral imperative, respect that is horizontal will actually suffice. Accordingly, two kinds of vertical honor that Stewart singles out, ‘‘rank honor’’ and ‘‘competitive honor,’’ can also be reduced to horizontal honor. Granted that rank is closely associated with honor; to be elevated to a new rank is strictly to gain membership in a new peer group. Rank in current usage generally (though hardly exclusively) pertains to the military or the police, where a colonel may give orders to a captain but is not more honorable on that account. Behavior is expected to conform to that of the officer ‘‘class,’’ and for that matter, noncommissioned officers and soldiers have their own codes.

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Before social ‘‘class’’ came into wide usage, one’s ‘‘rank in society’’ was the British expression for belonging to the gentry or among others of wealth and consequence. It can in no way be surprising that persons of higher rank have historically enjoyed greater visibility and reputation. Power has many ways of attracting praise, including the insincere praise known as flattery; and for practical reasons privilege often seeks to monopolize praise along with power. Privilege may wish to deny honor to others, since honor (the horizontal relation) signals a consensus that can be highly inconvenient even when it stops short of calling for daggers. Contrariwise, a highly stratified society will support an honor culture or cultures for the stability that results from men standing on an equal footing within each class. Lineage sorts individuals into groups before they are born, though they may lose their place if wealth fails them or they behave in proscribed ways (James, 1986, 325–27). Obviously, a group may make it a point of honor to fight for king or country, and a situation obtains where, as in a story narrated by Stewart, ‘‘the code of horizontal honor . . . forbids [one] to waive his vertical honor’’ (1994, 61). The constraint indicated here, please note, is that of horizontal honor. If members of an aristocracy are content with royalty or owe fealty to higher ranks among them, it is because they believe the nobility as a whole will support their practical interests against non-nobles. With rank honor, as Stewart calls it, there has always been this ambiguity because it can be documented again and again that people in all ages have used the language of honor to celebrate rank and the power that goes with it. But the idea that there is such a thing as competitive honor that is independent of the horizontal relation seems uncalled for unless one simply means to equate honor with fame. The idea is that achievement is scored on a vertical scale, and honor goes to the one with the highest score. A ready illustration would be the high jump, in which the athlete who jumps the highest wins the prize. But honor as reward is not all there is to the competition known as the high jump. If more than one athlete did not have a chance to win, there would be no competition. If the conditions of competition were not equal—if only one of the athletes were allowed to run up to the bar, for example—there could be no honor in winning. If henceforth no one should try to better the height, there would be little honor in the achievement today. Moreover—and this seems to me decisive—there is generally no dishonor for the athlete who tried his best but came in second, especially if the odds were against him (say if he were a head shorter than the winner). Obviously this competition, like so many others, is conditioned on some sense of equality. Dishonor, indeed, accrues to any who alter the grounds of competition in their favor, as by taking steroids, shouting when a rival approaches the bar, threatening his family, and so forth.

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In support of the notion of competitive honor as vertical, Stewart is nonetheless able to cite a distinguished authority on Homeric matters, M.I. Finley, who writes: ‘‘It is the nature of honour that it must be exclusive, or at least hierarchic. When everyone attains equal honour, then there is no honour for anyone. Of necessity, therefore, the world of Odysseus was fiercely competitive, as each hero strove to outdo the others’’ (1977, 118). Similarly, one could invoke Douglas Cairns, in his meticulous work on a whole range of Greek texts: honor implies a hierarchy, ‘‘for if everyone has equal honour, then no one has any’’ (1993, 94–95). Although the latter’s book is titled Aidos, ¯ both classicists have to be referring to tim¯e here, and the observations above on competition still apply. Honor cannot be exclusively hierarchic because it confers identity through membership in a group. To be excluded from the group is to be dishonored entirely, and for that reason it is often said that honor does not admit of degree. In the Iliad it may be that Thersites is without honor, but that is not the case with Hector, who is the great loser, even though by later standards he should not have fled headlong around the walls of Troy. So evenhanded is Homer with his heroes, in fact, that one hero almost never gets the better of another without the intervention of a god; and surely in the funeral games that are held in the Iliad and subsequent epic poems in the West, the courses to be run or rowed are of roughly equal length, even if Homer’s athletes get away with some things we do not allow and vice versa. It seems that scholars who assert, at least in passing, that honor is hierarchic must be confusing the relation with fame. Rivalry and also revenge have long been associated with honor. When rivalry is public—as in fighting and courting, sport and games, or other show of skills—success calls for counterdemonstrations that sometimes take the name of revenge. Taking revenge, or even brooding about it, is also a likely recourse in mourning the death of persons close to one (Welsh, 2001, 26–70). Note that rivalry and revenge both assume some sort of peer relation, however. If as a young person you rival a parent’s success, for example, you rival the parent as a man or woman, and may have to promote yourself to that status in order to do so. If you dare take revenge on the boss or a parent (as one conceivably might), you again insist on a certain parity. Neither rivalry nor revenge need be confused with plain disobedience where fealty is owed. Rivalry assumes the sharing of certain aims; revenge (including revenge fancied by mourning) insists on sharing pain or adversity of some kind. Rivalry and revenge confess to belonging, playing the same game. Jockeying for power is quite different from seizing power and holding it exclusively; revenge cannot properly consist of secretly striking back without the rival (now victim) knowing what hit him. All such actions and reactions, finally, can also occur collectively: group

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against group, or family against family, as in a feud, but not as in some restoration of higher authority. Stewart’s taxonomies are nevertheless important. At the very least they demonstrate the difficulty in coming to terms with a word with usages so varied. One of his narrower categories is ‘‘reflexive honor,’’ or the code that requires a member of the honor group to respond aggressively when his honor is impugned (1994, 64). His reference is to dueling codes, but I of course would prefer to extend the notion of reflexivity to honor generally. Although it is not my main interest here, the institution of dueling is one of the best indexes to the modern history of honor (Billacois, 1986; Nye, 1993, 127–228; McAleer, 1994; Peltonen, 2003). Dueling in the West was opposed by sovereigns as soon as it appeared, if only to prevent the waste of valuable fighting skills. In truth, those in power need to keep an eye on honor groups. A group is likely to resist top-down autocracy, and early on Aristotle cautioned that honor could trigger a revolution. In Shakespeare’s time, as well, rulers had reason to be wary when honor was invoked by the nobility ‘‘as the ultimate motivation for an appeal to violence; and so for the commitment of life itself to a dissident cause.’’ Above all, ‘‘the honour emphasis on will and moral autonomy precluded any sense of unconditional obedience’’ (James, 1986, 342–43). In the mid-twentieth century, Erik Erikson made personal identity the centerpiece of his clinical practice and his writings on youth in more than one North American culture. One of Erikson’s definitions of identity goes like this: Identity formation employs a process of simultaneous reflection and observation, a process taking place on all levels of mental functioning, by which the individual judges himself in the light of what he perceives to be the way in which others judge him in comparison to themselves and to a typology significant to them; while he judges their way of judging him in the light of how he perceives himself in comparison to them and to types that have become relevant to him. (1968, 22–23)

Erikson could well be defining honor here, as indeed the general neglect of young women in his writings may suggest, given the long cultural history of gendering honor as male. His language is abstract, but looking and returning looks supply the burden of his argument: ‘‘process,’’ ‘‘simultaneous reflection and observation,’’ ‘‘comparison,’’ and the rest. Internalization of the process is amply allowed for in the sweeping reference to ‘‘all levels of mental functioning.’’ By ‘‘types’’ and ‘‘typology’’ Erikson alludes to such standard-bearers of youthful identification in the United States as George Washington and famous athletes. Such types inhabit every culture as figures to emulate, not to obey. Identity, after all, is one of our current approximations for the honor relation.

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Identity, like respect, always looks in two directions: it means both what one is in oneself and how one identifies with a group. In this freighted sentence Erikson writes of ‘‘identity formation.’’ It is not clear from the immediate context whether he thinks of the process continuing indefinitely, but formation implies that a process of simultaneous reflection and observation is enough to start up a sense of identity, which is not (even in the best families) something one is born with. Erikson was not alone in judging that a sense of identity assumed comparison of ourselves with others. The early twentieth-century sociologist George H. Mead described the constitution of personal identity as follows: ‘‘Selves can only exist in definite relationships to other selves. No hard-andfast line can be drawn between our own selves and the selves of others, since our own selves exist and enter as such into our experience only in so far as the selves of others exist and enter as such into our experience also. The individual possesses a self only in relation to the selves of the other members of his social group; and the structure of his self expresses or reflects the general behavior pattern of this social group to which he belongs, just as does the structure of the self of every other individual belonging to this social group’’ (1934, 164). The labored repetition, like that of Erikson’s definition of identity formation, is another case of imitative form: Mead’s attempt to capture the ongoing relation, which becomes the basis of respect. Jürgen Habermas, citing Mead, states the point more succinctly: ‘‘No one can construct an identity independently of the identifications that others make of him’’ (1976, 107). Lovejoy, in his Reflections on Human Nature, makes a similar point (1961, 84–87). Erik Erikson was also known for his revival of the old idea of the ages of man, as in Jacques’s set speech in Shakespeare’s As You Like It. His argument that different ‘‘stages of growth’’ were subject to different pathologies was a useful contribution to social work as well as psychotherapy (1963). His own practice centered on male adolescents and turned ‘‘identity crisis’’ into a household word. It may well be that honor is of most concern to the young, who are discovering an identity, and to the old, who are concerned with preserving theirs. The middle-aged are often more devoted to profit, material well-being, or the support of their families (motives sometimes scoffed at by persons of honor). Parities would seem to govern these matters at every age. Thus, children may respect one another, but it is not self-evident that children respect adults in the same sense, not even their parents. If respect entails a reciprocal regard, then children must be of a certain age before they can engage in the process with adults. It is possible for a child to obey an adult, to long to be close to an adult, or to stay out of the adult’s way, but not to respect that larger person except in looser senses of the word such as gratitude or

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wariness. Later it becomes possible to respect as well as obey and, still more remarkably, to respect and to differ, even to disobey. If we think of those cultural ‘‘types’’ that Erikson finds important to the sense of identity, the distinction is clear: one may identify with a certain hero without imagining oneself carrying out the hero’s orders; sons may formally identify with their fathers and daughters with their mothers all their lives without necessarily taking much of their parents’ advice to heart. Tolerance for risk changes over a lifetime. Risk-taking is not something routinely urged on a child by its parents; on the contrary, children are first taught to fear and stay clear of whatever may threaten their safety. Only gradually, with growth in stature and usually outside the home, do youths accustom themselves to taking chances. With boys, sooner or later fighting becomes part of this risk-taking. The peer group both dares the boy to fight and protects him when the gang takes on outsiders. All this experience of arriving at a certain age begins to define male honor, and probably there is no code of honor that does not embrace risk. The ultimate proof of honor becomes the willingness to risk all one has—which is to say, one’s life. The respect of the group exacts this pledge; disrespect awaits a youth who won’t fight, but also one who refuses to take other risks. In warfare itself, dishonor does not follow from a failure to obey orders as such but from a failure to stand by the group. But wherever one looks, risk-taking seems age-related. In The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith remarks that ‘‘the contempt of risk and the presumptuous hope of success, are in no period of life more active than at the age at which young people chuse their professions,’’ and he observes that youths go to sea with the consent of their fathers, or into the army without that consent, just when a new war is starting up (1784, 126–27). Mature people study prudence again, it seems, unless or until they have nothing to lose. This may have been Shakespeare’s idea in contrasting the Earl of Northumberland with Hotspur, the son who predeceases him in Henry IV. But much the same has been said of Homer’s society also: ‘‘The life of communities is in their continuity, but excellence in combat requires one to forget continuity. The warrior must be given over to immediacy, ready to stake everything on the success of the moment. . . . In Homeric society this contradiction was to some extent mediated by the age-grading of the virtues; planning and forethought belonged to the elders, immediate action to the young’’ (Redfield, 1975, 124). The truth of this observation, like that of much else in James Redfield’s thoughtful book, would seem to depend as much on common experience as on a reading of the Iliad. As soon as children spend as much (or more) time with their peers as they have with parents or other adults, a new set of values and imperatives is added

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to the ones they have already learned at home. Often these values and imperatives are first noticed when they come into conflict with what has earlier been advocated. New rules and directives may be issued by the parents in consequence, but by the time the children grow to adult dimensions, at the latest, emulation of their peers is more constant than responses to directives from anyone (Harris, 1998). Obviously subject to peer pressure, as it is called in the United States, are matters of dress and outward appearance. The young, whether we like it or not, have begun to join in the process of respect. By attending to experiences so commonplace, we should be able to demystify honor and treat it as one kind of motivation that all are subject to, instead of losing sight of what is involved, as we do by confusing it in advance with something inexplicably noble or possessed by a privileged few. The adjustment to respect continues in the workplace, in the university, in the home itself, usually with lasting effect. Specialization tends to highlight the process in schools and the professions, in amateur and professional sport, and in other areas, including the armed services. But driving successfully on the freeway also demands at least as much mutual respect as obedience to the law. The principal distinction to be made here is indeed that between respect and obedience as they motivate individuals; and attending to how children begin to act on these two different grounds suggests that obedience is learned first, respect second. The basic theorizing of the distinction was done by Jean Piaget in the early twentieth century. Piaget’s best-known contributions to psychology all featured the development of mental capacities in children as they progressed from the earliest years to adulthood. In his work on the growth of moral judgment, Piaget’s empiricism may be somewhat suspect, though in a way that is instructive. Piaget determined that there were two stages of moral development and set up his experiments to prove it, but he was strongly prejudiced in favor of the second stage, the one associated with honor here. The political vocabulary that he employs gives him away. But it need not destroy Piaget’s usefulness that his experiments tended to be self-fulfilling. Circular arguments are not necessarily false, and Piaget’s terms link his work to political theory and the creating of a modern social order just as we might expect from the history of beliefs about honor. He never actually resorts to the word honor: but just as it was for Rousseau and Kant, obedience is very much his word for an earlier stage of moral growth. In The Moral Judgment of the Child (1932), Piaget began by assiduously reporting his work with boys playing marbles, the younger and older boys questioned separately by himself and his fellow researchers. Piaget observes that in Neuchâtel, where the study was carried out, only boys play such a complicated game as marbles. The entire book is about the judgment of boys,

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and Carol Gilligan (1982) has taken up the gender bias of later research along the same lines. (It has not gone without notice that in studies like Homer’s Iliad and Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar boys also conduct all of the business and do most of the damage.) Piaget keeps careful track of the ages of the boys whom he and his researchers question about the rules of playing marbles. From the records he has made of their answers he determines that the younger boys, up to the age of nine or so, think of the rules one way; the older boys, up to the age of twelve, have another way. Throughout the study he employs several pairs of terms to distinguish the two stages of thinking about the rules. Heteronomy is the principal term for the first stage; autonomy is achieved only in the second. The proximate cause of this first stage is the habit of ‘‘unilateral respect’’ for parents or older boys; of the second stage, ‘‘mutual respect’’ for one another. Rules of the game are at first ‘‘obligatory and sacred’’ but later ‘‘subject to their own choice.’’ Or, more starkly, the contrast is between a ‘‘coercive rule’’ at first and ‘‘rational rule’’ later on, or between ‘‘absolute command,’’ indeed, and ‘‘moral understanding’’ (1932, 15, 107, 87, 171). An obvious way to summarize Piaget’s findings is to say that while very young boys—in so far as they understand what rules are—take direction from parents and other grown-ups, older boys work out rules for themselves. Piaget rather takes for granted than actually examines the parental contribution. One of the reasons he is asking about a game—instead of what the boys think of the present mayor or city council of Neuchâtel, for example—is that he is trying to ascertain how children cope in an activity for which there is ordinarily little adult interference. Yet terms such as heteronomy and autonomy are borrowed from Kantian ethics and were originally metaphors from political theory, and the paradigm that Piaget sketches is congruent with one going back to ancient Greek thought about the differences of one-man rule and shared rule. Piaget’s thinking, to be sure, is less like that of Aristotle than that of moderns like John Locke. The former did not hold a one-directional view of history, and his Politics openly discussed the desirability of different forms of government. In the modern (and Christian) era, Locke typically does believe that history has a direction, and as far as he is concerned, it is progressing toward shared rule among equals. He opposes patriarchy, of course, and in his Second Treatise the chapter ‘‘Of Parental Power’’ begins with a reminder that anyone who imagines paternal authority a good model for government ought to realize that this is tantamount to saying that men can never become independent of mothers and fathers. There and subsequently Locke insists that ‘‘paternal or parental power is nothing but that which parents have over their children to govern them, for the children’s good, till they come to the use of reason, or a state of knowledge, wherein they may be supposed capable to

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understand that rule . . . they are to govern themselves by’’ (1690, 204): compare this with Piaget’s advanced stage of ‘‘autonomy,’’ of ‘‘rational rule’’ and ‘‘moral understanding.’’ At the same time, Locke dwells so on the slowness of a human child’s development and the caring it imposes on parents, that the picture he forms begins to fit in with modern evolutionary biology (Gould, 1977, 352–404). Nature demands the nurture that makes us different from the beasts. The resemblances to modern political theory that call Piaget’s empiricism in doubt can actually help us understand the broader relevance of his work. Piaget believes that social organization has evolved much as the philosophes judged it ought to. In reporting his results he can write of the older boys, for example: ‘‘Thus democracy follows on theocracy and gerontocracy: there are no more crimes of opinion, but only breaches in procedure. All opinions are tolerated so long as their protagonists urge their acceptance by legal methods’’ (1932, 65). But boys playing marbles, obviously, do not consciously oppose theocracy and gerontocracy, thoughtfully reject the notion of crimes of opinion, or conceive of the rules of the game as legal methods. These are the researcher’s metaphors, inspired by the faith that young people’s moral independence recapitulates Western political progress. Though older boys can undoubtedly distinguish between the rules they have agreed upon and those handed to them by their elders, it is not so clear that they need to have established freedom of opinion as a principle, and unlikely that they would draw the analogy between the consensus they have reached and legal methods. The efficacy of ‘‘mutual respect’’ is much more informal than either analogy would suggest. That Piaget did not spin his narrative solely from the data he gathered may also be suggested by its resemblance to at least one other narrative of social psychology available to him. Here is William McDougall’s 1908 version of successive stages in the ‘‘moralization’’ of individuals: ‘‘(1) the stage in which the operation of the instinctive impulses is modified by the influence of rewards and punishments, (2) the stage in which conduct is controlled in the main by anticipation of social praise and blame, (3) the highest stage in which conduct is regulated by an ideal that enables a man to act in the way that seems to him right regardless of the praise or blame of his immediate social environment’’ (quoted by Kohlberg, 1969, 411). McDougall’s third stage corresponds to the independence celebrated by Rousseau and other champions of inward honor, but the only source of the values thus embraced evidently lies in the second stage (hence my added emphasis on immediate). Stages 2 and 3 correspond fairly well with Piaget’s second stage, and in any case the stages are thought to be built on one another. In a late edition of his Language and

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Thought of the Child, Piaget offers this much looser formulation: ‘‘the child’s socialization operates in two different channels, corresponding to the opposing attitudes which he adopts towards the adult and towards his fellows’’ (1959, 257). Two stages of an individual’s development are what ordinary experience confirms. The first commences in relation to parents and other caregivers, the second in relation to peers. As Piaget’s ‘‘channels’’ may suggest, it is perhaps easier to think of two courses of development: although the stages can be separated for analytic purposes, they overlap and the relations formed are modified throughout life. The content of any moral judgment can usually be seen to derive from one of these two sources: as I shall argue later, in spite of Kant’s a priori contentions, it is difficult to imagine where else notions of the right thing to do might originate. To refine and multiply stages of growth indefinitely becomes unnecessarily controversial and even counterproductive. In later editions of his Social Psychology, for example, McDougall specified four stages in his scheme (1912, 181). The most prolific of Piaget’s followers in the later twentieth century, Lawrence Kohlberg determined that there were no fewer than six stages of moral development to contend with (1969). While these are all quite conceivable, they read like a schema rather than a record of any human being’s experience. Like Piaget, but more overtly in this area, Kohlberg does his best to amalgamate philosophy to psychology. Most twentieth-century writers on moral philosophy ignored this whole approach to their subject. The notable exceptions are John Rawls (1971, 458–79) and Jürgen Habermas (1976, 69– 123), both of whom cite Erikson and Piaget, together with McDougall, Mead, and Kohlberg himself. The importance of rehearsing stages of moral development is that they provide a clue to the intensity of youthful assertions of freedom and autonomy, which appear as an initial release from the authority of elders. Since the process of respect is reciprocal, it builds awareness of separate individuals, each capable of judging others as they judge him or her—as courtesy books told of honor in Shakespeare’s time or Mead and Erikson of personal identity in the twentieth century, and a good many moral philosophers do almost without thinking. There is another side to this reciprocity, since each individual as an individual is outnumbered by the group. If respect becomes nothing but fear of the group’s opinion, that sensation cannot be very liberating. The process of respect will leave varying impressions of freedom among the individuals so joined; some may emerge as followers and others as leaders, but without much need to issue commands. Even followers believe themselves free, and homogeneity of personality is a prerequisite for neither honor nor morality as usually understood. The consensus afforded by a peer group ex-

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plains why its members, when they feel compelled to act forcibly, do not feel and are not judged guilty on that account; for the time being they rest in a sphere with an honor-versus-shame axis rather than fret in one with an obedience-versus-guilt axis. Honor is a morality founded in respect. The respect of a peer group and the event of coming of age are the necessary spatial and temporal conditions for honor’s hold on individual behavior. I have stipulated—and begun to argue— that honor is an external gauge of one’s being but readily internalized; that the respect is ongoing, reciprocal, not intrinsically hierarchic; that membership in the group confers an identity along with the possibility of losing that identity. That a morality of respect entails coming of age helps to explain certain kinds of motivation associated with honor: a scorn for following orders and threats of punishment; an exultation, for a while at least, in putting the body at risk; a belief in personal autonomy. These attitudes and the behavior accompanying them are hard to account for completely except as a sudden release from a strict morality of obedience. Individual autonomy might seem to be the last thing to be gained from acceptance by a peer group (and undoubtedly it is often an illusion), but the group’s numbers enable the initiate to throw off some of the constraints of obedience. A dialectic between obedience and respect, if you will, generates independence. Obedience does not therefore cease to play a role, but it tends to be experienced as something the individual wills: respect for elders and leaders, for laws, and for the way things have customarily been done.

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Respect in the Ethics of Aristotle

In quest of honor lore, Renaissance and Enlightenment writers typically unearthed classical literature and classical ethics. The moderns, perforce aware of their Judeo-Christian heritage (Bowman, 2006, 47–51) and its leanings toward a morality of obedience, to some extent saw the classics as representative of a different culture. Their efforts made it commonplace for educated people in the West to read Greek and Roman texts as discontinuous with but nevertheless relevant to experience of the present. Among the most revered and influential texts are those by Aristotle and Cicero. The Greek philosopher and Roman statesman were obviously very much concerned with honor, yet they sought in their different ways to define a moral ideal higher than that which they ceded to honor and associated more with public than with private life. Both stressed character and moral being rather than trying to lay down specific rules of behavior. For Aristotle, the contemplative life emerges as the finest aim of a lifetime. Cicero’s vision is rather more social and can be thought of as centering on justice. From the perspective of history and present-day democracies, Aristotle’s views have sometimes been labeled aristocratic, and clearly Cicero did not compose his dialogues and De Officiis for just any readers. Neither was critical of the ancient institutions of slavery that directly or indirectly supported them, and Orlando Patterson (1991) has argued that both Athenian democracy and the

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Roman republic derived their notion of free, independent citizens from the condition of their opposites, the slaves who lived in their midst. The presence of slaves makes it all the more attractive to identify with a group of free citizens. With these thoughts in mind, let me begin with a number of observations about Aristotle’s ethics. Those lectures on ethics were designed for an adult audience and urge preparation for the whole of life, a continuing practice of learning and achieving what is best. The contemplative life, if indeed it is the chief good, would seem to be most natural for older persons. Aristotle’s eclectic definition of happiness includes pleasures as well as virtues and attests that these will frequently coincide. There is not just one excellence or virtue (aret¯e) to aim at but a good many, some of which loom larger than others but all of which have a place—courage and justice and truthfulness but also openness, temperance, gentleness, liberality, magnanimity, wit, and friendliness, modesty but also indignation when called for. Aristotle’s preferred formula for defining such virtues as a mean between obvious deficiencies and excesses itself attests to a ranging, eclectic study of the good life. This is a program of aspiration and personal fulfillment rather than a morality of prohibitions with associated sanctions. So much is confirmed by Sarah Broadie’s (1991) and Gabriel Richardson Lear’s (2004) painstaking commentaries, as well as the recuperation of Aristotle contemplated by Alasdair MacIntyre (1984, 131–225). In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle initially distinguishes honor (tim¯e) from moral character and happiness. Honor is an external good, superior to wealth no doubt, but similarly reserved for ‘‘those in high places’’—or better, ‘‘people of superior refinement and of active disposition.’’ As a reward to be aimed at, honor is, ‘‘roughly speaking, the end of the political life.’’ But he immediately begins to amend this notion by introducing a number of reservations. The idea of one’s honor depending on the opinion of those who bestow it makes Aristotle uneasy: they had better be people of sufficient ‘‘practical wisdom’’ to judge correctly. Furthermore, ‘‘the good we divine to be something of one’s own and not easily taken from one,’’ so it is questionable whether it should depend on opinion at all. Indeed, if men wish to ‘‘be assured of their merit,’’ they will wish to be honored by ‘‘those who know them, and on the ground of their excellence.’’ Should Aristotle’s listeners concur with this advice, they ‘‘might even suppose’’ excellence, ‘‘rather than honor, the end of political life.’’ Finally, the mere ‘‘possession of excellence seems actually compatible with being asleep, or with lifelong inactivity,’’ so it must come to more than that (1095b.19–1096a.2). Aristotle breaks off at this point, but it is a cagey argument altogether, in which he has been fencing with his audience. Would they rather be the noto-

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rious Sardanapalus, or someone of refinement and an active disposition? Thus he begins by characterizing honor as an external good, but he doesn’t want to leave it there. All the points he makes are salient in his treatment of honor here and elsewhere. If honor has to depend on others, they had better be of our own sort and know how to judge. Honor should be something we can maintain even if we fall into disfavor with others. Honor, properly speaking, should be the reward of excellence, not some other cause of fame. And honor is due to an active moral being. These reservations are prescriptive rather than descriptive of the world as we know it, therefore, and meaningful tim¯e derives from the respect emanating from a certain group. Even those ancients or moderns who define honor as reputation and subordinate it to morality testify to a kind of egalitarianism as soon as they ask whose opinions should count toward that reputation. Aristotle and Cicero, and thereafter many authorities, answer that the good opinion sought should be that of those most qualified to judge—in other words, the very people whom one also respects. The peer group that is implicit in this often-repeated argument should give pause to those who believe that honor is about hierarchies. Book 2 of the Nicomachean Ethics introduces the principle that actions, passions, virtues—or most of these—can best be chosen as means between extremes. ‘‘With regard to honour and dishonour the mean is proper pride, the excess is known as a sort of empty vanity, and the deficiency is undue humility’’ (1107b.23). As in English, proud need not be a term of approbation, and Aristotle has recourse to his preferred account of virtue as a mean. In the course of discussing pride in book 4, he can address the subject of honor positively and in some detail, for in these pages pride is understood as the virtuous mean. ‘‘Therefore the truly proud man must be good. And greatness in every excellence would seem to be characteristic of a proud man. And it would be most unbecoming for a proud man to fly from danger . . . or to wrong another. . . . Nor, again, would he be worthy of honour if he were bad; for honour is the prize of excellence and it is to the good that it is rendered. Pride, then, seems to be a sort of crown of the excellences; for it makes them greater, and it is not found without them. Therefore it is hard to be truly proud; for it is impossible without nobility and goodness of character.’’ Yet in the same passage Aristotle confirms that the proud man characteristically does not care much for honor and often seems disdainful of others. That disdain is quite as it should be, but the man must not be insolent as well, because insolence is inconsistent with virtue. The proud man is likely to be powerful and wealthy because ‘‘power and wealth are desirable for the sake of honour.’’ Birth also counts, though neither wealth nor birth counts as much as merit. Furthermore, this ‘‘is the sort of man to confer benefits, but he is ashamed of

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receiving them.’’ He also ‘‘must care more for truth than for what people will think, and must speak and act openly.’’ The description (or is it prescription?) continues with various negative strictures, as follows: He must be unable to make his life revolve around another, unless it be a friend; for this is slavish, and for this reason all flatterers are servile and people lacking in self-respect are flatterers. Nor is he given to admiration; for nothing to him is great. Nor is he mindful of wrongs; for it is not the part of a proud man to have a long memory, especially for wrongs, but rather to overlook them. Nor is he a gossip; for he will speak neither about himself nor about another, since he cares not to be praised nor for others to be blamed; nor again is he given to praise; and for the same reason he is not an evil-speaker, even about his enemies, except from haughtiness. (1123b.29–1125a.9)

Most of these traits will be recognizable as typical perquisites of a man of honor for at least two millennia in the West. Aristotle even stops to comment on the unhurried pace and resonant voice of this exemplar before he takes leave of him. Honor may be an external aspect of a man’s character, but it is hardly a small matter. ‘‘Desert is relative to external goods; and the greatest of these, we should say, is that which we render to the gods, and which people of position most aim at, and which is the prize appointed for the noblest deeds; and this is honour; that is surely the greatest of external goods.’’ According to this same account, however, honor simply cannot be awarded to behavior that is bad (1123b.17–20, 35). Thus, in the Ethics honor becomes inextricably mixed with goodness and is frequently invoked not only as a sign but as a test of moral being. But which evolved first, definitions of the virtues or approbation of fellow beings? The didactic thrust of Aristotle’s lectures has kept out of hearing ancient adages about honor among thieves. (Cicero will assert that there can be justice among thieves.) As we go about cultivating our lives, not for our passions or raw abilities but ‘‘for our excellences and our vices we [are] praised and blamed’’ (1106a.1). In the Revised Oxford Translation quoted here, aret¯e has consistently been rendered as excellence. Essentially the same translation, the work of W.D. Ross, first appeared in 1908, but then aret¯e was rendered as virtue, and Aristotle was made to speak of virtues and vices, rather than excellences and vices. Whereas virtue in English (or Christian) usage connotes an inward asset, excellence is open to interpretation either way, inward or outward. Clearly Aristotle’s attention to the development of character over a lifetime argues that each person’s moral being must be inward and increasingly independent of surrounding influences. Yet morals mostly have to do with our relations to other people, and Aristotle constantly appeals to how

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these relations are viewed. Even his determinations in favor of a mean between extremes are defended so: ‘‘excess is a form of failure, and so is defect, while the intermediate is praised and is a form of success; and both these things are characteristics of excellence’’ (1106b.26). To pose a series of leading questions may help tease out the degree to which a morality of respect—as distinct from obedience—informs Aristotle’s understanding of these matters. (1) Is it possibly the case that praise is a test as well as a sign of excellence or virtue? (2) How can one explain the frequent equation that Aristotle makes between good and bad on the one hand and noble and base on the other, and his penchant for attaching goodness to nobility? (3) What does it mean to engage in virtuous actions for their own sake? (4) If, as it seems, a higher type of morality is reserved for an elite, does avoidance of shame influence the behavior of that elite or not? (5) How important for Aristotle is the idea of respect shared among equals? In exploring the answers I don’t pretend to be an authority or seek to have the last word, and I shall be following a similar procedure when I review Kantian ethics in relation to honor. 1. Whereas Aristotle obviously distinguishes praise from whatever inherent excellence attracts praise, one cannot read very far in the Nicomachean Ethics without beginning to wonder how praise functions not only as a reward but as a way of identifying excellence. ‘‘Everything that is praised seems to be praised because it is of a certain kind and is related somehow to something else; for we praise the just or brave man and in general both the good man and excellence itself because of the actions and functions involved, and we praise the strong man, the good runner, and so on, because he is of a certain kind and is related in a certain way to something good and important’’ (1101b.12–18). Actions ‘‘of a certain kind’’ seem question-begging, though the point becomes clearer from the analogy posed between just and brave men and strong and swift men. The idea is that such men do their thing well. The analogy is helpful because it is usually easier to reach a consensus about lifting weights or running races well. But if so, doesn’t this analogy itself imply that judgments about what is brave or just also depend on a consensus? At the very least the argument insists that doing something well ordinarily draws praise, and that praise marks it as ‘‘something good and important.’’ The ‘‘we’’ of the argument, needless to say, outlines a definitive group of people that includes Aristotle and his audience. Note that when he subsequently seeks to distinguish excellences or virtues from the passions, he also invokes such a consensus to settle the point. ‘‘Now neither the excellences nor the vices are passions, because we are not called good or bad on the ground of our passions, but are so called on the ground of our excellences and vices, and because we are neither praised or blamed for

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our passions (for the man who feels fear or anger is not praised, nor is the man who simply feels anger blamed, but the man who feels it in a certain way), but for our excellences and our vices we are praised or blamed’’ (1105b.29– 1106a.2). This analytic distinction, in fact, comes close to that which will vex so many later philosophical accounts of honor, by treating it among the passions rather than the moral choices that sway human beings. Honor is not Aristotle’s subject here, but it is curious the way his illustration (in parentheses) skirts the subject. The illustration starts off with fear and anger parallel, both not praised, but then blinks at fear rather than preserve the parallel. The ‘‘man who simply feels anger’’ is not blamed, but what about the man who feels fear? Has he been dropped because chances are he will be blamed for lacking courage, a virtue in Athens if there ever was one? Similarly, the man who feels anger ‘‘in a certain way’’ may be blamed, but not always in this society, which makes allowances for just anger (see below). Objections aside, the main thrust of this argument is clear: excellences and vices can be distinguished because they are what elicit praise and blame, respectively. Again, early on in the Nicomachean Ethics, ‘‘praise is appropriate to excellence; for as a result of excellence men tend to do noble deeds’’ (1101b.32–33). Not only do we praise excellence, but it is a good thing that we do, for excellence helps bring about noble deeds. Aristotle never confuses praise and blame with moral validation, obviously, yet the arguments tend to move in a circle, and the potential of praise and blame for sorting out excellences and vices cannot be doubted. According to Aristotle’s Rhetoric, praising someone can be ‘‘akin to urging a course of action’’ (1367b.36). 2. In that same chapter of the Rhetoric, excellence (aret¯e) and that which is noble (to kalon) are introduced in apposition, as if they were synonymous: ‘‘excellence and vice, the noble and the base . . . are the objects of praise and blame’’ (1366a.23–24). The truth is that everywhere in Aristotle’s ethics, noble and that which is noble occur repeatedly as if they were in no need of definition, even though they serve as here to help define the good. Since Aristotle never subjects noble and base to analysis, he must be entirely confident of his listeners’ familiarity with their meaning. Over the centuries ‘‘noble’’ and its opposite, ‘‘base,’’ then became classic honor talk, though today these terms may seem as archaic as the word honor itself. The workaday, more loosely argued Rhetoric actually does more justice to them, perhaps because the audience for these lectures was less aristocratic, more representative of the wider community (Irwin, 1996); it is not the case that Aristotle treated rhetoric as some amoral technique of persuasion (Engberg-Pedersen, 1996). In the Rhetoric, then, ‘‘those actions are noble for which the reward is simply honour, or honour more than money. So are those in which a man aims at something desirable for

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someone else’s sake; actions good absolutely, such as those a man does for his country without thinking of himself; actions good in their own nature; actions that are not good simply for the individual, since individual interests are selfish. . . . And [in sum] the opposites of those things of which men feel ashamed . . .’’ The extended definition goes on to exclude women, since men are ‘‘of a naturally finer being,’’ and also laborers, ‘‘since it is the mark of a free man not to live at another’s beck and call.’’ But a martial calling is clearly in order and a readiness to fight one’s own battles as well: ‘‘it is noble to avenge oneself on one’s enemies and not to come to terms with them; for requital is just, and the just is noble; and not to surrender is a sign of courage.’’ In general, though kalon is sometimes translated as ‘‘fine,’’ to be noble is to be renowned, even if this has to be expressed somewhat tautologically. ‘‘Things that deserve to be remembered are noble, and the more they deserve this, the nobler they are. So are the things that continue even after death’’ (1366b.37–1367a.32). In this passage Aristotle recurs several times to acts that are performed for others’ sake. That makes sense if such acts are rare and likely to be remembered—likely to be remembered, also, by those whom they have helped. This is an area that poses extraordinary difficulties for interpretation. That nobility initially resides in the eyes of the beholder seems a fair conclusion to draw from the definitions provided in the Rhetoric. In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle tends to take for granted the meaning of to kalon but nevertheless invokes it to delineate the good. For example, an important passage on the voluntariness of actions characterized as moral or immoral in book 3 concludes, ‘‘Now if it is in our power to do noble or base acts, and likewise in our power not to do them, and this was what being good or bad meant, then it is in our power to be virtuous or vicious’’ (1113b.12–14). Thus, in elaborating the point that inaction as well as action can be a moral choice, Aristotle reverts to acts that are noble or base, classic terms of discourse about honor. Things noble or base are renowned or scorned, respectively, by the public voice of a given social group. He shifts the burden of his argument for the moment onto these terms, apparently in the faith that his listeners will more readily understand them. Although he hedges on the strict equivalence of noble and base to virtuous and vicious by adding to his conditional clause—‘‘and this was what being good or bad meant’’—clearly the purpose of the alternating diction is not to obfuscate, but rather to enhance his listeners’ understanding. In truth, the interchangeability of these terms is commonplace in his work. Something very similar takes place in Kant’s ethical writings: it is as if noble were not a term of the art in moral philosophy, yet it is nonetheless valorizing and frequently an operative term in the work of both philosophers. Nobility and goodness are distinct attributes of an action or doer of the

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action, Aristotle would say, yet he also uses them in conjunction (Broadie, 1991, 373–83). A prime instance is the concluding chapter of the Eudemian Ethics, where Aristotle continues to insist on the difference but nevertheless will judge that a conjunction of the two constitutes ‘‘perfect excellence.’’ ‘‘Now goodness and nobility-and-goodness [kalokagathia] differ not only in name but also in themselves. For all goods have ends which are to be chosen for their own sake. Of these, we call noble those which, existing all of them for their own sake, are praised. For these are those which are the source of praised acts and are themselves praised, such as justice itself and just acts; also temperate acts, for temperance is praised, but health is not praised, for its effect is not; nor vigorous action, for vigour is not. These are good but not praised.’’ Thus far in the argument, nobility and goodness seem to be on a par in that both are chosen for their own sake. The former is clearly singled out here by the praise bestowed on it. Praised by whom? Aristotle typically does not say. Presumably it is by the community he identifies with in Athens—the honor group, as I would say. The goods like health and vigor that are not praised he forthwith characterizes as ‘‘natural goods.’’ Sometimes, I imagine, Athenians did praise health and vigor, but with a different sense: they could admire or be thankful for such goods. When Aristotle’s argument resorts to goods that are praised, that presumed collective response is already focused on virtuous achievement. He goes on to enumerate other, greater natural goods than health and vigor— ‘‘honour, wealth, bodily excellences, good fortune, and power’’—but quickly cautions that for people of certain ‘‘dispositions’’ these goods can actually be harmful. He instances people who are foolish, unjust, or intemperate: for dispositions, that is, read characters of doubtful virtue. After this observation Aristotle is ready to derive his conclusion, that nobility-and-goodness is superior to goodness: ‘‘A man is noble and good because those goods which are noble are possessed by him for themselves, and because he practices the noble and for its own sake, the noble being the excellences and the acts that proceed from excellence. . . . Nobility-and-goodness, then, is perfect excellence’’ (1248b.8–1249a.17). In the course of this argument, Aristotle starts by characterizing all goods as ‘‘chosen for their own sake’’ and then lets it seem that ‘‘natural goods’’ can be pursued for the possession’s sake after all. The slight slippage lays bare the underlying tendency to make that which is noble a test of virtue or excellence. Sarah Broadie does a heroic job of expounding this matter of nobility-andgoodness. Thus Aristotle, as paraphrased by Broadie: ‘‘Nobility is goodness reflectively valuing itself and its actions as they should be valued: not as natural goods which can be used and misused, still less as means to such goods, but as admirable in themselves.’’ She then stops to reflect on ‘‘the sort of person

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whom Aristotle’s audience would identify as fine and noble.’’ In an unabashedly nineteenth-century vocabulary, that person ‘‘is a gentleman and lives a gentleman’s life of honourable pursuits.’’ The problem is, for Aristotle’s and later times, that the noble man pretty much needs wealth, power, and influence to support these pursuits. So how can others who do not know him judge whether his nobility resides in these possessions or his moral being? Aristotle is telling us where he thinks it resides. Broadie may actually stress the consciousness and reflectivity of the noble man more than Aristotle does, in order to contend that nobility makes room for theoria. ¯ ‘‘The noble character,’’ she summarizes, ‘‘consciously values good agency above its material products, and this opens up a new range of objectives. Whereas the good man pursues objectives which everyone has, but pursues them well by choosing good means, the noble person has the objective of pursuing the original objectives well. It fits in with this that he will seek out occasions for acting which challenge his qualities of character and intelligence’’ (1991, 379–83). This is all very much on the mark, including the last point, which Aristotle does not quite say in so many words. The noble man—the man of honor, let me say—is never content with being good enough. It would almost seem, if valiantness for its own sake is the aim, that only the ambition to excel in an amateur sport—and this without an eye to fame—could be a noble end in itself. In expressing these things, Broadie cannot help begging the question a little—actions valued ‘‘as they should be valued,’’ goods ‘‘admirable in themselves,’’ for example. Aristotle does much the same. When Gabriel Lear turns her attention to this problem, she begins her chapter with a footnote on English equivalents of kalon. Of three choices named, she prefers to translate the Greek as ‘‘fine,’’ occasionally resorts to ‘‘beautiful,’’ and quietly leaves ‘‘noble’’ behind. In current English the word noble does tend to sound archaic, echoing from times past. But in quoting and paraphrasing Aristotle, fine must often seem strained or awkward. Today expressions such as ‘‘That’s fine’’ convey little more than agreement, and perhaps most uses of the adjective by itself mean diminutive or delicate. Aristotle certainly did not mean that. It’s only in expressions like ‘‘That was a fine thing she did’’ and ‘‘a fine game they played’’ that current English approaches what he meant by kalon. But note that these expressions take for granted one or more spectators of the acts and persons referred to. That spectator, if you will, is precisely what a morality founded on the exchange of respect requires. In her thoughtful analysis of the conjunction of moral virtue and to kalon, Lear appears to confirm this necessity of looking and being seen by observing a number of times in the course of her argument that the agent’s commitment must be ‘‘visible’’ to be kalon. Aristotle’s doctrine of virtue as the mean, for example, scarcely suggests

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moral commitments that are showy, but intermediate courses of action are in fact hard to achieve: ‘‘The difficulty of intermediate, virtuous actions makes them notable; it brings them into public view . . . [so that] by being intermediate, they also have the visibility that all fine things possess.’’ Most codes of honor, it should be said, single out things difficult to achieve; and admittedly ‘‘the fine person, according to the Rhetoric, benefits others for the sake of fame and honor’’ (2004, 124n, 131, 134). Gabriel Lear is another interpreter who struggles to understand how Aristotle construes the contemplative life as the highest good but still connects this aim to the rest of his moral philosophy. She states up front, moreover, that ‘‘Aristotle never explains in the Nicomachean Ethics what to kalon is’’ and comments, ‘‘this omission is striking, for Aristotle repeatedly describes virtuous action as kalon and describes the virtuous person as one who is fixed on to kalon.’’ This is exactly my point. Lear faithfully returns to this ‘‘odd silence’’ at the end of her analysis, but her explanation is a bit of a stretch. She does not believe that Aristotle wrote as far as book 10 without knowing what he would conclude (nor do I) but speculates that his neglect to say ‘‘anything informative about to kalon’’ in the lectures resulted from his desire to develop fully ‘‘the argument that theoretical wisdom is better than practical wisdom’’ and that ‘‘contemplation is perfect happiness’’ (2004, 126, 146). Maybe so. I don’t dispute that that is where Aristotle’s chief interest lay, but a more telling inference can be drawn from the silence in question and Lear’s scrupulous analysis: namely, that Aristotle didn’t quite see the need to define that which was noble. He assumed his audience knew what he talking about and—not very rigorously, perhaps—repeatedly called upon to kalon to signal for them that which was good. 3. What does it mean to engage in virtuous actions for their own sake? Significantly, that which is noble is not pursued for personal advantage either. Honor is properly the reward of virtue, but to calculate on gaining honor, while not necessarily wrong, is not fine or noble or truly honorable after all. Accompanying praise is a sign and even a test of these things, yet the actions in question must be taken for their own sake. This consideration is what forces Broadie and others to use such expressions as ‘‘intrinsically noble’’ in their exegeses. Nonetheless, as T.H. Irwin remarks, in his Ethics ‘‘Aristotle gives no argument for his claim that the virtuous person must decide on the virtuous action for its own sake’’ (1996, 163). As with to kalon, something seems to be taken for granted here, and in the history of moralities founded in mutual respect, Aristotle is not alone in resorting to this locution. You could say that, by ‘‘for its own sake,’’ he is just pointing toward a categorical imperative. At least three things can be said about ‘‘for its own sake.’’ First, as a dis-

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claimer, it has broad negative implications: it means things not done for some other reason, and patently things not done for selfish ends. Thus the phrase implicitly excludes a much larger set of actions in favor of actions that are rare, hence more notable. Moreover, when these actions benefit other people—and Aristotle stresses the goodness of such actions—the beneficiaries can with good reason join in praising them. Second, praise coming from whatever quarter must be directed toward the action itself and the actor. ‘‘For its own sake’’ waves aside the consequences, let alone a utilitarian ethics. It is the actions that are virtuous or vicious, not the results as intended or otherwise. The identity, indeed the character, of the doer is the focus of attention. But third, doing something for its own sake—when it means something other than not for this sake or that sake—tends to be circular. The motive is not specified, yet seemingly understood and agreed on. So at this point I have to fall back on consensus. A community of respect is in play if moral judgments are singled out and ratified by praise. The common good will inevitably be brought back in, as in this summary from book 9 of the Nicomachean Ethics: ‘‘Those, then, who busy themselves in an exceptional degree with noble actions all men approve and praise; and if all were to strive towards what is noble and strain every nerve to do the noblest deeds, everything would be as it should be for the common good, and every one would secure for himself the goods that are greatest, since excellence is the greatest of goods’’ (1169a.6–11). A kingdom of ends, this, founded in the city-state. When all strive to be noble, everyone will be happy because virtuous. This common good summarizes their moral being rather than material well-being. 4. Aristotle’s emphasis on perfecting character and striving for that which is both noble and good, together with his sensible refusal to be dismissive of respectable but lesser achievement, invites the idea that there are two levels of moral behavior within a given community. To understand this possibility it is useful to look at what he says in the Eudemian Ethics about courage, a virtue always associated with honor because of the dramatic way it functions on the battlefield. As in the Nicomachean Ethics, he reviews several different meanings of courage: the kind he wishes to single out versus that which is more like an animal instinct, hotheadedness or plain ignorance of danger, or even the confidence that comes with physical strength and experience in battle. But in this text he also seeks to rule out a controlling sense of shame as contributing to true courage. (Not surprisingly, he refers to Homer’s Iliad in both texts.) Of all brave men of this sort, it is those who face danger because of shame who would most seem to be brave, as Homer says Hector faced the danger from Achilles—‘‘and shame seized Hector’’; and, again, ‘‘Polydamas will be

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Respect in the Ethics of Aristotle the first to taunt me.’’ Such bravery is civic. But the true bravery is neither this nor any of the others, but like them. . . . For a man ought to hold his ground though frightened, not because he will incur disrepute, nor through anger, nor because he does not expect to be killed or has powers by which to protect himself. . . . But since all excellence implies choice . . . bravery, because it is an excellence, will make a man face what is frightening for some end . . . because the act is noble. (1230a.16–31; my emphasis)

So once again Aristotle resorts to the action that is noble. But here something called civic bravery, the very thing a community depends on for its defense and cohesion, not to say imperial ambitions, does not rise to the level of a virtue or excellence—as if aret¯e were strictly the achievement of a few autonomous individuals. This is not quite the same position as that advanced in the corresponding chapter of Nicomachean Ethics. There, too, Aristotle writes of courage as a mean, but in summarizing that approach he indirectly admits shame or a concern for disrepute by naming the opposite of a noble end, that which is base. ‘‘Courage is a mean with respect to things that inspire confidence or fear . . . and it chooses or endures things because it is noble to do so, or because it is base not to do so’’ (1116a.10–12). And when he describes political courage this time (compare civic bravery) and cites Hector’s same words from the Iliad, he does rate such courage as a virtue, though controlled by shame as well as aspiring to a noble object: ‘‘This kind of courage is most like that which we described earlier [as a mean], because it is due to excellence; for it is due to shame and to desire of a noble object (i.e. honour) and avoidance of disgrace, which is ignoble.’’ Moreover, he contrasts this courage in the sentence that follows to that of men who are merely following orders, as illustrated by some quite different lines in Homer, spoken by both Agamemnon in book 2 and Hector in book 15 in their role as commanders. ‘‘One might rank in the same class even those who are compelled by their rulers; but they are inferior, inasmuch as they act not from shame but from fear, and to avoid not what is disgraceful but what is painful; for their masters compel them. . . . But one ought to be brave not under compulsion but because it is noble to be so’’ (1116a.26–1116b.3). This latter distinction, between acting from shame and a desire to be noble and acting from fear of one’s masters or rulers, seems to be fundamental for Aristotle. His finding of two sets of brave men, similar in their outward behavior but different in motivation, divides the group of independent moral agents from the hoi polloi. This division corresponds to the difference between moralities of respect on the one hand and obedience on the other that I began with, and Aristotle is not much concerned with the latter. Unquestionably, the

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perfect excellence that his teaching holds out as a goal will make all the more poignant the point of honor for one who is prepared to die in battle, ‘‘for the more he is possessed of excellence in its entirety and the happier he is, the more he will be pained at the thought of death’’ (1117b.10–11). Loss of respect affects one’s identity, the sense of who one is; the fear of punishment for disobedience has far less to do with who one is, since it entails submission to another in the first place. The thrust of Aristotle’s moral philosophy has to do with becoming someone, the best and also happiest person one can be. One is not punished for not doing the best one can; one may be less happy, less good. For this philosophy, therefore, wrong behavior is defended against by prospective shame (aidos). ¯ Without shame there can be no constraint on the moral agent who cares first and foremost for respect, nothing within to inform the agent what he must not do, what he simply cannot do and still face himself and those he cares about. Without shame a young person cannot fully absorb, first, what is expected of him and, second, how to achieve excellence. Douglas Cairns does the most careful job of working out the role of aidos ¯ in Aristotle’s philosophy (1993, 411–31). The difficulty of comprehending this may be partly due to the lecturer’s own wariness of the difference between prospective and retrospective shame. The first, avoidance of shame at all costs, translates as a motive of honor; the second, a state of shame, occurs already too late, with loss of honor. The same nervousness about shame plagues English usage. Cairns studies the problem in Aristotle’s own terms and concludes that ‘‘aidos, ¯ even if conceived as a mere preliminary to complete aret¯e, cannot simply be regarded as a fear of the unpleasant consequences of ill-repute and is thus not incompatible with a form of conscience based on internalized moral standards’’ (430). The conclusion to book 4 of the Nicomachaen Ethics undeniably presents this interpretation with a crux to resolve. ‘‘Shame,’’ this passage begins, ‘‘should not be described as an excellence, for it is more like a passion than a state’’; and Aristotle goes on to fill out his thought by alluding to the physiological evidence of blushing or turning pale. I believe we may be more comfortable with associating such phenomena with moral responses today because the theory of biological evolution, if anything, heightens our awareness that nonrational species often have protocols, engage in courtship, care for others, and sometimes march resolutely against the enemies of their clan. Homo sapiens, too, acts largely instinctively in its social relations. The obvious thing to ask here is why Aristotle feels he needs to raise the question of whether shame is an excellence or virtue in the first place. Surely it is because he is conscious that prospective shame leads people to do well by doing what is expected of them. Here he opts for shame as a passion, but even if shame is

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partly instinctive, it is not as if we are also born with a knowledge of the occasions and codes of behavior that it answers to. Aristotle develops his thought as follows: ‘‘The passion is not becoming to every age, but only to youth. For we think young people should be prone to shame because they live by passion and therefore commit many errors, but are restrained by shame; and we praise young people who are prone to this passion, but an older person no one would praise for being prone to the sense of disgrace, since we think he should not do anything that need cause this sense’’ (1128b.10–21). Though Aristotle asserts that shame is a passion, note that the passion is appropriate to youth, is attractively so, and passes that important test for what is noble, and so on, by being praised. When he contemplates the same in older persons, he becomes prescriptive and reproachful. It is as if he had inadvertently changed the subject to retrospective shame for something a person should not have done. For neither the young nor the old can he reasonably wish that shame should not serve as a deterrent. The last word on these matters, at the end of book 10 of the Ethics, identifies those young people instead with a wider class of those who are wellborn, open to reason and to that which is noble. Aristotle recalls once again his fundamental distinction between the few who can be shamed and the many who only fear punishment for their misdeeds. It is to the latter, not to shame-struck youths, that acting from passion is finally attributed. Now if arguments were in themselves enough to make men good, they would justly, as Theognis says, have won very great rewards, and such rewards should have been provided; but as things are, while they [such arguments] seem to have power to encourage and stimulate the generous-minded among the young, and to make a character which is gently born, and a true lover of what is noble, ready to be possessed by excellence, they are not able to encourage the many to nobility and goodness. For these do not by nature obey the sense of shame, but only fear, and do not abstain from bad acts because of their baseness but through fear of punishment; living by passion they pursue their own pleasures and the means to them, and avoid the pains, and have not even a conception of what is noble and truly pleasant, since they have never tasted it. What argument would remould such people? (1179b.4–16)

This is the last of the lectures, and so while he treats of the moral valences of shame and fear operative among an elite and the hoi polloi respectively, Aristotle is also complimenting his students and assuring them that they can engage with his arguments and, if they put their minds to it, belong. Thus Aristotle can be enlisted in support of an argument that there are broadly two sources of morality, the ongoing process of respect and training in obedience. He clearly prefers the former; he does not waste any words in the

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Ethics on the need to follow orders, even though he is careful to note in the Politics that free citizens need to know both how to lead and how to obey (1277b.15; also 1333a.1–2). In neither text does he directly address the many who behave well because they fear to do otherwise. In some harsh words from the Rhetoric, ‘‘we do not feel shame before those of whom we are thoroughly contemptuous’’ (1380a.21). The point is that we can and do feel shame among people like ourselves. It is the honor group (not Aristotle’s phrase, to be sure) that is important. The ethic, the habit of virtue or excellence, that he preaches is goodness-and-nobility, but for confirmation (I would add definition) this ethic looks to the group: what even ‘‘one good man thinks’’ is to be regarded more than the many. ‘‘Honour, great or small, is of two kinds; for it may be given by a crowd of ordinary men or by those worthy of consideration’’ (Eudemian Ethics 1232b.6, 13–17). It is the latter who count and who confirm the excellence of our actions with their praise. 5. Aristotle makes ample allowances for differences in wealth, power, and stature within this group, since virtues like generosity and magnanimity require assets and privilege to begin with. Yet honor regularly scores higher than wealth or power, because honor is properly the reward of excellence or virtue. According to the useful Rhetoric again, ‘‘Unusually great love of friends [is] more honourable than unusually great love of money’’ (1364b.1). The exhaustive treatment of friendship in books 8 and 9 of the Nicomachean Ethics is very relevant here and has wider applications than modern notions of friendship. Loving is the excellence most apparent in friendship (1159a.34), and this may include relations with family as well as others. The intimate, close-up experience of life with these few affords a practical understanding of the wider group of those one respects. Although friendship can exist between unequals, such as that between parent and child, it primarily signifies love between equals. Aristotle can be flexible here because he believes that equality, like justice, must often be measured proportionally. ‘‘On numerical equality rests the democratic partnership, and the friendship of comrades—both being measured by the same standard, on proportional the aristocratic and the royal. For the same thing is not just for the superior and the inferior; what is proportional is just’’ (Eudemian Ethics 1239a.4–5; 1241b.34–37). Still, justice, love, and emulation, the very belonging to a group, all have to do in some way with equality. Within the group not everything is love and cheer. Envy, as well as emulation, is experienced among equals, and these include our ‘‘fellow-competitors’’: ‘‘We do not compete with men who lived a hundred centuries ago, or those not yet born, or those who dwell near the Pillars of Hercules, or those whom, in our opinion or that of others, we take to be far below or far above us. So too we

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compete with those who follow the same ends as ourselves: we compete with our rivals in sport or in love, and generally with those who are after the same things; and it is therefore these whom we are bound to envy beyond all others’’ (Rhetoric 1388a.9–16). The activities and emotions glanced at here, and inevitably the rules of engagement, pretty much ignore those who are ‘‘far below or far above us.’’ Geographic and temporal proximity are also taken for granted: Aristotle’s apparent sarcasm—‘‘a hundred centuries ago’’—puts paid to the idea that matters of ancestry count most in the rivalries that fuel contests of honor. Especially notable in Aristotle’s account is that anger and revenge characterize the relations of equals rather than those of ranked individuals. ‘‘You cannot be afraid of a person and also at the same time angry with him,’’ he remarks; and if ‘‘servile, worthless, unambitious persons are not inclined to indignation,’’ then it follows that indignation can signify independence, worthiness, and ambition (1380a.32–33; 1387b.14). He repeatedly associates anger with revenge, and he takes particular note of the pleasure felt in the conjunction of the two. It is as if the mere thought of revenge—sweeter than honey dripping from the comb, he quotes Achilles in book 18 of the Iliad— can calm anger. Thoughts of revenge are ‘‘like the images called up in dreams’’ (1378b.2–9). But revenge is conceived and directed against those regarded as equals, or rendered equal by the avenger’s pursuit. Aristotle is very conscious of the difference between such pursuit, in thought or deed, and punishments as ideally administered by rulers, under law, or within the family. Thus, ‘‘punishment is inflicted for the sake of the person punished; revenge for that of the punisher, to satisfy his feelings’’ (1369b.13–14). It seems true to add that the punisher’s identity is more at stake in the task of revenge. In these passages from the Rhetoric, Aristotle is strictly treating of the passions; but surely he is also contrasting kinds of moral give-and-take, the same that I am calling moralities of respect and of obedience. Anger for Aristotle is not merely a passion but, precisely because of the way it plots revenge, a quite reasonable sort of business. In the Nicomachean Ethics he draws a contrast between anger and appetite in this regard (1149a.24–1149b.4). It must even be said that anger, the passion, seeks justice. The individual’s sense of identity and indeed moral values thrives in this contest of equals. The importance Aristotle gives to friendship suggests this, and even more so the persistent tendency throughout his lectures to match both goodness and nobility with that which is praised. Again, the praise that counts should come from those like oneself and most qualified to judge. That ‘‘we can contemplate our neighbours better than ourselves and their actions better than our own’’ would seem to be a condition for needing friends, and

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virtuous friends at that (1169b.34–1170a.3). We can see ourselves better by looking at others, in a kind of ongoing process of reflection. Near the end of the Magna Moralia (probably by Aristotle), there is a figure for this process: ‘‘as . . . when we wish to see our own face, we do so by looking into the mirror, in the same way when we wish to know ourselves we can obtain that knowledge by looking at our friend’’ (1213a.20–22). This same mirror will become a commonplace in Renaissance discussions of honor. It will become the inspiration of Cassius’s elaborate figure when he appeals to Brutus’s honor in Shakespeare’s play. John M. Cooper summarizes Aristotle’s position this way: ‘‘we cannot, if left each to his own devices, reach a secure estimate of our own moral character; nor by ourselves can we find our lives continuously interesting and enjoyable, because the sense of the value of the activities that make them up is not within the individual’s power to bestow. The sense of one’s own worth is, for human beings, a group accomplishment’’ (1980, 331). That strikes me as exactly right, though Aristotle also wants to believe that actions noble and good are performed for their own sake. Aristotle is always alert to the way age affects behavior. His Rhetoric contains a perfect Baconian essay in three parts on the behavior of young men, old men, and men in their prime (1389a.2–1390b.10). In these paragraphs he is rather hard on old men and finds that only the others are concerned with honor, the youths uneasily so and the men in their prime just as they should be—the mean once again. I rather believe that old and young are more concerned with honor than are the middle-aged, since the last are concerned with profit: not to their discredit, they are responsible producers who have to make ends meet. In any event, as a teacher of mature students, Aristotle emphasizes reason and independent judgment. He never preaches obedience, which he rather looks down on. Obedience provides simply a first stage of moral decision making. In the Politics he makes a point of the ‘‘difference between old and young’’ in this regard. ‘‘No one takes offence at being governed when he is young, nor does he think himself better than his governors, especially if he will enjoy the same privilege when he reaches the required age’’ (1332b.39–40).

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Cicero’s Mediation of the Same

Teachers, parents, and elders who expect to be obeyed in most things can and do instruct the young in the morality of respect as well. They frequently mix commands with advice about the kinds of behavior that will be demanded of the young by their peers. The Cicero who composed De Officiis as a letter of advice to his son was a model teacher of this sort. This work, thought to be the last from Cicero’s hand, is far from being a series of commands to anyone. It consists of observations about social life that the recipient will likely be making for himself, if he hasn’t already done so. With the exception of the Rhetoric, from which Cicero quotes in his own early work on that subject, the Roman statesman does not seem to have known much of Aristotle’s work firsthand. The philosophical dialogues that he wrote after he was forced to retire from public life belong to the tradition of post-Aristotelian philosophy, which it was his purpose to expound and criticize for readers of Latin. A notable difference is Cicero’s downplaying of the contemplative life celebrated by this tradition in favor of justice, in the practical affairs of men and governments. This is not to say that justice was not a concern for all these thinkers, but when wisdom is placed next to justice in Cicero’s text, the word is likely to be prudentia. In book 3 of De Officiis he acknowledges that the Stoics—whose position he has increasingly come round to—would call the duties he is discussing ‘‘second-grade,’’ not designed

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for wise men but for everyone (3.15). Since he has in mind a leadership role for his son, and by implication for other young men of good family, this tendency to the demotic may not be strictly true. But truth and strict consistency, compelling logic in itself, are somewhat beside the point: Cicero elaborates an extensive moral code in these pages and exhorts his reader to embrace it. The focus is still on the action and performance by the moral agent, but less exhaustively so than in Aristotle. The title De Officiis can be translated as concerning duties, or even offices, and the design of the three books is telling. The first and longest is devoted to ‘‘moral goodness,’’ as the Loeb Classics translation renders honestas (more on the problems posed by this word below). Cicero construes the four principal virtues under this head to be wisdom, justice, fortitude, and temperance, but he also writes of openness and truth telling, magnanimity and kindness and love. ‘‘It is the function of justice not to do wrong to one’s fellow-men; of consideration, not to wound their feelings; and in this the essence of propriety is best seen’’ (1.99). People have much in common, but everyone has an individual nature that has to be taken into account. We choose what we want to be rather like actors preferring the parts they play best; just so we may choose which virtue to excel in (1.114–15). Many young men will follow in the careers of their fathers, but ‘‘we need not imitate their faults.’’ ‘‘The noblest heritage . . . and one more precious than any inherited wealth, is a reputation for virtue and worthy deeds’’ (1.121). All together this is an attractive account of moral being and of who one is. Book 2 is devoted to ‘‘expediency,’’ as this translation renders utilitas. ‘‘Advantage,’’ as other translations have it, would not make Kantians any happier. Yet actually the focus does not shift very far from the moral agent. In this book Cicero enumerates three principal virtues, omitting fortitude (2.18). Is this perhaps because courage simply does not contemplate discouraging outcomes? Although book 2 may insert a consequentialist wedge between the agent-relative concerns and the desired result, the consequence the writer has in mind is chiefly the welfare of other people rather than that of the agent in question: Cicero never really addresses his advice to downright selfish persons. Then in book 3 he takes up conflicts between moral goodness and expediency. Again, although allowances must be made for circumstances, when the agent’s own interests are the issue, doing what is right trumps advantage. Cicero wants to claim that ‘‘nothing can be expedient which is not at the same time morally right,’’ and ‘‘it is expedient because it is morally right’’ (3.110). I don’t find that he ever proves this; the asserted equivalence is more like a hope for the best that rhetorically puts the question to rest. A little earlier, indeed, he has shrewdly observed that some who dispute over what is right or expedient simply want to have it both ways (3.52–53).

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The word officium had as many meanings in Cicero’s day as its cognates in English have today, including the idea of public office. Cicero urges his son and—by extension—other young men to seek public careers like his own (that is, until the assassination of Caesar and the revolution still under way at the time of writing put an end to it). Unlike Aristotle in his ethics, he frequently makes space for advice to the nation as a whole. With wars and revolutions in mind, and citing Dicaearchus’s opinion that such human doings cause more deaths than are caused by natural disasters, Cicero avers ‘‘that man is the source of both the greatest help and the greatest harm to man’’ (2.17). Perhaps reflecting on his career once more, as he often does in De Officiis, he privileges courage in diplomacy over courage on the battlefield. When war is necessary, it ‘‘should be undertaken in such a way as to make it evident that it has no other object than to secure peace’’ (1.80). This is a justification for war that will often be heard in modern times, though not so often in early modern times as after the rise of nationalism brought armies to clash with still more blood spilled than by Roman legions. The relations of parties within the state also come in for discussion: business ethics, for example, and respect for property. Cicero writes as if there were a social contract long before that concept was given a name. Society is the sum of those who belong to it and comes into being through a kind of choice. Merely to maintain it, let alone safeguard it from external enemies, requires an alertness to ethics, ‘‘for, in the first place, injustice is fatal to social life and fellowship between man and man.’’ The ‘‘bonds of union between citizens’’ are weakened when one neighbor injures another (3.21, 23). It was fear that brought down the republic as Cicero knew it, and he writes of love for others as a better policy all around. For the wealthy and magnanimous man it is better to finance public works rather than entertainments, the usual practice (2.60). However attractive this community spirit may be, it is possible to feel that Cicero is statist to a fault, that he is more ready to make exceptions with regard to promise keeping and other imperatives when it comes down to the interests of Rome than he is in private life. ‘‘This, then, ought to be the chief end of all men, to make the interest of each individual and of the whole body politic identical’’ (3.26). Of course, in many ways the interests of individuals within a community are not identical. As he did with the possible conflict between right and expedient actions, Cicero overrides this difficulty by declaring that there should be just one interest for all concerned. Could I have been the last person in the West to have studied Cicero in a public high school? Not likely, I suppose; but a certain youthful testiness comes back to me from those days, no doubt born of resistance to Latin class and grudging acknowledgment of the justice of the cases Cicero took up. How this

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ethic sounds to a modern ear very much depends on the translation of honestas and the adjective honestus. Both derive from honor (which in the nominative singular also occurs as honos), the word that directly entered Romance languages and English and which in Latin had most of the meanings still familiar to us: respect, distinction, esteem, reward, or preferment. Although in English honesty has come to mean just one primary virtue, honestas obviously signified much more to Cicero and his original readers, since he regularly subdivides it into several primary virtues. Nevertheless, its derivation and the uses he makes of it closely identify it with honor: a morality that is grounded in respect, associated with belonging to a group, and with sanctions for behavior determined by the group. It doesn’t help matters that the 1913 Loeb translation of De Officiis renders honestas as ‘‘moral goodness’’ throughout. Cicero’s idea of moral goodness, yes, but perhaps with different connotations in classical, preChristian times. The mid-twentieth-century Loeb Classics editions of his works are more circumspect and vary their terms. The translator of De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum uses ‘‘moral goodness,’’ ‘‘moral worth,’’ and ‘‘morality’’ for honestas, but in some contexts he introduces scare quotes around the adjective form and an alternative translation in parentheses, thus: ‘‘ ‘moral’ (honourable).’’ The translator of the Tusculan Disputations, another of the philosophical dialogues, regularly renders honestas as ‘‘honour,’’ but at least once as ‘‘reputation’’ and once as ‘‘rectitude.’’ The translator of De Inventione, Cicero’s youthful work on rhetoric, renders it consistently as ‘‘honour.’’ Part of Cicero’s purpose in such works was to make Greek learning, as well as his own views, available to Roman readers. All three translators of these works introduce footnotes urging that by honestas Cicero himself sought to translate the Greek to kalon (2.48n, 5.68n, and 2.159n, respectively). That which is kalon or noble, as we have seen, Aristotle distinguished from the good even while repeatedly invoking it to characterize perfect virtue. Similar questions of translation make it difficult to measure what Cicero’s teachings meant for modern thinkers over a good many centuries during which he was faithfully read. Arguably, what prompted Kant to begin writing out his moral philosophy was his engagement with a new translation of De Officiis in 1783 by Christian Garve (Kuehn, 2001, 277–83). The language Kant employs, it has been shown, and the emphasis he places on dignity, the will, and duty reflect Cicero’s usage (DesJardins, 1967). It is very likely that he first read De Officiis as a school text. But if Garve is representative, the adjective honestus was translated as moralische gut, and honestas mostly as moralische Gute. The noun he also translated as Tugend, virtue, at least once as moralische Vollkommenheit, moral perfection, and once as tugendhaft Charakter. One wonders whether Kant, whose Latin was surely as good as Garve’s,

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readily endorsed these German equivalents or held the meaning of honestas in abeyance. Another difficulty in reading Cicero obviously carries over from the time of Aristotle. From his Greek sources Cicero adopts the idea that virtuous actions stand out because they are done for their own sake. The casualness with which he deploys this argument in De Inventione is revealing. ‘‘We shall call honourable [honestum],’’ he writes, ‘‘anything that is sought wholly or partly for its own sake.’’ As in Aristotle, it is difficult to understand what is meant by doing something for its own sake, unless one is talking about a game or sport. But ‘‘wholly or partly’’? Playing amateur tennis partly with an eye to cash held out for a product endorsement perhaps. Cicero explains his meaning by following up this definition with a distinction between ‘‘simple’’ and ‘‘complex’’ motivations for such acts: the first account for things ‘‘wholly’’ done for their own sake and the second ‘‘partly’’ so. He immediately recalls his usual taxonomy of four principal virtues—wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance. He describes these very economically and allows that they are the kinds of honestas sought wholly for their own sake. Then he supplies four examples of complex motivation, which aim for glory, rank, influence, or friendship. These aims ‘‘attract us not only by their intrinsic worth but also by the advantage to be derived from them,’’ and he still more briefly spells that out for each (2.159– 69). In other words, he sketches in the same balance between honestas and utilitas that he will write of at greater length in De Officiis at the end of his life. Cicero’s argument hardly explains why wisdom, courage, and temperance— justice, too, when the seeker has been the victim of injustice—cannot also be pursued for advantage as well as for their own sake. There is honor and there is advantage, and the two are not necessarily incompatible in this generous view of morality. But still, how can one know what to do for its own sake? In the later and far more austere De Finibus, Cicero offers a similar definition of honestas. ‘‘By Moral Worth, then, we understand that which is of such a nature that, though devoid of all utility, it can justly be commended in and for itself apart from any profit or reward’’ (2.45). The translator here, of course, has chosen words that convey to his twentieth-century reader quite a different idea from that of honor; but given most other contexts of honestas in De Finibus, ‘‘moral worth’’ does well enough. (His capitalization of such terms throughout is another matter.) Note, however, that in this passage Cicero strives to scrub the definition clean of any hint of advantage to the moral agent. ‘‘Devoid of all utility’’ is only half of it: the original literally says something like ‘‘removed from all utility without any reward or satisfaction’’ (detracta omni utilitate sine ullis praemiis fructibusve). These are the character Cicero’s own words in his rebuttal of Torquatus’s Epicureanism in the first

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dialogue of the work. The third and last dialogue of De Finibus becomes so strident in its celebration of the Chief Good, the End and Ultimate Good, and so forth that the translator’s capital letters seem called for. To be sure, the voice is that of Marcus Piso expounding the philosophy of Cicero’s contemporary Antiochus, but the composer of the dialogues will have little to say in reply. Here is Piso: Whereas the Wise, under nature’s guidance, make right action their aim, on the other hand men not perfect and yet endowed with noble characters often respond to the stimulus of honour [ gloria], which has some show and semblance of Moral Worth [honestatis]. But if they could fully discern Moral Worth in its absolute perfection and completeness, the one thing of all others most splendid and most glorious [laudandum], how enraptured would they be, if they take such delight in the mere shadow and reputation of it! (5.69)

Piso’s triumphing over honor anticipates a good many philosophical and religious enthusiasts for centuries to come. No actual contradiction is noted between the dictates of absolute perfection and those of honor. Gloria just resembles honestas; or, as in Aristotle, honor ought to be a sign of virtue. (It would be mean to rejoin that Piso’s honor is apparently just a lesser show, glorious without being splendidly so.) Perhaps the most important thing to take away from De Finibus is Cicero’s gesture toward scrubbing clean honestas, however defined. In this case it is as if any advantage, more especially any calculation of advantage, would contaminate the ideal. Translate honestas as honor, and this austerity will characterize the position of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus; translate it as morality, and that will suit the philosophy of Kant. Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, named for the villa where the conversations ostensibly took place, consists of five dialogues between a speaker identified only as M and a listener and questioner designated A. The former (M for magister?) does most of the talking and presumably speaks for the author. The topics of the five-day tutorial that ensues are the fear of death, the endurance of pain, coping with distress and other disorders of the soul, and a concluding argument that virtue suffices to make one happy. It can be seen from these topics that courage must be the main virtue in question. Whether Cicero rehearsed them partly for his own comfort or because he believed young fellows like A had better be prepared for troubles, the so-called disputations continually adapt courage such as is called for on the battlefield to the vicissitudes of everyday life. Honestas is rightly translated as honor in this context, surely, for shame is both directly and indirectly invoked to help one keep up courage. M’s preachments on enduring pain recur repeatedly to the theme: ‘‘It

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will also be found that no evil, even if all evils were heaped together, is to be compared with the evil of disgrace. Therefore if . . . disgrace is worse than pain, pain is clearly of no account; for whilst you shall hold it base and unworthy of a man to groan, shriek aloud, break down and be unnerved; so long as honour, so long as nobility, so long as worth remain, and so long as you control yourself by keeping your eyes upon them, assuredly pain will lead to virtue and grow fainter by a deliberate effort of will; for either no virtue exists or all pain is to be despised’’ (2.31). One standard being evoked here is that of being ‘‘a man,’’ and M shortly reminds A that Latin virtus, virtue, is derived from vir, man. Moreover, ‘‘man’s peculiar virtue is fortitude, of which there are two main functions, namely scorn of death and scorn of pain’’ (2.43). Besides the military allusions, this dialogue on fortitude is adorned with quite a few calls not to be womanish. For men and boys, nature itself ‘‘offers nothing more excellent, nothing more desirable than honour, than renown, than distinction, than glory.’’ M then catches himself, aware that all of these, including honor, are only so many words. ‘‘What I want to say in fact is that far the best for man is that which is desirable in and for itself, has its source in virtue or rather is based on virtue, is of itself praiseworthy, and in fact I should prefer to describe it as the only rather than the highest good.’’ He proceeds to contrast virtue with ‘‘what is base . . . despicable . . . unworthy’’; concedes that all men have leanings toward ‘‘weakness, despondency, servility’’; but asserts they can overcome such moods by reason, and if not by reason then by their sense of shame (2.46–48). How does the man of honor exercise his reason, or know when he will be ashamed? The answer to the first question would be easy if advantage were the end in view. He could calculate how to get from here to there. To learn what is desirable in and for itself without attending a lecture seems more hazardous, if trial and error need be resorted to. That which is praiseworthy of itself could take a long time to locate if no one were around to praise it. Just after the ‘‘formal definition’’ of honestas in De Finibus as devoid of utility and commended in and for itself, Cicero in fact acknowledges that ‘‘this is more clearly explained by the general verdict of mankind at large, and by the aims and actions of all persons of high character’’ (2.45)—by opinion, it would seem, and from the example of other persons we respect. Alternatively, when exactly are we likely to be ashamed and how do we sense in advance which action or inaction will bring it on? Groaning and shrieking with pain, certainly, will put us in disgrace; but A will have to learn this from sore experience if not from heeding carefully what M says, since groaning and shrieking come all too naturally when it hurts. Shame is bound to be a social reflex however it is ingested and acutely felt. One subsequent exchange in the Disputations does

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suggest that approval or disapproval can take place without others’ participation. To M’s mind, ‘‘all things seem more praiseworthy which are done without glorification and without publicity, not that this is to be avoided.’’ His aside allows for an inadvertent advantage of publicity, but the point is that internal approval suffices, because ‘‘all the same there is no audience for virtue of higher authority than the approval of conscience’’ (2.64). Still, one has first to be aware of which action is praiseworthy, come what may. Conscientia in Latin could mean either conscience or simply consciousness. Even in English the meaning of conscience took a few centuries to sort itself out from consciousness (Lewis, 1967). That Cicero figures conscience as a kind of audience —literally a theatrum, theater—still leaves us with the impression of a good many people looking on. Toward the end of book 1 of De Officiis (the book explicitly devoted to honestas), Cicero delivers a matter-of-fact observation about how one learns what to be proud or ashamed of and how the moral agent reasons about what to do next: ‘‘Nor is it out of place in making a choice between duties involving a doubt, to consult men of learning or practical wisdom and to ascertain what their views are on any particular question of duty. . . . For, as painters and sculptors and even poets, too, wish to have their works reviewed by the public, in order that, if any point is generally criticized, it may be improved; and as they try to discover both by themselves and with the help of others what is wrong in their work; so through consulting the judgment of others we find that there are many things to be done and left undone, to be altered and improved.’’ This is more than a simile, since often in De Officiis the reader will find something like an aesthetic valuation of the character he is to make of himself. These last works of Cicero set forth more rules of behavior, in the form of advice from the author, a man of learning and practical wisdom both, than most philosophical works. Yet here the author goes on to admit, ‘‘no rules need to be given about what is done in accordance with the established customs and conventions of a community; for these are in themselves rules’’ (1.147–48). That is exactly the point: philosophers do not ordinarily make the rules but try to establish the grounds for them; nor do individual moral agents determine on their own what is an end in itself. By custom and habit of respect, the group to which the individual belongs or aspires provides rules, and an ongoing process of respect may modify as well as confirm these. There can be little question of the persistence over two millennia of the kinds of behavior and refinement that Cicero urges on his son: the dignity of men—except those in vulgar trades or who work for wages, little better than slaves—and loveliness prized in women, modesty and forbearance commended in both sexes. Manners are indeed important, and even posture, the

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way one holds one’s body—one’s person, as the English used to say. Some things are proper to speak about and some distinctly not; but more than that, there is an art to conversation, too. There are indeed premonitions of such a culture of refinement as far back as Homer’s Odyssey, in the subtle differences revealed to Telemachus when he visits the postwar households of Nestor and Menelaus. But one remarkable development evident by the time of De Officiis is indicated by the repeated warnings against the desire for fame. True honor consists ‘‘in deeds, not in fame, and prefers to be first in reality rather than in name.’’ Cicero realizes that the distinction is sometimes difficult to maintain because ambitious men may even be tempted by fame to commit injustices. ‘‘We are now, to be sure, on very slippery ground,’’ he writes; ‘‘for scarcely can the man be found who has passed through trials and encountered dangers and does not then wish for glory as a reward for his achievements’’ (1.65). Much worse, some are capable of starting wars in order to gain fame. Yet others who say ‘‘they care little . . . for glory and count it as naught’’ in reality do not partake in public affairs because ‘‘they seem to dread the toil and trouble and also, perhaps, the discredit and humiliation of political failure and defeat.’’ Or they may actually be ‘‘indifferent to glory, but . . . crushed by disgrace’’ (1.71). Both Aristotle and Cicero can and do cite Homer when the occasion calls for it. Aristotle sometimes quotes from the Iliad without supplying the speaker or context, as if the verses were familiar scripture for his listeners. Cicero is more likely to indicate the context and supply his own translation to Latin. Yet Homer’s heroes notably fight for the spoils of Troy or in its defense, and for unblushing fame on either side. They are intimately familiar with what will happen if they cut and run from the fight: disgrace will follow, and therefore they return to the fight. Moreover, they use this argument with their comrades, taunting them with cowardice precisely in order to get them to fight. Prospective shame, aidos, ¯ has this power to motivate all. But the ethos that provides rules of behavior in Homer has been altered in the teachings of Aristotle, and changed again, over a similar stretch of time, in the writings of Cicero. Contrary to Aristotle’s high expectations, avoiding shame in Homer’s world is not morally inferior to fighting for its own sake. Heroes on the fields of Troy fight for spoils and to keep themselves from being killed, as well as for the glory of fighting well and not turning their backs on death. They taunt their comrades with shame and just as loudly vaunt over their enemies. None is immune to being treated in this way, and not only in battle either. On a nice point of justice, Achilles chides Agamemnon for having no shame in book 1; in book 24 Apollo will complain that Achilles has no shame because of the way he has treated Hector’s corpse, an undoubted moral concern. ‘‘No shame in the man,’’ in Robert Fagles’s translation, ‘‘shame that does great harm or

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drives men on to good’’ (24.52–53). In a single line Homer’s Apollo remarks both the retrospective and prospective role of shame, the conjunction of which makes Aristotle so uneasy. Among the gods, even Zeus, who had better be obeyed because of his nearly unlimited punishing powers, is subject to the opinions of others. Both wife and daughter, on separate occasions, remind him that he had better at least be consistent or he will lose respect. ‘‘Do as you please,’’ Athena tells Zeus, when he toys with the idea of saving Hector after all, ‘‘but none of the deathless gods will ever praise you’’ (22.215–16). Contrary to Cicero’s animadversions, Homer’s strong men cry out in pain, howl in their death agonies with no sense at all that this is to their discredit. In the Iliad men as well as women readily weep, and occasionally they run headlong around the walls of Troy. A stiff upper lip would seem to characterize the shame-conscious face of much later men of honor, probably those accustomed to less violent occupations. If ‘‘the established customs and conventions of a community,’’ in Cicero’s terms, are the rules, then the timelessness of any morality of respect is very doubtful. Homer makes up for that by referring many matters to the will of Zeus, but Aristotle and Cicero are for self-direction of their listeners and readers’ lives, insofar as that is possible. How the personal autonomy they value is also bound up with respect is sometimes hard to fathom, but it would be even more so if they believed that the first duty of adult humans was obedience—obedience to another, to a ruler, or to timeless commandments of a god. Obedience to the law is possibly an exception, but laws, along with informal rules derived from custom and convention, are something they have implicitly agreed to. Yet the example of Homer’s Achilles is there, unforgettably, for Western ideas of a willed autonomy that is nevertheless founded on respect. In book 1 of the Iliad, Achilles’ sense of equality is offended by Agamemnon’s behavior. That Achilles withdraws his powers from the war but stays where he is and does not return home testifies both to his autonomous decision and to his continued belonging. When he protests in book 9 that nothing, no amount of gifts, will make him change his mind on a point of justice, or in book 22 once again that no material consideration, however great, will make him forswear vengeance against Hector for the death of Patroclus, his posture epitomizes countless stands of honor in the West still to be enacted or imagined. Only the mission of Hector’s father, Priam, and thoughts of Achilles’ own father compromise this stance in the end.

5

Shakespeare’s Recourse to Roman Honor

The first of the plays closely based on Plutarch, Julius Caesar was performed at the Globe theater in London in 1599. The timing itself calls for comment, since Shakespeare had to have learned of the principals in the story as a schoolboy, and North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans had been available for twenty years (Brower, 1971, 204– 38). The same theatrical season saw the completion of the highly successful tetralogy of English history plays known as the Henriad: namely, Richard II, both parts of Henry IV, and Henry V. These history plays, which treated the dynastic crisis of the English Crown two hundred years earlier and the recovery of leadership, contained a vital debate about the nature of honor as perceived in the Renaissance. The composing and production of Julius Caesar fast on the heels of Henry V cannot have been accidental. My belief is that the question of honor that Shakespeare had raised so acutely in the Henriad prompted his reading—or rereading—of Plutarch and his turning to Roman history to study an honor culture as such, a culture in important ways different from his own. Eight years later he returned to Plutarch again to prepare the last of his great tragedies, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus. Shakespeare’s best-known English history play, the first part of Henry IV, afforded both a dazzling display of honor-driven action and its deliberate subversion by Falstaff. In it Henry Percy, known as Hotspur, takes the initia-

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tive in a contest of honor. He is met by the other Henry, known as Prince Hal, who emerges as the hero of both Henry IV plays as well as Henry V. Shakespeare exploited the legend of the prince’s disobedience to his father’s wishes and deliberately made Hotspur about twenty-three years younger than his sources recorded in order to make him roughly the same age as Hal. By stressing youth and casting the two as rivals, Shakespeare prepared to illustrate both coming of age and honor as a peer relation, not merely a family matter and certainly not a matter of obedience. Hotspur in the play has the foremost reputation for honor and is most singleminded in its pursuit. ‘‘Send danger from the east unto the west, / So honor cross it from the north to south, / And let them grapple.’’ Honor readily accepts risk, and the risk to Hotspur and his troops notably increases during the action of 1 Henry IV when his father, the Earl of Northumberland, fails to show up for the battle of Shrewsbury. For Hotspur this diminishment of their numbers ‘‘lends a lustre and more great opinion, / A larger dare to our great enterprise, / Than if the Earl were here’’ (1.3.195–97; 4.1.77–79). The greater the risk, the more reason to fight. When the odds have turned decisively against them in act 5, Hotspur delivers the well-known speech to his men that begins, ‘‘O gentlemen, the time of life is short! / To spend that shortness basely were too long / If life did ride upon a dial’s point, / Still ending at the arrival of an hour’’ (5.2.81–84). Life is short in comparison either to history or to eternity, of course, but here also in comparison to peaceful lives. The man of honor does not expect to die in his bed and, if he should so die, would never conclusively have passed the principal test, which is to face head-on the kind of death one intends for an opposing warrior. Hotspur’s refusal to live ‘‘basely’’ asserts the claim to superiority of this code; conversely, the single adverb becomes an operative word of this short speech. For though he urges his followers to win glory if they can, there is also a negative sanction that enforces the code. The thought of what happens to one who does not offer to die bravely, the fear of dishonor, is the clincher. A vaunt about treading on kings expresses the revolutionary potential of the nobility in Shakespeare’s history, and this potential for a band of rebels to oppose government can be traced in later history as well. A brief allusion to ‘‘our consciences’’ in Hotspur’s closing sentence acknowledges a competing sanction of good behavior, but this slight qualm, if it is a qualm, gets swept aside because their cause is just. The task that Henry IV sets for Prince Hal and the latter accepts is to emulate this Hotspur. In order to become ‘‘more myself’’ the hitherto delinquent son will take arms against the northern rebels; he will specifically define himself against Henry Percy and, furthermore, as in ancient and medieval epic, assume credit for all the victories that have been chalked up to his namesake

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by conquering Percy in turn. ‘‘Percy is but my factor,’’ he promises his father, ‘‘to engross up glorious deeds on my behalf’’ (3.2.93, 147–48). Before Shrewsbury he duly challenges his opposite to single combat, and the rebels’ ambassador has never heard ‘‘a challenge urg’d more modestly, / Unless a brother should a brother dare / To gentle exercise and proof of arms’’ (5.2.52–54). Like his father before him, the prince becomes highly attuned to the necessity of keeping up appearances that is also part of the honor code, with its emphasis on respect at all costs. Notoriously, even in the tavern where we first encounter Hal, he conjectures that his intended ‘‘reformation’’ will ‘‘glitt[er] o’er my fault’’ (1.2.213). Shakespeare, in sum, provides ample matters of honor to meditate on even without inventing the great Sir John Falstaff, who could wish the tavern were his drum rather than march with the army, and whom some have perversely imagined to be the true hero of Henry IV. ‘‘I would ’twere bedtime, Hal, and all well.’’ Falstaff’s wariness before the battle seems heartfelt enough. The sentiment, with its childlike appeal, is touching—all the more so in contrast to the man’s far more callous jests and actions as a recruiting officer for the king. Bedtime strikes a universal chord; and nothing is more to be valued, after all, than the vital difference between sleep and the death that sleep images. Prince Hal picks up on the theme with his reply and exit line, ‘‘Why, thou owest God a death.’’ The life that comes from God is still finite, and behind Hal’s reminder is a widely shared thought (the prince does not have to be Hotspur to think it) that since one has to die anyway, it is best to die well. Falstaff’s next line, ‘‘’Tis not due yet,’’ is also ready enough. We do not know when we shall die, so what’s the hurry? And Falstaff utters his famous catechism: Well, ’tis no matter; honor pricks me on. Yea, but how if honor prick me off when I come on? how then? 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 a’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. ’Tis insensible then? Yea, to the dead. But will’t 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. (5.1.125–41)

The appositeness of Falstaff’s analysis will not be denied, for the reasoning stands independent of the man’s character—coward, clown, or whatever. Significantly, he addresses honor as the motive of engagement: ‘‘honor pricks me on.’’ Just so it pricks Hotspur and, with allowances for policy, the prince. Honor here is not synonymous with either reward or reputation, though confusingly it can be so in Shakespeare as elsewhere. Falstaff’s interrogation of the

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term assumes that it is shorthand in the discourse of the time for a summary motive to engagement, a motive peculiarly powerful in its negative consequences, should one not behave in the expected manner. The prince has introduced the stakes—‘‘a death’’—and Falstaff’s initial pun—‘‘pricks me on . . . prick me off’’—anticipates the casualty list awaiting the battle’s conclusion. The catechism by itself invites three important observations about the force of honor. First, this motive to action unconditionally puts the body into play; and the head, arm, leg, or any part you care to think about is subject to pain as well as loss. Yet honor is not an art of the body like surgery; it cares nothing for the cure of that body. Honor is this peculiar abstraction that thrusts the body in the path of danger. The catechism is strictly silent as to whose body: the opponent’s body may well be hacked to pieces also. But in 1 Henry IV Falstaff’s is the body, and his analysis accordingly defensive. Second, the apparent reduction of this abstraction to ‘‘a word’’—as in a mere word—conceals a more profound pun on the so-called word of honor, as it was known in all seriousness. Although the literature of honor regularly asserts the superiority of deeds to words, without one’s word there could be no such thing as honor. Courage may be instinctive, but honor is not the same thing as courage in action. It is more in the nature of a commitment or promise to act courageously when called upon—the explicit or implicit giving of one’s word of honor. Such is a man’s word that is tested in a trial by combat, as that medieval institution was splendidly illustrated at the beginning of Richard II, Shakespeare’s account of Henry IV’s coming to the throne. Of course, Falstaff’s ‘‘word’’ is at the same time dismissive; so also, his dissipating ‘‘air.’’ And third, since honor is a commitment for which the body or its various parts are the pledge, it can never translate to certain achievement until the possibility of any further actions is at an end and the pledge has been surrendered for good. ‘‘Who hath it? He that died a’ Wednesday.’’ The realization that the only heroes who permanently and certainly possess honor are the dead is commonplace, known to many besides Hotspur and Falstaff. The latter simply drives the point home with the matter-of-factness of ‘‘Wednesday,’’ a day that returns every week and therefore is seldom carved on tombstones. On this count, it works fine to equate honor with reward or reputation; but the catechizer here is very much the mortalist and does not believe honor is felt or heard by the dead. His reminder that a living hero’s reputation is always subject to ‘‘detraction’’ comes full circle to honor’s false promise to the dying. What is honor? Well might Shakespeare ask, on behalf of his time or our own. The word was more often on the lips in his time; more often in print, also, in narratives both historical and make-believe. For English gentlemen and would-be gentlemen, handbooks touching on the subject were available,

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often translated from the Italian, sometimes via French. The word and motive were very much part of the renewed interest—and translation—of classical ethics, classical literature. In European drama, especially tragedy, the popularity of the theme continued for a hundred years or more after Falstaff’s express objections, latterly in French neoclassical and English heroic plays and in the rise of the novel. In private life the word honor did not sound noticeably quaint in the West until the twentieth century, and its going out of private use was due mainly to the nationalization of the motive that was already under way during the Tudor and Bourbon monarchies. Falstaff indicates pretty clearly that honor subjects the body to the will, to an abstract and valorized purpose that is not inherently of the body or in the body’s interest. Honor is selfless, that is, precisely to the degree that the self includes nerves, muscles, bones, and organs of the body. Opposing other selves in combat is just one of its possible manifestations: Falstaff contends that honor opposes bodies period, whether someone else’s or one’s own. Yet, paradoxically, honor presumes pride and self-assertion. The motive is often in conflict not only with the body but with other values, other subjections of the body even. The literature of honor, more often than it treats frankly of Falstaff’s concern, dramatizes the motive in opposition to someone in authority, or to love between the sexes, or to the religion that opposes it in return. Chieftains and kings exact obedience, call bodies into line. But characters like Achilles resent being told what to do, amorous love longs to possess or share in the flesh, and Christianity urges its suppression. In a time when the demands of honor were openly debated, it can hardly surprise that the word should be meaningful in the King James Bible (1611), where Jesus admonishes, ‘‘How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only?’’ (John, 5:44). In sixteenth-century England competing claims to honor were especially apparent. Mervyn James summarizes the historical case this way: ‘‘Honour could articulate a compelling network of obligation which was outside what the state, law, and even religion enforced’’ (James, 1986, 341). James’s narrative of the interplay of English politics with the ‘‘community of honour’’ from 1485 to 1642 traces a gradual subduing by the monarchy, bureaucracy, and Parliament of an older recourse to violence by the nobility that was often undertaken in the name of honor. Yet James’s analysis and wide-ranging references to contemporary texts cannot quite explain that felt ‘‘obligation,’’ which goes well beyond any simple equation of honor with reward or reputation. To comprehend that sense of obligation, one has to assume a consensus founded in mutual respect and implicit sanctions—shame and exclusion from the group—that reinforce this motivation.

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The reciprocal nature of respect was certainly not lost on Renaissance writers about honor. Sixteenth-century courtesy books had to be forthright about seeing and looking back, since appearances and male dress very much counted. Sir Thomas Elyot in The Boke Named the Governour faithfully reproduces Aristotle’s definition of honor as the reward of virtue but expresses the relation much as the anthropologist Pitt-Rivers will do in the twentieth century: ‘‘which honour is but the estimation of people, which estimation is not everywhere perceived, but by some exterior sign, and that is either by laudable report, or excellency in vesture.’’ And Elyot adds, ‘‘report is not so common a token as apparel’’ (1531, 2:198–99). About the time Shakespeare was completing his English history plays and preparing Julius Caesar, a substantial essay on the subject was composed by Robert Ashley, whose Of Honour defined the term this way: ‘‘a certain testimony of virtue shining of itself, given of some man by the judgment of good men.’’ Ashley begins to sound a little like Erik Erikson or George Mead describing the achievement of a personal identity. Thus, honor ‘‘consisteth of a certain habit of virtue found in some one and allowed by good men judging aright thereof; because that Honour which is said to be in any is not only in him as if it depended wholly of him, but also in others, who must love and commend that virtue in him which they seem to allow of’’ (?1596– 1603, 34, 52). In this adroit account of honor as a process of continuous reflection, Ashley carefully qualifies each part of the process: the individual’s virtue, the goodness of those who respect him, and the rightness of the way they go about it all hedge against any mistake—or wickedness. While citing Cicero and others as well, Ashley capably adapts Aristotle for Christian readers; high spirit but also prudence and moderation characterize the man of honor. He sharply distinguishes honor from fame and glory, which may arise independently from virtue. And honor is for the living, not the dead—there can be no virtuous action from a dead man. In such Renaissance accounts the process of respect is paramount, however, even though all that viewing can seem to be a matter of mere appearances. The same emphasis on externals would be taken up by churchmen or moralists who argued against honor as a spur to virtue. The Renaissance commonplace of the man of honor as a mirror for others regularly shows up in Shakespeare. In 2 Henry IV the grieving widow of Hotspur compares his honor to the sun, for ‘‘by his light / Did all the chevalry of England move / To do brave acts,’’ and in her next sentence to ‘‘the glass / Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves.’’ The visual metaphors keep the essential relation an external one but are all the more capacious for that: ‘‘so that in speech, in gait, / In diet, in affections of delight, / In military rules, humors of blood, / He was the mark and glass, copy and book, / That fashion’d others’’ (2.3.19–22, 28–32). An even greater range of powers is reflected

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in the glass conceived by Ophelia’s tribute to Hamlet a few years later: ‘‘The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword, / Th’ expectation and rose of the fair state, / The glass of fashion and the mould of form, / Th’ observ’d of all observers’’ (Hamlet, 3.1.151–54). Such mirrors to facilitate emulation can be found everywhere in plays, romances, and handbooks of the time. Their usefulness assumes a certain equality of the individuals attracted to the mirrors; Hamlet, the observed of all observers, is first among equals and not indifferent to the gazes he attracts. Even Shakespeare’s Henry V as ‘‘the mirror of all Christian kings’’ (prologue of act 2) stands not alone: he is the model for other kings but also for the Christian gentlemen of various ranks throughout his realm. There would be no point in the figure of a mirror (as opposed to a portrait, say) if those looking his way could not also hope to catch glimpses of themselves. In the opening scene of Cymbeline two speakers describe the hero Posthumus as a gentleman like themselves. Until his current misfortune, Posthumus has been brought up at court, where he was ‘‘most prais’d, most lov’d, / A sample to the youngest, to th’ more mature / A glass that feated them, and to the graver / A child that guided dotards’’ (1.1.47–50). Obviously, this gentleman is an example to those younger than himself, something of a miraculous child to the elderly, but a mirror to his own cohort. Shakespeare, I suggest, faced the same puzzles about honor as we do here. He could dramatize the excitement of the compulsions of honor, he could spell out its implications by enlisting Falstaff’s body and his brilliant wit, he could point to honor as the defining test of young manhood by pairing prince Henry with Henry Percy and featuring their strained relations with their fathers, but he still could not fully explain honor’s hold on these individuals. At the same time Shakespeare and his contemporaries were very much aware that honor was a classical theme, and the playwright undertook at this juncture a second, more deliberate inquiry into the motive of honor in Roman times. This experiment freed him from having to represent dynastic struggles that still had political implications for his own day. On the contrary, there is in Julius Caesar but one generation of politicians, no fathers and sons at all. His Plutarch plays are characterized by the absence of any long-range historical direction and ‘‘the clarifying absolutes of good and evil.’’ Indeed, ‘‘there are no villains—no Macbeth, Claudius, Iago, Goneril, Regan, or Edmund. And there are no characters whose goodness intimates absolute and transcending value’’ (Simmons, 1973, 3). Forgoing also the comic subversion of the high style and noble behavior that he took to such memorable lengths in Henry IV, Shakespeare in these Roman plays studied honor as a motive in an earlier and distinct culture: an honor culture, as anthropologists used to put it.

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Critical opinion has been divided on the question of whether Shakespeare and his original audiences believed that the culture of the ancient Greeks and Romans differed essentially from their own. Tributes to the bard’s surpassing knowledge of human nature tend to override such distinctions, and some books and shorter studies of the Roman plays have also denied them. But in many ways the history of Shakespeare criticism has confirmed the distinctiveness of the Roman plays. A.C. Bradley could entitle his well-known lectures Shakespearean Tragedy (1904) even though they dealt with only four plays: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. These are the famous four, and even before Bradley estimations of Shakespeare tended to place them higher on the scale of achievement than the comedies or histories and higher than the other tragedies, including the three from Plutarch. Bradley himself subsequently lectured on Antony and Cleopatra, perhaps with unease at omitting it from his since famous book. But ‘‘although Antony and Cleopatra may be for us as wonderful an achievement as the greatest of Shakespeare’s plays,’’ he decides, ‘‘it has not an equal value.’’ He comes closer to what he means by finding the Roman play less valuable, less intimately suspenseful than the famous four, when he chides Shakespeare for not deploying ‘‘his matchless power of depicting an inward struggle’’ in his characters. The final turn in the action, ‘‘the fatal step of Antony’s return . . . is only reported; and not a line portrays any inward struggle preceding it’’ (1909, 282–87). Bradley says something similar in a separate lecture on Coriolanus. The eponymous hero ‘‘covets honour no less than Hotspur, but he has not Hotspur’s vision of honour. . . . And, his inward conflicts are veiled from us’’ (1912, 5). What one begins to hear from the Englishman Bradley is that the greatest tragedies are about you and me, not about other people. But the evidence suggests that Shakespeare designed his mature Roman plays to be about the noble beings of a different culture. If honor defines character externally— respect always being the gauge of self-respect—it is entirely germane that Bradley misses any inwardness in these plays. By changing the venue for his interrogation of honor, Shakespeare put to one side Christian animadversions on the subject and, more important, the implicit and explicit teleologies of English history. As M.W. MacCallum noted in the first book-length study of the Roman plays (in part a response to their subordination by Bradley), in English history plays Shakespeare was constrained to celebrate, first, ‘‘the unity of the country under the strong and orderly government of securely succeeding sovereigns’’; second, ‘‘its rejection of Papal domination’’; and third, ‘‘the power, safety, and prestige of England’’ (1910, 76). In his dramatizations of Roman history, however, Shakespeare could present an open field for the study of power relations and the resistance of honorable men to the

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rule of one man among them. The shift—via Plutarch—to classical times associated honor with a different polity. The most detailed study of honor in Shakespeare, that of Curtis Brown Watson (1960), is essentially an exhaustive survey of many resurfacings of Aristotle’s definition of honor as the reward of virtue. The Nicomachean Ethics had in fact been translated into English as early as 1547; it was already known to the Renaissance through other translations; and its influence can be traced in the courtesy books of the period. Ethics are never fully separable from politics, and it may be that the translation of Aristotle’s Politics in 1598, the year before Julius Caesar was produced, helped Shakespeare and some contemporaries to conceive more readily of dramatic actions suited to a different polity. All three of Shakespeare’s adaptations from Plutarch are set in the Roman republic. The two actions that are set in the last years of the republic forgo any reflection on the Roman Empire that would result, nor do they assume any fixed idea of a sovereign head of state unless it is Cleopatra. In her feminist study of the Roman plays, Coppélia Kahn remarks that the ‘‘male friendships are indistinguishable from politics itself’’ (1997, 89), and there is more truth in that observation than simply the exclusion of women. In Julius Caesar the figure of a mirror of honor is elaborated at such length that it virtually characterizes republican Rome. Shakespeare employs the figure, and the mutual respect it conveys, not merely as a general indication of social relations but as the proximate cause of the main action. The assassination of Caesar is tragic on its own terms—disastrous, if you will—but not as it impinged directly on Shakespeare and his audience. This dramatic experiment with honor is studied and matter-of-fact: an examination of respect as it operates in the absence of other checks and motives. Death will be as irrevocably attached to honor as in the views of Hotspur and Falstaff, but for Brutus’s political thinking this death is also a sacrifice to the general good. Before the action commences, the play affords just a glimpse of Caesar and a single line from Antony expressive of a different politics: ‘‘When Caesar says, ‘Do this,’ it is perform’d.’’ No sooner have Caesar and his entourage passed from the stage, however, than Cassius sets out to renew the process of respect at a rudimentary level: ‘‘Brutus, I do observe you now of late; / I have not from your eyes that gentleness / And show of love as I was wont to have’’ (1.2.10, 32– 34). So often is the word love uttered by male acquaintances in Julius Caesar that G.Wilson Knight (1931) contended that love was opposed to honor in the play (Brutus loved Caesar, counted Caesar too among his friends); but in truth this love more nearly is the honor relation, or the male bonding that Kahn refers to as ‘‘indistinguishable from politics itself.’’ Brutus rejoins politely that ‘‘if I have veil’d my look, / I turn the trouble of

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my countenance / Merely upon myself’’; but Cassius won’t allow that and brings the mirror figure directly to bear on their present relation: Tell me, good Brutus, can you see your face? brutus No, Cassius; for the eye sees not itself But by reflection, by some other things. cassius ’Tis just, And it is very much lamented, Brutus, That you have no such mirrors as will turn Your hidden worthiness into your eye, That you might see your shadow. I have heard, Where many of the best respect in Rome (Except immortal Caesar), speaking of Brutus, And groaning under this age’s yoke, Have wish’d that noble Brutus had his eyes. brutus Into what dangers would you lead me, Cassius, That you would have me seek into myself For that which is not in me? cassius Therefore, good Brutus, be prepar’d to hear; And since you know you cannot see yourself So well as by reflection, I, your glass, Will modestly discover to yourself That of yourself which you yet know not of. (1.2.37–39, 51–70)

Cassius will help focus the ‘‘eyes’’ of ‘‘many of the best respect in Rome’’ on Brutus, and thereby provide ‘‘such mirrors’’ as the latter needs to see his own ‘‘hidden worthiness’’—hidden, Cassius implies, because of Brutus’s modesty, but also because ‘‘that which is not in [him]’’ will actually motivate him to take action. The dialogue could hardly be clearer about the need for an internalization of respect, and Brutus understands immediately that Cassius is appealing to his honor—saying that his honor requires him to act in some way. What is it that you would impart to me? If it be aught toward the general good, Set honor in one eye, and death i’ th’ other, And I will look on both indifferently; For let the gods so speed me as I love The name of honor more than I fear death. (1.2.84–89)

The very addressing of one another by name in nearly every exchange of the dialogue marks time with reciprocity. Not infrequently in Julius Caesar the

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principals also refer to themselves in the third person, still another register of the tendency to see the individual from outside (Brower, 1971, 217; Miles, 1996, 141). Cassius has brought Brutus to the point of action—his honor demands it of him—without ever saying what it is. He thanks Brutus not for any agreed-on plan but for the assurance about his honor, which he could count on in any case from his friend’s ‘‘outward favor.’’ And with his next line—‘‘Well, honor is the subject of my story’’—Cassius begins to lay out his own feelings about the matter (1.2.91–92). Probably the actor will emphasize ‘‘my story.’’ Now that Cassius has brought Brutus to this point, he can risk a more impatient statement of the disequilibrium—as he sees it—that Caesar is threatening to create. Honor garners respect from equals, and Cassius is the last person to agree with Antony that when Caesar says, ‘‘Do this,’’ this should be performed. I cannot tell what you and other men Think of this life; but, for my single self, I had as lief not be as live to be In awe of such a thing as I myself. I was born free as Caesar, so were you; We both have fed as well, and we can both Endure the winter’s cold as well as he.

And Cassius here launches into a couple of eager anecdotes of Caesar’s human frailty: once when he lost a wager to swim the Tiber in flood and had to be rescued by the teller of the tale—‘‘Help me, Cassius, or I sink’’—and once when he fell ill to a fever in Spain and cried out like a girl—‘‘Give me some drink, Titinius’’ (1.2.93–99, 111, 127). The two anecdotes are punctuated by more shouting offstage. By now comparisons are in full swing. Significantly, even the power of Caesar does not seem so objectionable to Cassius as the man’s reputation: Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that ‘‘Caesar’’? Why should that name be sounded more than yours? Write them together, yours is as fair a name; Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well; Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with ’em, ‘‘Brutus’’ will start a spirit as soon as ‘‘Caesar.’’

But just as surely as the comparison should turn on a name it keeps returning to the mortal flesh, the body that may be given a name but is essentially alike in all men. Or as Cassius puts it, ‘‘Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed / That he is grown so great?’’ No wonder the Caesar in question remarks Cassius’s ‘‘lean and hungry look’’ when he recrosses the stage moments later, and adds, ‘‘Would he were fatter!’’ (1.2.142–47, 149–50, 194, 198).

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The ensuing action cannot simply be put down to Cassius’s envy. Each member of the honor group is subject to and defined by comparison, and that includes Caesar. Cassius’s insistence on this point is built into Shakespeare’s design, which repeatedly invites such comparisons—Brutus and Antony as public speakers, Brutus and Cassius in the quarrel scene, and initially Brutus and Caesar. As Norman Rabkin demonstrated (1967, 105–19), after these two principals appear outdoors in act 1, each appears in two closely parallel domestic scenes in act 2. The first such scene opens with Brutus calling for his servant, who receives his orders and exits with the words ‘‘I will, my lord’’ (2.1.9); the second, with Caesar calling for his servant, who exits with the same line (2.2.7). Both domestic scenes include the wives, Portia and Calphurnia, respectively, who are disturbed and anxious about their husbands’ intentions. Portia begs her husband ‘‘upon my knees’’ (2.1.270) to confide his troubles to her; Calphurnia pleads ‘‘upon my knee’’ (2.2.54) that Caesar not proceed to the forum that day. Both scenes include a delegation of male followers and conclude with the respective leaders resolved to behave just as they have themselves decided. Moreover, for all their differences on political arrangements, Brutus and Caesar are characterized here as very much alike. Both put the public weal ahead of their private interest, both are stoical about their own mortality; yet a marked vanity, condescension to others, and even self-deception are also evident. There is a tendency for the noble sentiments they express to wear out in bluster. These unmodern traits, I suggest, were not meant to be as off-putting as they may seem but were Shakespeare’s representation of honor’s vauntings. Of the two heroes, Brutus is brought closer to the audience by soliloquy (2.1.10–34). But the argument of his soliloquy is so qualified and possibly selfcontradictory that it does not seem quite sincere. It lacks the confessional note of Hamlet or the conscience of Macbeth, and this cannot be because Shakespeare had not developed such personalities yet, since Brutus’s soliloquy lacks even the wickedness of his Aaron the Moor or Richard III—to say nothing of the frankness of Falstaff or Prince Hal. Some scholars have concluded that the soliloquy is deceptive, or at least self-deceiving. But the message, the dramatic revelation of the words, is that Brutus’s mind is made up. ‘‘It must be by his death,’’ the soliloquy begins. The ‘‘it,’’ the obscure end in view, recalls his ‘‘What is it you would impart to me,’’ and ‘‘If it be aught toward the public good,’’ spoken to Cassius the day before. After stating his decision, Brutus mostly offers reasons to himself for not killing Caesar. He has nothing personal against the man, but should he be made king, he might abuse his power. On the other hand, Caesar has a reasonably good record in that regard. But successful men sometimes spurn their friends, so as a cautionary measure he had better be killed, to be sure the republic remains in safe hands.

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Somehow the argument for assassination has already been concluded. In the ritual stabbing of Caesar by all the conspirators in concert, Shakespeare boldly presents the action as that of a group sharing responsibility equally. He seemingly omits the process of reaching the decision to act, except for echoes of its supposed rationale in Brutus’s soliloquy of act 2. Or has Shakespeare already brilliantly sounded the motive and outcome in the 140-line colloquy on honor between Cassius and Brutus in act 1? ‘‘Tell me, good Brutus, can you see your face?’’ That question and its follow-up would seem to have triggered the impulse to cut Caesar back down to size. The process expressly spoken of as reflection leads directly to action. The assassination takes place and anarchy breaks out, with ugly instances of human cruelty thrown in. In this experiment Shakespeare is hardly celebrating the motive of honor, just working out the consequences as he sees them and history confirms. Once enough human casualties have piled up, order is restored by the exercise of military power. Rabkin was wrong to suppose that Julius Caesar in act 3 turned into a kind of revenge tragedy familiar to English audiences. Those tragedies commenced with the murder of the hero’s kin, up or down in the male order of inheritance. In Hamlet or Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, revenge is terribly longed for; the mere thought of it assuages the grief of a surviving son or father. Antony’s revenge in the Roman play is no more premeditated than it is felt to be wrong. He loved Caesar as Brutus loved Caesar, but Caesar is no blood relation of his. The cast includes no elders of the community and no children (true of no other Shakespearean tragedy but Antony and Cleopatra). There may be slight differences of age among them, but no one belongs to a distinctly different generation; the principal males are ostensible equals. As Rabkin observes in a telling aside, ‘‘even character is determined more by process than by abiding and shaping inner principles’’ (1967, 118). Antony never contends that the assassination was wrong in principle or a violation of the law—or even of due process, as we might say. He addresses the conspirators, ‘‘I know not, gentlemen, what you intend’’ (3.1.151), and he solemnly shakes each man’s bloody hand. Over and over he will repeat to the people that ‘‘Brutus says [Caesar] was ambitious, / And Brutus is an honorable man’’ (3.2.86–87). Nor is it clear that his sarcasm—for the phrase eventually becomes that—can impugn Brutus’s honor. Because Brutus is an honorable man, all that Antony can do is to fight him, out of anger at his betrayal of Caesar and from determination to fill, with Octavius, the power vacuum. And when his adversaries are beaten, Antony will say of Brutus, This was the noblest Roman of them all: All the conspirators, save only he,

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Did that they did in envy of great Caesar; He, only in a general honest thought And common good to all, made one of them. His life was gentle, and the elements So mix’d in him that Nature might stand up And say to all the world, ‘‘This was a man!’’ (5.5.68–75)

As for Brutus himself, he asks the people to ‘‘believe me for mine honor, and have respect to mine honor, that you may believe.’’ He does not spell out a political agenda but suggests that all would lose their freedom if Caesar had lived; and he avers that he loves Rome more than he loved his friend: ‘‘I have the same dagger for myself, when it shall please my country to need my death’’ (3.2.13–16, 45–47). Virtually any Roman, it would seem, offers to take his own life should he be balked or defeated—a powerful statement of their commitment (and their utter strangeness to any Christian doctrine familiar to Shakespeare’s audience). From a Falstaffian point of view the conspirators might be berserks, justifying the mayhem they cause by the willingness to take their own lives. ‘‘Caesar, now be still,’’ are Brutus’s last words: ‘‘I kill’d not thee with half so good a will’’ (5.5.50–51). Cassius is yet more explicit on this score. In a pronouncement to Casca in act 1, he exalts the ‘‘power’’ of suicide, a hyperstoical power always in reserve. Suicide is the answer to either bondage or imprisonment and, as required, can ‘‘make the weak most strong.’’ Tyranny, Cassius insists, he can thereby ‘‘shake off at pleasure,’’ and with a ‘‘So can I,’’ Casca concurs (1.3.89–100). In the end, Cassius and Titinius as well as Brutus are true to their word and turn the murder weapon (as one might say) upon themselves. But that it is murder is an extrapolation from Shakespeare’s text. The conspirators do not regard the killing of Caesar as murder so much as a political action they are called upon to take. They conceal their intention purely for practical reasons (to make the weaker side strong, as Cassius puts it concerning suicide). The surprise killing is carried out openly in the forum, and the leaders openly commit suicide when faced with defeat. All the action of Julius Caesar proceeds outward from the internalization of respect that Cassius rehearses with Brutus in act 1. The argument from respect and the figure of reflection Shakespeare employed again about three years later in the embassy scene of his Troilus and Cressida, where it appears still more formulaic for the purpose of invoking honor as a motive to action. In this dramatization of book 9 of Homer’s Iliad, the Greek leaders first deliberately stride past and studiously ignore Achilles, the holdout from the war. Then, somewhat like Hamlet working on Polonius also about this time, Ulysses pretends to be reading what he wants to say to

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Achilles, as if the argument had just come gratuitously to hand. So ‘‘familiar’’ indeed is the argument delivered by Ulysses that it might be from a textbook both heroes had studied in school. A number of commentators agree that the source is Cicero but not on the specific text. ulysses A strange fellow here Writes me that man, how dearly ever parted, How much in having, or without or in, Cannot make boast to have that which he hath, Nor feels not what he owes, but by reflection; As when his virtues, aiming upon others, Heat them, and they retort that heat again To the first giver. achilles This is not strange, Ulysses, The beauty that is borne here in the face The bearer knows not, but commends itself To others’ eyes; nor doth the eye itself, That most pure spirit of sense, behold itself, Not going from itself; but eye to eye opposed Salutes each other with each other’s form; For speculation turns not to itself, Till it hath travell’d and is [mirror’d] there Where it may see itself. This is not strange at all. ulysses I do not strain at the position— It is familiar—but at the author’s drift, Who in his circumstance expressly proves That no man is the lord of any thing, Though in and of him there be much consisting, Till he communicate his parts to others; Nor doth he of himself know them for aught, Till he behold them formed in th’ applause Where th’ are extended; who like an arch reverb’rate The voice again, or like a gate of steel, Fronting the sun, receives and renders back His figure and his heat. (3.3.95–123)

It would be hard to say which of these great warriors from Homeric times speaks more philosophically or articulates with more ease such Latinate terms as ‘‘speculation’’ for mirroring. Ulysses seems particularly concerned to emphasize reflection of sound and heat as well as light from these mirrors, as if these forms of energy might be still more conducive to action. His reverberating arch and gate of steel materialize and substantiate the process that, in the earlier play, Cassius touched on more lightly: the idea, one supposes, is that

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Achilles is a much more stubborn customer than Brutus. But Achilles, after a little of this treatment, rejoins the Greek war effort for all that. Though the argument may not be strange to Achilles, Troilus and Cressida, almost everyone agrees, is a strange play. Grouped with the tragedies in the folio edition of Shakespeare’s plays, it was named a history by the earliest printing in 1609, and most scholars read it as a satire or—more helplessly—as a ‘‘problem play.’’ For this segment of the story of the Trojan war, Shakespeare employs some of the distancing evident in the Roman plays—the perspective I have associated with later anthropology—but complicates the matter by introducing other philosophical arguments appropriate to a polity and nationhood more like those of his own time. The most famous speech of the play, also by Ulysses but in the quarrel scene in act 1, begins, ‘‘The specialty of rule hath been neglected’’: that is, hierarchy or so-called degree has been neglected. The speech has quite the opposite purpose from that of the subsequent embassy to Achilles, for here Ulysses turns his eloquence to the need for degree and command, in the state as in nature, in order to check the transformation of ‘‘Power into will, will into appetite,’’ and preclude the ‘‘envious fever / Of pale and bloodless emulation’’ (1.3.78, 120, 133–34). O, when degree is shak’d, Which is the ladder of all high designs, The enterprise is sick. How could communities, Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities, Peaceful commerce from dividable shores, The primogenity and due of birth, Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels, But by degree stand in authentic place? Take but degree away, untune that string, And hark what discord follows.

In sum, degree privileges one-man rule over any conceivable sharing of power among equals and is closely analogous to, if not modeled on, paternal authority within the family—or else ‘‘the rude son should strike his father dead’’ (1.3.101–10, 115). The full sixty-line speech used to be cited by E.M.W. Tillyard (1943) and other scholars as epitomizing the Elizabethan world order; certainly it has often been recited by Anglophone politicians, mostly conservative, ever since Shakespeare drafted it. Yet the same Ulysses later tells Achilles that no man possesses any qualities or even knows himself except by ‘‘reflection,’’ and none is ‘‘the lord of anything’’ except as approved by his fellows. I would answer that Troilus and Cressida is indeed a satire, from which the wise Ulysses—taking the dramatist’s part, in effect—is the only character to emerge unscathed. Ulysses tells

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Agamemnon, the acknowledged commander of the Greeks, exactly what Agamemnon wants to hear about degree; he rehearses with Achilles some things that dissidents need to remember about honor. Ulysses is undoubtedly the audience’s best guide to what is happening onstage, though he is not the only character who understands that more than one value system is in play. In the Trojan camp, the noble Hector debates with his younger brothers, Troilus and Paris, whether it is right to keep Helen from the invading Greeks, to whom she belongs. Hector argues from human and natural law that Helen should be returned to her husband; he takes a position here consonant with that of Ulysses addressing Agamemnon. ‘‘Nature’’ supports marriage, and when marriage is threatened, ‘‘There is a law in each well-order’d nation / To curb those raging appetites,’’ and ‘‘these moral laws / Of nature and of nations speak aloud / To have her back return’d.’’ Yet no sooner has Hector pronounced this opinion, than he abruptly reverts to a cause of honor: ‘‘ne’er the less, / My spritely brethren, I propend to you / In resolution to keep Helen still, / For ’tis a cause that hath no mean dependance / Upon our joint and several dignities.’’ Troilus agrees that ‘‘glory,’’ not passion, should guide them, for Helen ‘‘is a theme of honor and renown’’ (2.2.173–99). For both the quarrel with Agamemnon and the embassy to Achilles, Shakespeare had immediate authority in George Chapman’s translation of books 1, 2, and 7 through 11 of Homer’s Iliad in 1598. The quarrel in book 1 was bound to be of interest to any student of politics in Tudor and Stuart times: Agamemnon may have been supreme commander of the Greek forces, but in Homer his rule is far from absolute. He is apparently expected to act in council with the other chieftains, and on this occasion he is challenged by Achilles on a point of personal offense; nor is there much that the commander can do when his best warrior retires to his tent. As noted above, Aristotle’s Politics was also translated into English in 1598. The remarkable feature of that work was its open-mindedness about forms of rule. ‘‘The reason why there are many forms of government,’’ it stated, ‘‘is that every state contains many elements’’ (1289b.27). Generally, Aristotle believed that various styles of one-man rule were earliest in time, but the main point was that one practice could be relinquished for another. Several times he observes that honor is ‘‘a cause of revolution’’ (1302b.10–15). A tyrant ‘‘should be especially careful of his behaviour to men who are lovers of honour’’ (1315a.15; see also 1306b.23). Aristotle does not cite Homer on these occasions, yet both ancient texts posed a range of possibilities that were bound to stimulate Renaissance thoughts about the customs of different times and places. Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida demonstrably depends for some of its high-level discourse on the Nicomachean Ethics (Palmer, 1982, 311–20), and Shakespeare’s Hector—anachronistically, for sure—invokes Aristotle by name in the Trojan council (2.2.166–67).

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All of Shakespeare’s tragedies after Julius Caesar are occupied with honor in one way or another. Hamlet itself can be read coherently as a play about honor (Dodsworth, 1985). His last truly great tragedies, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus, were again based closely on Plutarch and, though radically different from one another in poetry and theatrical effect, afforded Shakespeare a renewed opportunity to study and portray onstage actions driven by honor. Both in its celebration of autonomy and in its dramatization of shame, Antony and Cleopatra is Shakespeare’s most resplendent show of honor—and rather less about love than legend would have it. Antony’s damaged reputation in the Roman world is a theme sounded in the first scene; and though the play is scarcely about adolescence, the ultimate insult for any of these Romans is to be thought a small boy again, as if incapable of getting his marbles together and playing by the rules. The play lays bare the full force of honor’s power to move humankind; in the last act the women too behave as an honor group. Although Antony and Cleopatra take their own lives in the end, this is strangely the most upbeat of the plays from Plutarch. The middle-aged pair throw kingdoms away and scarcely feel guilty on that account. Antony’s defeats culminate in searing shame and dishonor; at the same time, out of that nadir in the represented action, a resurgent sense of individual autonomy endows defeat itself with a combatlike rhythm. Even 67

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death will be greeted as another adversary, not as punishment: ‘‘Bid that welcome / Which comes to punish us,’’ as Antony says of his own death, ‘‘and we punish it, / Seeming to bear it lightly’’ (4.14.136–38). Note the external cast of the expressed antagonism: appearances really do count. The stoic attitude takes punishment into its own hands and entertains no thought whatever of the disobedience usually associated with punishment—or rather, Antony defies that interpretation of the facts. The moral sphere that features punishment or fancies guilt feelings is allotted no space in the play, whose amplitude is repeatedly attested both by its geography and by its poetry. Like Julius Caesar, and unlike Shakespeare’s four intervening tragedies, Antony and Cleopatra portrays but a single generation. The population divides east and west, the Romans and their armies form and reform into factions, but there are no elders to contribute advice or children to represent the future. There are three or four passing references to children of Cleopatra, but none is given any dramatic weight whatever, and her past is most memorably figured as her ‘‘salad days’’ (1.5.73). She and Antony do not think of the future. Nor is the play in the least concerned with a future polity, even though Antony’s defeat clears the way for Octavius Caesar to become the first Roman emperor, and one would suppose that the reign of Augustus would be more in keeping with British imaginings of the reign of James I. There are rivalries, allegiances, betrayals, yes, but no sense of which leader or faction ought of right to remain in charge. Instead, as in Julius Caesar, the culture is that of male equals who size one another up from moment to moment in the course of the action. This process is evident in the treatment of the lesser powers Lepidus and Pompey and also in that of the principals Antony and the younger Caesar. From beginning to end we get Antony especially through other people’s eyes, not least those of Cleopatra. But Antony himself is ‘‘a spacious mirror’’ for Caesar, who in an apostrophe in act 5 sums up their relation by lamenting, That thou, my brother, my competitor In top of all design, my mate in empire, Friend and companion in the front of war, The arm of mine own body, and the heart Where mine his thoughts did kindle—that our stars, Unreconciliable, should divide Our equalness to this. (5.1.34, 42–48)

Few passages in Shakespeare could better illustrate what Stewart intends by competitive honor (1994, 59), yet the same testimony and the action of Antony and Cleopatra as a whole portray the rivalry as that of presumed equals.

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The play is traditionally understood to oppose Antony’s honor to his infatuation with Cleopatra, and Roman civilization to the debilitating East. ‘‘Let his shames quickly / Drive him to Rome,’’ Caesar protests early in the play (1.4.72–73); and Antony’s defeat at Actium, ‘‘like a doting mallard,’’ graphically rounds out that theme. As Scarus, one of his followers, exclaims, ‘‘I never saw an action of such shame; / Experience, manhood, honor, ne’er before / Did violate so itself’’ (3.10.19, 21–23). Yet in the larger frame of the action, the match of Antony and Cleopatra is also honor-driven. The fame of the two brings them together, and Shakespeare portrays not so much sexual desire as the will to indulge it and other pleasures. It is Antony’s autonomous will, finally, that overrides his two marriages and the interests of the state (both defined here as shifting male alliances). The affair with Cleopatra is more of a game than a temptation, for there are no strictures the man must obey but those he ostensibly imposes on himself. His words for their embrace are no doubt exaggerated for effect but still to the point: Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch Of the rang’d empire fall! Here is my space, Kingdoms are clay; our dungy earth alike Feeds beast as man; the nobleness of life Is to do thus—when such a mutual pair And such a twain can do’t, in which I bind, On pain of punishment, the world to weet We stand up peerless. (1.1.33–40)

The lovers themselves are a ‘‘mutual pair’’; if they ‘‘stand up peerless,’’ is it because of love or fame? Shakespeare throughout trades on the worldwide reputation of the pair. Whereas his early tragedy of love Romeo and Juliet made its young lovers famous, Antony and Cleopatra takes its lovers’ fame as a given and the reason for their coming together. They are also peerless thereafter, in a longer competition of contenders over recorded time. ‘‘The nobleness of life / Is to do thus’’: a decision of autonomous wills. ‘‘On pain of punishment’’—a legal phrase—is directed at the hoi polloi, who may admire from a distance but who are constrained from acting so by fear. In the words of Scarus, after the battle of Actium, Antony has disobeyed no one and broken no law. Rather, each factor invoked—‘‘experience, manhood, honor’’—has violated ‘‘itself.’’ And Antony, on the same occasion, is the most eloquent in saying just that: ‘‘Hark, the land bids me tread no more upon’t, / It is asham’d to bear me. Friends, come hither: / I am so lated in the world, that I / Have lost my way for ever.’’ With characteristic magnanimity he urges his associates to take the treasure ship in the harbor and go over to Caesar’s side if

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they wish, but in any case to desert him: ‘‘let that be left / Which leaves itself’’ (3.11.1–4, 19–20). His dishonor thus entails his loss of identity and debars their continuing identification with him. Yet one of the astonishing things about Antony and Cleopatra is the way it summons up its hero’s youth and its heroine’s salad days. Even at this age Antony can still blush: in the battle at sea ‘‘I follow’d that’’—Cleopatra’s retreating galley—‘‘I blush to look upon. / My very hairs do mutiny; for the white / Reprove the brown for rashness, and they them / For fear and doting’’ (3.11.12–15). And as his difficulties mount, he is tempted to denominate his younger rival a mere boy. Antony’s sarcasm betrays his thought to the latter’s ambassador—‘‘To the boy Caesar send this grizzled head’’ (3.13.17)—and the ambassador does not fail to report the insult. As Caesar grimly informs his officers at the beginning of act 4, ‘‘He calls me boy, and chides as he had power / To beat me out of Egypt’’ (4.1.1–2). The enormity of calling someone ‘‘boy’’ in this Roman culture will be driven home at the end of Coriolanus, when Aufidius insults the hero to his face with the words ‘‘thou boy of tears’’ (5.6.100) and, as a result, Coriolanus expends the last moments of his life in a catatonic fit. Antony and Cleopatra confirms two important theses about honor. First, honor is not the same as fealty, yet it does assume mutual respect, a process that is first realized in the course of becoming a man. Second, no punishment is exacted for dishonor except that incidental to the change of fortune it may bring, for there is no acknowledged superior to administer punishment. Instead of punishment there may be loss of one’s manhood or, more narrowly, membership in the specific group, which Antony in the play anticipates by asking the others to leave him. Exclusion from the honor group is the sanction that best explains how honor can have such a hold on men who boast of their free and autonomous wills. Antony and Cleopatra adds these lessons together and dramatizes in the final acts the plight of a hero who ceases to be a man, who no longer is. When Antony dies—his suicide itself a botched job—Cleopatra pronounces over his body the words ‘‘O, wither’d is the garland of the war, / The soldier’s pole is fall’n! Young boys and girls / Are level now with men’’ (4.15.64–66). The garland and the pole both speak warmly of Antony alive; the conceit that in comparison to Antony other men are no more than boys and girls also compliments both the warrior and the lover. The point again turns on coming of age and attaining adulthood in the first place, the course of honor commencing with entry into the comparison group and concluding with suicide, as preferred to no longer belonging to that group. Cleopatra’s renewed tributes to her man in act 5 are similarly striking, but Antony’s own voice testifies most eerily to the

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sense of his fading from existence altogether. To Octavia in act 3 he has averred that ‘‘if I lose mine honor, / I lose myself’’ (3.4.22–23); and that is the commonplace that Shakespeare augments with such anguished dramatic poetry after the defeat at Actium. The chances of combat continue to swing back and forth in act 4, until losing again and distrust of Cleopatra bring Antony to a new low. Just before he receives the false intelligence of her suicide and attempts to take his own life, he delivers this virtual monologue to the attendant named Eros: Eros, thou yet behold’st me? eros Ay, noble lord. antony Sometime we see a cloud that’s dragonish, A vapor sometime like a bear or lion, A tower’d citadel, a pendant rock, A forked mountain, or blue promontory With trees upon’t that nod unto the world, And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs, They are black vesper’s pageants. eros Ay, my lord. antony That which is now a horse, even with a thought The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct As water is in water. eros It does, my lord. antony My good knave Eros, now thy captain is Even such a body. Here I am Antony, Yet cannot hold this visible shape, my knave. (4.14.1–14)

Eros understands that he is not really being asked to testify to Antony’s physical presence. If this is a dialogue at all, it is Socratic, and Antony’s metaphors are didactic as well as self-dramatizing. The unreal, multiple, and shifting cloud figures summarize all that is left of his identity, inside or out. ‘‘Now thy captain is / Even such a body’’: but clouds, as we say, have no body to them. Antony’s ‘‘visible shape’’ has drifted off with his honor, and the process of respect that has defined his being is necessarily at an end. As invisibly as water passing into water, his suicide will dissipate what little is left. The dislimning of Antony has been held off this long only by his recovering will. The imagery of fading, dissolving, melting—or ‘‘discandying’’ (3.13.165), to use one of Shakespeare’s own coinages—corresponds to the action of the play as a whole (Charney, 1961, 136–41). The drama of ‘‘greatness going off’’ (4.13.6) concludes by universalizing the theme of an identity defined as honor. Antony becomes representative of a person invested with an identity by his

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fellows and not by teleological design; his role in history, or even that of Octavius Caesar, is not at all what Shakespeare has in mind. Because in his approaching invisibility Antony might be any of us, the play suggests that every society must in part be an honor culture. A democratization of the theme is movingly played out in act 5 by Cleopatra, Charmian, and Iras, persons who are neither Roman nor male. When ‘‘Royal Egypt’’ wakes from her swoon after her lover’s death, she announces herself to be ‘‘no more but e’en a woman, and commanded / By such poor passion as the maid that milks’’ (4.15.70, 73–74). A sisterhood, to whom she now relates as one of the ‘‘girls,’’ closes ranks around her in the last scenes. Caesar, who hopes to display this captive in Rome, pretends to ‘‘purpose her no shame’’ (5.1.62) in order to forestall her following Antony’s example. But Cleopatra is not deceived: ‘‘He words me, girls, he words me, that I should not / Be noble to myself.’’ In this new honor group (since girls are level now with men?) the queen is, in Charmian’s oxymoron, ‘‘a lass unparallel’d.’’ Again competitive honor assumes a field of comparison, while the demotic ‘‘lass’’ opens the field to all women at the time of coming of age. Caesar attributes Cleopatra’s style in dying to her ‘‘being royal,’’ but Charmian’s speech evokes a whole group of lasses (5.2.191–92, 316, 336). Most readings of the play used to deny Cleopatra her dignity. Far from appreciating the community of the women in act 5, critics called attention to Cleopatra’s deviousness with Caesar and his emissaries and knowingly connected this behavior to her mischievous lovemaking with Antony in act 1. It is worth noting that some of these charges would need to be brought against Caesar also. As North put it in his translation of Plutarch, Caesar goes off ‘‘supposing he had deceived her, but indeed he was deceived himself’’ (Bullough, 1964, 314). Actually, the behavior of both these contenders in act 5 might be glossed by Pitt-Rivers’ attempt to describe the relation between honor and truth telling: if a man’s ‘‘true will was not behind the promise or the assertion, then he is not dishonoured if he fails to fulfil the promise or turns out to have lied. . . . it is lack of steadfastness in intentions which is dishonouring, not misrepresentation of them.’’ As Pitt-Rivers goes on to explain, the felt autonomy of the man—in this case the woman—lies behind these niceties. A ‘‘duty to tell the truth curtails the personal autonomy of the man who may otherwise feel himself entitled, on account of his social pre-eminence, to represent reality as he pleases and offer no justification’’ (1965, 32–33; also Shapin, 1994, 101–7). Cleopatra’s intentions are reasonably clear, because in order to fix the dramatic irony of the last scenes Shakespeare renders Caesar’s intentions unmistakable. The personal autonomy of a host of characters in Antony and Cleopatra—even that of some notable subordinates like Enobarbus—is dra-

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matically fixed. Failure to follow orders is never the question; failure to live up to expectations may be. A curious instance of the difficulties that Pitt-Rivers expounds is young Pompey’s refusal of the pirate Menas’s offer to rid him, treacherously, of all his rivals. If only, Pompey protests, Menas had just done it without telling him since, for publication at least, ‘‘’Tis not my profit that does lead mine honor; / Mine honor, it’’ (2.7.75–76). Antony himself never blames Cleopatra for her last deception of him, though he has more than once burst out in anger against her—presumably because he grasps her intention. In act 5 she determines to live up to his example, and then to die by his example. When Dolabella refuses to believe Cleopatra’s exalted ‘‘dream’’ of Antony astride the ocean, she gives him the lie: ‘‘You lie up to the hearing of the gods!’’ When another agent of Caesar tries to smooth-talk her, she lies right back. ‘‘I hourly learn / A doctrine of obedience,’’ she pretends; but a doctrine of obedience is exactly what she and honor scorn (5.2.95, 30–31). Although Antony and Cleopatra is certainly not about girls and boys, the last hours of both protagonists trumpet a reprise of their coming of age. From the beginning their identities loom larger in the action than their love: ‘‘the nobleness of life / Is to do thus—when such a mutual pair / And such a twain can do’t’’ (1.1.36–38). When their wills are frustrated, they have no recourse but to will their own deaths. Shakespeare throughout places his characters in perspective; he shows how they appear to this person and to that, and how Antony and Cleopatra see one another. As in Julius Caesar, power itself waits on respect instead of the other way around. There is no accepted hierarchy of authority or any fixed procedure for arriving at consensus. In Antony and Cleopatra, personal autonomy makes grander claims than in the earlier play yet still can only be composed of respect. Antony can no more see his own face than Brutus could; only the others can help him see himself whole. The atmosphere of Coriolanus is strikingly different—all the more so because readers, along with members of the original audience, are aware that its composition followed swiftly upon the demise of this famous pair in their glory. It’s as if Shakespeare now had in mind additional pressing thoughts about the Roman honor culture and the willed autonomy of its heroes. Set in earlier republican times, Coriolanus is more politically focused than the other two plays; the sway of leadership and popular election fill the center of the action. Unlike the Romans of Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus also has a linear family, three generations of which appear onstage at the end and crucially cut into the hero’s autonomy. Again the play lacks the interiority that Bradley prized in Shakespearean tragedy, and this third Plutarchian experiment concludes with a chilling sense of familial and political loss. Since I have summarized and defended my reading of Coriolanus elsewhere

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(2005), I won’t repeat all of that here. But it is important to recognize how thoroughly Shakespeare champions his strident hero before leading him to this collapse (Waith, 1962, 121–43). The use of dramatic irony is the clue: even people who find Caius Martius, named Coriolanus, too unpleasant a protagonist are forced to identify with him in some degree because of the way the scurrilous tribunes, Brutus and Sicinius, maneuver public opinion behind his back. The treatment of Aufidius, the hero’s great rival and leader of the Volscian enemy, likewise moves us to side with the hero: in Plutarch, Aufidius does not even emerge as a player until the end of the story, but Shakespeare brings him onstage early, displays his resentment of Coriolanus, and has him announce to the audience his determination to get back at him underhandedly. Enough battle scenes are staged early on to render Martius’s prowess and fearlessness unquestionable and to reveal his style of leadership. In truth these Roman commanders do not lead by handing down orders; they lead by example in the forefront of the action, Martius first among all. Follow me, is the cry, and it sometimes works: in 1.6 the folio’s stage direction certifies, ‘‘They all shout and wave their swords, take him up in their arms, and cast up their caps.’’ This hero may be infamous for his contempt and his sarcasm, a kind of verbal tearing of the flesh; but these are a soldier’s coarse way of saying, Prove yourself worthy of the group. In Shakespeare’s play this honor code then spills over and clashes with the politics of incipient democracy. His hero has a lovehate relation with the people similar to that which he has with Aufidius. Coriolanus could well serve as a case study in the basic difference between honor and fame. After the bloody action in the field of act 1, in the scene in which the hero is rewarded for his deeds by being named Coriolanus with a flourish of trumpets and drums, he responds wryly, ‘‘I will go wash; / And when my face is fair, you shall perceive / Whether I blush or no’’ (1.9.68–70). Much evidence in the rest of the play suggests that under the frequently mentioned splatter of Volscian blood its hero, in this characteristic reply, probably is blushing. To the tribunes and citizens Martius is just not credible on this score, since he has achieved so much and berates them for not fighting. In the opening dialogue of the play the second citizen reminds the others of Martius’s services to Rome, but the first citizen insists that ‘‘what he hath done famously, he did it to that end,’’ or alternatively that ‘‘he did it to please his mother.’’ After Martius has entered the scene and departed, one of the tribunes repeats the accusation that it is fame ‘‘at the which he aims’’ (1.1.36–39, 263). His mother, Volumnia, embraces the same argument, significantly, when she boasts that she—not Martius—‘‘was pleas’d to let him seek danger where he was like to find fame’’ (1.3.12–13). But Shakespeare discredits the tribunes every chance he gets: it is simply not true, as they say, that the hero goes about ‘‘topping all others in

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boasting’’ (2.1.20), for example, or people like themselves wouldn’t be so irritated by his not boasting. And it is Volumnia, not Coriolanus, who is first to be inconsistent in the critical turning of act 3. The reason he shrinks from praise is precisely to avoid the imputation that is foremost in their crasser minds: namely, that he takes such risks and fights so unstoppably in order to win fame. To him it is false and shameful to have ulterior motives for one’s actions, to do one thing in order to achieve a different end—in this case fame. He deserves his fame, but the more famous he becomes, the more he needs to reject the imputation that he purposes to be famous. He instinctively turns away from the instrumentalism that Kant will depreciate as hypothetical, such imperatives as regard ‘‘a possible action as a means to achieving something else that one wills’’ (1785, 4:414). Honor, on the other hand, strikes this hero with the immediacy of categorical imperatives. Shakespeare’s hero is more a man of moral principle than he is usually given credit for, though within the play only the older men Cominius and Menenius come close to appreciating this. Here is Martius fending against praise on the battlefield: Pray now, no more. My mother, Who has a charter to extol her blood, When she does praise me grieves me. I have done As you have done—that’s what I can; induc’d As you have been—that’s for my country: He that has but effected his good will Hath overta’en mine act.

Martius wants to believe that what he has done is the same as what his cohorts have done, and here he says so for their encouragement, not disparagement. In the last sentence—‘‘He that has but effected his good will / Hath overta’en mine act’’—he is speaking categorically. Editors sometimes gloss ‘‘overtaken’’ as surpassed, but that ignores the deliberate understatement of ‘‘but’’ without really making better sense of his meaning. Anyone who has effected his goodwill, done what he knew he had to do, has done the same as I have. The idea is that the intrinsic worth of all such acts is equal, even if results are sometimes disproportionate. Cominius urges that to hide the exceptional achievement is unfair to Rome; but he understands his colleague’s position well enough to couch the compliment as a ‘‘sign of what you are, not to reward / What you have done.’’ Martius replies, ‘‘I have some wounds upon me, and they smart / To hear themselves rememb’red’’ (1.9.13–19, 26–29). This modesty seems genuine; the more sensitive a person is to others’ respect, the more sensitive he or she is likely to be to their feelings of comparative success. There was a time,

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not more than one or two generations ago, when goal-scoring football heroes kept their faces lowered when they ran back to their positions on the field, and young tennis stars blushed to defeat a more renowned opponent. Stanley Fish believes that Coriolanus shrinks from praise because he cannot tolerate ‘‘submitting himself to the judgment of anyone’’ (1980, 208–10). This thought places the critic in company with the tribunes Sicinius and Brutus— though it is true Shakespeare’s hero has no use for praise or blame from those he judges not worthy of continuing to be Roman citizens. Fish’s real contribution is to show how acts 2 and 3 of Coriolanus seem to anticipate speech-act theory, as taught by J.L. Austin at Oxford. Coriolanus has, whether he intended to or not, easily positioned himself to run for consul in Rome after the defeat of the Volscians. But he runs afoul of the custom of showing his battle wounds and requesting the voices, or votes, of the citizens. Fish gives the conditions for successfully performing a request with words, as set forth by John Searle (1969, 66), and shows how Coriolanus in effect voids his request of the people before he can even get around to making it. Coriolanus cannot get himself to ask for anything, and in these two acts especially the play is about how to do (or not to do) things with words. But though I agree with that analysis and value it for calling attention to Shakespeare’s understanding of performatives, two comments are in order. First, the hero’s discomfort and objections to standing for election are ethical as well as uncomprehending of the procedure. He fears the imputation that he acted as he did in the wars in order to gain some other end, as if he had risked his life on purpose to win the people’s votes and the consulship. He puts it just this way: ‘‘As if I had received [my wounds] for the hire / Of their breath’’ (2.2.149–50). Thus again he dissociates himself from a hypothetical imperative, the gaining of the consulship, and in so speaking recalls that men of honor traditionally scorned working for hire, perhaps for this same Kantian reason. Coriolanus does not regard his stance as recidivist but as reformist. ‘‘Custom’’ requires that he seek votes for office, but custom might just be the problem: ‘‘What custom wills, in all things should we do’t, / The dust on antique time would lie unswept, / And mountainous error be too highly heap’d / For truth to o’erpeer’’ (2.3.117–21). Second, long before speech-act theory came along, Renaissance discussions of honor were closely concerned with the relation of words and deeds, hence performatives. One’s ‘‘truth,’’ in this context, more likely referred to loyalty or integrity—to whom or what one was true—than to an accurate representation of the facts. Deeds are superior to words, and therefore honor scorns words that are not backed by deeds: giving one’s word of honor means that they will be. The ranging dispute about the people’s voices in Coriolanus takes

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place against this tradition (Gordon, 1964). Basically, Martius contends that the words and votes of the citizens are worthless because those men are deficient in deeds: they do not fight readily enough or well enough for Rome. The tribunes, those ‘‘tongues o’ th’ common mouth’’ (3.1.22), he has still less use for; and his pun substituting ‘‘common mouth’’ for commonwealth underscores the inadequacy of mere talk. At the same time, honor itself cannot dispense with words, which are intrinsic to commitment and promises, to say nothing of vaunting and challenging. To compel others to fight, one gives the lie to them, as Coriolanus vainly tries to do with the tribunes when they call him a traitor: if they were men of honor, they would have to respond with their swords. For the hero, word and deed must be inseparable. His body will stand by his word, and his word must not belie his intentions. ‘‘His heart’s his mouth,’’ as Menenius says; ‘‘What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent’’ (3.1.256–57). In this sense of matching words to intent and backing them with all the force of which his body is capable, Coriolanus will be true to himself. In all these ways Shakespeare constructs the honor culture of his Roman play and establishes the fierce independence of his hero. Then in act 3 the viability of this code of behavior comes in question and the hero’s freedom of action takes on a new and critical meaning. Martius’s behavior has been controversial from the start; now, as Coriolanus, his entire modus operandi comes into doubt. In 3.2 Volumnia takes the initiative in disabusing him of his beliefs, and this scene anticipates the final turning of the action in 5.3 when she, accompanied by her son’s wife and child, averts his attack on Rome. Consistent with his principles, Coriolanus cannot get himself to show his wounds and ask for the citizen’s votes. Volumnia’s inconsistency, in the present crisis, is first apparent. ‘‘You might have been enough the man you are, / With striving less to be so,’’ she now tells her son. Furthermore, ‘‘You are too absolute, / Though therein you can never be too noble’’—except at times like this! And worse, she advises him to be false to himself by divorcing his words from his heart—just what Menenius has said he cannot do. Not for the first time, she tells what she would do in his place: that is, coolly appropriate honor to policy. ‘‘I would dissemble with my nature where / My fortunes and my friends at stake requir’d / I should do so in honor’’ (3.2.19–20, 39–41, 62–64). Coriolanus’s silence is ominous, and his way of life will never be the same again. Volumnia’s pleading, however, also begins to crack the honor code. It becomes pertinent to ask which is the honor group, not only within Rome as the political debate has located the question, but beyond Rome’s borders. The audience has already witnessed how Martius has set his sights on Aufidius, would exchange places with him and even change sides to compete against him. His own values he would extend to all, within and without the precincts

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of Rome, if only others would live up to them. Volumnia now questions whether her son’s devotion to truth telling actually applies to warfare with other peoples. Without supplying any instances, she contends that deception is all part of the game, at war against an enemy, and that truthfulness, in effect, stops at the border. Then she calmly erases the border in order to gain her political point: If it be honor in your wars to seem The same as you are not, which, for your best ends, You adopt your policy, how is it less or worse That it shall hold companionship in peace With honor, as in war, since that to both It stands in like request?

‘‘Honor and policy’’ go together in war, so why not in political differences at home (3.2.46–51, 42)? Does this sound familiar? Her question is one that might trouble moral philosophers and political theorists both, and Coriolanus does not venture an answer. If his mother is right, of course, for all intents and purposes there is no honor group, or if there is, its membership shifts with the exigencies of every decision, since she is asking her son to lie to his fellow Romans as he would to the enemy. Her advice is tantamount to saying that the group is whoever he wants it to be, and the remaining action of the play pursues this idea to its logical conclusions. In the end Coriolanus will have neither peer group nor family to belong to. The official encomium after the victory at Corioles recalls this young warrior’s first battle, his rite of coming of age. Martius was but sixteen, according to Cominius, ‘‘When with his Amazonian’’—that is, beardless—‘‘chin he drove / The bristled lips before him’’; and, ‘‘When he might act the woman in the scene, / He prov’d best man i’ th’ field.’’ The sexist contradictions merely underline the importance of being male as well as grown up. ‘‘His pupil age / Man-ent’red thus,’’ the orator continues, ‘‘he waxed like a sea, / And in the brunt of seventeen battles since / He lurch’d all swords of the garland’’ (2.2.91–101). The play does dwell on the condition of being a grown-up. It is an insult for a grown man to be called a boy and tantamount to his being thrown out of the group. Aufidius’s notorious ‘‘thou boy of tears’’—virtually the last words Coriolanus will hear—is only the worst of it. Menenius can chide the tribunes, ‘‘your abilities are too infant-like for doing much alone’’ (2.1.37–38). When the citizens retract their votes to make Coriolanus consul, he can exclaim, ‘‘Have I had children’s voices?’’ (3.1.30). The hero, with sarcastic self-depreciation, pretends to doubt his own manhood when his mother urges him to say one thing to the people and to mean something else: ‘‘My

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throat of war be turn’d . . . into a pipe / Small as an eunuch, or the virgin voice / That babies lull asleep! The smiles of knaves / Tent in my cheeks, and schoolboy’s tears take up / The glasses of my sight!’’ (3.2.112–17). In the mock comparison of his voice to that of a female babysitter, Janet Adelman remarks, Coriolanus imagines himself undergoing ‘‘a kind of reverse voice change’’ of adolescence (1992, 151). Family unmistakably reasserts itself in this scene, as it does in 5.3. Volumnia is indeed the hero’s mother, and she very much wants to remind him of that. ‘‘Prithee now, / Go, and be rul’d,’’ she attempts to command him to seek votes. Obedience is being called for, the very constraint that honor has supposedly outgrown. Shelved for the time being is the hero’s need to be his autonomous self. When Coriolanus finds his voice again, he is beaten: ‘‘Must I . . . Must I / With my base tongue give to my noble heart / A lie that it must bear? Well, I will do’t.’’ Then he wavers back and forth, as he will in 5.3; and she brings him around by ostensibly dismissing him, as she will also in the later scene. She would take back his very identity if she could: ‘‘Do as thou list; / Thy valiantness was mine, thou suck’st it from me; / But owe thy pride thyself’’ (3.2.89– 90, 99–101, 128–30). At this, the turning point of the action, Shakespeare renders the mother’s despite irrational, not to say pathological—but such is the ugliness to which family quarrels sometimes descend. On the other side, both in his arguments here and in his actions in acts 4 and 5, Coriolanus has lost his constancy (Miles, 1996, 160–68). Yet he knows himself far better than his would-be handlers do, for in the following scene with the tribunes he is still unable to lie to them or to himself. Anger against oneself is not likely to be any more conciliatory than anger between parties, and Coriolanus is unable to mix honor with policy. He behaves not as his mother and the senators have asked him to but as the tribunes have predicted he will. The citizens shout the sentence of banishment on cue, and Coriolanus responds with renewed contempt and the words ‘‘I banish you! / And here remain with your uncertainty!’’ It is a noble reply, but it is he who is on his way out and the Romans who are to remain. The common people among them have never known their own minds, in his view, and now he ambiguously leaves them with their uncertainty, which he may already be planning to prey upon. (He is never uncertain—except that he has just gone back and forth with his mother and friends, saying what he will do and not doing it.) ‘‘Despising, / For you, the city, thus I turn my back; / There is a world elsewhere’’ (3.3.123–24, 133–35). Coriolanus puts a great front on it, but without the group he is indeed ‘‘a kind of nothing, titleless’’ (5.1.13). Shakespeare portrays him as still humanly responsive when he says farewell to his friends and family in 4.1, but he then

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begins to hint of the action to come by introducing a brief scene in prose between a couple of intelligence officers, as we might euphemistically call them: a Volscian, and a Roman who apparently makes a living by supplying intelligence against Rome. No indication of Coriolanus’s course of action has been given, until he appears in the next scene at the gates of Antium and delivers a soliloquy—a wholly uncharacteristic mode of speech for this hero. The uneasiness of what he has to say about chance echoes the cynicism of the spies who have preceded him onstage: O world, thy slippery turns! Friends now fast sworn, Whose double bosoms seems to wear one heart, Whose hours, whose bed, whose meal and exercise Are still together, who twin, as ’twere, in love Unseparable, shall within this hour, On a dissention of a doit, break out To bitterest enmity; so, fellest foes, Whose passions and whose plots have broke their sleep To take the one the other, by some chance, Some trick not worth an egg, shall grow dear friends And interjoin their issues. (4.4.12–22)

So that is all partnership comes down to: slippery turns of fortune, a trick not worth an egg. These are the sentiments that signal Coriolanus’s intention to offer his services to the Volsces. They recall all too well Hamlet’s ‘‘even for an egg-shell,’’ when honor was also supposedly at stake (Hamlet 4.4.53). Aufidius later provides a sort of chorus in a soliloquy of his own after Coriolanus has met with him: ‘‘so our virtues / Lie in th’ interpretation of the time,’’ and ‘‘One fire drives out one fire; one nail, one nail’’ (4.7.49–50, 54). The imperatives of honor apparently depend on bonds that shift at the merest chance, right or wrong is subject to the judgment of history, and one power succeeds another without any distinction. To this rapid dissolution Coriolanus brings the definitive matter of honor, the respect of the peer group. The critique that the play poses is startlingly simple: which group, and what time frame? The certainty with which Coriolanus conceived all his actions cannot accompany him from one group to the next or outlive the power of his arm to back it. The last act makes similar short work of that other characteristic of honor, its grown-up independence and immunity from obedience. The hero’s capitulation before his womenfolk is the resounding dramatic development of his mother’s insistence in act 3 that he be ruled by her. In a moving speech that might as well be a soliloquy—so little does he seem to care who is listening—Coriolanus once more wavers even as

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he vows not to waver. His autonomous will and alliance with the Volsces now confront ‘‘affection, / All bond and privilege of nature.’’ His young son, as well as wife and mother, recalls those ties of life deriving from the successive generation in every family. He steels himself against these attachments by reminding himself that he is not a child and by his most extravagant claim to autonomous being thus far: Let the Volsces Plough Rome and harrow Italy, I’ll never Be such a gosling to obey instinct, but stand As if a man were author of himself, And knew no other kin. (5.3.24–25, 33–37)

And then, in this climactic scene—the anticlimax of Shakespeare’s many examinations of honor—Coriolanus gives in. He makes peace with Rome and returns with Aufidius to Antium. There his Volscian rival, with a view to his own political standing, has his men surround Caius Martius Coriolanus and cut him down—not without first insulting him as a boy of tears and afterward standing upon his body. Aufidius’s bad manners are reproved by his own senators, and the play concludes with his half-apologizing, taking up the body, and promising that Coriolanus ‘‘shall have a noble memory’’ (5.6.153). One has only to compare the eulogy spoken by Antony for Brutus at the close of Julius Caesar to register the difference. In this last Roman play the hero is curtly eliminated, stamped out, by an adversary who has himself become diminished in the course of their rivalry. We are back with something closer to the skepticism of Falstaff on honor, absent the clowning. ‘‘Who hath it? He that died a’ Wednesday.’’ The loyalties of Coriolanus have all become unstuck, his autonomy is of no help to him, and it is now over with, except for the destruction left in his wake. In yielding to instinct, the bonds of nature and affection—‘‘Tell me not / Wherein I seem unnatural’’ (5.3.83–84)—Coriolanus could be said to rejoin the company of Shakespeare’s Hamlet or King Lear, with their mixture of styles and moral uses of nature. The other two experiments with Roman honor, Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, restricted relations to those of the peer group without regard to a role for elders, care for children, or succession of authority within the family. Coriolanus, in testing honor relations and finding them wanting—confused and destructive even at their most heroic pitch—brings this experiment to a close. The bafflement and defeat of Coriolanus by his own family and country can also be said to confirm the organicism of the state implied by the fable of the body politic, adapted from

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Plutarch (Bullough, 1964, 510–11) and delivered by Menenius in act 1 before Martius comes onstage. Because this fable is presented facetiously (1.1.96– 155), its application to the action of the play is left in suspense; but if there is an organ of the body politic that Menenius’s introduction of this fable omits, it is that which corresponds to the hero of honor, who would seem to be irrelevant. In the end, so disturbingly that it chills the heart, that becomes the case; and the frustrated career of Coriolanus is at an end. Both H.D.F. Kitto (1966, 397–98) and Reuben Brower (1971, 372–75) judged that a profound model for act 5 of Coriolanus was book 24 of the Iliad, in which Priam comes to the tent of Achilles in the night, to ransom the body of his son Hector, and speaks of Achilles’ father. Without that very moving scene at the close, Homer’s poem would seem less than tragic—something more like pornography of violence, with Achilles, another killing machine like Coriolanus, at its center. The comparison of these works is instructive because Achilles, too, in his anger threatens as much harm to his own side as he does to the enemy. The interposition of the older and younger generations at the end of Coriolanus is less tragic, more in the nature of a demonstration. No such feelings as Homer invests in his Priam are wasted on Volumnia, whose victory over her son is fatal to him. The hero’s athletic military achievement is rubbed out by Aufidius, and it is politics as usual in republican Rome. Impractical and destructive as it proves to be, the earlier uncompromising honor of Coriolanus may paradoxically be the most attractive feature of this hero and of the play itself. In truth, the man’s principles attach him to a world that does not exist. Like Achilles, Coriolanus believes in speaking his mind, but he frames some of his most exalted thoughts as conditions contrary to fact: ‘‘And were I anything but what I am, / I would wish me only he’’; and ‘‘Were half to half the world by th’ ears, and he / Upon my party, I’d revolt’’ (1.1.231– 34). But Martius happens not to be Aufidius, and Aufidius is not on his side to begin with. He invents still other counterfactuals so that he can vent his indignation: ‘‘As if I lov’d my little should be dieted / In praises sauc’d with lies’’ (1.9.52–53); and ‘‘As if I had receiv’d [my wounds] for the hire / Of their breath only!’’ (2.2.149–50). He heaps up impossibilities for the purpose of vaunting: ‘‘Within thine eyes sate twenty-thousand deaths, / In thine hands clutch’d as many millions, in / Thy lying tongue both numbers, I would say / ‘Thou liest’ ’’ (3.3.70–73). All these conditions contrary to fact raise the question of whether honor is not pursued as an unattainable ideal. Coriolanus’s great riposte, ‘‘I banish you’’ (3.3.123), would seem to be another: he cannot banish the people except from a Rome that exists only in his head. His most breathtaking claim to autonomous being—the rejoinder, in a sense, to his mother’s claim that he sucked his valor from her breasts—is that he will fight

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against his instincts ‘‘As if a man were author of himself, / And knew no other kin’’ (5.3.36–37). But a man is not the author of himself, and the mood of the speaker’s verb betrays that he is aware of this. The sum of these counterfactuals should also alert the audience to the impossibility of some of honor’s claims. As Menenius says of the hero at the crisis, ‘‘His nature is too noble for the world’’ (3.1.254), and that may be one serious lesson of the play. This most Kantian of Shakespearean heroes scorns hypothetical imperatives to action. The tribunes and his mother, on the contrary, can imagine no imperatives other than the hypothetical in Kant’s sense. To their understanding, a hero acts to achieve a certain end. If you do not call off this attack on Rome, his mother tells him, your name will be abhorrent to future ages. But the categorical imperatives of honor refuse to calculate results. In the phenomenal world of this tragedy, Coriolanus’s counterfactuals come to nothing and his own imperatives are finally subject to the group in question, the politics and history of the immediate situation. They abruptly give way to other imperatives with which they conflict. The man of honor regresses to a family man—a mere son, father, and husband again. His nearly unprecedented demonstration of autonomy wearily takes refuge in something like habitual obedience.

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Honor by That Name in Mandeville and Montesquieu

The Enlightenment looked to classical themes—ancient history, classical philosophy and literature—just as fervently as the Renaissance did. Plutarch’s Lives became more than an occasional source; before the commencement of the nineteenth century selected Lives had become common school texts. In his Confessions (1764–70, 1:9), Jean-Jacques Rousseau tells us that he read Plutarch aloud to his father when he was just seven years old. Needless to say, Aristotle and Cicero continued to impress the philosophes, with the additional urgency that, for most, morality was now to be defended independently of the commands of God. For moral philosophy, however, it had become traditional to treat honor among the passions that sway human beings. As I have indicated, I believe this philosophical practice of keeping honor at arm’s length from morals proper was—and is—something of a mistake. Even if one reduces honor as a motive to the love of fame, the fame in question is a complicated social matter; and our famed heroes have not necessarily acted as they have in order to acquire fame. A code of honor is more like a set of maxims, some of which dictate behavior that is frankly, even brutally, contrary to the agent’s desires. By writing of self-esteem in The Passions of the Soul, René Descartes adopted the usual practice of regarding honor as a passion; but when he claims that ‘‘one thing which might give us good reason to esteem ourselves’’ is ‘‘the use of our

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free will, and the empire which we possess over our wishes’’ (1649, 1:401), the said exercise of the will and the metaphorical empire that it establishes resound with stoicism rather than desire. That Descartes treats esteem in a consideration of the passions did not preclude his writing shrewd things about it, needless to say. Like Aristotle and Cicero before him, and David Hume and Adam Smith, Rousseau and Kant after him, Descartes discoursed ably on pride and humility, disdain and ingratitude, self-satisfaction and emulation, and—often in the same breath—on morality. The tensions and ambiguities latent in this traditional stance of philosophy showed themselves briefly in certain indignant objections to a passage—a faux pas, so to speak—in one of the most influential of Enlightenment texts, An Essay concerning Human Understanding. This was the most ambitious of the extraordinary outpouring of Locke’s writings when he returned from exile, and in the last decade of his active life, its author managed to see it through four editions. The Essay did not directly address moral philosophy, but in a chapter originally titled simply ‘‘Relations,’’ Locke classified ‘‘the Laws that men generally refer their Actions to, to judge of their Rectitude, or Obliquity,’’ as follows: ‘‘1. The Divine Law. 2. The Civil Law. 3. The philosophical Law.’’ (In this and the following extract, I have reconstructed the wording of the first, 1690, edition of the Essay from Peter H. Nidditch’s textual notes.) After devoting a brief paragraph each to the divine and to the civil law—the first enforced by rewards and punishments in the afterlife and the second by the criminal justice system—Locke began a considerably longer discussion of the philosophical with these sentences: The third, which I call the philosophical Law, not because Philosophers make it, but because they have most busied themselves to enquire after it, and talk about it, is the Law of Vertue, and Vice; which though it be more talked of, possibly, than either of the other, yet how it comes to be established with such Authority as it has, to distinguish and denominate the Actions of Men; and what are the true measures of it, perhaps, is not so generally taken notice of. To comprehend this aright, we must consider, that Men uniting into Politick Societies, though they have resigned up to the Publick the disposing of all their force; so that they cannot employ it against any fellow-Citizen, any farther than the Law of their Country directs: yet they retain still the Power of Thinking well or ill; approving or disapproving the Actions of those they live amongst, and converse with. If therefore we examine it right, we shall find, that the measure of what is every where called and esteemed Vertue and Vice is this approbation or dislike, praise or blame, which by a secret and tacit consent establishes it self in the several Societies, Tribes, and Clubs of Men in the World: whereby several actions come to find Credit or Disgrace amongst them, according to the Judgment, Maxims, or Fashions of that place. (1700, 352–53nn)

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In the second edition of An Essay concerning Human Understanding, Locke perfunctorily renamed this ‘‘philosophical Law’’ as the ‘‘Law of Opinion or Reputation’’ and elaborated on this statement somewhat. For the first two sentences above—but without truly altering his position—he substituted the following: ‘‘Vertue and Vice are Names pretended, and supposed every where to stand for actions in their own nature right and wrong: And as far as they really are so applied, they so far are co-incident with the divine Law abovementioned. But yet, whatever is pretended, this is visible, that these Names, Vertue and Vice, in the particular instances of their application, through the several Nations and Societies of Men in the World, are constantly attributed only to such actions, as in each Country and Society are in reputation or discredit’’ (1700, 353). As a look at book 2, chapter 28, of any subsequent edition will confirm, in spite of his critics Locke neither changed his viewpoint nor conceded that he had expressed himself poorly. His only concessions were to suppress the rubric ‘‘philosophical Law’’ and to refer his readers’ worries to the aforesaid divine law. The sentence that serves as the epigraph to the present book I have printed as given in the second and later editions of the Essay, but obviously it remained essentially unchanged from the first edition, as it appears above. The author learned of the reaction to his so-called philosophical law by the summer of 1690 at the latest. One of Locke’s younger correspondents and a political ally, James Tyrrell, wrote to him of the objections of ‘‘thinking men at Oxford,’’ who in effect were charging that Locke shortchanged both revealed religion and the commonwealth by crediting ‘‘the praise, or dispraise that men give to certain actions in several clubs or societies.’’ By that reasoning, ‘‘if Drunkenness, and sodomy, and cruelty to Enemies . . . should be in any Country . . . thought praise worthy; and that those that could drink most; or enjoy most boys and be most cruel (not only) should be counted the gallantest, and most virtuous, but also be so indeed: and so would really become subjects of that which you call the philosophical Law of virtue, since it had all that you suppose was requisite thereunto.’’ In his letters Tyrrell assures Locke that he is not speaking for himself, but he is quite capable of slipping in his own observations and advice. Of drunkenness and cruelty, he thinks he could supply some examples ‘‘out of the Spanish and other relations of America’’; and he warns that these anarchic possibilities tend ‘‘to come very near what is so much cried out upon’’ against Hobbes’s state of nature (1979, 101–2). Locke calmly defended himself in a letter to his friend dated 4 August 1690. ‘‘’Twas my business [in the Essay] to shew how men came by moral Ideas or Notions and I thought they did by comparing their actions to a rule. The next thing I endeavour to shew is what rules men take to be the standards to which they compare

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their actions to frame moral Ideas.’’ Mainly it was not his purpose to examine the ‘‘nature force or obligation’’ of the rules in question, but how people think of them. Locke wishes his readers ‘‘might have considered better what I writ’’ (1979, 112). And he was probably right. He also troubled to defend himself in an Epistle to the Reader appended to the 1694 edition. The protests against identifying virtue and vice with praise and blame strike a very real chord, nevertheless, and raise the question of relativism, as it is usually called by philosophers—a problem for honor also, as defined in the present book. But Locke is aware of this. He concedes in the first edition of the Essay, in a paragraph that he apparently found no reason to change, that what ‘‘passes for Vice in one Country . . . is counted a Vertue . . . in another.’’ But without pausing, he continues, ‘‘yet every-where Vertue and Praise, Vice and Blame, go together.’’ He cites Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations (2.46) on words that are used to mean more or less the same thing (a passage that I have cited above on honor, for a similar purpose). Locke’s position is that countries are nevertheless more alike than different; his initial reference to societies, tribes, and clubs, after all, was likely meant to raise this very question. Basic human values are not going to differ that much, and ‘‘nothing can be more natural, than to encourage with Esteem and Reputation that, wherein every one finds his Advantage; and to blame and discountenance the contrary.’’ It stands to reason, and self-interest, not to assign blame or commendation where they are not deserved. ‘‘Nay, even those Men, whose Practice was otherwise, failed not to give their Approbation right, few being depraved to that Degree, as not to condemn, at least in others, the Faults they themselves were guilty of.’’ In the course of this argument, indeed, Locke falls back on obedience to divine law, as well as ‘‘the true Boundaries of the Law of Nature’’ (1700, 354–56). So it ought to have been clear to his readers that he was not committing himself to the proposition that praise and blame were all that morality ever amounted to. According to Tyrrell, readers also complained that Locke failed to say what he meant by divine law, to which he gave very little space as compared to this other law. Was it revealed law, the law of Moses, or of Jesus, with ‘‘rewards and greater punishments in the world to come’’? Tyrrell went so far as to suggest that Locke add in parenthesis the words ‘‘which others call the Law of nature’’ (1979, 107–8). In the second edition of the Essay, Locke complied as follows: ‘‘The Divine Law, whereby I mean, that Law which God has set to the actions of Men, whether promulgated to them by the light of Nature, or the voice of Revelation’’ (1700, 352). One gets the impression that some among the book’s original readers were more comfortable with natural law than arbitrary appeals to scripture. The concept of natural law tends to pass over the conscious choice of obedience. Locke himself remarks in the course of this

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correspondence that ‘‘many men do compare their actions to a divine law and thereby form the Ideas of their Moral rectitude or pravity without telling where that law is to be found.’’ He was well acquainted with the advanced thinking of his generation, eager to communicate and to refine his own thinking. He goes out of the way to ask Isaac Newton, for example, to point out any passages in the Essay where he needs to explain himself better (1979, 111, 731). Still, one must acknowledge that Locke was not trying to accomplish everything in this great work. Several times he entertains the thought, almost a promise, ‘‘That Morality is capable of Demonstration, as well as Mathematics’’ (1700, 643); but he leaves that one for Immanuel Kant. In defense of that third, sometime philosophical law—also called ‘‘The Law of Fashion, or private Censure’’—however, Locke did offer this: ‘‘I think, I may say, that he who imagines Commendation and Disgrace, not to be strong Motives on Men . . . seems little skill’d in the Nature, or History of Mankind’’ (1700, 356–57). This wry observation, one of the places that Locke extends the negative judgment to include disgrace, engages unmistakably with the honor of the agents in question, their very identity rather than notoriety. Two influential writers of the next generation would take up this motive and forthrightly name it honor. Bernard Mandeville and Baron de Montesquieu programmatically argued that honor—and that is the word they used—provided necessary social bonds and kept unsocial passions in check. Mandeville, an adept satirist in English as an adopted tongue, seemingly looked down upon the fray with a cynicism that belied his serious purpose. Montesquieu, sometime novelist and a far more collected political thinker, looked about him and upward, to show how the honor code of an aristocracy could serve monarchy. In their different ways, both could be said to defend the status quo; or better, both derived convincing social theories from real life as they understood it. If honor is a passion, for Mandeville and Montesquieu it was the passion that holds out the best promise for society. Although they were writing for a culture that still boasted a titled aristocracy, their conclusions had broader implications for times to come. Mandeville’s philosophical and satiric hybrid, The Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits (1714; Part 2, 1729), made him at once famous and infamous. Neither Hume nor British believers in moral sense took kindly to it, since it was one of those works that made human selfishness constitutive of any morality. Adam Smith would also go out of his way to reprove Mandeville, though it is hard to believe that The Wealth of Nations did not subsequently improve on the basic idea that the unintended consequences of intentional acts can benefit society as a whole, and reflect also Mandeville’s own commitments to mercantilism (Horne, 1978, 51–75; Hundert, 1994, 219–

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36). The design of The Fable of the Bees—an animal fable in about five hundred lines of verse, followed by twenty-four discursive ‘‘remarks’’ in prose —defies any one simple reading, and the tone of much of it is even trickier to interpret. For example, according to one remark attached to the fable, ‘‘one Man in an Army is a check upon another, and a hundred of them that single and without witness would be all Cowards, are for fear of incurring one another’s Contempt made Valiant by being together.’’ Not only do most readers resent being told that bravery results from herdlike behavior, but the remarks persist in calling this phenomenon ‘‘artificial Courage.’’ Predatory animals are stirred by hunger against their prey, and their anger is therefore natural; but soldiers have not that motivation and must substitute for it pride, which may then be cultivated by flattering them. Moreover, Mandeville suggests that soldiers are thus manipulated by their leaders and by government: ‘‘the Government must find out an Equivalent for Courage that will make Men fight,’’ and therefore the fear of shame is put into them. ‘‘The Courage then which is only useful to the Body Politick, and what is generally call’d true Valour, is artificial, and consists in a Superlative Horror against Shame, by Flattery infused into Men of exalted Pride’’ (1714, 1:208–11). This can sound almost as if it were Falstaff preparing for a doctorate in political science. The continuation of The Fable of the Bees, produced fifteen years later, takes the form of six dialogues between Cleomenes (who quite evidently speaks for Mandeville) and one Horatio (the friend and generally admiring understudy). Here is Cleomenes, from a discussion of dueling. Two things, he assures Horatio, are as clear ‘‘as the Sun’’: The first is, that the fear of Shame in general is a matter of Caprice, that varies with Modes and Customs, and may be fix’d on different Objects, according to the different Lessons we have receiv’d, and the Precepts we are imbued with; and that this is the Reason, why this fear of Shame, as it is either well or illplaced, sometimes produces very good effects, and at others is the cause of the most enormous Crimes. Secondly, that, tho’ Shame is a real Passion, the Evil to be fear’d from it is altogether imaginary, and has no Existence but in our own Reflection on the Opinion of others. (1729, 2:95)

At this juncture Cleomenes has decided that pride and shame, however they move us, are value-neutral. Some other, consequentialist principle must be invoked to distinguish between ‘‘good effects’’ and ‘‘the most enormous Crimes.’’ The second point, that the ‘‘Evil’’ feared is imaginary, I take to be not a logical deconstruction of shame but its dematerialization: the pain in question is not physical. Unmistakable in ‘‘our own Reflection on the Opinion of others,’’ however, is the fact of internalization. Otherwise, as Mandeville would express

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it later, a shameless and an honorable man would react no differently. Eventually he decided that pride and shame amounted to the same passion, which he referred to as ‘‘Self-liking’’ and associated with a meaning of honor that goes back to ancient times (1732, 41–42, 12–14). These irritants make it difficult to get to the bottom of Mandeville’s position on honor. ‘‘By Honour, in its proper and genuine Signification, we mean nothing else but the good Opinion of others, which is counted more or less Substantial, the more or less Noise or Bustle there is made about the demonstration of it.’’ The definition starts on a high note, settles upon ‘‘good Opinion’’ as a synonym, and then scoffs at the usual measure of opinion, here characterized as ‘‘Noise or Bustle.’’ Is the comedown meant to entertain us or to drive home some bitter truth? Here honor amounts to a hubbub, and elsewhere the contrivance of politicians. ‘‘In great Families it is like the Gout, generally counted Hereditary, and all Lords Children are born with it. In some that never felt anything of it, it is acquired by Conversation and Reading, (especially of romances) in others by Preferment; but there is nothing that encourages the Growth of it more than a Sword, and upon the first wearing of one, some People have felt considerable Shoots of it in four and twenty Hours’’ (1714, 1:63, 198–99). As the mock of romances anticipates, the writer will shortly mention Cervantes’ Don Quixote. But Mandeville’s fun making is also searching. We need not be put off by it, and it would be a mistake merely to be entertained. The satirist is pushing a hard line about morality. He knows that morality is deeply and often confusingly invested in the meaning of words. He admits that moral agents differ radically in what he calls their constitution, their physical and emotional makeup, over which they often have little control. When the chips are down, honor is a better bet than virtue for constraining and directing social lives. Basically, Mandeville sees a role for honor much like the one Sharon Krause advocates today, though her argument originates specifically with Montesquieu: that is, unlike virtue, honor manages to combine self-sacrifice with selfinterest (2002, 189). Virtue, especially the Christian virtue of modern times, requires a different order of self-denial and thus, according to Mandeville, is rarer altogether. As for honor, ‘‘there would be no living without it in a large Nation; it is the tie of Society, and though we are beholden to our Frailties for the chief Ingredient of it, there is no Virtue, at least that I am acquainted with, that has been half so instrumental to the civilizing of Mankind.’’ This position would be more feasible to some readers if it described an aristocracy, but Mandeville as usual is thinking of the rest of us, the troops, the generality of mankind: ‘‘Nothing civilizes a Man equally as his Fear.’’ Unlike Aristotle, however, Mandeville means the fear of shame—the damage to our own reflec-

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tion on the opinion of others that he repeatedly comes back to. This is not the same as fear of punishment. It is not the same as fear of death. On the contrary, it is a fear that can overcome the fear of death. The kind of motivation that Aristotle attributed to a few, Mandeville attributes to the many—and society must do the best it can with it. When he writes of honor as ‘‘an Invention of Moralists and Politicians,’’ therefore, he is not being dismissive but stating what moralists and politicians necessarily have to work with. Leadership usually depends on an excess of the same: ‘‘if some great Men had not a superlative Pride, and every body understood the Enjoyment of Life, who would be a Lord Chancellor of England, a Prime Minister of State in France, or . . . a Grand Pensionary of Holland? The reciprocal Services which all Men pay to one another are the Foundation of the Society’’ (1714, 1:218–19, 198, 220–21). Honor admittedly gives rein to appetites that virtue would never countenance. ‘‘Good Manners have nothing to do with Virtue or Religion; instead of extinguishing, they rather inflame the Passions.’’ Yet there is no passion that honor cannot conquer, and no force of will more capable of self-denial. Mandeville insists that honor in this department is comparable to true religion. But honor’s urgings are the opposite of religion’s: ‘‘Religion commands you to leave all Revenge to God, Honour bids you trust your Revenge to no body but your self. . . . Religion plainly forbids Murther, Honour openly justifies it: Religion bids you not shed Blood upon any Account whatever: Honour bids you fight for the least Trifle; Religion is built on Humility, and Honour upon Pride’’ (1714, 1:79, 221–22). This need not mean that Mandeville approves of dueling, but just as virtue is so much less effective in the world than honor, so religion—more especially the Catholic Church—has failed to uphold its end. Society must carry on as it can, with human nature as it finds it. Mandeville’s Enquiry into the Origin of Honour and the Usefulness of Christianity in War (1732), written a year before his death, is a more sober and prosaic work, impressive for the seriousness with which it addresses these issues. It consists of four further dialogues between Cleomenes and Horatio, the first two of which carefully recast the former’s thoughts about honor. Dueling—or what people mean by honor as a ‘‘Term of Art’’—is discussed, and Cleomenes is at pains to show that this institution was of Gothic rather than classical origins. He wryly comments that it grew out of trials by combat that were sanctioned by the church as well as the state. Awkwardly, honor is called ‘‘an Invention of Politicians’’ again, but with an aim ‘‘to keep Men close to their Promises and Engagements, when all other Ties prov’d ineffectual; and the Christian Religion itself was often found insufficient for that Purpose.’’ Now ‘‘skilful Rulers’’ have probably been ‘‘tempted to try if Man could not be made an Object of Reverence to himself’’ when religion fails. Under question-

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ing from Horatio, Cleomenes makes clear that this self-liking had to be present in humanity naturally before it could be ‘‘encreas’d by an artful Education,’’ and that by moralists and politicians he really means ‘‘All’’ who, ‘‘having studied Human Nature, have endeavour’d to civilize Men, and render them more and more tractable, either for the Ease of Governours and Magistrates, or else for the Temporal Happiness of Society in general.’’ So this is very much an Enlightenment response to institutional religion and received political wisdom, a response that leads directly to Rousseau’s thinking. Later Cleomenes will quip, ‘‘Pray, when a Man asserts a Thing upon his Honour, is it not a Kind of Swearing by himself, as others do by God?’’ (1732, 30, 39–41, 87). This is not a dismissive crack about honor but part of a sober discussion of promise keeping and other commitments as necessary to social well-being. In these dialogues Mandeville can spell out, by scripting the speech of his Cleomenes, the advantages honor holds over virtue in the conduct of human affairs. He still makes it hard for his readers—honor is ‘‘an Improvement in the Art of Flattery,’’ for example—and easy for his critics to quote out of context; but this satiric residue remains from the initial irony that private vices confer public benefits. Virtue came first, or at least has long been advocated as the solution to the troubles humanity brings upon itself; honor ‘‘as a Principle’’ is of later date. But ‘‘the Invention of Honour has been far more beneficial to the Civil Society than that of Virtue, and much better answer’d the End for which they were invented’’ (1732, 42–43). Virtue has proved less effective because it makes no allowances for indulging our appetites and because it demands no recognition from others. In contrast, the man of honor is cheered by recognition and free to seek it; by invoking the ‘‘Term of Art,’’ he can punish with death the smallest trespass on his dignity. It is also more natural to resent real or imagined injuries than to forgive them. Cleomenes is obviously thinking of Christian virtues, though he comes short of Hume’s subsequent denial of any merit to ‘‘celibacy, fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, solitude, and the whole train of monkish virtues’’ (1751, 270). Also, earlier Cleomenes has conceded that what honor singles out as meritorious depends on the opinion of the group: a pickpocket is not going to praise one of his fellow thieves for neglecting a good pocket. Mandeville’s Enquiry begins with a just complaint of the many and miscellaneous ways in which the word honor has been used. Cleomenes believes that honor originates from ‘‘a Passion in our Nature’’—he doesn’t claim that honor is this passion—to which no one has thought to give a name. He gives this the name ‘‘Self-liking,’’ deliberately eschewing ‘‘Self-love.’’ The helpful Horatio provides a summary of this opening argument:

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I now understand perfectly well what you mean by Self-liking. You are of Opinion, that we are all born with a Passion manifestly distinct from Selflove; that, when it is moderate and well regulated, excites in us the Love of Praise, and a Desire to be applauded and thought well of by others, and stirs us up to good Actions: but that the same Passion, when it is excessive, or ill turn’d, whatever it excites in our Selves, gives Offence to others, renders us odious, and is called Pride. (1732, 6)

The distinction being built here corresponds to many such that go at least as far back as Aristotle and have required additional terms like vanity and modesty to distinguish one sort of pride from another—and more commonly, ‘‘true’’ honor from something else. Despite the claim, in this case, that we are born with ‘‘Self-liking’’ and its potential for better or worse, the idea is most similar to what Rousseau will call ‘‘amour propre’’ and associate with the civil state. Mandeville’s distinction between self-love and self-liking clearly anticipates that of Rousseau between amour de soi-même and amour propre. Montesquieu thought about honor in much the same way, though The Spirit of the Laws, his culminating work, is much more ambitious and systematic than anything by Mandeville. Both writers are tough-minded and take the world as they find it. For Montesquieu this world is the monarchy of his own day and the aristocracy of which he is a member, seen against a backdrop of history and cultures worldwide. He paints a pretty disappointing picture of courtiers: you won’t find much virtue among them. But just here he draws the same contrast between virtue and honor that Mandeville posits. In a republic, virtue should motivate all those who share power; be that as it may, virtue requires far too much self-renunciation for the class of men who surround and influence the power of a king. ‘‘The honor of monarchies is favored by the passions, and favors them in its turn.’’ As with Mandeville, honor is able to take advantage of private ambition for public good. The interaction among the nobles results in a certain moderation after all. Honor thus ‘‘supplies the place of the political virtue’’ that is missing from this set (1748, 1:34, 24). Honor is simply more effective in constraining and directing behavior than virtue could be. For Montesquieu honor is the principle of a monarchical state. His view of honor is hierarchical—and his book has sometimes been cited by those who share that view. Honor adheres to those of high rank and wealth in the kingdom, men of great visibility, as we might say. When Montesquieu writes of glory and applause as recompense for deeds, he is not generally thinking of the troops, though some of his wording is significantly inclusive: he calls honor ‘‘the prejudice of every person and rank,’’ for example. Or consider this sen-

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tence, which might have been written by Mandeville: ‘‘Honor sets all the parts of the body politic in motion, and by its very action connects them; thus each individual advances the public good, while he only thinks of promoting his own interest’’ (1748, 1:24–25). The said prejudice and several parts of the body politic, however, are conceived of as looking upward to where the power lies. Montesquieu does not associate equality with honor at all, unless (as I think he would have to admit) among certain nobles themselves. Political equality for him exists in only two forms: in a republic, where every citizen has an equal voice in the government; and under despotism, where everyone but the despot is equally powerless. Much more important for Montesquieu, honor is what prevents a monarchy from being despotic. Honor is simply not consistent with despotism, for three reasons placed in this lively conjunction: ‘‘as honor has its laws and rules; as it knows not how to submit; as it depends in great measure on a man’s own caprice, and not on that of another person.’’ How can despotism abide with honor? The one [honor] glories in the contempt of life; and the other [despotism] is founded on the power of taking it away. How can honor, on the other hand, bear with despotism? The former has its fixed rules, and peculiar caprices; but the latter is directed by no rule, and its own caprices are subversive of all others. Honor, therefore, a thing unknown in arbitrary governments, some of which have not even a proper word to express it, is the prevailing principle in monarchies; here it gives life to the whole body politic, to the laws, and even to the virtues themselves.

By monarchy is meant something like constitutional monarchy; and honor too, despite caprices and rules of its own, is compatible with the rule of law. Honor, along with law, serves as a check on the absolute power of kings. To underline the point, Baron de Montesquieu resorts to the first person: ‘‘There is nothing so strongly inculcated in monarchies, by the laws, by religion and honor, as submission to the prince’s will; but this very honor tells us that the prince never ought to command a dishonorable action, because this would render us incapable of serving him’’ (1748, 1:25–26, 31). And just here he instances the example of the Vicomte d’Orthe’s refusal to slaughter the Huguenots on orders from Charles IX. Krause, who notes that Montesquieu’s man of honor often distinguishes himself through his disobedience, repeatedly dwells on this vicomte’s refusal to kill innocent people, since she particularly values honor for its powers of ‘‘conscientious objection’’ (2002, 23, 44–63). Yet how did this one nobleman, a provincial governor, decide what to do? And how did his peers react in the cruel days of 1572? It is noteworthy that, in the two

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sentences from his letter to the king that are quoted by Montesquieu, the vicomte himself cited the refusal of the ‘‘honest citizens and brave soldiers’’ of Bayonne to carry out the killings. Some pages on education in a monarchy give an idea of which values Montesquieu believed honor endorses. This education ‘‘commences, in some measure, at our setting out in the world,’’ rather than in colleges or academies; ‘‘for this is the school of what we call honor, that universal preceptor which ought everywhere to be our guide.’’ He singles out three rules: ‘‘that we should have a certain nobleness in our virtues, a kind of frankness in our morals, and a particular politeness in our behavior.’’ In some part, Montesquieu’s position resembles that of Rousseau a decade later: ‘‘the virtues we are here taught are less what we owe to others than to ourselves.’’ When it comes to morals, ‘‘a certain frankness and open carriage’’ are important. Truthfulness is called for, but not for truth’s sake. ‘‘Truth is requisite only because a person habituated to veracity has an air of boldness and freedom’’; and the ‘‘truth and simplicity’’ of the people may be ‘‘despised’’ by the same standard. Politeness ‘‘arises from a desire of distinguishing ourselves’’ and ‘‘shows we are not of a mean condition, and that we have not been bred with those who in all ages are considered the scum of the people.’’ Politeness at court ‘‘gives people to understand that a person actually belongs, or at least deserves to belong’’ (1748, 1:29–31). Judith Shklar has spoken forcefully for Montesquieu as a ‘‘disciple’’ of Montaigne and a foe to cruelty (1984, 8–35), but he was no democrat and was concerned to maintain the economic base of the ‘‘principle of a monarchical government’’ that was honor. The laws should support the nobility, which should continue to be hereditary, with whatever measures are necessary to prevent the division of estates. ‘‘The land of the nobility ought to have privileges as well as their persons,’’ and ‘‘when these privileges are communicated to [that is, shared with] the people, every principle of government is wantonly violated’’ (1748, 1:53–54). Naturally, honor ‘‘strongly recommends to the nobility’’ service in war, because war’s ‘‘dangers, its success, and even its miscarriages are the road to grandeur.’’ With that thought in mind, Montesquieu judges that honor has three ‘‘supreme laws,’’ which he states as follows: The chief of these are, that we are permitted to set a value on our fortune, but are absolutely forbidden to set any upon our lives. The second is, that when we are raised to a post or preferment, we should never do or permit anything which may seem to imply that we look upon ourselves as inferior to the rank we hold. The third is, that those things which honor forbids are more rigorously forbidden, when the laws do not concur in the prohibition; and those it

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How the third rule is consistent with honor’s readiness, as the principle of monarchy, to abide by the settled laws of the state can be a more than theoretic question. In its negative half, rule three looks forward to Kantian ethics; in the positive, to political revolution. Since for Montesquieu ‘‘honor inclines toward individual subjective judgement, it runs the risk of tearing itself away from its mooring in inherited family fortune and status’’ (Mosher, 2001, 215). But each of Montesquieu’s laws of honor is familiar to us already: the premium on risk that is fixed beyond doubt by the readiness to die; the status conferred by membership in a group and the need to guard against the loss of that status; and the reservation to oneself of freedom of action.

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Leveling Down in Enlightenment Fiction

It was as a law unto itself that honor came to be both celebrated and criticized in the fiction of the period. For flights of honor and triumphs over love itself, we think mainly of French neoclassical drama and heroic drama of the Restoration stage in England; but novelists also figured the word large, and for explorations of the subject, experiment, redefinition, and the extension of this motive to different classes of society, much study can profitably be devoted to prose fiction. Montesquieu maintained the importance of honor for the modern state, yet arguably the subject would never have attained the political significance it came to have for statesmen of the time if it had not been for the broadening of its base to include the bourgeoisie and professional classes. The English novel, especially, dealt in the desires of non-aristocrats to achieve an identity and be treated with respect. Michael McKeon has characterized this juncture in literary history as ‘‘a progressive attack on aristocratic honor.’’ Internalization of respect is as old as civilization, I believe; but McKeon rightly detects an increasing stress on internal worth in the modern period that comes about because of attempts to downplay the significance of external rank. Certainly in novels the primary denotation of the word honor ‘‘shifts from ‘title of rank’ to ‘goodness of character.’ ’’ Social mobility was at issue: McKeon judges that one contribution of the English novel ‘‘lies in its ability to mediate—to represent as well as contain—the revolutionary clash

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between status and class orientation and the attendant crisis of status consistency’’ (1987, 150–75). Novels first reflected and then refined this development. Besides increasing social mobility and the diffusion of a prideful sense of honor among different classes of people, a distinct pacification is evident in openly expressed codes of behavior: basically the idea that it is acceptable to defend oneself but not to offend others, not to be found the aggressor. What novels excel at, of course, is demonstrating the consciousness of honor and the decisions that it exacts. I can sketch only a little of the relevant literary history here and shall concentrate on English novels, two by Henry Fielding in particular. Mandeville’s quip that those who have never felt anything of honor can always learn about it from romances could apply anywhere. But insofar as novels were truly new— and sometimes pitched as Cervantine anti-romances—English contenders appeared in advance of the French. Fielding stands out because of the deliberation with which, like Mandeville and Montesquieu, he invoked the word honor in reasoned arguments. Two French novels should be mentioned, however, that frame this overall picture. Madame de Lafayette’s The Princess of Clèves, which appeared anonymously in 1678 and has often been called the first French novel, can hardly be said to break with the tradition that honor was an aristocratic concern. Though her thoughts and the part she plays are fictitious, Lafayette’s heroine bears a real historical person’s name, as do other characters in the sixteenth-century setting of the action. The assumptions about love and its compelling force are not that different from those of Chrétien de Troyes in the twelfth century. Nevertheless, the focus on a woman’s consciousness of her situation and feelings was new and would be quickly taken up by other novelists, male as well as female. Lafayette features the princess’s decision to tell her husband of her love for the Duke of Nemours—without naming him—and a psychological account of her reaching that decision. The decision and the determination not to yield to Nemours can fairly be summarized as motivated by self-respect. Both determinations she makes inwardly; and that neither answers to her own desires is the test of her honor. The constraining and hidden—not public—role played by honor was new also. Earlier, in the short tale The Princess of Montpensier (1662), Lafayette portrayed the suffering inflicted by honor on a male lover, the Count of Chabannes. About a hundred years later, Denis Diderot began composing Rameau’s Nephew, though not for publication. This fictitious dialogue between Moi— ostensibly Diderot—and Lui, the nephew, as the speech headings designate the speakers, differs radically from the Ciceronian model for dialogues adopted by Mandeville and others. In the latter, readers can quite confidently identify

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which speaker represents the author’s opinion; his speeches are usually longer and more meditated, as if the subject were not new to him at all. So much is this the case that Ciceronian dialogues tend to be frankly pedagogical. In Rameau’s Nephew the dialogue moves faster, the exchanges are shorter, and surprise makes itself felt. Lui does most of the talking, and Moi the protesting. Thus readers are left up in the air, for although Moi takes a stand for traditional values, his insistence on his own honesty and morality might better be left to others. What comes through is Moi’s indignation at Lui’s frank talk about how he drums up business for himself as a musician (second-rate musician, according to Lui); how he presents himself according to circumstances and the company he keeps; how he performs in more than one sense. Lui is unconcernedly frank about his adaptability, disguises, and workaday dishonesty. There is a strong possibility that he also speaks the truth about the world that Moi himself occupies. Yet Rameau’s Nephew is not a satire so much as a large question mark: there is no sure perspective from which to judge the goings-on that Lui informs us about. Though Moi never surrenders his point of view, he is intellectually on the defensive. Lui’s apparent shamelessness may be shameless only as perceived by Moi and like-minded moralists. And who belongs in this society, whose society is it? (Trilling, 1971, 26–52; Williams, 2002, 191–205). The contrast of this open-ended dialogue about the (second-rate?) musician’s performable identity, according to circumstances, and the princess of Clèves’s passion and decisive actions to preserve her honor could not be greater. Remember also that the action of The Princess of Clèves is set in the sixteenth century—it was itself a historical novel. The questioning of personal integrity in Diderot’s fictional dialogue reflected not only historical change, but also some of the English novels that had been written in the interval and which the author admired. Like the aristocrat Montesquieu, the commoner who would call himself Daniel Defoe was opposed to dueling. Both these very different men and writers were impatient with and contemptuous of the logic of that formal rite of honor. If one man was wrong to insult another, what was the sense of the two offering to kill or be killed? In truth, these so-called laws of honor could be rationalized only as a deterrent to insult in the first place. One of Defoe’s protagonists, Colonel Jack, defensively adopts a position on this matter that became standard for British novel heroes by the end of the long eighteenth century: that one should never initiate a duel with an equal who has insulted one; nevertheless that, if challenged, one must agree to fight in order to nullify any imputation of cowardice (Welsh, 1963, 134–54). In nineteenth-century European novels, a surprising number of heroes will go further and discharge their pistols into the air while allowing their challengers to take a fair shot at

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them. Taking this tack on dueling doesn’t mark Defoe as uninterested in honor —far from it. As Maximillian E. Novak has shown, the novelist was something of a hero-worshipper throughout his life (two of his real-life heroes were Gustavus Adolphus and William III of England). Courage was for Defoe the chief virtue of all, if only because fear demonstrably inspires so much human behavior. And the highest kind of courage, which he called ‘‘Courage of Honour,’’ is passive. The courage that endures, that is cautious and circumspect but does not succumb to fear, is more valuable than the kind that instinctively strikes back (Novak, 1963, 130–45). Defoe did not turn to novel writing until he was nearly sixty, but he was an extremely prolific writer before that. Always acutely conscious of differences in social status, from his True-Born Englishman, a popular poem of 1701, to his Compleat English Gentleman, unfinished and never published until the end of the nineteenth century, he naturally favored merit over birth in the recurring debate in courtesy books about who was a proper gentleman. A gentleman is ‘‘a Person of Merit and Worth; a Man of Honour, Virtue, Sense, Integrity, Honesty, and Religion, without which he is Nothing at all.’’ Traditionally, a gentleman should not have to work for a living because he has inherited his estate, however modest. But estates can also be purchased with merchant fortunes: the purchaser may not have the most polished manners, but manners can await the next generation. The Compleat English Gentleman contains not a word on martial arts, but many words on the need for education and a modicum of book learning. How different from the wisdom of the tutor of Rousseau’s Emile, who prohibits any reading for young boys until they are old enough to absorb Robinson Crusoe! ‘‘It is no scandal,’’ writes Defoe—an authority on scandal, being a journalist—‘‘upon a gentleman of the highest quality or of the greatest estate to manage his own affairs with prudence and judgement,’’ and indeed to be able to keep accounts (1730? ed. 1890, 21). That is a sentiment with which Emile’s tutor concurs, as will Adam Smith. Defoe’s first experiment in novel writing, Robinson Crusoe, appeared in 1719 and was an immense success. It still is one of the most widely read works of Western fiction. What should it contribute to a young boy’s education? Surely Rousseau counted on the good example of Crusoe’s self-reliance and resourcefulness. The hero not only overcomes his fears and exercises his will to sustain himself; he arranges his life, plans how to spend his time, invents a oneman division of labor, and improves on his environment. When his man Friday turns up, Crusoe has someone from whom to distinguish himself and to lead; if it’s not exactly a master-slave relationship they have, it’s an advance on the economy he has begun to construct. To be marooned on a desert island can turn out to be an opportunity. Robinson Crusoe was rapidly followed by

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Captain Singleton, another voyager novel, in 1720, and then three remarkable stories of upstarts: Moll Flanders and Colonel Jack, both in 1722, and Roxana in 1724. All are autobiographical in form, life stories told in the first person. All end satisfactorily, usually with some overt bookkeeping as assurance of the protagonist’s financial and social gains. Such ‘‘Strange Surprising Adventures’’ —to borrow from the full title of the first—are pleasing fictions of course, but also models in their kind of striving for a place in the world and holding on. What provides the ‘‘scary, disruptive, exalting energies of a new individualist sense of self’’ in these last three novels is the criminal element (Gladfelder, 2001, 97). Colonel Jack begins his career as a pickpocket, Moll Flanders as a thief, Roxana as a prostitute. The struggles of the three from rags to riches are not at all tidy, the main chance never much inhibited by morality. The women surrender their chastity with importunity and regard marriages as opportunities. Hardship is sufficient justification for looking out for oneself. Dropping a disguise or exchanging one public identity for another is simply a matter of prudence. And yet out of these lifetime adventures a singular identity is formed. I cannot believe Defoe was being ironic: he had been arrested and pilloried himself for his writings and would not deprive his protagonists of similar experiences. The civilizing process traced by Norbert Elias (1939)—from medieval brutality to modern table manners, as it were—did not take place overnight. Colonel Jack believes himself to be a gentleman early on; he may have been born a gentleman, though if so he does not know his parentage. Jack endures being a soldier and indentured servant as well as a thief before he emerges as an overseer of slaves and colonialist, therefore gentleman. Roxana is a modern sex worker and then some, for like Crusoe she plots and crafts her survival, and she is entitled to be a lady. As Hal Gladfelder puts it, ‘‘with her investment portfolio secure and her sexual waywardness regularized by marriage (which also affords her the longed-for title of ladyship), Roxana has attained the position from which all Defoe’s protagonists begin the work of repentance and exculpation, their self-reproaching reconciliation to the rich, happy ending of their lives’’ (2001, 133). I don’t quite believe in the guilt and penitence that seem to accompany their successes. The perpetrators are sensitive to a patina of Christianity in the culture; they are aware how difficult it is to pass through a needle’s eye, just as they know how difficult it is to spin a good yarn. The heroine is desperate in the end not to be recognized as Roxana because she dreads the scandal, the danger of being thrown out when she is too old to live her life over again. What is scary, and what Defoe is able to dramatize by borrowing from the genre of criminal biography, is the fragility of respectability in this modern world. The mercantile surroundings in Defoe’s fiction have led some scholars to

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associate these books with a Puritan ethic. They are certainly not very puritanical about sex, unless the very businesslike attitudes of Moll and Roxana betray them. A Puritan outlook has more safely been attributed to the fiction of Samuel Richardson (Wolff, 1972); yet that hardly does justice to the degree that this novelist too was concerned with social status in changing times. Richardson’s first heroine, a servant girl, does not remain a servant. The argument of Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded is that status can be achieved by virtue— famously by a lady’s maid’s withholding sex from a young master who, attracted by her beauty, retains the maid in his household after his mother’s death. The publication of Pamela in 1740 was an event in British literature, and its sentimental appeal was not lost on the Continent, where it also became very influential. Insofar as the novel is about honor, the subject is confined to the matter of female chastity. The double standard for sexual congress could not be clearer, since by the end Pamela herself has implicitly waived objection to her lover’s many hands-on attempts to seduce her. This is not to say that the psychology of the work is vacuous: there no longer can be reason to doubt the niceties, sincerities and evasions, innocence and practicality of female modesty (Yeazell, 1991). Modesty is a kind of pride, after all, and it originates in a morality of respect rather than obedience. Moreover, Mr. B, the gentleman and would-be seducer of Pamela, is understandably concerned for his own reputation, should he marry a pretty lady’s maid. Pamela also provided the occasion for Henry Fielding’s turn from writing plays to writing novels. His Joseph Andrews offered to extend the experiment conducted by Richardson and to propose a few amendments. Like Richardson, Fielding would adopt a servant for his protagonist—Joseph is ostensibly Pamela’s brother—and like Defoe’s, his low people would include some outright criminals. Fielding liked to think of himself as descended from a titled family, and he makes free use of the word honor in his fiction. One of the dishonorable implications of Pamela, obviously, was the heroine’s possible calculation that her virtue would be rewarded. Yet for Fielding honor can motivate any person, regardless of social standing. Richardson’s Pamela—in Fielding’s representation of that lady—disapproves of her brother’s marriage to his beloved Fanny, a third former servant. ‘‘ ‘She was my Equal,’ answered Pamela, ‘but now I am no longer Pamela Andrews; I am now this Gentleman’s Lady, and as such am above her’ ’’ (1742, 264): this gentleman being her own Mr. B, whose name Fielding spells out as Booby. Snobbery is no longer acceptable to Fielding’s code of honor, as will become more and more clear by the time his most faithful disciple, William Makepeace Thackeray, gave the term its modern meaning a century later. Gentlepersons may be found among all ranks. The initial joke in Joseph Andrews plays with the idea of male chastity. In the

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early chapters, Joseph just barely escapes with his virtue from the bed of the elder Lady Booby (Pamela Booby’s aunt) and thereby proves himself worthy of his namesake in Genesis (39:7–12). Immediately readers can appreciate that they are in the hands of an author with a sense of humor, rather different from Richardson. The novel that follows is the occasion of much satire of human behavior at every level, satire that is facilitated by the simplicity of Joseph and his mentor, Parson Adams, both. Their ready and unmistakable courage, for example, sets off the absence of the same in those who boast of their exploits or promise to perform bravely. And this particular young man’s chastity is quickly explained: plenty of women are attracted to the handsome and very physical Joseph, including the good-natured Betty at the inn, and it is likely he would respond in kind if it were not for his passionate desire to marry his first love, Fanny, every bit as desirable and chaste as he. Whereas in Pamela sexual desire is muted or coyly represented—even Mr. B’s fumbling about inside Pamela’s clothes comes short of being passionate—in Joseph Andrews passion is felt no less than physical blows and deprivations. Toward the end of the novel, when Parson Adams is delivering a lecture to Joseph on stoical Christianity, someone runs in to say that Adams’s youngest child has drowned, and the lecture gives way to helpless grief. As Hume had written a few years earlier, reason is the slave of the passions, for both heroes and for poor Fanny as well. Yet reason plays a very important part in this novel, and in Fielding’s Tom Jones and his sister Sarah Fielding’s David Simple as well. The two Fieldings authored fictions of the Enlightenment with as much brio as Hume authored his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. ‘‘Mr. Joseph Andrews, the Hero of our ensuing History, was esteemed to be the only Son of Gaffer and Gammer Andrews, and Brother to the illustrious Pamela, whose Virtue is at present so famous.’’ The question of the identity of this hero—note the Mister—will not differ very greatly from that in a Defoe novel. But the case is argued, the irony controlled, and hints of classical learning thrown in for good measure. Indeed, it is sufficiently certain that he had as many Ancestors, as the best Man living; and perhaps, if we look five or six hundred Years backwards, might be related to some Persons of very great Figure at present, whose Ancestors within half the last Century are buried in as great Obscurity. But suppose for Argument’s sake we should admit that he had no Ancestors at all, but had sprung up, according to the modern Phrase, out of a Dunghill, as the Athenians pretended they themselves did from the Earth, would not this Autokopros have been justly entitled to all the Praise arising from his own Virtues? Would it not be hard, that a Man who hath no Ancestors should therefore be render’d incapable of acquiring Honour; when we see so many who have no Virtues, enjoying the Honour of their Forefathers? (1742, 17–18)

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Thus, the narrator turns essayist at will, and the essayist a prose satirist as necessary. Fiction and irony permit this freedom, even though the action has meanwhile come to a halt. Much clarity of thought lies behind the rhetoric, even if latter-day sociology might protest at the many implied moral judgments. In a subsequent chapter Fielding divides ‘‘the human Species’’ into high and low people, adjusts this division to people of fashion and no fashion, lists the spaces they respectively occupy in the city and two spaces they share (the church and the theater), all the while playing mischievously with the up and down, until he hits upon the figure of a ‘‘Ladder of Dependance’’ that represents the time of day as well as degrees of power, since the humblest boy (the ship boy or shoeblack) arises earliest in the morning to wait on those who occupy the rung above. ‘‘Nor is there, perhaps, in this whole Ladder of Dependance, any one Step at greater distance from the other, than the first from the second; so that to a Philosopher the Question might only seem, whether you would choose to be a great Man at six in the Morning, or at two in the Afternoon. And yet there are scarce two of these, who do not think the least Familiarity with the Persons below them a Condescension, and if they were to go one Step farther, a Degradation.’’ After apologizing for the ‘‘long Digression’’ (two or three pages long), Fielding knocks the ladder out from under these great men with the following Homeric thrust: ‘‘perhaps, if the Gods, according to the Opinion of some, made Men only to laugh at them, there is no part of our Behaviour which answers the End of our Creation better than this’’ (1742, 137–38). This narrator is no more learned than the older of the novel’s two heroes, Parson Adams, who speaks at length about the Iliad and the Odyssey and laces his discourse with commentary from Aristotle and others on the lost texts of Homer. Mr. Abraham Adams, who shares with Joseph Andrews in the full title of the book, is Fielding’s brilliant reincarnation of Don Quixote for his own time. His first venture into fiction is therefore both Cervantine in method—its realism asserted at the expense of that romance of Pamela by Richardson—and quixotic by imitation of Cervantes’ hero. Adams is not obsessed with chivalric romance, however, but with classical Greek. An autodidact like Don Quixote, he carries about with him a copy of Aeschylus transcribed in his own hand, which absorbs his attention whenever he has a spare moment. Like that of his great original, Adams’s foolishness is inspired by idealism—by sympathy, by charity, justice, and honesty. He is utterly naïve and readily deceived, because he would never dream of deceiving anyone himself. His simplicity and courage therefore tell against those he encounters and profoundly against humanity as we know it: to be a true hero in this world is to be a fool. Just as Don Quixote and Sancho begin to suffer too many

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practical jokes in the second part of Cervantes’ novel, Parson Adams is deliberately tricked and knocked about when smart fellows smoke him out. But though there is never any calculation in Adams’s moves, once he understands that mischief is afoot he strikes back without hesitation. A prolonged business in which a certain squire, a doctor, and others befriend him in order to play a series of nasty jokes ends with the hero turning the tables: ‘‘Adams, after ducking the Squire twice or thrice leapt out of the Tub, and looked sharp for the Doctor, whom he certainly would have convey’d to the same place of Honour; but he had wisely withdrawn: he [Adams] then searched for his Crabstick, and having found that, as well as his Fellow-Travellers, he declared he would stay not a moment longer in such a House’’ (1742, 218). It can be argued that Parson Adams is an advance over his original: he has a sharper eye for injustices than Don Quixote and less tolerance for practical jokes. Don Quixote itself, often said to be the first modern novel of all, had something to say about modern identity and social life. David Quint has suggested that its hero is proleptically engaged in something like class warfare with the Duke and Duchess who mistreat him and Sancho so egregiously in part 2 (2003, 131–62). That Don Quixote becomes friends with Sancho, a peasant, anticipates the mixing of ranks in Defoe’s and Fielding’s work—though Shakespeare’s mixture of styles was also a powerful example for the British novel, especially after Walter Scott turned to fiction in 1814. Cervantes’ wide-ranging contribution to modern conceptions of the self inhered in the very conception of his novel, that a poor hidalgo of La Mancha fancies himself a knight errant such as he has read of in books. What begins as a bit of nonsense, in short, teases out some profound truths about personal identity. For the process of emulation, the patterning of oneself after persons one admires, that is initially made fun of here defines the individual one way or another. Emulation is obviously one vector that a morality of respect can take. The hero Don Quixote, who runs away with his author’s initial idea, shows how many different roads emulation can take. One can imitate fictional or legendary characters as well as real-life people. It doesn’t really matter whether Homer’s Achilles and Odysseus were historical creatures; and most heroines, Don Quixote advises Sancho, were not at all as perfect as poets portrayed them. The novel experiment showed that emulation, and therefore personal identity, can be free and multiple. It showed that identity can be preserved and even established in defeat—Don Quixote himself gets battered again and again, and who is more famous? Above all, a certain amount of autonomy can simply be willed by the individual in question. The hidalgo is so obscure that Cervantes never distinctly gives his real name, yet that crazy becomes, on his own, Don Quixote (Welsh, 1981, 167–84). Fielding took care to make his quixotic hero a more plausible character than

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this. Abraham Adams is a poor curate, with a larger family than he can readily support on his small income. Yet in his simplicity and readiness to sympathize with anyone in difficulties, his purse is open—when there is any money in it. He is loved by everyone in his parish for his support and helping hand. Adams is a preacher of the gospel; charity rather than chivalry is his heartfelt aim. He is not on the road seeking adventures like Don Quixote but traveling toward London with the quixotic faith that he will find a publisher for his sermons, which he has absentmindedly forgotten to pack in his saddlebags in the first place. He does not shy away from adventure, because he is one of those rare people—true knights errant—who jump to help others. He saves Fanny from a rapist without first recognizing her; they run into Joseph coming the other way after he has been discharged by Lady Booby and robbed and stripped naked by highwaymen—adventures that come unsought for. Joseph is a more plausible understudy of Parson Adams than Sancho is of Don Quixote. Fielding seems to want to bring home Cervantes’ marvelous inventions. Joseph shares Adams’s good instincts and physicality, and he even displays some learning of his own. Halfway through the novel he launches a sermon on charity, which the narrator mischievously warns the reader about ahead of time, as if impugning our interest in the subject. Joseph, in fact, takes up charity from a perspective on morality akin to that of Mandeville and Montesquieu: honor is the only motive that can be depended on for selfless acts. Tho’ the Goodness of a Man’s Heart did not incline him to relieve the Distresses of his Fellow-Creatures, methinks the Desire of Honour should move him to it. What inspires a Man to build fine Houses, to purchase fine Furniture, Pictures, Clothes, and other things at a great Expense, but an Ambition to be respected more than other People? Now, would not one great Act of Charity, one Instance of redeeming a poor Family from all the Miseries of Poverty, restoring an unfortunate Tradesman by a Sum of Money to the means of procuring a Livelihood by his Industry, discharging an undone Debtor from his Debts or a Gaol, or any such like Example of Goodness, create a Man more Honour and Respect than he could acquire by the finest House, Furniture, Pictures or Clothes that were ever beheld? For not only the Object himself, who was thus relieved, but all who heard the name of such a Person must, I imagine, reverence him infinitely more than the Possessor of all those other things: which when we so admire, we rather praise the Builder, the Workman, the Painter, the Laceman, the Taylor, and the rest, by whose Ingenuity they are produced, than the Person who by his Money makes them his own. (1742, 203)

Joseph is something of a philosophe himself, it seems. He next appeals to a couple of poems by Alexander Pope in support of his argument. The author

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nevertheless cannot bear to complete his novel without discovering that Joseph Andrews is not Pamela’s brother after all, but was stolen by gypsies from the family of one Mr. Wilson, a gentleman who after many bitter lessons in the ways of this world has preferred a life of retirement and meditation. Fielding’s success inspired his sister to publish The Adventures of David Simple in 1744. This was not a quixotic fiction, unless one counts all efforts to do good in the world as quixotic. Sarah Fielding’s novel was basically a satire, more formal than Joseph Andrews and with accompanying homilies throughout. The author dispatches her hero on a quest to find a friend in this world, a quest that is all too predictably frustrating. David Simple thus becomes a touchstone compared to which one gem after another proves to be flawed. Eventually David gathers about him a brother and sister with sad troubles of their own, and also the brother’s loved one, so that a double marriage can rescue at least these four friends from misfortune at the end of the second volume. But in a third volume added in 1753, Sarah Fielding proceeded to show the two sincere couples stricken down and deserted once more by fickle patrons. The satire in this continuation of their story becomes dark indeed, and the author’s ability to dissect the spite and antipathies of personalities like Mrs. Orgueil, who scarcely comprehend their own behavior, and types like Mr. Orgueil the rational man, who always find excuses when their help is actually needed, is quite stunning. Though such people act dishonorably as well as unkindly, the author saves her examination of honor by that name for the French scenes in the unhappy tale of Isabelle, of her brother the young marquis and his wife, and the Chevalier Dumont—another foursome. It is as if Fielding were arguing that the French equivalent to David Simple’s goodness is the honor code of the similarly impoverished chevalier, very likely modeled on Madame de Lafayette’s Count of Chabannes. The Chevalier Dumont is courageous and handsome, but his code primarily expresses itself in a determination never to lie and not to offend; his circumstances are such that his and Isabelle’s love for one another is silent. This tale of honor in France turns tragic rather than satiric. The marquis’s young wife, sensing Isabelle’s love, falls passionately in love with Dumont herself. He, of course, will not betray the wife and is stabbed to death by his friend in a fit of misdirected jealousy. Isabelle, who lives to tell the tale within the novel, is the only survivor. Her loss and the faultless chevalier’s death command most of her listeners’ sympathy, since the suicides of the brother and his wife betray their grievous mistakes. This must be the way French aristocrats, as opposed to impoverished English gentlemen, carry on. By the eighteenth century Plutarch’s Lives was more common reading than in Shakespeare’s time, and the work’s influence on the literature of this period

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was widespread (Howard, 1970). Sarah Fielding’s contribution in this line was not as impressive as her David Simple, but ingenious just the same. In 1757 she published The Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia, which needless to say was not canonical. The lives are narrated in the first person by the souls of the two rival women in the underworld. Cleopatra’s is thoroughly researched in Plutarch and a few other classical sources: Fielding does not borrow from Shakespeare or Dryden’s All for Love at all. Her Cleopatra, who matter-of-factly admits to falsehood and calculation, boasts of neither love nor lust for Antony and not until her deathbed decides, ‘‘upon the whole, that the Indulgence of my Ambition, and in the cultivating in myself the Spirit of Pride and Vanity, had produced more Misery than Happiness. How indeed can it be otherwise? When instead of restraining, we give loose to Passions.’’ Antony’s passions, in this account, alternate weakly between dotage and anger. Far more original and shorter is Fielding’s life of Octavia (fewer details available from Plutarch or elsewhere). In a creative description of Octavia’s first husband, Marcellus, she portrays manliness and true marriage from the woman’s point of view (1757, 125, 127–29). By subsequently remarrying for reasons of state, Octavia is true to Marcellus’s last wishes; and she rather likes Antony, too, in spite of his behavior as recorded in Plutarch and enacted on Shakespeare’s stage. As in Henry Fielding’s first novel, the exact parentage of the hero in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749) is kept secret. Jones nevertheless remains illegitimate to the end, as if to demonstrate that he is still his own man. For once his good nature has become incontrovertible, his honesty demonstrated, and his innocence of the crimes he is accused of proven, Sophia Western can accept his love; and by marriage he inherits the estates of Mr. Allworthy and Squire Western both. But Jones is not born to this privilege; rather, he is born with a good heart and comes to merit Sophia’s love and Allworthy’s respect. The foundling’s honor and good name are at stake throughout. To be sure, he is unable to resist several women who offer themselves to him, so he is not another Joseph. With that earlier joke behind him, Fielding in this comic epic in prose (and later in Amelia) takes for granted the double standard of sexual behavior. So, for that matter, does Sophia accede to the double standard before marriage. Jones manifests his sexual drive; she is a model of female modesty who, like Fanny, is nonetheless passionately in love. That there is also a code of honor that delimits male behavior before marriage becomes clear in the case of Jones’s friend Nightingale, who has made his Nancy pregnant. Insisting that his friend marry her, Jones takes the position that ‘‘the very best and truest Honour . . . is Goodness’’; but since Nancy’s condition has become known, Nightingale frets that he will disgrace himself by marrying a fallen woman. Jones retorts:

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As you mention a Scruple of this Kind, you will give me leave to examine it. Can you, with Honour, be guilty of having, under false Pretences, deceived a young Woman and her Family, and of having, by these Means, treacherously robbed her of her Innocence? Can you, with Honour, be the knowing, the wilful Occasion, nay, the artful Contriver of the Ruin of a human Being? Can you, with Honour, destroy the Fame, the Peace, nay, probably, both the Life and Soul too of this Creature? . . . Can Honour support such Contemplations as these a Moment? (1749, 588)

Thus the hero is able to refine his friend’s crasser notions of honor. He has never quite found himself in Nightingale’s situation, of course. The women who have trusted themselves to Jones are all more experienced than Nancy, and once they have made sexual advances to the young man it would be insulting—and uncharitable—to refuse them. With The History of Tom Jones, Fielding aspired to epic. He divided his epic into eighteen books, with justly famous essays at the head of many of them, but for practical purposes he followed a biographical model of the hero’s coming of age and encountering adult adventures. Young Tom picks up more ideas of how to behave from his companions than he does from his elders, it seems, though from a respectful distance he loves Allworthy just the same. Honor becomes a theme early on, when he has to protect one of his companions, the gamekeeper George, after trespassing with their guns on a neighbor’s lands. Allworthy guesses, in fact, that Tom’s silence results from ‘‘a mistaken Point of Honour.’’ The boy’s tutor, a divine named Thwackum, protests, ‘‘Honour! . . . Can Honour teach any one to tell a Lie, or can Honour exist independent of Religion?’’ Fielding is then inspired to introduce a philosopher, ‘‘a profest Master of all the Works of Plato and Aristotle,’’ then residing in Allworthy’s house. The very first dialogue of Thwackum and Square in the novel is thus devoted to honor. Square’s reply to Thwackum’s rhetorical question is that first one must define his terms, since there are as many different opinions about honor as there are about religion. Square: ‘‘if by Honour you mean the natural Beauty of Virtue, I will maintain it may exist independent of any Religion whatever. Nay, (added he) you yourself will allow it may exist independent of all but one: So will a Mahometan, a Jew, and all the Maintainers of all the different Sects in the World.’’ Just so, Thwackum: ‘‘when I mention Honour, I mean that Mode of divine Grace which is not only consistent with, but dependent upon, this Religion; and is consistent with, and dependent upon, no other.’’ The philosopher contends that honor is independent of religion, the divine just as heatedly the opposite. Both concur, nevertheless, that ‘‘true Honour cannot support an Untruth’’ (1749, 93–95). Both ignore Allworthy’s hint that Tom is lying in order to protect the far more vulnerable gamekeeper, though Allworthy

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agrees with them in principle since he calls that loyalty mistaken. Square and Thwackum hereby commence a routine of beating up on young Tom and helping to sway Allworthy’s judgment against him. As their names suggest, Square and Thwackum are caricatures, but their entertaining disputations echo genuine Enlightenment concerns. Some fifty years ago, William Empson speculated that Fielding purposefully set out in Tom Jones to celebrate honor as a moral force. Empson cited the Nightingale and gamekeeper episodes and more. The idea is that the young Jones progressively learns how to rule his own behavior and to judge others by identification with them. Even to marry for love can be a point of honor. As Empson reads the plot of Tom Jones, the hero emerges as more worthy than Allworthy himself, in that his moral impulses are finer. Still, standards are not all of a kind. The novel provides a survey of society ‘‘in which many different codes of honor, indeed almost different tribes, exist concurrently.’’ Empson lights on the notion of different tribes because of an episode in which Jones and Partridge encounter the King of the Gypsies, who effectively argues that shame is a more powerful deterrent of unsocial behavior than the threat of punishment. Given the pluralism and his evident distrust of a so-called neo-Christian movement of the mid-twentieth century, Empson sided with Square’s camp without saying so. ‘‘I take it,’’ he remarks, that Fielding ‘‘refused to believe that the ‘inside’ of a person’s mind (as given by Richardson in a letter, perhaps) is much use for telling you the real source of motives’’ (1958). And I take it that Empson sides with Fielding over Richardson, as was customary at the time. To do so, for one thing, meant judging characters by actions rather than by feelings. About three decades ago now, critical opinion in the academy swung round in Richardson’s favor. The work that convinced critics of Richardson’s extraordinary powers of rendering conflicting layers of personality and fraught interpersonal relations, however, was Clarissa—all too often read before then, by students and teachers alike, in misleading abridgments that reduced it to a Pamela-sized assignment. Without question Clarissa is a compelling and revealing tragedy of female honor, the heroine’s chastity under attack from the perverse, sustained, and ultimately futile code of the rake Lovelace. One may also note that it is an excruciating demonstration of everything wrong with the double standard for sexual relations of men and women, ancient to be sure but particularly brutal at that time. I don’t think I could do justice to it here. Richardson’s attempt to portray an ideal male protagonist and to address the subject of honor more broadly awaited the equally long narrative told in letters, Sir Charles Grandison. Richardson’s new heroine, Harriet Byron, is so fortunate as to be rescued by Sir Charles Grandison from her would-be abductor. But Sir Hargrave Pollex-

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fen, who simply planned to force the young woman to marry him, is unhappy about this intervention and intends to challenge Sir Charles. Such is the situation that introduces about a thousand pages of expectation that Harriet will marry her protector, and more immediately allows Richardson to rehearse this hero’s highly principled stand against dueling. In the latter respect, the novel is something of a benchmark for shifting attitudes toward dueling in Western literature. Sir Charles’s opinion on the matter is approximately the one Defoe’s Colonel Jack falls back on, but he has much more visibility, a secure position in society, a better education and command of speaking. For a man known to be opposed to dueling, he also has the useful reputation of great skill in the martial arts. His father was the victim of a duel, and his mother taught him that ‘‘the science I was learning, was a science properly called of defence, and not of offence.’’ Nevertheless, in his own words, ‘‘something must be done by a man who refuses a challenge, to let a challenger see (such is the world, such is the custom) that he has better motives than fear’’ (1753–54, 1:261, 242). On the present occasion, besides impressively thrusting aside Sir Hargrave’s sword with his left hand, Sir Charles courteously offers to argue his position before his adversary and his seconds. The verbal confrontation that follows is secretly taken down in shorthand as if it were a state trial, but our hero does not object: he never speaks any words that he would not willingly have others hear. He merely asks for a transcript and shares it with the ladies, who share it with the reader by enclosing it in their letters. Sir Charles’s address is so superior that it grates with this reader, but it is also enlightened, historically and politically grounded, as well as Christian. He makes a point that dueling was not a Roman institution but originated with ‘‘the barbarous northern nations.’’ Romans had more patriotic ways to compete and display their daring and battle skills. He notes that the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century decreed that victims of duels were to be treated as suicides, and from more recent time he singles out Louis XIV, whose ‘‘edict against dueling was the greatest glory of his reign.’’ Shrewdly, he acknowledges that the Germans of the dark ages, who may have been responsible for dueling as a way of settling disputes, did not have a proper government; but we do have government, and legal redress if necessary. Moreover, we have laws against dueling, and ‘‘of what use are the Laws of society, if magistracy may be thus defied?’’ Sir Charles could be said to combine the best classical and Christian thinking on the subject. He confesses that he himself is ‘‘naturally choleric’’; but he is in ‘‘no doubt but the man, who can subdue his passion, and forgive a real injury, is an hero.’’ One can sympathize with his rival’s teeth gnashing at this: Sir Hargrave is being told to mind his manners next time, and that he won’t solve his problems by offering to fight. ‘‘To die

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like a man of honour, Sir Hargrave, you must have lived like one’’ (1753–54, 1:247–68). There cannot be much joy, one may think, in the life of honor represented in Sir Charles Grandison. Miss Byron and Sir Charles admire one another more than anything, and when time works round to the long-drawn-out proposal, etiquette and nice considerations of feeling prevail over emotion. Even the fantastic complication of a third principal in the plot, the Roman Catholic Lady Clementina in Italy, whom Sir Charles is also prepared to marry, fails to contribute much love interest. Instead, the dark and light heroines bow to one another across the distance, in a contest of honor as to which shall most readily forgo her happiness. In due course the beautiful Italian sacrifices herself to her church, and the male principal presents himself back in England to Harriet Byron: O Sir! Sir!—What is it you call pain, if at this instant (and I said it with tears) that which your goodness makes me feel, is not so?—The dear, the excellent Clementina! What a perverseness is in her fate! She, and she only, could have deserved you! He bent his knee to the greatly-honoured Harriet—I acknowledge with transport, said he, the joy you give me by your magnanimity; such a more than sisterly magnanimity to that of Clementina. How nobly do you authorize my regard for her!—In you, madam, shall I have all her excellencies, without the abatements which must have been allowed, had she been mine, from considerations of Religion and Country. Believe me, madam, that my Love of her, if I know my heart, is of such a nature, as never can abate the fervor of that I vow to you. To both of you, my principal attachment was to mind. (1753–54, 3:125–26)

If such dialogue had been composed for the stage by William Wycherley or William Congreve, the London audience would have been entertained by the actors’ delicious insincerity. Perhaps not even they would have conceived of Harriet occasionally referring to herself in the third person, like Caesar in Shakespeare’s play. But Richardson’s couple is clearly engaged in saying what they mean and meaning what they say. Nor were the stiff protocols of their speech wholly unfashionable in British literature for a couple of generations to come. The method and sentiments of Richardson’s novels possibly had the most telling effect on Rousseau’s Julie; or, The New Heloise (1761), which immediately preceded his Emile; or, On Education. In different ways, honor continued to dictate actions in many of the greatest nineteenth-century novels: one has only to think of works by Manzoni, Stendhal, Melville, Trollope, Tolstoy, or Fontane. Some, to be sure, were historical novels in the tradition of

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Scott, but others were not. At the end of the century, there are significant works by Conrad and James. If the latter seems unlikely, think of James’s The American, The Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassadors, and other titles on the international theme. In the early twentieth century, Proust and Faulkner write of honor. This large body of secular literature on principled behavior is the impressive heritage of Enlightenment fiction.

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What is enlightenment? Kant’s ‘‘Answer’’ to this question, in an essay less direct than cogent, compared enlightenment to an individual’s emergence from minority. Since minority is the ‘‘inability to make use of one’s own understanding without direction from another,’’ all children are minors until they grow up and become independent. Kant’s animus is directed against drawnout minority that is ‘‘self-incurred,’’ which he puts down to ‘‘lack of resolution and courage’’ and even ‘‘laziness and cowardice.’’ At present it would seem that ‘‘only a few’’ people succeed, ‘‘by their own cultivation of their spirit, in extricating themselves from minority and yet walking confidently’’ (1784, 8:35–36). The rest of the brief essay is a rather cautious and convoluted attempt to apply these observations to the public sphere. Kant earned his living by teaching, and the great number of his students were young men not much older than boys. In his lectures on ethics he associated duties with different age groups, which are as follows: ‘‘childhood, when we cannot maintain ourselves; the period of adolescence, when we are able to maintain ourselves, and propagate our kind, but not to sustain them; and the period of manhood, when we can maintain ourselves, have issue, and sustain them too.’’ Discipline is necessary at every age, and ‘‘the earliest discipline rests on obedience.’’ Even in young children, Kant singles out telling lies for special opprobrium. Lying is the mark of a coward, he says. ‘‘If the child lies . . . we

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should treat it as unworthy to be spoken to at all.’’ At about the age of ten, however, the child becomes capable of reflection on what is appropriate behavior and what is not. In this second stage of growth, ‘‘a youth . . . acquires the concept of steadiness, and of the love of man; now he is already capable of principles; from this point on, religion and morality are cultivated; and by then he is already refining himself, and can be disciplined by honour, whereas a child is disciplined only by obedience.’’ At sixteen the youth prepares to be a man. In this third stage, ‘‘he learns increasingly to recognize his vocation, and hence must get to know the world. At this entry into manhood he must be apprised of his real duties, of the worth of humanity in his own person, and of respect for it in others’’ (1784–85, 27:466–69). As a direct allusion then reveals, the congenial inspiration of these reflections was Rousseau’s Emile; or, On Education (1762); and their attentions to stages of development notably anticipate Piaget’s observations in The Moral Judgment of the Child. Given that Kant’s immediate test of enlightenment is adult independence— to become a grown-up, as we might say—this brief foray into stages of moral growth poses a sort of allegory of human reason coming of age in his century. ‘‘Whether or not Kant’s regard for Emile influenced his choice of this metaphor may remain open to question,’’ writes Susan Neiman, ‘‘but it is certain that he used the figure of a child’s growth to maturity to describe both a historical process of humankind and one that every individual reason must undergo. If the critical philosophy represents humankind’s intellectual maturity, it is also the means by which all individuals attain their own’’ (1994, 199– 200). There cannot be much doubt that Rousseau played a key role in this analogy between the coming of age of persons and the Enlightenment. If Kant did not sufficiently spell out the analogy, Rousseau certainly had at the close of Emile. The book concluded with a brief for a future political science that followed logically from the tutor Jean-Jacques’s officious raising of his pupil, Emile, to manhood. Kant would have read, for example, the following two paragraphs, which at once approve and delimit a paternal model of civil society: Assuming that one rejects this right of force and accepts the right of nature, or paternal authority, as the principle of societies, we shall investigate the extent of that authority, how it is founded in nature, and whether it has any other ground than the utility of the child, his weakness, and the natural love the father has for him. Whether when the child’s weakness comes to an end and his reason matures, he does not therefore become the sole natural judge of what is suitable for his preservation, and consequently his own master, as well as become independent of every other man, even of his father. For it is even more certain that the son loves himself than it is that the father loves his son.

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Coming of Age in Neoclassical Drama Whether when the father dies, the children are obliged to obey the eldest among them or someone else who will not have a father’s natural attachment for them; and whether there will always be a single chief in each clan whom the whole family is obliged to obey. In which case we would investigate how the authority could ever be divided, and by what right there would be more than one chief on the whole earth governing mankind. (1762, 4:838)

Rousseau’s allegorizing conditionals were even a little ominous. As fathers inevitably die and cede their power, so must kings—and must we not study how that power should be divided? All these conjectures play with revolutionary ideas. As far as families themselves are concerned, Rousseau’s language was blunter in his Social Contract of the same year: ‘‘The most ancient of all societies and the only natural one is that of the family. Even so children remain bound to the father only as long as they need him for their preservation. As soon as the need ceases, the natural bond dissolves.’’ Father and children then become equally independent. ‘‘If they remain united, they are no longer so naturally but voluntarily’’ (1762a, 3:352). Such sentiments can scarcely be said to favor the ancien régime. In the Discourse on Inequality, where Rousseau cites Locke by name, his language is kinder to fathers and offers the key distinction for any theory of honor, that between respect and obedience: ‘‘that by the Law of Nature the Father is the Child’s master only as long as it needs his assistance, that beyond that point they become equal, and that then the son, perfectly independent of the Father, owes him only respect and not obedience’’ (1755, 3:182). For purposes of the last clause, it will be noted, the child has been gendered male as well as come of age. Before taking a closer look at Emile, however, I want to remind my readers of the astonishing vogue at the time for theatrical productions with themes of honor. From Calderón and Corneille in the seventeenth century to Goethe and Schiller in Kant’s time, tragedy regularly invoked the demands and recalcitrance of honor. Obviously, a great deal of scholarship has been devoted to neoclassical drama, but just as an emphasis on the younger generation in novels of the period can be seen as analogous to political developments (Alryyes, 2001), many heroic plays betray a generational bias and turmoil that has its wider bearing on the culture. The political content of the drama, latent or otherwise, if anything spoke louder than that of the novel. ‘‘The audience takes part in two celebrations, one social, the other literary,’’ in Paul Bénichou’s account. ‘‘The heroic theater and the society of which it is the expression presuppose the uncontested power of public opinion. The very idea of glory is inseparable from it. Contests of valor between great men before the public tribunal—a public made up of peers, of inferiors, or more often of

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both—are the moral institution most in keeping with the spirit of this society’’ (1948, 11). Exploiting classical subject matter or actions set in faraway imperial climes emboldened the dramatists. Calderón’s early honor plays were mainly about real or imagined sexual betrayal and thus—however terrifying for the male—only indirectly about inheritance or public affairs. Life Is a Dream (1636) was different. The title suggests a Christian commonplace but also, as the action plays out, a bad dream that absurdly repeats itself. A contretemps of father and son exerts an extraordinary generalizing power over the life of the state as well as the course of individual lives. The young Segismundo appears for acts 1 and 3 in animal skins. His father, Basilio, the king of Poland—wary of just such revolutionary possibilities that were shadowed forth in the writings of Rousseau, one could say—keeps his son imprisoned in a tower in the mountains during those acts and admits him into the court only in the act between, so that if the young man does not behave himself, the interlude of experiencing his civilized identity will seem unreal to him and he can be locked away again for life. But ‘‘I know who I am,’’ Segismundo announces in the first scene of act 2, echoing a refrain of Spanish honor plays; and ‘‘if you once had me bound in chains, / that was because I had no notion who I was, / but now I know exactly who I am, / and that’s knowing I am / partly beast and partly man.’’ This soliloquy—given here in Edwin Honig’s verse translation—occurs after the unruly Segismundo has quarreled with a servant who has not brought himself fully to accept the prince’s newly granted freedom. When the servant claims to follow Basilio’s orders, Segismundo assures him that if the orders are unjust, ‘‘the King / is not to be obeyed,’’ and he puts an end to the quarrel by pitching the man off a balcony into the sea. Basilio himself enters and scolds his son. How can a father love someone who behaves that way? basilio God in Heaven, if only I’d never given you a life, I’d never have to hear your voice or look at your outrageous face. segismundo If you’d never given me a life I’d have no complaint against you, but since you did and then deprived me of it, I must complain. If giving something freely is a rare and noble thing, to take it back again is base as one can be.

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Coming of Age in Neoclassical Drama basilio Is this the way you thank me for making you a prince who were a poor and lowly prisoner? segismundo But what’s there to thank you for? What are you really giving me, tyrant over my free will, now that you’ve grown so old and feeble that you’re dying?

Despite the strained out-of-the-way circumstances of Calderón’s Life Is a Dream, these are mostly charges such as might conceivably be brought by any son against his father: you created me human (the mother’s role is beside the point), but until I came of age treated me strictly as an animal and denied my freedom. The father’s reactions are also understandable. The play’s self-possessed heroine, Rosaura, illegitimate by birth and betrayed in love, serves as a female loose cannon to complement Segismundo’s obstreperousness. She comes in pursuit of the nobleman who seduced her and is determined to kill him if necessary, citing her honor and self-respect. Segismundo encounters her in man’s clothing in act 1, then falls abruptly in love with her when she appears as a woman in act 2. They combine forces in the battle scene of act 3. There he enters in his animal skins once more, saying to himself, ‘‘If old Rome, in its triumphant / Golden Age, could see me now, / how she’d rejoice at the strange sight / of a wild animal leading / mighty armies.’’ Then Rosaura enters in a third change of costume, sporting a sword and dagger this time and offering her assistance. Equipped in ‘‘robes of Diana and the armor / of Minerva,’’ she narrates at length her own past and proposes that they put a stop to the marriage of her lover Astolfo to the princess Estrella. ‘‘As a woman I come hoping to win you / over to my honor’s cause; / but also as a man would, I come / to swell your heart, battling for your crown.’’ And she warns him that if he treats her merely as a woman, she will kill him. Segismundo, passionately in love with her, is tempted: if life is a dream, and ‘‘all glories like dreams,’’ why should he not take advantage of her? But literally in mid-soliloquy he comes to a different conclusion from the same premises and resolves to restore her reputation. When he turns his back on her nonetheless, to avoid temptation, Rosaura at first misunderstands and is hurt. Segismundo explains himself in terms of the honor of both concerned: Words fail me in reply so my honor will not fail. I do not dare to talk to you, because my deeds must do the talking. I do not even look at you because,

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as someone sworn to look after your honor, I have all I can do to keep from looking at your beauty.

Life Is a Dream concludes with the young Segismundo conquering himself, ordering Astolfo to marry Rosaura, and proposing to the princess—presumably still virgin—Estrella. This honor play, with its Christian and Old Testament overtones, is most remarkable for its elaborations on coming of age and an accompanying diminishment of fathers. For by the strangest of coincidences—or Calderón’s tightest plotting—Rosaura’s wayward father is the man who has served as Segismundo’s jailer. Clotaldo lives to acknowledge his daughter, but the king Basilio far more dramatically first protests and then bows to ‘‘a tyrant son.’’ The fate of Basilio is to fall on his knees in defeat before Segismundo, exclaiming against the blow to his honor and self-respect. In a long speech his son spells out the dangers of misreading what is written in the stars and the moral of his bizarre upbringing in any case. Whatever other lessons derive from this special case, ‘‘nothing better shows how, / after so much as been done / to prevent its happening, / a father and a king lies subject / at his own son’s feet.’’ Thus the dramatic action might be summarized by the words Carole Pateman uses for the inception of the modern state: ‘‘another story of the masculine genesis of political life, but . . . a specifically modern tale, told over the dead political body of the father’’ (1988, 88). Despite its gestures to ancient Rome, Calderón’s play is not strictly what we think of as neoclassical. It does not follow the unities so brilliantly exemplified by Corneille’s The Cid of the same year (1636), which may well be the French work of that genre most frequently studied and performed to this day. Life Is a Dream even boasts a clown, the character Clarín, from a Spanish tradition more nearly resembling Shakespearean theater. While no Falstaff, Clarín both subverts honor with his chatter and sets it off by his own cowardice. He hides from the battle in the last scene, only to be shot down from his hiding place: ‘‘Trying to hide from death, / I ran straight into it. . . . From this you clearly may conclude, / the man who most avoids its sting / is stung the quickest.’’ But if The Cid contains no such pointed clowning, it is just as certainly another play with two fathers that celebrates the ascendancy of the son—the son and son-in-law-to-be, Rodrigue, thereafter known as the Cid. In most such honor plays, the action is set in a remote time and place. Calderón’s takes place in a vaguely imagined Poland, Corneille’s in eleventhcentury Spain. To be sure, the action was borrowed from a contemporary Spanish play, but Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar was a legendary hero and his honorific, ‘‘el Cid,’’ Moorish. In its austere formality, The Cid is neoclassicism itself.

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The heroine’s father, the Count of Gormas, insults Rodrigue’s father, Don Diègue, over an issue that has nothing to do with the lovers. The count aggressively contends that he, though younger than Don Diègue, ought to have been appointed tutor to the prince of Castile (a personage who never otherwise appears or is heard of in the play). The economy of the plot is such that all concerned, the two fathers as well as the lovers, approve the intended marriage of Chimène and Rodrigue; even the infanta, who is secretly Chimène’s rival, approves the marriage as a constraint on her own passion. But Don Diègue is too old to defend himself against the other father’s insult, and he calls upon his son to defend his honor: before the end of act 2, Rodrigue has done just that by killing his future father-in-law in a duel. The ambition, or the aggressiveness, of the deceased may have been ill-advised, but all the characters concur that Rodrigue’s response was what honor called for. It’s just that now Chimène demands that her honor be satisfied, either by the king applying the law against her betrothed or by a champion challenging him to a new duel. She also appeals for a trial by combat, but Castile’s Ferdinand I observes that this medieval institution not only consumes a country’s best men but is no guarantee of justice. Thus The Cid enacts a head-on conflict of love and honor, in which the very tightness of the plot and the rhyming couplets triumph as theater. You could say that Chimène has to bear the brunt of the conflict in her own person, since her love pleads for Rodrigue’s life and her honor for his death. But Rodrigue on his part keeps offering her his life, out of respect for that honor. If the state, because of its laws against homicide, should require Rodrigue’s life, his father offers to die in his stead. Chimène’s unwanted suitor, Don Sanche, offers to die as her champion. All men of honor—and heroines, it seems—have no more persuasive way of expressing their will than this readiness to die, though the proof can only be in the dying. Rodrigue’s repeated offers are one with his daring to combat the Moors, both within the play and at its end, beyond the time of its action. But it must be stressed that for the protagonists of such plays, honor always trumps love. The lover always puts his or her honor, and that of his or her loved one, ahead of their passion. True love is so defined. Sometimes a rival, especially if she is a woman, lets her passions get the better of her; but this is not the case in The Cid, where the infanta (whose love is of course another credit for Rodrigue) keeps herself well in control. Note that the principle also holds for Calderón’s more free-wheeling heroine, Rosaura, who demands that her honor be restored. Chimène’s is the unresolvable dilemma. In the theater, after protests against his original version, Corneille invites the audience to decide the outcome: the king gives the marriage his blessing and sends Rodri-

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gue off to more feats of glory, to give Chimène more time. In the examen accompanying the published text, the author professes to believe that his heroine will never marry and to be troubled that she does so in the Spanish play that is his source (which he also chides for permitting the action to extend over three years). There is another temporal factor in the strict formal unity of The Cid. This same brief time of action in the play marks the hero’s coming of age. The duel with the count, Chimène’s father, is Rodrigue’s first use of his sword in earnest —his coup d’essai, which turns out to be his first success as well. This private matter comes first; he has yet to try himself against the Moors or any foreign adversary. Corneille accordingly makes a point of this being the primal deed in the dialogue. The count himself first calls attention to the hero’s youth and is in truth concerned that a fighter of his reputation should duel with one so inexperienced. ‘‘To challenge me! What has made you so presumptuous, you who have never been seen carrying arms?’’ To which Rodrigue rejoins with another couplet that opposes not just himself, but the best of his age against the older man: ‘‘My peers do not need to make themselves known twice, and their first tries are those of a master’’ (ll. 407–10). After the news that Rodrigue has killed the count in their duel, a dialogue of the hero with his own father goes over the same ground. Don Diègue takes his son’s victory as a compliment to the family and even indulges in a little hyperbole: ‘‘Your first try with the sword is the equal of all of mine.’’ The son returns the compliment, and is delighted that ‘‘My first try pleases him who gave me life’’ (ll. 1032, 1042). Only after this initiation does Rodrigue fight victoriously against the Moors and receive a parallel compliment from the king, who assures him the first military test of his powers already equals those of his ancestors (l. 1212). Of course, it is unfortunate that the coup d’essai takes the life of the other father in the case, who has also consented to the marriage with Chimène; but one could argue that the count’s death, and the inevitable passing of the older Don Diègue, and the hero’s own protestations of his readiness to die, all inhere in the marriage anyway—in precisely the loss of men and getting of children, as the clown in Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well (3.2.41–42) defined marriage. These deaths are biologically warranted—or, one can say, they follow logically from the premise that the father has given life to the child. Mothers are never directly referred to in The Cid. The formality of the central scene of act 3 between Rodrigue and Chimène, with its suppressed sexuality, takes one’s breath away. Rodrigue’s decision is to confront Chimène directly after the fatal duel and ask her to take his life. This need not be merely tactical on his part: let us grant both protagonists their sincerity. Corneille does not work here by inviting irony but by creating an

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impasse: a competition of honor that overrides their sexual intentions. In this scene the dialogue between man and woman is subtly gendered. Rodrigue wants her to take his sword and kill him. Chimène avoids the word sword: ‘‘Take that thing away from me, which to my eyes upbraids your crime and your life.’’ ‘‘It is stained with my blood,’’ she protests, speaking strictly of her father’s blood. ‘‘Plunge it into mine,’’ is Rodrigue’s reply, ‘‘and thus wash it clean of that color.’’ Again she protests the sight of his weapon, which has killed her father and is now killing her. ‘‘Take that thing away from me, I cannot bear it’’ (ll. 859–67). Then, in more reasoned speeches, he reminds her that she could not love him if he had not challenged her father, and she concedes that honor gave him no alternative: but now her honor is at stake. Even under such special circumstances as these, they can use the French gloire and honneur interchangeably to specify the motive. Chimène concludes that her générosité, or nobility, must match his own: ‘‘You have, in offending me, shown yourself worthy of me; I must, by your death, show myself worthy of you’’ (ll. 931–32). As a woman, she doesn’t name the means she will employ; he goes back to insisting that she take his life herself, not by proxy. Rodrigue argues that her reputation will suffer if she fails to take revenge; Chimène counters that she will demonstrate to all that she can both love him and seek his death. The dramatic action of The Cid turns upon this scene, which at bottom consists of avowals that both have come of age. In France, according to Bénichou, ‘‘the primary end of tragedy, in its revival in the first half of the seventeenth century, was to provoke an outburst of moral admiration in the audience’’ (1948, 138). Every character in The Cid behaves admirably, with the minor exception of the count, who has been put away by act 2. The count’s ambition displayed a vanity that ought to be avoided by men of honor, though his provoking a quarrel with Don Diègue need not be seen as murderous: this is not the first time he has staked his life on his reputation. By substituting a son for one of the fathers in the playing out of this action, it may seem that Corneille was solely concerned to demonstrate family honor—a so-called vertical rather than horizontal affair. But the duel is more significantly Rodrigue’s first essay in combat, and he has already been proposed and accepted for marriage by the two families. The quarrel between the count and Don Diègue provides the occasion, the contest between Rodrigue and Chimène, the centerpiece of the action. Subsequently in The Cid, as in the legend, the hero is tested in a wider combat (though also offstage). Family honor has its horizons also, families being compared with other families. Bénichou, who specifically instances this play, is again helpful: ‘‘The aristocratic family does not compel the hero to sacrifice himself. . . . The family is not so much a disciplined social entity as a community sustained by pride. The

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honor of the group is barely distinguishable from that of any of its members, and great questions of state or family directly concern the individual’s honor’’ (1948, 38–39). Or great questions of belief: in Polyeucte, Corneille’s Christian tragedy of 1641, the eponymous Armenian convert seeks his glory in martyrdom. He uses the same term, gloire, with which Rodrigue justifies his duel with a fellow Christian in the earlier play, in which the characters’ Christianity is entirely beside the point, hardly more than a convenient marker between the Castilians and the Moors offstage. And the word refers to the same kind of motivation: Polyeucte martyrs himself not because he imagines God commands or calls on him to do so but because, as the newest member of the group, he enthusiastically wills to do so. As Pauline, his Roman wife, immediately understands, he has become a Christian ‘‘because he wills it’’ (l. 943). A case could be made that Pauline herself is too submissive to her father, the governor of Armenia. It is he who has desired her to marry Polyeucte, and of course the rule of obedience to fathers in this literature is strict for daughters. The truth is that Pauline pointedly wills to obey her father, Félix, and she is far more constant than he. When Félix learns that Pauline’s first love, Sévère, is still alive and even higher in the emperor’s service, he begins to wish he had not regarded the marriage to the local young man as so advantageous. Pauline on her part is still in love with Sévère but loves Polyeucte as her husband and will not waver. In this play, even more than The Cid, it is the young people—bride, husband, and lover—who conduct themselves with honor throughout and easily outshine Félix, the distinctly unhappy representative of the older generation. Pauline’s example sets the standard for all the men, and only her father falls short. Sévère, hardened in combat and service to Rome, has the most power in his hands and still passionately loves her. But he is smart enough to appreciate Pauline’s ‘‘lessons in nobility’’ and accordingly reaches for ‘‘the glory of demonstrating to that beautiful soul that Sévère is her equal and worthy of her’’ (ll. 1391–92). Consequently, his determination to save Polyeucte from martyrdom is as sincere as hers is. Though Sévère’s own future is in the hands of the emperor Décie, who hates Christians, he declares, ‘‘I am still Sévère; and all [the emperor’s] power can do nothing to my glory, nothing to my duty. This my honor requires, and I will satisfy it’’ (ll. 1405–7). On the other hand, Félix as father and father-in-law comes off very poorly. An affectionate but compromised man, rendered uncertain by ambition, he shifts ground and thinks of acting secretly because he is bemused by hypothetical imperatives. He projects onto Sévère his own thoughts: namely, that if Polyeucte dies, the young Roman can marry Pauline after all, and he can become father-in-law a second time. Corneille in fact enlists these musings of Félix to set off the absence of

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such calculation in the young principals; he seeks to dramatize the sincerity of their categorical imperatives. Not every play, to be sure, contrasts the two generations as tellingly as Polyeucte, but Corneille privileges autonomy over obedience every time. In his last play, Suréna (1674)—its story taken from Plutarch—the young prince Pacorus is more unpleasant than his tyrannical father, Orode, the Parthian king. Although this tragedy owes something to Racine, the strong love of the protagonists, Suréna and Eurydice, is again first and last an affair of honor. As the latter avers, ‘‘The lover of a hero loves what he is like, and therefore looks upon his perils without trembling’’ (ll. 1091–92). The constancy and sheer will of these two contrast with the adaptation and plotting of Orode and his son. Suréna’s military honor code obliges him to obey the king; but one reason Orode cannot quite trust his young general is that, consulting his own character, he cannot believe that the hero’s word can be trusted without engaging his interests somehow. Besides, Suréna’s skill as a general and his conquests have earned him a large following. As Bénichou generalizes over the politics of all Corneille’s work, ‘‘A sense of one’s own worth, the approval of the public— these are the values in open conflict with the ideal of obedience’’ (1948, 48). The upshot in this case, the bleakest ending of all, is that Suréna is murdered outright, shot down from a safe distance when he walks off in the last scene. After the London theaters reopened in 1660, the plays of Dryden owed much of their heroics to Corneille and to Calderón as well (Kirsch, 1965, 46–65; Loftis, 1973, 178–248). In his early plays especially, Dryden featured young autonomous heroes—Montezuma, Almanzor, Aureng-Zebe—who are never more confident and assertive of their own freedom than when in the service of some reigning monarch. The least exotic locale for their fearless demonstrations of love and valor is Spain. In The Conquest of Granada (1672), Dryden returns to the legendary era of the Cid and the crossroads of two cultures. Almanzor declares himself in the first scene: But know, that I alone am king of me. I am as free as nature first made man, Ere the base laws of servitude began, When wild in woods the noble savage ran.

Here is a hero of prelapsarian fortitude well before Rousseau came along to script him. Dryden’s man of honor, who shares in more than one culture and holds himself apart from the state, has a dangerous capacity for disobedience. In the second part of The Conquest of Granada, Almanzor will be explicitly compared to Achilles, and on another occasion he compares himself to Zeus. There are some suggestive resemblances to Coriolanus as well: his contempt

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for the mob, his solo performances, his changing sides, and his surrender to his hitherto unknown father, the Duke of Arcos and a Christian, at the end. Throughout Dryden deploys a two-father subplot to set off, with nice ensemble scenes, the star-crossed love of young Ozmyn and his Benzada. These plays also feature a series of marvelously out-of-control women— Zempoalla, Lyndaraxa, and Nourmahal—to contrast with the principal heroines, who insist, like Corneille’s heroines, on placing honor ahead of love. Dryden may have felt such women necessary to represent the wrong sort of passion on the English stage, but they tend to steal the show. What greater reward to the audience of Aureng-Zebe (1675) could he offer than Nourmahal’s curtain speech, which begins, ‘‘I burn, I more than burn; I am all fire’’? But more subtly the plays distinguish between honor and obedience even as they embrace a patriarchal politics. In Aureng-Zebe, which is set in faraway Agra on the Indian subcontinent, the emperor states his view of children this way to his two sons: Children, the blind effect of love and chance, Formed by their sportive parents’ ignorance, Bear from their birth the impressions of a slave: Whom Heav’n for play-games first, and then for service gave.

He is hinting that Aureng-Zebe, his older son, may well be set aside for Morat, the younger. But observe the difference he evokes between childhood and adulthood: the first is equivalent to slavery, the second to service. From this father’s point of view, both stages assume the fealty of his sons, yet the shift from slavery to service acknowledges some greater independence. Think how Shakespeare’s Romans bandy the word slave: the emperor’s coarse representation of childhood as slavery reveals that he knows honor is at stake for these grown sons. Dryden was a deeply conservative thinker, and throughout the plays a high value is placed on filial loyalty; but as in Corneille, it is up to the young man or woman of honor to will that loyalty. In an exchange with Aureng-Zebe in act 2, the emperor—very parentlike—reminds his son that ‘‘Obedience is your safest course.’’ The hero comes back promptly with the lines ‘‘I’m taught, by honour’s precepts, to obey: / Fear to obedience is a slavish way.’’ Again slavery is the antithetical condition, and honor’s imperatives are categorical. To obey out of fear assumes some immediate calculation of consequences. Only slaves (or children) may do that. Notwithstanding Rousseau’s convoluted antitheatricality (Barish, 1981, 256–94), his moral and political writings comprehend many of the same values as these plays and might be used to expound their subtleties. Rousseau had

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very ambivalent feelings about nobility and a veritable chip on his shoulder against confining honor to wealthy or privileged groups. But the theater of the time did not always portray honor as the prerogative of a single class. In such plays as Peribánez (?1609–12) and Fuenteovejuna (?1612–14), Lope de Vega could weigh the true honor of peasants collectively against the rapacity and false honor of certain noblemen. In The Mayor of Zalamea (1642), Calderón effectively argued that honor among the peasantry could be as formidable as that of the military, and thus it earns the respect of a king onstage as well as the audience off. During Rousseau’s lifetime, and like him under the influence of Richardson’s novels, Gotthold Lessing partially politicized honor in Emilia Galotti (1772), by opposing the marriage of his bourgeois heroine and Count Appiani to the tyrannical womanizing of their petty sovereign. As in a comedy, which this play was certainly not, the action turns on the happiness of the younger generation. The count’s courage and independence and Emilia’s chaste honesty bring about their deaths the same day. The middle-class parents of the heroine are treated sympathetically; some of the prince’s responsibility is displaced on his chamberlain. When the young Friedrich Schiller recast Lessing’s drama as ‘‘Luise Millerin,’’ otherwise Intrigue and Love (1784), he employed a two-father plot, contrasted the ambition of the courtier to the honor of the musician, and raised the political stakes of the catastrophe accordingly. This prose play about the middle class was drafted while Schiller was working on Don Carlos, with its royal father and son, Spanish inquisition, and suppression of the Netherlands: it is the prince in that play who saw the queen first and is on the right side of the colonial struggle. The prose plays especially reflected real social misgivings and anticipate discontent with traditional power structures. In featuring a new generation coming of age and bourgeois honor resisting the aristocracy, they could be said to model Enlightenment thinking.

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And How Rousseau’s Emile Comes of Age

The fate of fathers in Rousseau is to be eclipsed by their remarkable heirs, or sidelined by other officious males who can speak more directly for the author, or both. This is so even for Julie; or, The New Heloise (1761), in which the heroine’s utterly dutiful bowing to her father’s wishes dictates the plot of five out of six parts of the novel. Julie is a long epistolary novel: to have a true voice, a character must be one of the letter writers, yet the Baron d’Étange is allotted a single epistle, of not much more than a hundred words, to oppose and threaten the schoolmaster who is his daughter’s lover—or to express his position on anything else, for that matter. The novel is a two-father work of sorts, but the father of Claire—the brunette cousin who functions as a kind of double for the blonde Julie—is an even more shadowy figure than d’Étange. Instead, two other males who are indeed older than the protagonists afford plentiful fatherly advice. One is Wolmar, Julie’s appointed husband, thoughtful observer, and respectful friend to her lover, who he hopes will tutor their children. The second is the well-to-do Englishman, Milord Edouard, who generously befriends the hero and subsequently shares his wisdom with the rest. The hero of Julie, dubbed St. Preux by Claire at one point, has no father or family whatever. Preux, used as a noun, once meant a valiant warrior, with a suggestion of one who had made himself useful. He remains nameless in the novel to protect Julie, perhaps, or as a backhanded concession to d’Étange’s

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charge that he is not a gentleman—or because Rousseau identified with Julie’s lover so empathically that he could not bear to give him a name other than his own. In Emile—a work designed, among other things, to compete with Locke’s modestly entitled Some Thoughts concerning Education (1693)—the author could be less shy, and the tutor is understood to be Jean-Jacques. Emile is not so much a novel as a manual of education that has been arranged as a narrative in order to accommodate the several stages of a child’s growth to manhood. Emile, the model pupil, is said to have a father somewhere, but that parent has been thrust aside in order to make room for the tutor. ‘‘Emile is an orphan. It makes no difference whether he has his father and mother. Charged with their duties, I inherit all their rights’’ (1762, 4:267). These exhaustive narratives by Rousseau repeatedly engage with honor, both purposefully and casually. Julie is of course a love story designed to improve on that of Abelard and Heloise in the twelfth century. Much of the improvement conforms with the protocols of neoclassical tragedy, which require love to give way to honor. ‘‘Take away esteem and love is reduced to nothing,’’ Julie’s lover pronounces: ‘‘If I must choose between honor and you, my heart is prepared to lose you’’ (1761, 2:84–86). He need hardly worry on this score, since the heroine is cast in the same mold as Chimène and Pauline. Rousseau wants to have it both ways, however. In part 1 of Julie, when she is nineteen and he twenty-one, the couple do make love; he has been first to declare himself, but she has been forward in inviting him to her bed. It is as if the Princess of Clèves had first surrendered and then not surrendered to her passion for Nemours. The rest of the novel, with Julie always taking the lead, is devoted to rendering this episode honorable, to preserving but trumping love with self-esteem, as supported by the love and esteem of their intimate circle and the admiration of the locals. Readers have to be in a mood to be entertained by so much goodness, as discerned and debated at length with such intelligence. In a last footnote to Julie, the supposed editor of the letters is pleased to point out that there has been no villain. In that respect, Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison is a closer model than his Clarissa, given the latter’s Lovelace and the stark, ultimately pointless violation of its heroine. By asserting freedom and daring death itself, the love action of the novel mimics honor. When Julie carefully instructs St. Preux how he is to make his way to her room, she warns him not to bring any weapon but to be prepared to die with her if they should be caught by her father. ‘‘No, my sweet friend, no, we shall not depart this short life without having for an instant tasted of happiness. But bear in mind . . . that the approach is subject to a thousand hazards, the site dangerous, the retreat extremely perilous; that we are done for if we are discovered, and everything must favor us if we are to avoid discovery’’ (1761,

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2:145). A dangerous night expedition, this, but the risk of death warrants their right to do as they please. For a comparable assertion of the will in lovemaking, one would have to look to an honor play like Bussy d’Ambois (1604) by George Chapman, the translator of Homer. Female honor as conventionally understood should rule out the consummation of Julie’s love. But the whole thrust of Rousseau’s novel is to put to right the freely willed embrace of the young lovers. Rousseau wants to imagine them as beyond the rules and as exemplary of a modern code of honor. Ten years and over a hundred letters later, the very last words composed by Julie dying sound the same theme: ‘‘Only too happy to pay with my life the right to love thee still without crime, and to tell thee so one more time’’ (1761, 2:743). In the novel’s last letter of all, Claire writes to St. Preux that she will kill him if he should marry anyone now, including the writer of the letter. Claire, who was Julie’s candidate to marry St. Preux, has now taken the role of Chimène to herself. Far from the careful endorsement of marriage that it seems to be, Julie finally weighs in on the side of austere independence, the principals released from love and marriage too. Julie is dead; she is survived by the widow Claire, her widower father and husband, and a couple of now inveterate bachelors (Schwartz, 1984, 134–38). The tutor in Emile is no young lover. The task Rousseau sets for himself is in the tradition of Cicero’s De Officiis, but instead of adopting the form of a letter of advice from a father to a grown son, he narrates in stages the growth of the imaginary boy Emile to manhood, with long pedagogic asides on the instruction appropriate at the time. A use of the present tense enhances the impression that his is an ideal model of education rather than a case study. Rousseau never quite comes to terms with the anomaly that such detailed and relentless instruction should result in his pupil’s autonomous being as a man standing on his own. But Cicero and all parents or teachers could be said to be in the same boat. If, as I believe, honor demands that individuals be adults and engaged outside the family, that does not mean that parents and others should not try to prepare the young for that condition. More troubling are the frequent deceptions employed by Jean-Jacques the tutor, if honesty and straightforwardness are really what he hopes to inculcate in his pupil. The five stages of education corresponding to the five books of Emile are not each strictly calibrated as to years, and presumably they vary somewhat with the child in question. In infancy, there is little to be called for except physical care. Health is essential, and indeed strength, or there would be no use in proceeding further. ‘‘All wickedness comes from weakness’’ (1762, 4:288) might be the beginning of an honor code: the work is concerned directly only with a male child. Rousseau argues that risk already plays a part in the lives of the very young, who are scarcely immune to accidents. When Emile is some-

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what older, the tutor begins to take up—with his readers, at least—the nature of amour propre, of which I shall say more below. The child has become a boy and begins to understand the physical limits that he is up against. In a third stage, from about twelve to fifteen years, he is approaching adolescence. Only now does Jean-Jacques give him his first book to read, and that is Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. He should also learn a trade: that is, a skill such as carpentry. Like Dryden’s Almanzor, he will discover that a man who ‘‘owes nothing except to himself’’ is greater than a king. This part concludes with a resounding paragraph of almost defiant expectation of trouble: he ‘‘counts on himself alone’’ (1762, 4:469, 488). In the fourth stage Emile leaves childhood behind. He becomes aware of those around him, makes friends, and is moved by pride, emulation, and jealousy. Someone’s hormones are stirring. The narrative gives the impression that interest in the opposite sex precedes friendship with other youths, though Rousseau puts this the other way around a few pages later. The wavering may affect the meaning of amour propre, which comes fully into play at this stage (since Rousseau’s infusion of morality with ‘‘heart’’ has an erotic component). Emile is now able to profit from the Savoyard vicar’s words on natural religion and tolerance. Book 5 begins with some telling pages on the differences between the sexes and proceeds to a cloying account of the tutor’s introduction of Sophie as a mate for Emile. Once the two fall in love, Jean-Jacques intervenes again by ordering them to separate until they are older. The test is harder on the young woman, for she, ‘‘unlike Emile, does not have the honor of combat and victory’’ (1762, 4:824); but this expression is purely a metaphor for the young man’s response, since Rousseau despises the military as a career. A plan for Emile to travel, finally, opens up space for the author’s analogy between coming of age and the evolving of a modern state. Emile himself does not emerge from this education as a citizen of a republic, let alone a revolutionary. It would seem he has been better prepared for the leisure enjoyed by members of the charmed group that surrounds Julie in the novel. So just how has his manly independence been defined? Broadly, by what he is not, as in any traditional sorting by honor. He is not a woman, as JeanJacques is at pains to make clear in book 5, though marriage to Sophie will console him and she will tend to his needs. And of course he is no longer a child. A footnote in book 4 enlarges on this elevation as unfortunately characteristic of social snobbery as well: ‘‘There is no one who sees childhood with so much contempt as those who are leaving it, just as there is no country where the distinction of ranks is preserved with more affectation than in those where inequality is not great and where everyone always fears being confounded with his inferior’’ (1762, 4:637n). Rousseau always speaks out against snob-

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bery, yet the adult who owes nothing except to himself will still belong to one group and not another. Morally, the group defines itself by excluding wrong sorts of amour propre. Allan Bloom avoids translating this term (reasonably current in English) mainly, I suspect, because Rousseau seems of different minds about it. In Emile it can mean vanity, excessive concern with one’s image, getting on a high horse. Yet with a different nuance it is also what Emile needs to experience and come to terms with in order to be a man. Now Rousseau uses amour propre as a key to the depth of his commitment to honor as self-esteem, entirely detached from the esteem of others. Kant rightly enough observed in an early lecture that ‘‘Rousseau’s conception of honour is purely internal . . . a true self-esteem of one’s inner worth’’ (1762–64, 27:53). Certainly Rousseau, who often sentimentalized loneliness, would have liked to believe that self-esteem is sufficient to itself. These very same writings, however, assure an ongoing process of respect that results in a positive sense of amour propre. Much misunderstanding of Rousseau—including Kant’s own interpretation possibly—could be avoided by remembering that, strictly speaking, a world without amour propre exists only in that imaginary clime, the state of nature. Furthermore, selfesteem, so important for Rousseau, inevitably has to attend to the esteem of others—esteem for and from the other members of a peer group. Why else is the expression reflexive, and of what else can it be reflexive? Self-esteem assumes that there must be other participants, before the estimation in question can occur. Without the group, esteem can find no definition. The main reason why Rousseau and other moderns lean toward a so-called internal standard of honor is that they wish to rebut received ideas that identify honor with existing privilege, as of nobility or great wealth. Julie, for example, writes, ‘‘Private virtues are often all the more sublime for not aspiring to the approval of others but only to the good witness of the self.’’ Her very next thought, however, is ‘‘that the greatness of man belongs to all stations.’’ This is not a non sequitur but the very reason for taking the line about the witness of the self, and for continuing, ‘‘that none can be happy if he does not enjoy his own esteem’’ (1761, 2:224). In most stations of life men do not garner much approval; in humble stations few receive any notice at all. Selfesteem can be far more democratic than the prevailing idea that honor is only for those in high stations. In Emile the position is similar. A young man like Emile ‘‘will hardly seek advantages which are not clear in themselves and which need to be established by another’s judgment . . . still less will he seek those advantages which are not at all connected with one’s person, such as being of nobler birth, being esteemed richer, more influential, or more respected, of making an impression by greater pomp’’ (1762, 4:670–71). The

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rhetoric here first challenges the need for any opinion but one’s own. Then it dismisses accidentals, as not being ‘‘connected with one’s person.’’ Next it recalls the Renaissance debate on whether honor ought to reflect birth or merit: for moderns it will have to be merit. The rest of the sentence dismisses being respected for riches, for power, for popularity, or for show. What is left, in other words, is the esteem of fools. Any discourse on honor, including Rousseau’s, prefers the respect of those deemed worthy to judge. But Rousseau’s enchantment with the state of nature that humanity once enjoyed also influences the case for self-esteem. The solitariness of life in that original state obviated the need for any opinion other than one’s own, and a part of Jean-Jacques always wants to get back there. He exploited the myth most determinedly in the Discourse on Inequality. As humans emerged from the state of nature, ‘‘idle men and women gathered together. Everyone began to look at everyone else and to wish to be looked at himself, and public esteem acquired a price.’’ Inequality and vice are the results of this fall of man, for Rousseau significantly and somewhat bitterly assumes the shallowness of respect. ‘‘Any intentional wrong became an affront because, together with the harm resulting from the injury, the offended party saw in it contempt for his person, often more unbearable than the harm itself.’’ But this appears to be an actual condition of civility. As the author explains in note 15 to the discourse, amour propre is bound to be less innocent than the simple self-interest that contented one in the state of nature. Amour de soi-même ‘‘is a natural sentiment which inclines every animal to attend to its self-preservation and which, guided in man by reason and modified by pity, produces humanity and virtue. Amour propre is only a relative sentiment, factitious, and born in society, which inclines every individual to set greater store by himself than by anyone else, inspires men with all the evils they do one another, and is the genuine source of honor’’ (1755, 3:169–70, 219). This view of amour propre—so dour, conclusive, and resentful of social life—damns honor along with it. One would scarcely dream that honor elsewhere in Rousseau’s writings can have positive connotations and stand for the most compelling motives to act well. When Rousseau repeats the same distinction in Emile, a nostalgia for a state of nature is still evident, but with a firmer sense of present realities. For the job at hand, only the earliest time of infancy is analogous to a state of nature, and the achievement of manhood will inevitably require some endurance of society. ‘‘A child’s first sentiment is to love himself’’: that is only natural, but before long other people become involved in the equation. Again, ‘‘amour propre, which makes comparisons,’’ creates trouble. But now Jean-Jacques offers this uncharacteristic concession: ‘‘It is true that since [children and men] are not able always to live alone, it will be difficult for them always to be

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good.’’ Sometimes the tutor makes a point in spite of himself. The young Emile has grown up and so must interact with others. ‘‘Love must be reciprocal. . . . This is the source of the first glances at one’s fellows; this is the source of the first comparisons with them; this is the source of emulation, rivalries, and jealousy.’’ Coming of age means experiencing amour propre whether we like it or not, and the challenge it represents is not to be underestimated. ‘‘Extend these ideas,’’ the passage continues, ‘‘and you will see where our amour-propre gets the form we believe natural to it, and how self-love, ceasing to be an absolute sentiment, becomes pride in great souls, vanity in small ones’’ (1762, 4:492–94). With this indication that amour propre manifests itself in different ways, Rousseau effectively joins a tradition of finely interpreting honor that goes back to Aristotle. Emile then, expertly raised by his tutor, will realize that amour propre poses a danger, a passage in life to be met with address and with reserve. ‘‘A useful but dangerous instrument,’’ it is called at one point, and in a couple of places it is said to be as natural as amour de soi-même after all (1762, 4:536, 322, 488). What a young man ought to cultivate, therefore, is a cool unconcern coupled with close observation of those around him. ‘‘He is firm and not conceited. His manners are free and not disdainful. An insolent air belongs only to slaves; independence has nothing affected about it. I have never seen a man who has pride in his soul display it in his bearing.’’ He is—surprise!—not ‘‘absolutely indifferent to the opinion of others.’’ Any of this advice might be from a courtesy book for young gentlemen, and it would seem to be good advice to this day. The principle of valuing most the respect of those judged worthy of respect in return is fully instated here. Perhaps only Rousseau could borrow an argument from Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics, 1159a.13–24) or Hume (1739, 321) and make it seem so self-congratulatory: He loves men because they are his fellows, but he will especially love those who resemble him most because he will feel that he is good; and since he judges this resemblance by agreement in moral taste, he will be quite gratified to be approved in everything connected with good character. He will not precisely say to himself, ‘‘I rejoice because they approve of me,’’ but rather, ‘‘I rejoice because they approve of what I have done that is good. I rejoice that the people who honor me do themselves honor. So long as they judge so soundly, it will be a fine thing to obtain their esteem.’’ (1762, 4:667–71)

Such is the honor group, then, with its ‘‘resemblance by agreement in moral taste.’’ An esteem engine of this quality, furthermore, will easily produce a consensus on how one should act. It is above all a reciprocating engine. But however one reads this long passage, of which I have given only a part, the

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education of Emile has proceeded from a sheltered life of obedience to his tutor—a stand-in for his parents—to this necessary observing and deciding for himself. ‘‘As soon as amour-propre has developed, the relative I is constantly in play, and the young man never observes others without returning to himself and comparing himself with them’’ (1762, 4:534). The discursive narrative of Emile also affords many classical ‘‘types’’ for comparison, to use Erikson’s term. Two or three times Emile is compared implicitly to Achilles, and at least once each to Odysseus and to Aeneas. Allusions to Plutarch abound, and it is an open question of Rousseau scholarship whether Emile is not indebted for his name to Plutarch’s life of Aemilius Paullus. For all Rousseau’s vexed relations with persons of more elevated standing in society than his own, the large tendency of his writings after his death in 1778 was to promote egalitarianism. The comparison group into which full manhood thrusts Emile is fundamentally a peer group; honor, more especially in a society sharply divided between privilege and servitude, has a distinct political edge. Amour propre, that frame of mind which seemed to hold such dangers for the youth coming of age, at its best holds out the promise of equity at large: ‘‘Let us extend amour-propre to other beings. We shall transform it into a virtue, and there is no man’s heart in which this virtue does not have its root. The less the object of our care is immediately involved with us, the less the illusion of particular interest is to be feared. The more one generalizes this interest, the more it becomes equitable, and the love of mankind is nothing other than the love of justice’’ (1762, 4:547). Though enigmatic, this thought is congruent with The Social Contract of the same year, which defined sovereignty as the general will. The author’s egalitarianism was ahead of his time but also very much of his time. In Julie the heroine promises that ‘‘a man brought up in sentiments of honor is everyone’s equal, there is no rank where he is out of place’’ (1761, 2:633). Jean Starobinski characterizes such declarations of faith as sentimental and notices that, while the choice group surrounding Julie practice feeling equal with their servants, the servants know better than to try it the other way around (1971, 97–104). A similar one-sidedness can be pointed out in the instruction that Emile should learn a trade. It seems that any trade will do (except tailoring, which is fit only for women), but of course Emile does not need to earn his living. Very well then, Jean-Jacques exclaims, ‘‘Do not work out of necessity; work out of glory.’’ Later Emile does show off his skill in a carpenter’s shop when he is courting Sophie, but he is careful not to accept any pay for the work. On the other hand, one of the shrewdest observations the tutor makes about already existing relations of equality in society has historically very much to do

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with money: ‘‘No society can exist without exchange, no exchange without a common measure, and no common measure without equality. Thus all society has as its first law some conventional equality, whether of men or of things’’ (1762, 4:471, 461). When Rousseau wrote these words, the scale of commerce in the West was about to be multiplied over and over, first by the industrial revolution and then by successive information revolutions that would make comparisons possible on a global scale, far in advance of political institutions prepared to cope with them. While Jean-Jacques disciplines Emile and Sophie to wait philosophically for their wedding day, he can take time to speculate about what a future political science might look like. First he gives an appreciative nod to Montesquieu, who more than any of the philosophes invoked honor as an ordering principle in the state (Krause, 2002, 32–66). But Montesquieu ‘‘was content to discuss the positive right of established governments’’ (1762, 4:836). It is here that Rousseau outlines his suggestive analogy between a young man coming of age and a new polity, from which I extracted two paragraphs in the last chapter. The loose analogy becomes an allegory, a coded way of thinking politics. Paternal authority as a social principle is clearly preferable to the rule of force, he suggests, but to acknowledge even this truth raises questions. Fathers are needed only to love and protect the young child. When the child is old enough to care for himself, he becomes his own master. When the older generation passes, therefore, what sort of polity ought to take its place? Since grown sons are no longer subject to obedience, is it clear that there should be any single privileged authority? How might that authority be divided? Besides, when we do obey our elders, isn’t it only because we want to? It is doubtful whether anyone, given his achieved selfhood, can surrender it to another as his slave without in effect ceasing to exist: then how can a whole people give themselves over as slaves to a master? How can there be such an agreement without something like a social contract? A contract like this: ‘‘Each of us puts his goods, his person, his life, and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and we as a body accept each member as a part indivisible from the whole’’ (1762, 4:838–40). That each member of the body politic is indivisible from it may be no more than a tautology, given Rousseau’s emphasis on the freedom of the contracting parties: one need only be a member while one is a member. A few pages earlier in Emile, the author allows for what may be called a Coriolanus principle, akin to an ‘‘I banish you’’ directed at the state. ‘‘Now that Emile has considered himself in his physical relations with other beings and in his moral relations with other men, it remains for him to consider himself in his civil rela-

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tions with his fellow citizens.’’ He must first study political theory and ‘‘the particular government under which he was born, so that he may find out whether it suits him to live there.’’ For by a right nothing can abrogate, when each man attains his majority and becomes his own master, he also becomes master of renouncing the contract that connects him with the community by leaving the country in which that community is established. It is only by staying there after attaining the age of reason that he is considered to have tacitly confirmed the commitment his ancestors made. He acquires the right of renouncing his fatherland just as he acquires the right of renouncing his father’s estate. (1762, 4:833)

No doubt Rousseau in these pages is entertaining feelings of his own, a lifelong unease about where he belonged. But the radical solution proposed, while it asserts an individual’s autonomy in no uncertain terms, invites the kind of helplessness that Coriolanus met with. When the author returns to this eventuality after laying out his short version of the contract, it seems that the state may also exercise its freedom of action against the individual. In that case, little would seem to have changed from the citizen’s point of view except the legitimization of the power to send him into exile or put him to death. ‘‘Since the two contracting parties—that is, each individual and the public—have no common superior who can judge their differences, we shall examine whether each party remains the master of breaking the contract when it pleases him—that is to say, of renouncing it as soon as he believes himself injured.’’ Each party, note: the masculine pronouns in the final clauses of this sentence stand for either the person or the state. When it comes to mean the latter, little due process is contemplated here. The only comfort, since there is no longer a parent-like figure to adjudicate differences, is that the contract ‘‘renders legitimate, reasonable, and free from all danger commitments that otherwise would be absurd, tyrannical, and subject to the most enormous abuses’’ (1762, 4:840–41). But would it feel better to be hounded out of the country or to submit to capital punishment in the event that the state should break the contract? The matter at issue is not strictly criminal justice but who belongs or does not belong: who shall deign to be a part of this community, who shall be turned out whether he has deigned to belong or not, who shall exist or not in the eyes of the other. The terror of 1793 is in the offing, and maybe the terror and counterterrorism of our new millennium. ‘‘O Emile, where is the good man who owes nothing to his country? Whatever country it is, he owes it what is most precious to man—the morality of his actions and the love of virtue’’ (1762, 4:858). For all the supposed freedom of the adult male to choose his country, a dose of nationalism is also injected into

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the argument. For Rousseau this nationalism has little military meaning, but the geography of belonging can become potentially very wide, so long as it still has borders. In the clash of European armies not long after the writer’s death, expressions of honor began to lose something of their personal relevance in Western lives. One fought for one’s nation or not at all, though not until World War I did rituals of personal honor like that of dueling give way entirely. Daring aviators carried on man-to-man in that war for a while, but there was nothing quite like a machine gun or poison gas for undoing gentlemen on foot. Just as significant over the long run may be the inroads of a legal culture on private honor. In his speculative project for political science at the end of Emile, Rousseau did not fail to call for a redefinition of law. History responded with the Code Napoléon, which not only endorsed freedom and equality and the right of property but reflected a commitment to the absolute sovereignty of the state as the force behind the law. The new legal order competed more successfully with honor than the church or monarchy ever had. This was not just a matter of the availability of actions for libel or breach of contract where honor might earlier have been at stake, but the ever wider use of criminal justice proceedings, right down to the everyday issue of traffic tickets. The law, as it is familiarly called, exacts obedience even when fathers and tutors are powerless.

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Kant’s Engagement with Honor

Honor was manifestly an important consideration in Kant’s lifetime, though he and many of his contemporaries were persuaded that the violence associated with honor in the past, and which persisted in the practice of dueling, ought if possible to be avoided. In what follows, I shall be arguing that some of what seems original or different in Kant’s moral philosophy may be traceable to conceptions of honor rather than religion or earlier philosophy. Recently, J.B. Schneewind’s The Invention of Autonomy (1998) has given an admirable and comprehensive account of the theological as well as the philosophical traditions that paved a way for Kant, but honor has never had a tradition of formal argument devoted to it. In the early twentieth century, Ernst Cassirer concluded his chapter on the moral philosophy by affirming ‘‘the reaction of Kant’s completely virile way of thinking to the effeminacy and over-softness that he saw in control all around him’’ (1918, 270). Then it appears that Cassirer is simply paraphrasing Goethe’s judgment in the early nineteenth century, which he proceeds to quote. Kant ‘‘brought us all back from the effeminacy in which we were wallowing’’ —too much consulting of our happiness, apparently, in the determination of right and wrong (thus Goethe in a letter of 29 April 1818). There need not be some hidden agenda here; when men spoke of effeminacy and distanced themselves from it, that was one of the commonest signs that honor was at issue.

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Another commonplace about the honor group, however defined, is that its members be grown up. When Kant in his ‘‘Answer to the Question, What Is Enlightenment?’’ takes up from Rousseau the matter of being grown up, his tone is almost like that of Coriolanus and his fellows, who live in scorn and terror of not being grown up. This theme of being grown up is at the root of his call for autonomy and of his objections to paternalism, together with the political overtones of the same theme. ‘‘A government established on the principle of benevolence toward the people like that of a father toward his children,’’ Kant held in a later essay, ‘‘is the greatest despotism thinkable’’ (1793a, 8:290–91). In the mid-twentieth century, Philippa Foot rather mischievously asked whether categorical imperatives had any really different purchase on a moral agent than the demands of etiquette. Foot’s choice of etiquette to make her point was surely rhetorical, since her purpose was to defend morality as ‘‘a system of hypothetical imperatives.’’ Her essay gestured toward ‘‘club rules’’ as well as manners in their normative usages—codes that might confidently be associated with honor (1952). Even if one can only guess that an alertness to the ways of honor at the time influenced Kant’s thinking, the project of Kantian ethics does parallel that of honor in certain respects, and indeed the two sorts of directives share certain problems. The present argument will therefore consist of two moves. First I shall rehearse what Kant explicitly said and wrote about honor by that name. Then in the following chapter I shall explore the parallels between the practical philosophy and honor as I have defined it— without, I trust, confusing the two. Kant fiercely rejected the idea that a moral obligation depended on a consensus of any sort. In lecturing on moral philosophy, Kant was scarcely bashful about honor. In the later eighteenth century there was no need to be shy of the word. He regularly exhorted his students to conduct their lives with honor, and the tone might be that of a general in the field or a coach before the big game. Between the demands of inner worth and outer repute, the professor can whipsaw his young men: ‘‘a man of inner worth will sooner sacrifice his life than commit a disreputable act.’’ As reconstructed from the notes of G.L. Collins, this lecture continues: ‘‘The man of inner worth is not afraid of death, and would sooner die than be an object of contempt and live among felons in servitude. But the worthless man prefers servitude, almost as if it were already the proper thing for him. There are duties, therefore, to which life is much inferior and to fulfill them we must evince no cowardice in regard to our life. The cowardice of man dishonours humanity, and it is very cowardly to set too much store by physical life.’’ The lecturer does not stop to explain which duties he has in mind; the operative terms—the threats of contempt and dishonor, the states of servitude

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and cowardice—are reserved for a failure to perform. The major premise that there are two kinds of men, those of ‘‘inner worth’’ and the ‘‘worthless,’’ is keyed to respect rather than any notion of right or wrong. The lesson is driven home by repetition. Honor emerges as no mere perquisite but the necessary condition for morality. A man ‘‘should live honourably. . . . If he can now no longer live in that fashion, he cannot live at all; his moral life is then at an end’’ (1784–85, 27:376–77). In these lectures Kant spoke at least tentatively of honor as a peer relation. A prince may be indifferent to the opinions of his subjects but not to that of other princes; noblemen do not care much what peasants think, but they are highly sensitive to the judgment of other noblemen. To illustrate the principle among the lower orders of society, Kant even suggests a female case. ‘‘The love of honour seems, in fact, to have much to do with one’s equals; thus a young woman of low degree, for example, is more ashamed in front of her equals than her superiors, from whom she would sooner incur contempt than from those on her own level’’ (1784–85, 27:408). Some of the distinctions Kant makes, such as that between the love of honor and the craving for it that is ambition, go as far back as Aristotle’s Ethics (1107b.23, 1159a.18). The lectures of 1793 that were written up by J.F. Vigilantius treat honor in more detail, but much of this discussion subsequently made its way into The Metaphysics of Morals, which appeared in 1797, when Kant was seventy-three. Fame, or good reputation that survives after a person’s lifetime, Kant treats briefly in the Metaphysics as a form of property under his doctrine of private right. Under the doctrine of virtue he can be more expansive. There he features two kinds of duties that bear directly on honor. The first kind he labels ‘‘a human being’s duty to himself regarded merely as a moral being’’; the second, as ‘‘duties to one’s fellow beings arising from the respect due them.’’ For both kinds it is easier to characterize these duties, as Kant does, by naming the vices they oppose: in the first instance, lying, avarice, and servility; and in the second, arrogance, defamation, and ridicule. The duties to oneself are also given a name, ‘‘love of honor,’’ and it is worth recording how Kant introduces this phrase: The vices contrary to this duty are lying, avarice, and false humility (servility). These adopt principles that are directly contrary to his character as a moral being (in terms of its very form), that is, to inner freedom, the innate dignity of a human being, which is tantamount to saying that they make it one’s basic principle to have no basic principle and hence no character, that is, to throw oneself away and make oneself an object of contempt.—The virtue that is opposed to all these vices could be called love of honor (honestas interna, iustum sui aestimium), a cast of mind far removed from ambition (ambitio) (which can be quite mean). (1797, 6:429, 465, 420)

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Words such as freedom, dignity, and moral being clearly refer to personal identity rather than directly to actions. Without a love of honor to oppose the vices named, a person’s own identity is lost—thrown away, in fact. Disparagements of what is ‘‘mean’’ or who deserves ‘‘contempt’’ are commonplace when membership in an honor group is at issue. To be sure, it is possible to understand contempt as a moral attitude (Mason, 2003). But despite the context, Kant does not write ‘‘self-contempt’’ here, presumably because contempt falls between persons, is fiercely dismissive of one or more other people. It is hard to imagine what it can mean absent any social relations. The harm that a moral agent does to others is not the issue for Kant in this context, but rather degradation of the self. For example, ‘‘Lying . . . may be done merely out of frivolity or even good nature; the speaker may even intend to achieve a really good end by it. But his way of pursuing this end is, by its mere form, a crime of a human being against his own person and a worthlessness that must make him contemptible in his own eyes.’’ Or by avarice, in the same context, Kant means leaving ‘‘one’s own true needs unsatisfied.’’ Our servility is wrong because ‘‘a human being regarded as a person . . . possesses a dignity (an absolute inner worth) by which he exacts respect for himself from all other rational beings in the world.’’ The only thing that strikes one as especially moral about these sentiments is that Kant wants to understand selfrespect as mainly respect for our capacity to be moral. The chapter nevertheless concludes with such advice as ‘‘Be no man’s lackey’’ and ‘‘Do not accept favors you could do without,’’ as well as the following aphorism: ‘‘one who makes himself a worm cannot complain afterwards if people step on him’’ (1797, 6:430–37). The duties of virtue to others descried by Kant, and also associated with love of honor, have less to do with personal identity and more to do with what might be called manners. Here the particular vices to be guarded against are arrogance, defamation, and ridicule. Arrogance, he first suggests, takes the form of an ambition ‘‘in which we demand that others think little of themselves in comparison with us’’ and that thereby disrupts or distorts ‘‘the respect that every human being can lawfully claim.’’ Another useful way to think of it is that arrogance betrays pride in the bad sense. Thus ‘‘it differs from pride proper (animus elatus), which is love of honor, that is, a concern to yield nothing of one’s human dignity in comparison with others.’’ Kant contends that self-respect entails respect for others. He neatly places the man who would override respect somewhere beneath it, by suggesting that ‘‘someone arrogant is always mean in the depths of his soul.’’ Such a person must know ‘‘that, were his fortune suddenly to change, he himself would not find it hard to grovel.’’ Kant’s argument against defamation of others also depends on reciprocity, ‘‘for examples of respect that we give others can arouse their

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striving to deserve it’’; but mainly defamation just weakens ‘‘respect for humanity’’ conceived of collectively (1797, 6:465–66). Finally, Kant’s reproof of ridicule is brief but nuanced: he allows for banter or a humorous defense against mockery, and he attacks only ridicule that is designed to deprive a person of respect. This same chapter treats of the duties of love to others, but Kant makes a sharp distinction between love and respect. ‘‘Failure to fulfill mere duties of love is lack of virtue ( peccatum). But failure to fulfill the duty arising from the respect owed to every human being as such is a vice (vitium). For no one is wronged if duties of love are neglected; but a failure in the duty of respect infringes upon one’s lawful claim’’ (1797, 6:464). Love is something given to another, whereas respect is owed to one. Though by lawful Kant basically means a moral, not a legal claim, the argument supports Stewart’s observation that honor can be treated as a right that has a basis in German law (1994, 21– 29, 145–53; also Whitman, 2000). The notion of a claim to respect typically justified dueling as a defense against insult, and I shall come to an exception Kant makes for dueling in a moment. In the contest of love and honor, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century heroic drama regularly privileged the latter. The same priority is attested in Kant’s lectures, though his argument about respect versus love tends to fall back on itself. For Kant, however, the trouble is that love depends on others and thus cannot depend on oneself. ‘‘Respect is directed to our inner worth,’’ and thus can stand alone. This respect for inner worth apparently cannot be mistaken —it is respect for that which deserves respect. Love is more chancy. ‘‘Love . . . can be present even where there is little esteem.’’ (Perhaps true, but so might the reverse be said.) The difference is most stark when contempt and hatred, the opposites of respect and love, are compared: If we take the opposites of these two, contempt is more painful than hatred. Both are unpleasant, but if I am an object of hatred, I shall, after all, be hated only by one person or another, and even though I may have much trouble to expect from such hatred, I shall nevertheless, if others do but know my worth, find courage and means enough to bear the hatred, and stand up against it. Contempt, however, is unbearable. An object of contempt is despised by everyone. It takes away our worth for others, and also the consciousness of our worth. If we wish to be respected, we must also have respect for other people, and for mankind in general. (1784–85, 27:407)

When he speaks of hatred, the lecturer is almost relaxed and resorts to conditionals he poses. It will be unpleasant, and I can expect trouble if I am hated ‘‘by one person or another.’’ A cheerful stoicism about the loss of love

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may be implied. But from the start of the comparison, ‘‘contempt is more painful.’’ On the theme of contempt, a crescendo effect moves from painful and unpleasant to ‘‘unbearable,’’ and suddenly the realm of respect or contempt includes ‘‘everyone.’’ Painfully, inner worth has become subject to an outer test after all; ‘‘the consciousness of our worth’’ now appears to be an internalization of ‘‘our worth for others.’’ The answer to the question of whether the drive to be loved or the drive to be respected is stronger has become chastened in the last sentence, for ‘‘if we wish to be respected, we must also have respect for other people.’’ In this rhetorical contest of love and respect, Kant seeks to establish respect as the inner line of self-defense. ‘‘If I have inner worth, I shall be respected by everyone,’’ he says. That is wishful thinking, of course, but it is congruent with the sentiments of neoclassical tragedy, where true love is strictly conditional on honor. Kant distinguishes somewhat eccentrically between love and respect when he writes of friendship. He is possibly recalling Aristotle’s remarks on friendship between those who are not equals (Nicomachean Ethics, 1158b.12). Perfect friendship, or ‘‘the union of two persons through equal mutual love and respect,’’ is an ideal that cannot be achieved in real life; and part of the difficulty would seem to be the tension between love and respect: ‘‘love can be regarded as attraction and respect as repulsion, and if the principle of love bids friends to draw closer, the principle of respect requires them to stay at a proper distance from each other.’’ Typically, Kant conceives of ‘‘even the best of friends’’ as being unequal. The rule against intimacy ‘‘holds not only for the superior in relation to the inferior but also in reverse. For . . . once respect is violated, its presence within is irretrievably lost, even though the outward marks of it (manners) are brought back to their former course’’ (1797, 6:469– 70). It is remotely possible that Kant is cautioning against homoeroticism. In any event respect, once violated, is lost irretrievably. Two or three matters of honor arise when Kant writes of murder, under his doctrine of public right. Kant is firmly in favor of the death penalty for murder as well as certain unspecified crimes against the state. If given a choice of death or convict labor for a crime against the state, however, ‘‘the man of honor would choose death, and the scoundrel convict labor.’’ (Convict labor he treats as a form of slavery.) Then, as the passage continues, honor appears briefly as an attribute of mind: ‘‘This comes along with the nature of the human mind; for the man of honor is acquainted with something that he values even more highly than life, namely honor, while the scoundrel considers it better to live in shame than not to live at all.’’ Why this scoundrel comes conveniently to hand or how the nature of the human comes into it is pretty obscure, unless Kant is saying that the mind that would opt for dishonor

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instead of death is that of a scoundrel. Scoundrel, of course, is often just strong language for non-gentleman. In his own case, one gathers, Kant would prefer death to dishonor. But then, by assuming outright that any man of honor is less guilty (of treason, say) than a man without honor is guilty of the same, he confirms this preference of the death penalty by a wonderfully nice appeal to justice: Since the man of honor is undeniably less deserving of punishment than the other, both would be punished quite proportionately if all alike were sentenced to death; the man of honor would be punished mildly in terms of his sensibilities and the scoundrel severely in terms of his. On the other hand, if both were sentenced to convict labor the man of honor would be punished too severely and the other too mildly for his vile action. And so here too, when sentence is pronounced on a number of criminals united in a plot, the best equalizer before justice is death. (1797, 6:333–34)

In arguing for the death penalty Kant is opposing the reform of the criminal law proposed in the eighteenth century by Cesare Beccaria, to whom he alludes briefly. Yet it is curious the way his own thinking, even on a question of public right, diverges into a question of duties to oneself, in this instance openly treated as honor. It helps, obviously, that the man of honor is ‘‘undeniably’’ less deserving of punishment, whereas the scoundrel’s action in the same cause is ‘‘vile.’’ A further explicit reference to honor in Kant’s treatment of murder stems from a special concern with killing a fellow soldier in a duel and child murder by an unwed mother, crimes that warrant the death penalty and yet, in the philosopher’s view, should not be punished by law because they are motivated by honor. Such cases indeed pose a ‘‘quandary,’’ which Kant gestures at resolving by separating the moral imperative of the death penalty from traditions lingering from ‘‘barbarous and undeveloped’’ times, or alternatively, ‘‘justice arising from the people.’’ You feel he is on very shaky ground, and I do not quite see how he resolves his quandary. Perhaps the oddest thing from today’s perspective is the casual linkage of the two crimes. This is how Kant introduces his concern: There are, however, two crimes deserving of death, with regard to which it still remains doubtful whether legislation is also authorized to impose the death penalty. The feeling of honor leads to both, in one case the honor of one’s sex, in the other military honor, and indeed true honor, which is incumbent as duty on each of these two classes of people. The one crime is a mother’s murder of her child (infanticidium maternale); the other is murdering a fellow soldier (commilitonicidium) in a duel.—Legislation cannot re-

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move the disgrace of an illegitimate birth any more than it can wipe away the stain of suspicion of cowardice from a subordinate officer who fails to respond to a humiliating affront with a force of his own rising above fear of death. (1797, 6:335–37)

The exposition of the two exceptions takes for granted that the child is illegitimate and the officer a subordinate before these facts are made explicit, as if the reader would understand as much. Could a superior officer simply kill outright an inferior who had insulted him, no questions asked? Married women, one may well believe, did not as frequently resort to infanticide as unmarried women; but this is one of the rare times in all of Kant’s ethical writings that women are specifically mentioned as moral agents (‘‘one’s sex’’ announces the shift in venue here). Whatever the public right might be, Kant judges that, for subordinate officers and unmarried mothers, duty to themselves—‘‘true honor, which is incumbent as duty’’—ought to prevail. In sum, when Kant explicitly introduces matters of honor in The Metaphysics of Morals, he treats these quite positively. Moreover, when it comes to teaching ethics, according to the closing arguments of the book, ‘‘It is the shamefulness of vice, not its harmfulness (to the agent himself), that must be emphasized above all’’—and of course, ‘‘the dignity of virtue’’ (1797, 6:483). As in Kant’s lectures, pronouncements that stress shame rather than harm and rate virtue by its dignity actually privilege honor over morality. Formally, to be sure, Kant insists on keeping honor apart. Respect and disrespect are technically passions or inclinations. The opinion of others is not something that concerns true morality. The very reasoning process, in Kant’s three major works of practical philosophy, is supposed to be a priori, and he scarcely acknowledges the extent to which conceptions of honor influence his thinking. Yet on page after page the language with which he construes human behavior or conducts his a priori arguments could pass for that of honor. As in Aristotle, the weight placed on terms like noble and worthy (to say nothing of pure) can be hard to overestimate. In some contexts, respect and dignity receive attentive definition, but for the most part Kant deploys this spirited vocabulary without definition or full awareness of how operative it is in the argument. He frequently insists that certain arguments themselves are noble or worthy, and therein to be preferred to any that would degrade morality. Moral concepts may be a priori for Kant, but ‘‘just in this purity of their origin lies their dignity,’’ and ‘‘in adding anything empirical to them one subtracts just that much . . . from the unlimited worth of actions.’’ Or again, ‘‘everything empirical . . . is also highly prejudicial to the purity of morals,’’ and to consult such implies ‘‘laxity, or even mean cast of mind’’ (1785, 4:411, 426). His

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incessant calls for purity may be inspired by pietism, the condemnation of laxity by pietism and honor both, but a so-called mean cast of mind is simply that which is beneath a man of honor. Kant’s view is about as far as one can get from a Hobbesian view of honor as the show of power; it is more like a proud awareness of freedom and autonomy that is divorced from power. In one of his lectures of 1784–85 he could say, ‘‘The inherent value of the world, the summum bonum, is freedom in accordance with a will that is not necessitated to action’’ (quoted in Guyer, 2000, 129). Paul Guyer may be right that the value of freedom, endorsed in such sweeping terms, was the spur to the entire philosophy, but it is notably freedom of the inner man, ‘‘in accordance with a will that is not necessitated to action.’’ When Kant proceeds formally to state his position for publication, various commonplace grounds for action are set aside—inclination or desire, prudence or any instrumental motive—and what is left is the categorical imperative. This prized imperative is then expressed in a series of formulae that restrict freedom to respect for the law. Each formula circles back on itself as if the need for action were beside the point and the will to action the thing that counts. A certain passivity is surely compatible with dignity, too, and its finest product may be Kant’s championing of peace. As the conclusion to the section on public right in The Metaphysics of Morals has it, ‘‘there is to be no war.’’ Even if peace should be a fiction, ‘‘we must act as if it is something real’’ (1797, 6:354). In the age of the American and French revolutions, Kant’s politics were ambivalent. He lived in a Prussia of uncompromising monarchy, but his conceptions of the future, including his vision of perpetual peace, were typically predicated on republican forms of government. In the Metaphysics he weighs in heavily against rebellion, which he claims amounts to nothing other than a contradiction—the people expecting to be judges in their own suit against the sovereign. If the constitution is to be altered, therefore, it must be by reforms carried out by the sovereign. Even if a rebellion has taken place, that does not release the people from ‘‘the obligation to comply with the new order of things.’’ Yet the commitment to equality implicit in belonging to a kingdom of ends, and often explicit when he writes of political relations—for even where there is a sovereign, his subjects should be equal under law—aligns Kant with the progressive movements of his time. He frankly opposes a hereditary nobility and thus joins a long debate on whether honor is due to birth or to merit. Renaissance writers found ingenious ways to come down on both sides in this debate; by the end of Kant’s lifetime, merit was the inevitable winner. Kant argues that ‘‘a rank that precedes merit and also provides no basis to hope for merit’’ can only be ‘‘a thought-entity without any reality.’’ Every citizen of a

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state has his dignity, unless he ‘‘has lost it by his own crime’’ or by becoming ‘‘another’s tool.’’ And the Metaphysics comes toward a close with the invitation ‘‘to cultivate a disposition of reciprocity,’’ a sort of equal civility for all (1797, 6:318–23, 329–30, 473). Yet the very features of Kant’s practical philosophy that parallel and help modernize the code of honor serve as cautions against accepting either honor or Kantian ethics as procedures that provide safe or sufficient guides to behavior. The privileging of the will implies not only a refusal to be distracted but the kind of commitment that forbids second thoughts. ‘‘What is essential to any moral worth of actions is that the moral law determine the will immediately,’’ according to the Critique of Practical Reason. By immediately Kant does not mean hastily but directly, without intervening motivations. But the man of honor also knows immediately what he has to do, even when the business is very much against his inclinations. Some careful weighing of the outcome would actually seem to provide a balance here. Yet empiricism, ‘‘allied with all the inclinations,’’ Kant has just written, is ‘‘much more dangerous than any enthusiasm, which can never constitute a lasting condition of any great number of people’’ (1788, 5:71). Kant’s essential pacifism has possibly misled him here: history suggests that groups of people find it easier to sustain an enthusiasm for violence than individuals do. One happiness held out by Kant’s practical philosophy is that of belonging to the kingdom of ends. This belonging to a group is very much a part of the philosophy. Often this would seem to be portrayed as an elite group, but always with some sense of shared equality—at its grandest, the group of all rational beings. A yearning for this is present even when Kant writes of the universal purely in a logical sense. But the boundaries of the group remain something of a problem. Who counts as a rational being is a problem, as Allen Wood concedes when introducing the philosophy to his own readers. Kant ranks European, Asian, African, and American races ‘‘in descending order as regards their inborn talent for perfecting human nature,’’ and he also does not believe women can ‘‘be treated as full adults in the public sphere’’ (1999, 3). I am enough of a believer in the Enlightenment to judge that, if Kant had written at the end of the twentieth instead of the eighteenth century, his opinion would have changed on such matters. But as the history of honor as shared respect can show, further enlightenment does not eliminate the problem altogether. Groups define themselves against those they regard as different— from animals and irrational beings to cowards and infidels, to say nothing of many putative ‘‘churls,’’ ‘‘slaves,’’ ‘‘women,’’ or ‘‘boys’’ who are nothing of the kind. After teasingly evoking a very un-Kantian image of love between the sexes, Christine Korsgaard avers that ‘‘the subject matter of morality is not

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what we should bring about, but how we should relate to one another.’’ This proposal obviously is still within the parameters of Kantian ethics. In the same essay, Korsgaard engages with the problem of defining the extent of the group by positively welcoming a retreat from Kant’s universal law. ‘‘The claims springing from an acknowledgement of our common humanity are one source of value, but the claims springing from friendships, marriages, local communities, and common interests may be others’’ (1996, 275, 281–82). Yet a problem with her intersubjectivism, too, is where it stops. Honor need not be an all-white or male principle; the honor group can embrace different races, ethnicities, and genders, even as marriages can; and there exist such groups. But groups in this world will continue to define themselves against others whom they regard as in one way or another different. The process of respect keeps confirming the fact, and applied Kantian ethics cannot always escape it. Kantian ethics are not very forgiving, either. There are no rules set down for penance or allowances for contrition. As far as pure practical reason goes, there is little point in making up for what one has done, since calculation of the effect was not the point in the first place. To fail the categorical imperative is more like losing one’s privileges and membership in the kingdom of ends, or perhaps never attaining membership. Honor is similarly unforgiving. There is no mending of a failure, no recovery from dishonor, but something like the loss of one’s identity, which derives from the respect of the group. Conrad’s relentless narrative of failed honor, Lord Jim (1900), makes this point. Jim and the other officers of the Patna desert the ship; no injury is suffered by the pilgrim passengers, for the Patna does not sink after all. The story is strictly that of a violated imperative of the merchant navy, not that of some hypothetical about the danger to the passengers if the officers do not perform their task. In the second part of Lord Jim, the hero performs creditably by bringing order and justice to the people of remote Patusan; his leadership adds substantially to the good of that adopted community. But neither this positive result nor any other can mend his lost honor. A renegade ironically identified as Gentleman Brown arrives on the scene; Lord Jim is forced to recognize his shameful kinship with the man, and his weakness proves fatal. ‘‘He was one of us,’’ is Marlow the narrator’s spellbound thought; but Jim isn’t any longer and hasn’t been one of them since he jumped ship. The general hypothesis I have been advancing defines honor as the mutual respect that motivates or constrains members of a peer group; this respect is an ongoing process of comparisons taking place within the group, as a good many classical and later writers have believed. Kant prefers to reserve respect (Achtung) for the law and second for individuals whose behavior exemplifies the law. In the Groundwork, as in his lectures, he is quite down on imitation—

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as well he might be, since there is always plenty of bad behavior as well as good to imitate. ‘‘Imitation has no place at all in matters of morality’’; or again, a moral imperative ‘‘cannot be made out by means of any example’’ (1785, 4:409, 419). But in that case the question of which moral imperatives becomes more of a problem. Kant may be admitting as much when he writes in the Critique of Practical Reason that ‘‘how a law can be of itself and immediately a determining ground of the will (though this is what is essential in all morality) is for human reason an insoluble problem’’ (1787, 5:72). As far as pure reason goes, he is probably right. If he would accept example and imitation, as in the process of respect among members of an honor group, he would at least know where to look for some answers. The law that a ship’s officer will not desert his charge is imperative because it is the law embraced by ‘‘us,’’ the officers of the merchant navy. The case is similar with laws that are imperative for Kant, including that of not telling lies. Homer’s Greeks quite admired Odysseus for his deceitful ways, and Romans thought it preferable to lie in some circumstances rather than be disgraced (Barton, 2001, 119–21). PittRivers, remember, reports that some honor cultures rate individual autonomy higher than truth telling. Kant’s most vigorous argument against lying is that it is dishonorable and destroys one’s dignity (1797, 6:429). But it is not clear whether dignity is subject to degree. In just a couple of pages Guyer, expounding Kant, writes of ‘‘the incomparable dignity of autonomy’’ and (twice) this ‘‘unparalleled dignity’’ (2000, 153–54). How can Guyer know what is incomparable without comparisons being tried, or what is unparalleled without the parallels? There is something contagious in Kant’s style of writing that produces these absolutes. Despite what Kant claims, dignity does not originate in the rationality of each separate rational being, and more likely the word meant about the same to him as it did to Cicero. On the other hand, if a process of respect indeed determines how moral agents will to act, that does not resolve the principal shortcoming of honor and Kantian ethics both, which is their scorn for calculating consequences. For what if the members of a group immediately will to engage in pointless risk-taking, or set out to enslave all nonrational beings? The catalogues of foolishness, mayhem, and cruelty premised on group identification are legion. Finally, there is the puzzle of autonomy and the freedom associated with it. In Kantian ethics, autonomy would seem to be secured by the very existence of rational beings. The wonder is the way autonomy and freedom keep being bundled back into a strict abiding of the law. If the will counts as free only when it coincides with the moral law, we are not really thinking about choice but of freedom as a term of valorization (the law validates freedom, and

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freedom valorizes the law); or, subjectively, the agent may nurse a secret pride in always being right (righteousness). There are similar difficulties with distinguishing honor from pride, and an additional difficulty in establishing how its strong sense of autonomy and freedom arises from the process of respect that engages a peer group. It is likely the case that some individuals, because of their particular circumstances or talents, possess a greater sense of autonomy than others who remain grateful just to belong to the group, and the interaction of the two types may well increase the difference between them. But the only general explanation I can see for the strong sense of autonomy provided by the group is that the experience of belonging succeeds that of obedience to elders. In other words, autonomy would not have much meaning for us without the experience of its lack. Joining the peer group continues the process of forming an identity and begins a new stage of moral being. Still, the freedom gained may be illusory or merely a boast; the person may be as constrained by the will of the group as the Kantian moral agent is by the law. Kant was born in 1724, and his practical philosophy dates from the last two decades of the eighteenth century. By displaying the affinities of his thought to a code of honor, I do not wish to create the impression that he belonged in spirit to some earlier time; he learned from Rousseau and the code of honor of his time and community. Kant contributed to a turning of Western moral philosophy, and for some today he represents its culmination. ‘‘During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,’’ as Schneewind puts it, ‘‘established conceptions of morality as obedience came increasingly to be contested by emerging conceptions of morality as self-governance.’’ For this broad movement, I have suggested, Kant helped create the metaphors that Piaget adapted in his early twentieth-century account of individual moral growth, from a stage of obedience to a stage of autonomy. Schneewind names ‘‘two essential components’’ of the traditional morality: the obedience owed by created beings to their God, and the unfortunate inability of most people to behave without guidance, or indeed threats of punishment and offers of reward. The latter conviction about humanity had been stated frankly by Aristotle in ancient times. Its pessimism was pretty much shared by Kant, but countered by his vision of a kingdom of ends that men could find within themselves. Different as they are, Hume and Rousseau were Kant’s most important confreres among philosophers, though Schneewind also gives a nod to Montaigne for ‘‘rejecting every conception of morality as obedience that he knew’’ (1998, 4, 509, 513).

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Since I have been so rash as to name Coriolanus the most Kantian of Shakespearean heroes, let me begin by remarking some uncanny resemblances between that Roman’s thinking and Kant’s moral philosophy. ‘‘He that has but effected his good will / Hath overta’en mine act’’ (1.9.18–19), Coriolanus can say, and he means that sincerely, regardless of how much each individual soldier has achieved. All who have fearlessly tried their best are equal in this company. Kant’s emphasis on the moral agent’s deeds—to use the word that Renaissance writers use to bring will and act together—is similar, and he begins his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals with a sentence that gives the same prominence to good will that can be heard in Coriolanus’s deliberate understatement: ‘‘It is impossible to think of anything at all in the world, or indeed even beyond it, that could be considered good without limitation except a good will’’ (1785, 4:393). In both cases good will defies measurement just because the will, rather than the result, is at issue. Or again, the first thing Coriolanus says when he encounters Aufidius is this: ‘‘I’ll fight with none but thee, for I do hate thee / Worse than a promise-breaker’’ (1.8.1–2). The pointed application that Kant makes of his universal law formula for the categorical imperative is this question: ‘‘may I, when hard pressed, make a promise with the intention not to keep it?’’ The austere Groundwork contains only a handful of applications such as this throughout. But like Coriolanus in

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his memorable counterfactual conditionals, Kant is not describing the world as we know it. In the Groundwork’s law-of-nature formula he himself falls back on a counterfactual: ‘‘act as if the maxim of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature’’ (1785, 4:402, 421). Since it is unlikely in the phenomenal world that many of our maxims will attain to universal laws, whether of rational beings or of nature, Kant’s ‘‘as if’’ resonates in some ideal space like that occupied by the spirited Coriolanus. The Metaphysics of Morals provided more room for application of the principles set forth in the Groundwork, for an explicit division of duties, and for casuistry (in the good sense). Here Kant sometimes writes directly of honor, as we have seen, and from a point of view certainly closer to that of Coriolanus than to that of any of the latter’s dramatic foils. Shakespeare’s hero, no slave to custom, surely agrees, for example, that ‘‘a tyranny of popular mores would be contrary to his duty to himself.’’ After his experience of seeking the citizens’ votes for the consulship—and for that matter, quite consciously in advance of that experience—he would be entirely in sympathy with Kant’s belief that accepting a favor from others creates an obligation, which then lowers oneself in their eyes and in one’s own. And since the action of Coriolanus turns on its hero’s inability to say one thing and mean another, he would have to concur with Kant’s bottomless scorn for lying. Indeed, ‘‘no intentional untruth in the expression of one’s thoughts can refuse this harsh name. For, the dishonor (being an object of moral contempt) that accompanies a lie also accompanies a liar like his shadow. . . . By a lie a human being throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a human being’’—and so forth (1797, 6:464, 471, 429). It is not too hard to imagine the philosopher and the Roman warrior as temperamentally akin. One of Allen Wood’s expressed purposes in reinterpreting Kant’s ethics is to give his man a better press, to amend the notion that Kant’s view of human nature was too grim, or narrow and unflattering. But Kant’s position is strenuous and exacting, according to Wood, and ‘‘any other way of representing our condition appears complacent, cowardly, and dishonest’’ (1999, 332–35). Those are terms such as Coriolanus might use to characterize some of his fellow Romans. So it is important to ask in what ways Kant’s moral philosophy parallels honor as an imperative to act or refrain from acting, or in certain areas overlaps with codes of honor consistent with the writer’s views noted in the last chapter. As most scholars agree, Kant was brilliantly innovative in philosophy, and a question for the history of ideas is whether his contribution was partly a matter of crossing honor lore with philosophy as these existed in largely independent traditions. Then too, Kantian ethics may throw light on some of the anomalies and problems associated with honor. There are five promising areas

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in which Kant’s moral philosophy parallels imperatives of honor and therefore may be instructive: (1) the privileging of the will, (2) the categorical imperative and its acceptance of risk, (3) the assumption of membership in a group, (4) the importance of respect, and (5) the presumption of autonomy. 1. Men of honor are notoriously strong willed. They are prepared to act; they tend to be as intolerant of delay as they are of contradiction. This spiritedness Plato and Aristotle distinguished from both reason and desire, and they valued it especially for the defense of the community. Kant values the will even more than those ancient philosophers; his first move in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals is to insist on the importance of the will, though just as quickly he identifies the will with reason. The only will that concerns him is that of the rational being. Any other will could be at the service of inclination or desire. He begins with good will, but it rapidly becomes clear that he does not mean by this a desire to bring about good. Good does not qualify the purpose of will but rather its energy or spiritedness. If you just feel like doing good, that is scarcely to your credit: the will relishes opposition from some other part of the self as fiercely as a Hotspur or Coriolanus relishes an opposing sword. Kant wants us to think of will as simply an extension of rational being, but that is not necessarily the effect of his argument, because he keeps thrusting aside any use of reasoning to figure out what action will achieve some appropriate end in view. That is not what will is all about. ‘‘A good will is not good because of what it effects or accomplishes, because of its fitness to attain some proposed end, but only because of its volition, that is, it is good in itself and, regarded for itself, is to be valued incomparably higher than all that could merely be brought about by it in favor of some inclination and indeed, if you will, of the sum of all inclinations.’’ Much as in a contest in which courage weighs more than the prize, the will subsumes the achievement. ‘‘Even if, by a special disfavor of fortune or by the niggardly provision of a stepmotherly nature, this will should wholly lack the capacity to carry out its purpose—if with its greatest efforts it should yet achieve nothing and only the good will were left (not, of course, as a mere wish but as a summoning of all means insofar as they are in our control)—then, like a jewel, it would still shine by itself, as something that has its full worth in itself.’’ But this is likely to be unpersuasive. Jewels do not shine of themselves. Declarations laced with superlatives—‘‘to be valued incomparably higher,’’ and so forth—are no more than exhortations. No wonder Kant checks himself: ‘‘There is, however, something so strange in this idea of the absolute worth of a mere will, in the estimation of which no allowance is made for any usefulness, that, despite all

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the agreement even of common understanding with this idea, a suspicion must yet arise that its covert basis is perhaps mere high-flown fantasy.’’ Kant both doubts and takes to heart this ‘‘high-flown fantasy.’’ He both claims that anyone with ‘‘common understanding’’ can grasp his idea and wants it to be rare. There is an aura about this will (1785, 4:393–94). Basically, the first section of the Groundwork strives to isolate moral choice as an exercise of the will. Inclination or desire is scorned, and inductive reasoning has no role except the distinctly inferior one of fitting actions to needs— the kind of thing people do, one might say, when they work for a living. ‘‘That the purposes we may have for our actions, and their effects as ends and incentives of the will, can give actions no unconditional and moral worth is clear from what has gone before.’’ Though some may still protest that unconditional worth itself poses a condition very difficult to meet, Kant continues, ‘‘In what then can this worth lie, if it is not to be in the will in relation to the hoped for effect on the action? It can lie nowhere else than in the principle of the will without regard for the ends that can be brought about by such an action.’’ Then it begins to appear that what Kant calls respect is an adjunct of this will, though respect he typically reserves for what he calls law. ‘‘For an object as the effect of my proposed action I can indeed have inclination but never respect, just because it is merely an effect and not an activity of the will.’’ So respect seems to be the test of worth, and activity of the will what it points to; one does not have respect for inclinations or the object of a proposed action but only for the will’s activity and (more often in these pages) a law. ‘‘Only what is connected with my will merely as ground and never as effect, what does not serve my inclination but outweighs it or at least excludes it altogether from calculations in making a choice—hence the mere law for itself—can be an object of respect and so a command.’’ By this point Kant has already moved swiftly to check the will that he has so evidently privileged. He does so by aligning it with law: the will becomes the law upon which the agent acts. As the next sentence makes clear, he arrives at the law by process of elimination. Since ‘‘the influence of inclination and with it every object of the will’’ are out of the question, ‘‘there is left for the will nothing that could determine it except objectively the law and subjectively pure respect for this practical law’’ (1785, 4:400–401). Kant’s a priori conclusion works like this: either p or q determines the will; p does not determine the will; therefore q determines the will. The difficulty lies in the exclusive alternatives of the major premise. Other factors might determine the will besides inclination and objects of the will on the one hand and respect for the law on the other. The will could be determined by coercion or example, by opinion or consensus, by fashion or tradition. Kant refers all such factors to inclination or desire, its objects and avoidances. The latter can be

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studied only from experience, and he wants something that will apply to all rational beings, even if he has to leave the said law something of a blank, without content. But suppose we should wish to fill in some of that content. A particular honor group will do just that. Honor as a morality of respect allows for the very factors that Kant rules out, such as example, consensus, and tradition, which are not what most people think of as passions or inclinations. Respect is not only a subjective test but a process that, among other things, helps determine the will, as Cassius contends in Julius Caesar, a process that may be so lowly that it could be observed by a Piaget in a game of marbles. What Brutus in that play and Kant have in common is that when honor (Brutus) or the moral law (Kant) is at stake, the will to act is unmediated and seemingly incontrovertible. What Piaget and Kant have in common will be the celebration of autonomy. Arguably, personal autonomy is the major premise that governs Kant’s deduction that will is law. But honor usually insists on autonomy also. I shall come back to a problem with respect, which the present account of honor and Kant’s practical philosophy see quite differently. But there is another problem in the speed with which Kant moves from privileging the will to subjecting it to law that has the force of a command. Can he really have it both ways? Granted that Kant’s transcendental idealism is behind the seeming contradiction, for the understanding is the lawgiver to nature in the first place. Yet honor harbors a similar contradiction. No one can tell the man of honor what to do; nevertheless, he performs much as he is expected to. Honor frees and at the same time honor compels and constrains the will. One way of looking at what Kant argues in terms of an understanding of honor is that his imperative deliberately revisits the earlier stage of moral growth (despite the inveighing against childishness) and recuperates the lessons of obedience. That the vectors of obedience and respect twine and untwine during the moral agent’s lifetime would seem to be true to experience—a bitter truth for Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. 2. The second section of the Groundwork, which introduces the categorical imperative and lies at the center of Kant’s practical philosophy, is also of great use in studying honor, most particularly honor’s impatience with calculation and acceptance of risk. In this section the will becomes still more firmly attached to a priori reason. ‘‘Since reason is required for the derivation of actions from laws, the will is nothing other than practical reason.’’ For Kant, this reason is always both competent and sufficient to make the necessary deductions; a rational will, therefore, is the only requisite of morality. Every so often Kant reminds his readers that there is a difference between the set of rational

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beings and that of human beings: a rational being cannot go wrong, obviously, but the human often does. Thus the human will is not always obedient to law or reason. When it is swayed by inclinations, even by such long-range interests as the good of the family, or indeed any concern for the future, the will is ‘‘not thoroughly good.’’ But the philosophy regards that condition as mere weakness and wastes no time worrying what to do about it; the whole thrust is toward defining and celebrating a will that is ‘‘necessarily obedient,’’ or a sort of moral gut response. Kant doesn’t put it quite that way, of course, but I am trying to suggest how congruent his exposition is with a rationale of honordriven behavior. ‘‘The representation of an object principle, insofar as it is necessitating for a will, is called a command (of reason), and the formula of the command is called an imperative’’ (1785, 4:412–13). Kant has begun by insisting on the will as the locus of everything we need to understand about morality. Then he has rather casually invoked law, as if we already know what that is, and invoked reason as ‘‘required for the derivation of actions from laws.’’ But in the Groundwork he is not much concerned to instance what counts as law or to demonstrate how reason informs the will. He wants to show, in principle, how it is possible to know immediately what to do and—more often, it seems—what not to do. He wants to provide a formula for this moral imperative. And it happens that the formula applies very well to the way honor embraces risk and scorns profit, and therefore any calculation of results—instrumentalism, as we say. ‘‘Now, all imperatives command either hypothetically or categorically. The former represent the practical necessity of a possible action as a means of achieving something else that one wills (or that it is at least possible for one to will). The categorical imperative would be that which represented an action as objectively necessary of itself, without reference to another end’’ (1785, 4:414). It might be possible, for example, to will always to follow categorical imperatives and thus attain the reputation for oneself and among one’s fellows of being faultless, but that would involve a contradiction; that would be, in fact, to follow a hypothetical imperative, with the end of being faultless. Similarly, it is possible for an individual to design to be famous, but that is not what honor obliges one to do, and for a hero like Coriolanus such a motive is intolerable. In the field of honor and the field of Kantian ethics both, the point is to do what is ‘‘objectively necessary of itself, without reference to another end.’’ In both fields this necessity is never survival, never something you would be inclined to do if it were not for honor or a categorical imperative. True, in these same pages Kant sometimes explicitly refers to honor as one of the higher forms of inclination, but that is because he doesn’t reflect that honor too can be unconditional. Kant admits happiness as a purpose of every human being, a priori. But his

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formula of the categorical imperative allows him to be scornful of choices calculated to bring about happiness, choices collectively known as prudence and recommended by so many of those people who imagine themselves to be fine moralists. ‘‘The imperative that refers to the choice of means to one’s own happiness, that is, the precept of prudence, is still always hypothetical; the action is not commanded absolutely but only as a means to another purpose.’’ In truth there are no such things as the commands of prudence but only its counsels. Prudence and skills are what parents ordinarily try to instill in their children, but then honor scorns prudence. The prudent cannot do anything without thinking of advantages and disadvantages and weighing the risks. Kant, too, is impatient with such patience. Finally there is one imperative that, without being based upon and having as its condition any other purpose to be attained by certain conduct, commands this conduct immediately. This imperative is categorical. It has to do not with the matter of the action and what is to result from it, but with the form and the principle from which the action itself follows; and the essentially good in the action consists in the disposition, let the result be what it may. This imperative may be called the imperative of morality. (1785, 4:415–16)

Or of honor. Clearly, Kant did not expressly intend to valorize risk-taking when he privileged the imperative that ‘‘commands . . . immediately,’’ but that is what letting ‘‘the result be what it may’’ implies. Traditionally, honor also commands that one fight the good fight, the result be what it may. Even as Kant’s Groundwork approaches its climax—its triumph of deductive reason—the rhetoric leans more and more heavily on the language of command. The voice of command sounds in the categorical imperative but also in the law, in reason, in what Kant calls objective principles. The will strictly connects acts to practical reason; reason and law project wills of their own as commands. In everyday usage, however, commands issue from someone in authority to someone bound to obey. Kant has to resort, or feels he needs to resort, to this metaphor in order to express the idea of compelling authority. This is a brilliant rhetorical strategy because it co-opts the language of heteronomy for the service of autonomy. ‘‘There is,’’ he has already deduced, ‘‘only a single categorical imperative and it is this: act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.’’ Now, at the climax of the work, his triumphant conclusion is that the moral agent obeys the laws that he himself has willed: ‘‘If we look back upon all previous efforts that have ever been made to discover the principle of morality, we need not wonder now why all of them had to fail. It was seen that the human being is bound to laws by his own duty, but it never

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occurred to them that he is subject only to laws given by himself but still universal and that he is bound only to act in conformity with his own will, which, however, in accordance with nature’s end is a will giving universal law’’ (1785, 4:421, 432). Similarly, a man of honor is subject only to laws given by himself, which command his conduct immediately, without hesitation. He is too grown-up to obey parents’ commands, too independent to need any laws but those of his own making. He does not believe that these are just any laws (nor does Kant), but he favors those shared by the honor group, freely willed by each of its members (and therefore may have a more concrete idea of what these rules are than Kant professes here). He behaves accordingly, in Kant’s words, ‘‘not for the sake of any other practical motive or any future advantage but from the idea of the dignity of a rational being, who obeys no other law than that which he himself at the same time gives’’ (1785, 4:434). There is obvious pride in so expressing his position, as in taking an honorable stand. But more important, both for Kant and an honor code, is the guarantee of dependability. 3. If there is an equivalent of the honor group in Kant’s moral philosophy, it would seem to be the very large one (sometimes not so large, he implies) of rational human beings; and there can be such a group, in the process of forming itself, even if it is a distant ideal. At his most enthusiastic, Kant denominates his group ‘‘a kingdom of ends.’’ The phrase plays on the Bible’s kingdom of God, but this is in truth a secular ideal more like a lifetime residence at Rabelais’s Abbey of Thélème (1543, 149–63) than belonging to a church. ‘‘A rational being belongs as a member to the kingdom of ends when he gives universal laws in it but is also himself subject to these laws.’’ The ‘‘ends’’ turn out to be both rational human beings who constitute the group and the way they regard one another. ‘‘For, all rational beings stand under the law that each of them is to treat himself and all others never merely as means but always at the same time as ends in themselves. But from this there arises a systematic union of rational beings through common objective laws, that is, a kingdom, which can be called a kingdom of ends (admittedly only an ideal).’’ And just as ends doubles for both persons and the right attitude, universal stands as an invitation to all grown men and sets a limit. Without this idea of belonging it would be hard to understand what Kant imagines to be the appeal of the reason and law that he invites his readers to embrace, yet which is by definition against their inclinations. There is a strong implication that we would not wish to be excluded from this exalted company, that belonging is the desideratum here. The Groundwork as a whole concludes with a paean to belonging, but not without a warning: ‘‘the noble ideal of a universal kingdom of ends in themselves (rational beings) to which we can belong as members only when we

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carefully conduct ourselves in accordance with maxims of freedom as if they were laws of nature’’ (1785, 4:433, 462). The notion that this is a group of equals, like Kant’s promotion of freedom itself, comes through more strongly when he writes directly of politics. That all men are created equal may not be the self-evident truth that it was in the American Declaration of Independence (Guyer, 2000, 262–65), yet Kant’s politics are unmistakably of that era. True, in most of the ethical writings he is careful to allow for a sovereign, who has quite different standing from other men; but all other citizens have an equal footing, and when Kant looks to the future he endorses an arrangement in which all male citizens would have a vote. That too involves the conjunction of individual independence and group action. The only requisite for the franchise, apart from ‘‘not being a child or a woman,’’ is that of ‘‘being one’s own master (sui iuris), hence having some property (and any art, craft, fine art, or science can be counted as property) that supports him.’’ The two classes of men who are excluded are thus servants and wage earners, but the others have an equal voice whether owners of lands or of skills—so long as a man ‘‘serves no one other than the commonwealth’’ (1793a, 8:295). We recall the vigor with which Kant accosts servility in The Metaphysics of Morals, and in that context also it is clear that the group he has in mind is essentially a peer group—just as evidently as in the Declaration of Independence, honor and equality do come together. According to Kant, ‘‘a human being regarded as a person, that is, as the subject of a morally practical reason, is exalted above any price; for as a person (homo noumenon) he is not to be valued merely as a means to the ends of others or even to his own ends, but as an end in itself, that is, he possesses a dignity (an absolute inner worth) by which he exacts respect for himself from all other rational beings in the world. He can measure himself with every other being of this kind and value himself on a footing of equality with them.’’ Kant at his most exhilarating is the visionary writer who conceives of perpetual peace and the company, as here, of ‘‘all other rational beings in the world.’’ Except for a brief sketch of methods, the Metaphysics too concludes by imagining a group surrounding the dignified and principled individual as expanding indefinitely: ‘‘one ought to regard this circle drawn around one as also forming part of an all-inclusive circle of those who, in their disposition, are citizens of the world—not exactly in order to promote as the end what is best for the world,’’ but ‘‘to cultivate a disposition of reciprocity—agreeableness, tolerance, mutual love and respect’’ (1797, 6:434–35, 473). The difference between Kant’s kingdom of ends and what I have been calling an honor group will be obvious. For Kant it was anathema to suggest that

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morality had anything to do with the consensus of a group—it would just be a case of heteronomy substituting for autonomy. Far from thinking that selfrespect can be learned from others and be reinforced by mutual respect, he contended that self-respect was part of one’s core being. Moreover, it is hard to accept exclusion from the group as the ultimate sanction of right behavior if the end one has in mind is an all-inclusive gathering of citizens of the world. But it is instructive what happens when a philosopher ponders seriously the project of applying Kantian ethics to the world as we know it. To meet admitted objections like these, in his Tanner Lectures Thomas E. Hill Jr. adopts a partial ‘‘Kantian perspective,’’ from which he can then appeal to relations such as ‘‘co-membership in the community,’’ or ‘‘group ties, traditions, family connections, and deeply layered hopes.’’ Thus Hill repeatedly asks his listeners to work out Kantian ethics in settings that might very well function as honor groups: for example, ‘‘ourselves and others like us,’’ ‘‘social networks’’ with ‘‘common histories,’’ ‘‘the groups within which the individual finds his or her life valuable’’ (2000, 59–118). Somehow, in the world as we know it, all rational human beings are too many to have much bearing on our behavior. For Kant himself, ‘‘the question arises whether one may also keep company with those who are vicious.’’ Like honor, Kantian morality features belonging and the identity of the moral agent. Occasionally in his writings identity and belonging do depend substantially on the threat of real or implied exclusion from a definable group. Kant acknowledges that ‘‘one cannot avoid meeting them,’’ the vicious, while still living in this world; nor can or should we always judge them (one of his evident Christian reservations). ‘‘But if the vice is a scandal, that is, a publicly given example of contempt for the strict laws of duty, which therefore brings dishonor with it, then even though the law of the land does not punish it, one must break off the association that existed or avoid it as much as possible, since continued association with such a person deprives virtue of its honor’’ (1797, 6:473–74). These words, among the last written by Kant for publication, stop short of putting questions of virtue to the test of honor, but they nicely bring out a familiar way of thinking about social intercourse. 4. A function for respect would seem to be as prominent in Kant’s moral philosophy as in any conception of honor. But in Kant reciprocity is sometimes absent, and respect need not be mutual. The difference is at least partly linguistic. The ordinary German word for respect does not have the sense of looking back that the English and Romance languages retain from the Latin respicere. The German is Achtung, which by itself usually means Pay attention, or even Look out! The root idea here is more like taking care. Second, and perhaps as a consequence of the semantics, Kant more often writes of respect for the law

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than for persons, and there Achtung suits well enough. Like Rousseau, he reproves comparing oneself with others and thus would seem to dismiss from consideration what I have been calling the process of respect. In lecturing on self-esteem, for example, he asserts that ‘‘moral self-esteem, which is founded on the worth of humanity, must never be based on a comparison with others, but only on comparison with the moral law itself’’ (1784–85, 27:349). Yet the matter is not that simple, and even in comparisons with others the danger that concerns Kant is just as likely to be fawning as it is vanity. The word respect in English also can be used without the sense of reciprocity that is important to the peer group. Hume treated respect as pretty much a unilateral relation, just as Kant would. Hume also contrasted respect with contempt, and he supposed it to be a genuine mixture of love and humility (1739, 389–93); and, needless to say, many uses of the word fit something like this definition. Kant treated respect formally in the Critique of Practical Reason—first respect for the law, then of persons, then of the law again. ‘‘So little is respect a feeling of pleasure that we give way to it only reluctantly with regard to a human being,’’ he decides, rather discouragingly; or when we do respect a person, the respect is ‘‘strictly speaking to the law that his example holds before us.’’ It is not an incentive to morality exactly, but it operates like an incentive subjectively because of its check to self-love (1788, 5:75–82). In The Metaphysics of Morals he treats respect less opaquely, as indeed one of four predispositions of the mind to duty—the others being moral feeling, conscience, and love of human beings (1797, 6:399–403). But these formal attempts to characterize respect are few in proportion to the frequency with which respect is invoked throughout the writings. In spite of his increasing interest in political equality, Kant seems almost more comfortable with subordination than with mutual respect. Given his family origins and the society in which he lived, this is perhaps understandable. The feudal order of things comes out, for example, in the casual assumption when writing of friendship that one friend is superior and the other his inferior. Also, when he writes of gratitude as both a sacred duty and an obligation that can never be discharged, he underscores subordination. Even if one were to try to repay a kindness received, the benefactor has priority simply from being ‘‘first in benevolence.’’ And gratitude, for Kant, is a special case of respect. ‘‘Gratitude is not, strictly speaking, love toward a benefactor on the part of someone he has put under obligation, but rather respect for him.’’ Love in this case admits of equality, but ‘‘in gratitude the one put under obligation stands a step lower than his benefactor.’’ Kant would have one steer clear of any obligation, if only because pride then tempts one to the vice of ingratitude (1797, 6:455, 458). Generally, he is wary of drawing comparisons with other

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people: one should live by principle, not example. Yet sometimes, as in a lecture of the same decade, comparison is a ‘‘duty, since we cannot judge ourselves in any other way, save by putting ourselves into comparison with other people’’ (1793, 27:703). Obviously, when Kant writes explicitly of honor, or the equivalent of an honor group, in which a person ‘‘can measure himself with every other being of this kind and value himself on a footing of equality with them,’’ he counts on there being such a thing as mutual respect. It is true that his outlook is pacific, and that as far as he is concerned, ‘‘a duty of free respect toward others is, strictly speaking, only a negative one (of not exalting oneself above others)’’ —or conducing to modesty, say, rather than political assassination. But it is a process with consequences all the same, and not ‘‘the mere feeling that comes with comparing our own worth with another’s (such as a child feels merely from habit toward his parents, a pupil toward his teacher, or any subordinate toward his superior)’’ (1797, 6:435, 449). Kant is thus far from being consistent on the importance of respect. The language—Achtung again—and possibly his temperament work against recognition of the process of respect that Shakespeare works out in the dialogue of Cassius and Brutus; yet a commitment to an equality of rational human beings tends to assume mutual respect. Kant deliberately chooses to feature respect for law, or as ‘‘a response to rational agency itself’’ (Sherman, 1997, 181). Still, an eloquent paragraph in the Critique begins, ‘‘Respect is always directed only to persons, never to things,’’ and concludes, ‘‘Respect is a tribute that we cannot refuse to pay to merit, whether we want to or not; we may indeed withhold it outwardly but we still cannot help feeling it inwardly’’ (1788, 5:76–77). Coming to the subject from Aristotle, Nancy Sherman is one commentator who singles out the role of respect in Kant’s practical philosophy. Surely she is right that formally Kant has to treat respect as a feeling rather than a way of deriving moral laws, and that nonetheless it is as if he expects the feeling to be imperative. In trying to explicate this burden of respect, Sherman writes, ‘‘Such emotions can be said to become ‘practical’ (or properly conditioned by and supportive of duty within a structured conception of character) when they embrace increasingly more adequate appraisals, such as when we take to heart new relevant information: for instance, that this is not a worthy object of benevolence or love, or that this, too, is a case of need and is a possible occasion for beneficence’’ (1997, 175–81). The parenthetical words here are a tribute to Aristotle, and I would only contend that information as to who may be worthy or unworthy objects of attention has to be learned somehow. And how should one ever learn respect in the first place? In first confronting persons, or in confronting abstractions like the law? When Kant writes repeatedly of respect for law, is he resorting in effect to personification?

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5. Autonomy of the will would seem to confute, or possibly contradict, reliance on any such thing as an honor group or the process of respect. An honor code usually insists that there is no contradiction—that in fact the group instills a sense of autonomy through its commitment to equality and as an alternative to habitual obedience. But if I am right, there is certainly a paradox here, or an impasse that experience gets round about sometimes in one way and sometimes in another. As we have seen, in a study of moral development that strove to be empirical, Piaget concluded that only the older boys, at the second stage, began to learn autonomy. He adopted the term from Kant and more broadly from what Schneewind has characterized as the invention of autonomy in modern times. Piaget’s subjects somehow realize their autonomy from a group activity, however, even an activity so apparently inconsequential as a game of marbles. Similarly with an honor code, men who take fierce pride in their autonomy learn it, and take confidence in themselves, from the group. But even as this newfound autonomy frees one from obedience, it constrains because of the felt need for respect. Or it may be that, in a struggle with the group, autonomy of the will meets its match. Coriolanus’s ‘‘I banish you’’ may be the noblest three words in Shakespeare, but they turn out to express the hero’s bewilderment as well as his autonomy. He cannot exclude the very group that provides his identity. When Kant first introduces the principle of autonomy of the will in the second section of the Groundwork, its meaning depends on the stated difference between categorical and hypothetical imperatives. An autonomous agent is subject only to a law that arises ‘‘from his will.’’ Any other law ‘‘had to carry with it some interest by way of attraction or constraint,’’ and an imperative to follow it could only be hypothetical—that is, conditional. ‘‘Attraction’’ here refers to any inclination or desire: that sort of law is equivalent to the hypothetical, Do such and such to satisfy your desire, or because you feel like it. ‘‘Constraint’’ here refers to obedience, whether to other persons or to the penal law: that is equivalent to the hypothetical, Do such and such to avoid punishment. What remains, with these two hypotheticals out of the way, is the categorical imperative of a law that arises from the autonomous will. ‘‘I will therefore call this basic principle the principle of the autonomy of the will in contrast with every other, which I accordingly count as heteronomy’’ (1785, 4:433). It may be that honor is not as assiduous as Kantian morality when it comes to turning aside inclinations and desires; and if one asked Kant directly, he could find room for honor so-called under both ‘‘attraction’’—an imperative to win honor—and ‘‘constraint’’—an imperative to avoid dishonor. But true honor, like pure morality, scorns these hypothetical imperatives. And Kant is there to spell out the logic of honor’s resistance to obedience: I cannot be

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threatened by anyone translates as, I do not operate under hypotheticals that advise me whether I shall be punished or not. The striking thing about Kant’s argument, once again, is that whatever counts as morality has worth and dignity: Now, morality is the condition under which alone a rational being can be an end in itself, since only through this is it possible to be a lawgiving member in the kingdom of ends. Hence morality, and humanity insofar as it is capable of morality, is that which alone has dignity. Skill and diligence in work have a market price; wit, lively imagination and humor have a fancy price; on the other hand, fidelity in promises and benevolence from basic principles (not from instinct) have an inner worth. (1785, 4:435)

Like so many passages, this becomes a praise of morality: all honor to it! Particularly revealing is the contrast with activities that have a price. For each use of morality one could substitute honor with little difference in meaning. But just how autonomous is ‘‘a lawgiving member in the kingdom of ends’’? The kingdom of ends is short for persons regarded as ends in themselves, not merely as means. The praise here, the exaltedness conveyed by ‘‘kingdom’’— the German may also be translated ‘‘empire’’—is a boost to the group as a whole. The autonomous moral agent is a lawgiving member of the whole, no more privileged than the other lawgiving members. The silent premise is that the lawgiving is only such as each member would legislate for all—‘‘laws given by himself but still universal,’’ in the shorthand of a few pages back. If these are not conditions, in the sense that Kant rules against hypothetical imperatives, they typically verge on conditions contrary to fact. To realize them in this world would be a puzzle like that of reaching a consensus in Rabelais’s Thélème or in Shakespeare’s Rome. The kingdom or Reich in Kant’s stirring phrase has little to do with a sovereign: it is precisely the community of autonomous beings that is exalted. Indeed, a couple of sentences where Kant is mindful of the difference between ruler and subjects reveal that each member is subject to the law of the others: ‘‘A rational being belongs as a member to the kingdom of ends when he gives universal laws in it but is also himself subject to these laws. He belongs to it as sovereign when, as lawgiving, he is not subject to the will of any other’’ (1785, 4:432–33). Possibly this is just Kant reminding himself and the authorities that they do not live in a republic, but the rare admission lies in the last clause. If a sovereign ‘‘is not subject to the will of any other,’’ by implication the member is subject to the will of others. The same limitation applies to the member’s freedom. That I am not alone in perceiving this constraint is attested by Korsgaard’s generous reading of Kantian ethics: ‘‘Generalized to the Kingdom of Ends, my own ends must be

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the possible objects of universal legislation, subject to the vote of all. And this is how I realize my autonomy. Paradoxically if you like, my ends and actions are most truly my own when they are chosen under the restrictions of a possible reciprocal relation—a kind of friendship—with everyone’’ (1996, 193). Korsgaard tends to think of groups bound by love rather than respect, and she is not very taken by Kant’s idea of friendship. But the paradox she describes is all the more evident in the case of a group bound by respect. It may be that Kant never resolves this paradox. A long remark pursuant to his third theorem in the Critique of Practical Reason begins boldly, ‘‘Thus freedom and unconditional practical law reciprocally imply each other.’’ Accepting this equivalence, he then asks, ‘‘from what our cognition of the unconditionally practical starts, whether from freedom or from the practical law’’ (1788, 5:29)? Kant is not asking how it is that we learn something, but which concept is logically prior. Not freedom, he decides, but the practical law. He thus revises the initial equivalence and possibly reverses the position adopted in his lectures of 1784: ‘‘Freedom, only freedom, makes us ends in ourselves’’ (quoted by Guyer, 2000, 156–57). I won’t attempt to trace his reasoning, except to note that this is one of those places in which Kant argues that practical reason does not wait on pure speculative reason. The passage in the Critique allows that ‘‘experience also confirms this order of concepts in us,’’ though what follows is not a reported experience but a pair of thought experiments: Suppose someone asserts of his lustful inclination that, when the desired object and the opportunity are present, it is quite irresistible to him; ask him whether, if a gallows were erected in front of the house where he finds this opportunity and he would be hanged on it immediately after gratifying his lust, he would not then control his inclination. One need not conjecture very long what he would reply. But ask him whether, if his prince demanded, on pain of the same immediate execution, that he give false testimony against an honorable man whom the prince would like to destroy under a plausible pretext, he would consider it possible to overcome his love of life, however great it may be. He would perhaps not venture to assert whether he would do it or not, but he must admit without hesitation that it would be possible for him. He judges, therefore, that he can do something because he is aware that he ought to do it and cognizes freedom within him, which, without the moral law, would have remained unknown to him. (1788, 5:30)

The first experiment seems to have been adopted from Rousseau (1762, 4: 650–51), who attributed its moral to a fourth-century Roman source. The man quickly takes back his assertion that the need to satisfy his lust is irresistible. In the second experiment the man realizes that he is free, on moral grounds, to disobey his prince and accept death as the penalty. It is unclear why Kant really needs the

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first experiment unless to establish the man’s love of life, which is important for the second and perhaps ought not to be taken for granted. The second experiment is the one that supports his earlier conclusion that recognition of the moral law is prior to the sense of freedom. In the first, the man is not exercising his freedom in a Kantian sense at all, merely weighing outcome against outcome. If anything, the outcome of the second experiment is overdetermined. The issues are heightened; the stakes are not the same as in the first experiment. There the gallows simply appears in the street; here it has been erected by the prince. There it was a demeaning matter of personal behavior; here it is a matter of state; and it is easier to resist, because if any of this became known the prince would be perceived to be in the wrong. Our man has the opportunity to stand up to the prince and to death. Freedom offers both this classic political statement and a venerable proof of honor. The nicest touch is Kant’s identification of the other person oppressed by the prince as also ‘‘an honorable man.’’ For the purposes of his thought experiment—to show how the cognition of freedom follows from (or is equivalent to, as he has it earlier) the moral law—he might specify a good man, an innocent man, or even an outright villain as the victim of the prince’s trumped-up charges. In each case the moral law against giving false testimony would still apply. In a famous rejoinder to Benjamin Constant, Kant held it wrong to lie even to achieve good (1797a), so that if this prince were soliciting help from the subject (his subject and the subject of the thought experiment) to do away with the country’s public enemy number one, it would still be wrong for the subject to perjure himself. The double experiment could not be better designed if Kant’s purpose were to illustrate the freedom of a man of honor. That man would not wish to be regarded as a fool in the first instance; in the second, he gets the chance to be a hero. That the prince’s intended victim is another honorable man would clinch the matter. As it is, the way Kant has casually identified him suggests once again that he is capable of imagining morality in terms of honor and an honor group. The thought experiment is to see if the man can find within himself the freedom to resist the prince’s plan. The experiment ostensibly leaves the decision open. But is that really possible, given Kant’s belief that moral imperatives are immediate, without regard to result? Or to put it another way, could the subject of the experiment find in himself the freedom to go along with the prince, concoct his false testimony, and thereby save his own neck, while condemning the said honorable man to death, torture, forfeiture of property, or whatever? Both Kantian ethics and the honor code answer, No. The freedom discovered by the story is one-sided; it consists of the one option, to defy the prince and accept the consequences. Kant leaves the decision open because

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conceivably the man could recognize the moral law but then prove too weak to follow it. But in that case no one could prove that he recognized the law; he might be just following the hypothetical imperative that tells him to save his neck. He cannot glimpse Kantian freedom without glimpsing the law, and he cannot prove he understands any of this without defying the prince. But either way, it is not hard to guess how Kant would construe the outcome if the man decided to perjure himself. The man would suffer lifelong shame; it would be evident that he did not belong to the company of rational beings. And it would be immediately evident that he cannot belong to the group implied by the existence of at least one honorable man, the victim of the prince and not the prince’s lackey.

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Respect and Adam Smith’s Impartial Spectator

Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant were almost exact contemporaries. The latter seems to have read The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) shortly after its translation into German in 1770; Jean-Jacques Rousseau does not seem to have read it at all. Smith’s moral philosophy and Kant’s were quite complementary as far as honor is concerned. The Scottish philosopher did not contribute anything as near to the spirit of honor as Kant’s categorical imperative, his emphasis on the will and autonomy, and the privilege of belonging. But Smith too was a philosopher of the Enlightenment, and The Wealth of Nations, the first edition of which appeared in 1776, assured the continuing interest of his earlier work. More comfortable with Cicero than with Christianity, he was ‘‘a Stoic philosopher who wanted virtue to be relevant to this life rather than the next’’ (Fitzgibbons, 1995, 19). He joined in the attempt to ground morality in the practice of moral beings rather than authority, and his empiricism offered the reassurance of descriptions from life: this is how (if we are to believe him) people actually behave. His particular contributions to a morality of respect were a pragmatic treatment of sympathy—featured also by his immediate British predecessors—as something closer to an exchange than an instinct, and his thoughtful appeal to what he came to call the impartial spectator, a real or supposed viewer of one’s actions who could be readily internalized.

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When in the second volume of A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), entitled ‘‘Of the Passions,’’ David Hume announced, ‘‘Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions,’’ he offered to turn moral philosophy upside down and inside out. This ‘‘somewhat extraordinary’’ opinion, as he called it, was meant to be provocative and it still is. Plato and Aristotle and the Stoics had left reason in charge of the passions, and Hume’s choice of metaphor pulls the bottom out from under the ancient social assumption of the difference between master and slave. His recourse to ‘‘slave’’ recalls the way this word is sounded by Shakespeare’s Romans, and when he adds that reason ‘‘can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey’’ the passions, he comments on the reason’s traditional ambition and adds to the insult (1739, 415). Hume’s point is not to exalt the passions, of course, but to assert that human motivation is driven by interests, which are ultimately analyzable as seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. Reason serves these interests and has no moral purpose of its own. Therefore, to treat the love of fame, or any other interest, as a passion is not to diminish it in this account or to subordinate it to some more sublime vision of morality. If honor is indeed a driving force in human affairs, Hume’s theory of the passions opened a way for it to be better appreciated—as master once more, so to speak, rather than slave. Possibly because it is partly derivative from Hume’s, Adam Smith’s moral philosophy is far less frequently studied; but as we shall see, Smith’s version is still more accommodating to honor as a continuing process of respect. Hume divided his argument between direct passions, ‘‘such as arise immediately from good or evil, from pain or pleasure’’ (pairs of terms used almost casually in apposition here), and indirect passions such as are conjoined with ‘‘other qualities.’’ He begins with and devotes more space to the latter, which might better be called the social passions, the ones that involve other persons and their responses. (The discussion of the direct passions is less specific and largely an effort to define the will.) A love of fame, to be sure, is one of the indirect passions, though Hume does not initially list it as such. Much like Renaissance writers on honor, he describes this passion as significantly reciprocal: ‘‘tho’ fame in general be agreeable, yet we receive a much greater satisfaction from the approbation of those, whom we ourselves esteem and approve of. . . . In like manner we are principally mortify’d with the contempt of persons, upon whose judgment we set some value.’’ Even when the specific materials for comparison are unequal, as in the amassing of power and riches, the human relations are responsive. ‘‘In general we may remark, that the minds of men are mirrors to one another, not only because they reflect each others emotions, but also because those rays of passions, sentiments and opinions may be often reverberated.’’ The wealthy enjoy not only their own means

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but the esteem for wealth that gathers around them. Others take vicarious pleasure in their estate, and they in these witnesses’ pleasure—a process that need have no logical stopping place. ‘‘Here then is a third rebound of the original pleasure; after which ’tis difficult to distinguish the images and reflexions, by reason of their faintness and confusion’’ (1739, 276, 321, 365). With such indirect passions, far more than individual desires or aversions are involved. The ‘‘other qualities’’ invoked tend to be the agreed-on standards of the people in question. Humean psychology and morality alike insist on sympathy as natural to human beings. This natural propensity is said to follow from our near resemblance to one another, though it is possible to feel that Hume’s sympathy gets this push from nature in order to fend against theories that would reduce morality to self-love. Sympathy is an instinctive identification with others that makes it possible to sense the utility and agreeableness of actions that affect more than one person. To a stern moralist, agreeableness might seem beside the point: shouldn’t utility, broadly enough considered, be sufficient to justify one’s actions? Yet in Hume’s much shorter exposition of these matters, An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), it becomes increasingly clear that utility cannot fully explain every moral choice. This is especially the case (as we might expect) when it comes to courage: The utility of courage, both to the public and to the person possessed of it, is an obvious foundation of merit. But to any one who duly considers of the matter, it will appear that this quality has a peculiar lustre, which it derives wholly from itself, and from that noble elevation inseparable from it. Its figure, drawn by painters and by poets, displays, in each feature, a sublimity and daring confidence; which catches the eye, engages the affections, and diffuses, by sympathy, a like sublimity of sentiment over every spectator.

Classical allusions abound in these same pages of the Enquiry, and thus Demosthenes is next called upon to testify to the ‘‘shining colours’’ of courage. Hume’s point is that such estimations are quite different from the calculations of utility: ‘‘These praises excite the most lively admiration; but the views presented by the orator, carry us not, we see, beyond the hero himself, nor ever regard the future advantageous consequences of his valour’’ (1751, 254). Though not to the extent that Aristotle and Kant rely on ‘‘dignity’’ and ‘‘worth’’ to valorize their moral philosophies, Hume is also capable of using such presumptive language and making it operational in his argument. That which is ‘‘noble’’—as in a ‘‘noble elevation’’ or ‘‘noble disposition’’—is handily valorized in advance even though the argument is about valorization. Hume relies far more on a communal understanding of these terms among his

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readers than he does for such building blocks of his empiricism as ‘‘impressions’’ and ‘‘ideas.’’ ‘‘Eloquence, genius of all kinds, even good sense, and sound reasoning, when it rises to an eminent degree, and is employed upon subjects of any considerable dignity and nice discernment,’’ all have merit. But what exactly are ‘‘these noble talents of the human mind’’? Hume clearly regards honor as supplementary to morality, notwithstanding this tendency to rely on its vocabulary when he writes of moral sentiments. ‘‘By our continual and earnest pursuit of a character, a name, a reputation in the world, we bring our own deportment and conduct frequently in review, and consider how they appear in the eyes of those who approach and regard us,’’ he writes in the last section of the Enquiry. Hedged with terms like ‘‘earnest’’ as well as ‘‘noble,’’ this continuing review is well within the tradition of Renaissance definitions of honor. ‘‘This constant habit of surveying ourselves, as it were, in reflection, keeps alive all the sentiments of right and wrong, and begets, in noble natures, a certain reverence for themselves as well as others, which is the surest guardian of every virtue.’’ The all-important relation of sympathy, in these concluding passages, affects our character and those around us. ‘‘Our regard to a character with others seems to arise only from a care of preserving a character with ourselves; and in order to attain this end, we find it necessary to prop our tottering judgement on the correspondent approbation of mankind’’ (1751, 263, 276). Whenever Hume treats of the passions or even of utility, he typically analyzes human interactions and either observes or construes the ways by which others’ interests are represented to moral agents and how they see themselves. The priority ceded to ‘‘preserving a character with ourselves’’ in this last formulation anticipates Rousseau, and ‘‘correspondent approbation’’ will do nicely for any honor group. Adam Smith’s approach is still more pragmatic. From the empiricism of Hume and others he picks up a descriptive account of morality that is on the one hand not primarily consequentialist, and on the other not as singularly compelling as Kantian imperatives, but more like a careful working out of the process of respect that honor regularly assumes. Smith never moves very far beyond this process, nor does he appear to want to. As he contemplates the total picture, the figure of the impartial spectator emerges as a means to keep before us the comparisons that need to be made in order to judge ourselves and our actions rightly. I am partial to this impartial spectator because she keeps looking about her, active in the business of others’ seeing that is featured in Shakespeare and Renaissance definitions of honor. Smith, to be sure, uses a masculine pronoun to refer to his spectator, but when the moral agents are men in any case, shouldn’t a woman onlooker be trusted to be more impartial still? She will duly become the spectator within us

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as well as without, but there are precedents in the anima that has inhabited male bodies from ancient times and, closer to hand, a smooth paragraph near the close of Hume’s Enquiry in which virtue appears as a very amiable woman (1751, 279–80). All of our philosophers, after all, are eager to gender Nature female. Admittedly, my usage for the spectator is purely rhetorical: regendering Smith’s spectator as female does not make sense unless women as well as men can be considered members of the relevant peer group. In the West women have now become more nearly equal to men under law, but whether it is practically possible for honor groups to be without their separate identities is a different question. At least it is fair to say that Smith’s moral agents, regardless of male pronouns, may usually be taken to include women. In a few contexts he may use womanish to mark some unmanly trait, and in one egregious instance he carries on about female chastity, but he does not boast of gender differences quite the way Kant does. The Theory of Moral Sentiments begins with a discussion of sympathy, or the individual’s capacity to identify with other human beings. As in Hume and Francis Hutcheson (Smith’s teacher at Glasgow in the 1730s), sympathy is more than that, too. To sympathize is a habit, something we do all the time and cannot help doing. Like these predecessors, Smith explains how our notions of merit, duty, and virtue develop from sympathy. His explanation reads more like a theory of honor than does Hume’s, however, because he minimizes the part that utility plays and allows that sentiments will vary from group to group. Throughout his argument, he is highly conscious that groups may be of different sizes and makeup. From the start he is careful to define sympathy in a neutral way that distinguishes it from pity or compassion, which have narrower application. Sympathy will be used ‘‘to denote our fellow-feeling with any passion whatever.’’ Therefore he can, and often does, write of sympathy that has an aggressive content. Shared resentments are important to the theory. Whereas gratitude is the normal human response to benevolence, resentment turns on injuries or perceived injustices. Smith importantly contends that resentment courts sympathy, and indeed more so than such agreeable passions as gratitude: ‘‘we are not half so anxious that our friends should adopt our friendships, as that they should enter into our resentments. We . . . lose all patience if they seem indifferent about the injuries which may have been done to us’’ (1759, 10, 15). Whether these generalizations about sympathy correspond to the facts of ‘‘our’’ lives or not, Smith frequently returns to them. This is a treatise that is surely more about honor than about love. On the whole, friends and the ‘‘spectator’’ whom they begin to embody exert a moderating influence on our passions and rapid responses. It is soon clear, however, that they also serve to authenticate responses and to justify actions.

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How many things are requisite to render the gratification of resentment completely agreeable, and to make the spectator thoroughly sympathize with our revenge? The provocation must first of all be such that we should become contemptible, and be exposed to perpetual insults, if we did not, in some measure, resent it. . . . We should resent more from a sense of the propriety of resentment, from a sense that mankind expect and require it of us, than because we feel in ourselves the furies of that disagreeable passion. There is no passion, of which the human mind is capable, concerning whose justness we ought to be so doubtful, concerning whose indulgence we ought so carefully to consult our natural sense of propriety, or so diligently to consider what will be the sentiments of the cool and impartial spectator.

In all of this, Smith need not resort to the word honor. The term propriety— ‘‘our natural sense of propriety’’ here—serves as the title of the entire first section of his book and is never explicitly defined. It means fitness in some kind and is obviously normative, yet it is more often associated in English with manners than with goodness. The very next reference here is to the ‘‘magnanimity’’ that ought to govern our motives, and which is briefly elaborated. ‘‘It must appear . . . from our whole manner,’’ the passage concludes, ‘‘that if we yield to the dictates of revenge, it is with reluctance, from necessity, and in consequence of great and repeated provocations. When resentment is guarded and qualified in this manner, it may be admitted to be even generous and noble’’ (1759, 38). This attention to resentment, in fact, will feed directly into Smith’s rather perfunctory treatment of justice. Not that Smith is deliberately serving up a theory of honor in disguise. He has obviously ruled out faith-based and rationalist ethics and is deeply appreciative of stoicism and the general inheritance of Aristotelian ethics. What his argument turns up are the only grounds he can find for the determination of virtue and merit, the practice of duty and justice. The readiness of sympathy and the need for it he sees as inseparable from social life. Then the only source of normativity becomes the approval or disapproval of the people who matter to one. ‘‘We examine our persons limb by limb, and by placing ourselves before a looking-glass, or by some such expedient, endeavour, as much as possible, to view ourselves at the distance and with the eyes of other people.’’ A man living outside society (Smith had read Rousseau’s two discourses) would experience nothing of this. ‘‘Bring him into society, and he is immediately provided with the mirror which he wanted before. It is placed in the countenance and behaviour of those he lives with, which always mark when they enter into, and when they disapprove of his sentiments’’ (1759, 110–12). This looking back and forth is at bottom all that Smith can adduce about the experience of rendering moral judgments, and out of this emerges the need for

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construing something like the impartial spectator. This spectator is plural rather than singular to begin with, and only with internalization—the need to imagine her views—does she become conveniently singular. Impartial, the modifier Smith most commonly uses for the spectator, is not strictly needed to qualify her character but to make the basic point that spectator and moral agent do not initially see things alike. The views of the moral agent are assumed to be partial to his own interests. ‘‘Compared with the contempt of mankind, all other external evils are easily supported’’ (1759, ed. 1790, 61). In that sentence, the word external was not inserted until the sixth edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, the last during Smith’s lifetime. For five editions, that is, contempt was less bearable than all other evils. In general, the argument of the book begins with the importance of respect and shows how this is internalized as conscience, but the standard of judgment is always referable to a sentiment external to the moral agent just the same. Smith tentatively offers to discriminate occasions of respect or contempt that may seem to matter more than others. ‘‘Upon coming into the world, we soon find that wisdom and virtue are by no means the sole objects of respect; nor vice and folly, of contempt.’’ Presumably we can choose whether to pursue ‘‘wisdom and the practice of virtue’’ on the one hand or ‘‘wealth and greatness’’ on the other. Every philosopher has known which of these paths will attract more attention and which will be least appreciated. Yet Smith frankly acknowledges ‘‘those sentiments bear a very considerable resemblance to one another’’ (1759, 62). There is an echo here of Locke’s observations about visible and less visible normative ways. Essentially Smith concentrates throughout on the philosophical law that Locke amended to read ‘‘the Law of Opinion or Reputation’’ (1700, 353). Unlike Locke, he has not invoked any divine law to fall back on. Smith completed his book in seven parts. Of these, part 4—‘‘Of the Effect of Utility upon the Sentiment of Approbation’’—is a mere fourteen pages. In it Smith makes several gracious references to Hume, though not by name. His own position on utility as a ground for moral judgments, however, is minimizing and heedless. He offers a lengthy narrative about a poor man’s son, who labors all his life to remedy the supposed unhappiness of his lot and to found his family’s fortunes. This man has been moved to do all that hard work by utility, by the better life that he has so badly wanted to achieve; but the moral as far as Smith is concerned is that the same man might have found ease and tranquility without wealth and striving. So stoical is the future author of The Wealth of Nations that, in the present context, he can call ambition that ‘‘rouses and keeps in continual motion the industry of mankind’’ a ‘‘deception.’’ He concedes in passing that government has indeed the purpose of

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promoting happiness. Moreover, with another nod to Hume, he agrees that nature happily confirms the usefulness of much that we approve of. But such is not ‘‘the first or principal source of our approbation and disapprobation,’’ for two reasons. First, ‘‘it seems impossible that the approbation of virtue should be a sentiment of the same kind with that by which we approve a convenient and well-contrived building; or . . . a chest of drawers’’—impossible apparently because such sentiments are not worthy or dignified enough (no argument is offered). ‘‘Impossible’’ sounds as if Kantian pure reason were being invoked, but that hardly rules out an honorlike sentiment. Second, ‘‘it will be found, upon examination, that the usefulness of any disposition of mind is seldom the first ground of our approbation; and that the sentiment of approbation always involves in it a sense of propriety quite distinct from the perception of utility’’ (1759, 183, 188). No argument here, either, though the ‘‘examination’’ called for would presumably be an empirical study. In these same few pages, Smith tells one more brief story against the utilitarian thesis. The question it poses is whether a soldier who sacrifices his life to save that of his officer in wartime is weighing the consequences of the action or is moved by his perception of what an impartial spectator would approve. Smith believes the latter. And so it is with other branches of Smith’s theory. He is willing to embrace prudence as a significant virtue, but not very warmly. Prudence ‘‘commands a certain cold esteem,’’ perhaps. ‘‘It never is considered as one, either of the most endearing, or of the most ennobling of the virtues.’’ Smith makes some allowance for moral luck, but his treatment of this also turns on esteem. If a man brings about evils that he has not intended, or by accident fails to achieve what he has intended, then he may invoke the maxim ‘‘That those events which did not depend upon our conduct, ought not to diminish the esteem that is due to us.’’ A man in these circumstances ‘‘summons up his whole magnanimity and firmness of soul, and strives to regard himself, not in the light in which he at present appears, but in that which he ought to appear, in which he would have appeared had his generous designs been crowned with success.’’ Similarly, when a man does go wrong, the remorse he suffers is overwhelmingly experienced as shame rather than guilt. Such a man ‘‘can never reflect on the sentiments which mankind must entertain with regard to him, without feeling all the agonies of shame, and horror, and consternation. . . . By sympathizing with the hatred and abhorrence which other men must entertain for him, he becomes in some measure the object of his own hatred and abhorrence’’ (1759, 216, 108, 84). Smith does allow that remorse is composed also of grief and pity, and the dread of punishment as well, but first and foremost he singles out shame.

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He has little difficulty in analyzing conscience as the internalization of respect: ‘‘the principle by which we naturally either approve or disapprove of our own conduct, seems to be altogether the same with that by which we exercise the like judgments concerning the conduct of other people’’ (1759, ed. 1790, 109). This is how those mirrors mentioned earlier come into play. ‘‘We suppose ourselves the spectators of our own behaviour. . . . This is the only looking-glass by which we can, in some measure, with the eyes of other people, scrutinize the propriety of our own conduct.’’ In a long chapter, ‘‘Of the Influence and Authority of Conscience,’’ the point is made again. The standout metaphor (also a metonymy, the very sight organ of the spectators within and without) is still that of eyes, since the impartial spectator has subsumed the spectators at large and transmuted herself into ‘‘reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct’’ (1759, 112, 137). The formidability of this creature within—and the aspirations, too, for Smith writes in the same passage of ‘‘the love of what is honourable and noble, of the grandeur, and dignity, and superiority of our own characters’’—has been anticipated almost from the start, in the initial demarcation of spectator and moral agent. There, with perhaps a lingering pity and compassion that are not strictly what Smith says he means by sympathy, the spectator’s kindly mediation inspires in ‘‘the person principally concerned’’ a kind of fierce gallantry: ‘‘the great, the awful and respectable, the virtues of self-denial, of self-government, of that command of the passions which subjects all the movements of our nature to what our own dignity and honour, and the propriety of our own conduct require’’ (1759, 23). These heroics are then sounded again in the chapter on conscience and in another on self-command. (The major contribution of the 1790 edition was an entirely new part 6, ‘‘Of the Character of Virtue.’’ This contained a section on the Stoic virtue of self-command and an admirable discourse on the distinction between pride and vanity. If anything, this new part, added just before Smith’s death, made his book even more like a treatise on honor.) Smith’s thoughts about justice were not extensively developed, probably because he intended to treat justice in a book on jurisprudence. His approach to the subject is nevertheless quite distinctive. Smith’s justice does not weigh goods in a scale; again the emphasis is on the sentiment, the desire for justice, precisely because this stems from resentment—a passion to which The Theory of Moral Sentiments devotes much space. Because people can identify so readily with resentment, and the person resenting wants their sympathy so badly, all that resentment needs in order to grow into a collective demand for justice is a perceived cause. This impetus obviously has its dangers as well as its grim satisfactions, its frustrations as well as triumphs, but resentment is not some-

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thing that Smith looks down on. His thoughts are so well attuned to honor that he regards resentment as inevitable. ‘‘Resentment seems to have been given to us by nature for defence’’—but ‘‘for defence only. It is the safeguard of justice and the security of innocence. It prompts us to beat off the mischief which is attempted to be done to us, and to retaliate that which is already done.’’ So it is not surprising that others, at least others who are in the same camp, will sympathize with it. Like every other passion affecting more than one person, resentment is to be regulated by the impartial spectator. It does not occur to Smith that if this spectator is representative of the group already in sympathy with the moral agent, the effect is likely to be an amplification of resentment rather than its regulation. Almost always he thinks of individual passions as shrill and prone to get out of hand, and the spectator’s intervention as moderating them. He lived in an age in which manners were thought to have been improved and the code of honor among gentlemen was prideful yet pacific; so much is attested to by novels and plays of the period, and would probably be confirmed by his original readers if they were around to tell us of it. Most of the few pages in The Theory of Moral Sentiments that are devoted to justice advise about the limits of aggressive behavior that an ‘‘impartial spectator can go along with’’ and caution one against incurring ‘‘the natural resentment of the injured’’ (1759, 79, 82–83). Smith’s theory does reckon with retributive justice. When he writes of the force that can properly be used to restrain or punish offenders, he thinks mainly of justice under law. ‘‘The rules which [society] establishes for this purpose, constitute the civil and criminal law of each particular state or country,’’ the principles of which can be derived from what he would call ‘‘natural jurisprudence.’’ This foundation Smith says he cannot go into on the present occasion (and it is fair to say that he never really put together his thoughts about it). But the legal system is part of the overriding moral commitment to justice in any case. Justice with or without law therefore falls within the purview of the impartial spectator, who is constantly overseeing resentment. ‘‘Proper resentment for injustice attempted, or actually committed, is the only motive which, in the eyes of the impartial spectator, can justify our hurting or disturbing in any respect the happiness of our neighbour’’ (1759, ed. 1790, 218). Again Smith stresses justice as a curb on the moral agent—‘‘our hurting or disturbing’’—even though it might be that the neighbor started the trouble. The theory’s intention is all very lids-on. Nevertheless, he is describing a motive that ‘‘can justify’’ hurting and disturbing someone. T.D. Campbell paraphrases the argument this way: ‘‘If the resentment is shared by the spectator then the punishment is justified. The spectator approves of this immediately, without any calculation of its utility, merely by considering the injury which

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has been inflicted’’; and in a footnote Campbell finds support from one of Smith’s lectures on jurisprudence in 1763 (1971, 191 and n). When the agent and spectator link up in this way, the rightness of retaliation is assured with the speed of a categorical imperative or a point of honor. It sometimes seems that the impartial spectator, especially when weighing in as ‘‘the great judge and arbiter of our conduct’’ or helping us to administer justice outside the law, must know something that we do not know. What can this be? What is she able to see besides ourselves as others see us? Apparently nothing but that, and nothing more than we can see in others. Since ‘‘our continual observations upon the conduct of others, insensibly lead us to form to ourselves certain general rules concerning what is fit and proper either to be done or to be avoided,’’ the reasoning involved is strictly inductive. Where Kant deliberately would fix on pure reason as the basis of his moral philosophy, Smith takes for granted that the knowledge acquired is empirical. It is thus that the general rules of morality are formed. They are ultimately founded upon experience of what, in particular instances, our moral faculties, our natural sense of merit and propriety, approve, or disapprove of. We do not originally approve or condemn particular actions; because, upon examination, they appear to be agreeable or inconsistent with a certain general rule. The general rule, on the contrary, is formed, by finding from experience, that all actions of a certain kind, or circumstanced in a certain manner, are approved or disapproved of. (1759, 159)

And what better servant of empiricism could there be than a spectator? Smith’s theory has been read as a theatrical account of the moral sentiments (Marshall, 1986, 167–92). If such is the case, it is the complement of Rousseau’s narrative fashion of doing philosophy in Julie and Emile in the same era. A test of the theory’s empiricism arises when Smith distinguishes between praise and praiseworthiness, blame and blameworthiness—for how is such worthiness determined? Man ‘‘desires, not only praise, but praise-worthiness; or to be that thing which, though it should be praised by nobody, is, however, the natural and proper object of praise’’; and so, conversely, with blame and blameworthiness. The determination of worthiness would seem to depend on some standard not empirical and independent of that introduced by the spectator. The argument is not very satisfactory. Smith brings in emulation and defines it as ‘‘the anxious desire that we ourselves should excel . . . founded in our admiration of the excellence of others.’’ What determines their excellence? Next he maneuvers with ‘‘admired’’ and ‘‘admirable’’ just as he has with praise and praiseworthiness. But at this point he gives up and calls for an impartial spectator:

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in order to attain this satisfaction [of believing ourselves to be admirable], we must become the impartial spectators of our own character and conduct. We must endeavour to view them with the eyes of other people, or as other people are likely to view them. When seen in this light, if they appear to us as we wish, we are happy and contented. But it greatly confirms this happiness and contentment when we find that other people, viewing them with those very eyes with which we, in imagination only, were endeavouring to view them, see them in precisely the same light in which we ourselves had seen them. Their approbation necessarily confirms our own self-approbation. [The pronoun ‘‘them’’ in this passage consistently refers to ‘‘our own character and conduct.’’] (1759, 114)

The turnabout and resort to the impartial spectator suggest that we have not really departed from the circle of respect after all. It is just a matter of the order in which the opinion was formed. When the moral agent himself takes the initiative and decides what conduct or character is admirable, this claim will be confirmed when the others see the matter in the same way—and delightfully so when they see it ‘‘in precisely the same light.’’ Smith does not consider how long the individual could stick to his claim should the others not concur in it. And the questions inadvertently raised about the source of normativity before this turnabout might have been met more fairly if Smith had asked himself directly what he meant by praiseworthiness rather than bundling this question with the desire for praiseworthiness. But I think his answer, implicit in this retreat to the spectator and consistent with his empiricism, would have to be that what is worthy is that which has been praised and admired enough to be presumed so by the group. (For other criticism of this passage, including that of Leslie Stephen, see Campbell, 1971, 151–57.) To be sure, Smith never addresses the question of how wide an agreement his impartial spectator represents. Which groups have impartial spectators who differ importantly from ours? Do enemies enlist only partial spectators on their side? One thing that is characteristic of honor and of Kantian ethics, but not of Smith’s theory, is the prize of belonging. Smith does his best to work by persuading readers whom he imagines to be much like himself. The writing is didactic, the empiricism heroic in its way. But he asks a lot from that impartial spectator, and all she can see is what the others see. In his last words on the subject, and some of his last writing on any subject, Smith makes this very strong claim: ‘‘no man . . . ever trod steadily and uniformly in the paths of prudence, of justice, or of proper beneficence, whose conduct was not principally directed by a regard to the sentiments of the supposed impartial spectator, of the great inmate of the breast, the great judge

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and arbiter of conduct.’’ This ‘‘Conclusion to the Sixth Part’’ of the book does allow once more for the ‘‘agreeable effects’’ and ‘‘utility’’ of these same virtues, the anticipation of which should help to promote them. But Smith’s last word of all is reserved for the virtues of self-command, which may be entirely indifferent to outcomes. The effects of these virtues may well be disagreeable. ‘‘The most heroic valour may be employed indifferently in the cause either of justice or of injustice’’—an observation that may be traceable to Socrates, in Plato’s Laches. In valor, ‘‘and in all the other virtues of self-command, the splendid and dazzling quality seems always to be the greatness and steadiness of the exertion, and the strong sense of propriety which is necessary in order to make and to maintain that exertion. The effects are too often but too little regarded’’ (1759, ed. 1790, 262–64). Smith concludes as he has begun, with propriety. The last cryptic remark about effects, however, betrays his consciousness of a problem. A utilitarian Falstaff’s problem, it might be called: what if valor lengthens the casualty list, or worse, places my name on it? Religion is pretty much absent from the pages of The Theory of Moral Sentiments. The sense of duty as Smith derives it from the give-and-take of respect can serve as a corrective to the notion that ‘‘religious principles were the sole laudable motives of action.’’ He several times tentatively revises the Golden Rule of Christianity by emphasizing, as Mandeville might, the love of self; but for Smith, love of the self is already qualified by what our neighbors think of us. In this respect, the Golden Rule is self-enforcing, and it would be silly to think we follow it ‘‘merely because we are commanded to do so’’ (1759, 171; see also 25, 137). Since it is possible, with strict attention to the impartial spectator, to work out a persuasive moral theory on purely secular grounds, it follows that the rules derived from it can likewise be projected onto the Deity, who is thereby understood to ‘‘reward the obedient, and punish the transgressors,’’ in the next world. In the course of his summaries of other systems of moral philosophy, just before he attends to the ‘‘licentious’’ theory of Mandeville, Smith devotes a paragraph to ‘‘that system which places virtue in obedience to the will of the Deity.’’ He can find just two reasons why a moral agent should obey in this sort. The first is the hope of reward and fear of punishment from ‘‘a Being of infinite power.’’ That reason, obviously, cannot be very attractive to a philosophe or to a man of honor. The second is propriety, a sense of ‘‘congruity and fitness that a creature should obey its creator’’ (1759, 163, 305). That reason is akin to the creed of the young man in a heroic drama by Dryden, who obeys his father strictly and only because he wills to obey his father. The relation that the law bears to morality in Smith’s philosophy unfortunately gets put off to another day. His Lectures on Jurisprudence (1762–63,

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1766) are not very helpful on this score, and this material never made its way into a proper book. The last part of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, however, does offer one relevant thought experiment in this area. Although Smith characterizes this puzzle as ‘‘a trite example,’’ it derives from Cicero and Augustine among the ancients, and from Samuel Pufendorf and Smith’s teacher Hutcheson among the moderns (1759, 331, editors’ n3). The case is this: ‘‘a highwayman, by the fear of death, obliges a traveler to promise him a certain amount of money’’; and the question is ‘‘whether such a promise, extorted in this manner by unjust force, ought to be regarded as obligatory.’’ An appeal to the law in such a case makes no sense to Smith. Extortion at gunpoint is a crime to begin with, and for a judge to require performance on the victim’s promise would absurdly create a new crime. But morally speaking, are not all promises scrupulously to be observed? Think of Kant on the subject of promise keeping. Yet Smith repeats almost word for word with respect to the moral question the very reasons that make the promise not enforceable by law. By not fulfilling the promise of the money, ‘‘no injury is done to the robber,’’ and in any case ‘‘nothing can be extorted by force.’’ That would seem to be the end of the matter, whether in a court of law or not. Then it appears that Smith’s casuistry is more narrowly focused on a point of honor, and he gives it that name: the promiser’s ‘‘own dignity and honour’’ have to be taken into account. Think of Montesquieu’s rule: honor insists all the more on its demands precisely when these do not coincide with the law’s (1748, 1:32). Smith next allows that the answer might depend on the amount of money this gentleman has promised the highwayman and indeed his capacity to pay it; for ‘‘the man who should beggar himself, or should throw away an hundred thousand pounds, though he could afford that vast sum, for the sake of observing such a parole with a thief, would appear to the common sense of mankind, absurd and extravagant in the highest degree.’’ This digression seems a very awkward intrusion on dignity and honor. But Smith does not quite say that he shares in that common opinion, and after this base utilitarian thought is put aside, he returns to the fray with renewed enthusiasm for avoiding ‘‘dishonour’’ by sticking to promises and fresh salvoes of ‘‘the highest and noblest maxims of magnanimity and honour.’’ Once that word honor has been unleashed, the Scottish philosopher goes well beyond even Kant and Montesquieu; he scorns no one more than a promise breaker—unless it be an unchaste woman. For once in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith introduces the honor of the fair sex as he draws this comparison: Our imagination therefore attaches the idea of shame to all violations of faith, in every circumstance and in every situation. They resemble, in this respect,

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Respect and Adam Smith’s Impartial Spectator the violations of chastity in the fair sex, a virtue of which, for the like reasons, we are excessively jealous; and our sentiments are not more delicate with regard to the one, than with regard to the other. Breach of chastity dishonours irretrievably. No circumstances, no solicitation can excuse it; no sorrow, no repentance atone for it. We are so nice in this respect that even a rape dishonours, and the innocence of the mind cannot, in our imagination, wash out the pollution of the body. It is the same case with the violation of faith, when it has been solemnly pledged, even to the most worthless of mankind. (1759, 330–32)

This excursus, which commenced with a question of the difference between law and morality, seems very regrettable to me—even though, as you might say, it plays to my hand by exposing the honor code that is never far from the surface of Smith’s theory. That theory as a whole concedes that human interests differ. The relativism implicit in the impartial spectator’s constant referencing of the views of others is not such a bad thing. But when Smith drops his inductive approach and brings the h-word out into the open, as he does in this aberrant passage, the rules of the particular code to which he subscribes are stated as universals, from which correct behavior can be deduced with Kantian rigor. The whole strength of his theory of moral sentiments would seem to reside in its applicability to particular circumstances. The h-words, by habit and association, make universals out of what are only rallying calls. Smith would do well to recall some words from Mandeville’s preface to An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour about a certain triviality that inheres in supposedly timeless certainties. (Compare the ‘‘trite’’ example that starts off this excursus upon female chastity.) All propositions, not confin’d to Time or Place, that are once true, must be always so; even in the silliest and most abject Things in the World; as for Example, It is wrong to under-roast Mutton for People who love to have their Meat well done. The Truth of this, which is the most trifling Thing I can readily think on, is as much Eternal, as that of the Sublimest Virtue. If you ask me, where this Truth was, before there was Mutton, or People to dress or eat it, I answer, in the same Place where Chastity was, before there were any Creatures that had an Appetite to procreate their Species. (1732, viii)

Although Smith was among those who believed Mandeville’s influence to be pernicious, he was perfectly capable of appreciating ‘‘the humorous and diverting eloquence of this lively author’’ (1759, 310). Possibly Mandeville’s intellectual espousal of honor was one reason for Smith’s general avoidance of the word itself. However one looks at it, his comparison of male promise keeping and female chastity as absolute conditions of being was unfortunate. I would rather he had held fast to his impartial spectator, who is as chaste as she need be.

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Adam Smith and Recent Social Science

As its full title suggests, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations was a pragmatic, searching, and at bottom empirical study of British and European society as Adam Smith was acquainted with it, a thoughtful rather than programmed account of how this society held together. Given his attention to commerce and manufacturing, banking and monetary systems as well as agriculture, there was bound to be more emphasis on class difference than in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which so takes for granted the homogeneity of interests among moral agents that the author could be addressing a single honor group. Like most of his contemporaries, Smith accepted the existence of higher and lower ranks of society, and this entailed respect for persons in different ranks. The Wealth of Nations famously begins by commending the division of labor and its promise of productivity, yet the author does not fail to register in due place the ‘‘torpor’’ of mind and body that such tasking effected on the factory floor (1784, 782–84). This book, which we think of today as an outstanding contribution to the new subject of economics, also makes repeated references to the ancient world, especially the Roman world, and regularly assumes that civilization had evolved from hunting and pastoral economies. The Inquiry is altogether more historical, therefore, than the earlier Theory, and in it Smith depends more on Hume’s History of England than on his friend’s philosophical works.

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The new book put forward and defended a labor theory of value. ‘‘The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it’’ (1784, 47). A labor theory seems an unlikely accompaniment for honor, and so it is—for aristocratic honor. But like the novelists and dramatists of his time, Smith is helping to redefine elites and the occupations crucial to the larger society. Basically, his distinction between productive and unproductive work brings traditional hierarchies into question. Productive work is that which adds value to raw materials, improvements in the use of lands and manufacturing. A ‘‘manufacturer’’ need not refer to management, as it does today, but is the workman himself, contrasted to ‘‘menial’’ servants who assist only in spending capital. ‘‘Though the manufacturer has his wages advanced to him by his master, he, in reality, costs him no expence, the value of those wages being generally restored, together with a profit, in the improved value of the subject upon which his labour is bestowed. . . . A man grows rich by employing a multitude of manufacturers: He grows poor, by maintaining a multitude of menial servants’’ (1784, 330). The connotations of menial are negative, and the world of traditional respectability has gone topsy-turvy when the sheer size of a wealthy family’s establishment betrays the quantity of unproductive labor. Moreover, ‘‘the labour of some of the most respectable orders in the society is, like that of menial servants, unproductive of any value, and does not fix or realize itself in any permanent subject, or vendible commodity, which endures after that labour is past.’’ It is tempting to read this as something mischievously penned by Mandeville, but Smith offers the comparison simply as the truth of the matter. The sovereign, ministers, justices, officers of the army and navy, however honorable, ‘‘are the servants of the publick, and are maintained by a part of the annual produce of the industry of other people.’’ Government assuredly has its value; indeed, it is necessary. Everything we pay for has some kind of value, but not always value that is productive. Smith is alert to the paradox this economy of the whole poses for drawing a line between repute and disrepute, or even gentility and clownishness. In nonproductive lines of work may be found ‘‘some both of the gravest and most important, and some of the most frivolous professions: churchmen, lawyers, physicians, men of letters of all kinds; players, buffoons, musicians, opera-singers, opera-dancers, etc.’’ (1784, 330–31). An entire book might be written about this deliberate juxtaposition of the important and the frivolous. If increased productivity is the desideratum, pride in belonging to any of these professions becomes an interesting question. In this account of society honor can be a proletarian concern. The very first explanation of differential wages that Smith puts forward is this: ‘‘The wages

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of labour vary with the ease or hardship, the cleanliness or dirtiness, the honourableness or dishonourableness of the employment.’’ Because of the demand for labor, some dirty jobs are compensated more than safe and respectable jobs; or acceptance of risk and danger by the worker may command higher pay. On the other side of this coin, members of the so-called honorable professions, by which he means those churchmen, lawyers, physicians, and men of letters again, ‘‘are generally under-recompensed.’’ ‘‘The publick admiration which attends upon such distinguished abilities, makes always a part of their reward’’ (1784, 116–27). Most of these considerations, which involve measurable forms of respect, anticipate studies like Robert H. Frank’s Choosing the Right Pond (1985). The question of risk-taking (which Smith attributes especially to the young) is more complicated. Competition entails risk, and it is competition of both capital and industry that leads to increased productivity. Competition is what liberty chiefly imports for Smith, who is antiprotectionist, anti–regulation of commerce, manufacturing, or agriculture. The role of government should strictly be limited to national defense, provisions for justice, and certain more debatable public works and institutions. It is goes without saying that Smith values commerce and manufacturing more than inherited wealth. The growth of commerce and manufacturing in cities stimulates the agricultural countryside by providing a market and tools for improvement. Smith was as much concerned to preserve the landed interest for the sake of the economy as Edmund Burke was for political stability. ‘‘The capital . . . that is acquired to any country by commerce and manufactures, is all a very precarious and uncertain possession, till some part of it has been secured and realized in the cultivation and improvement of its lands.’’ Nevertheless, if estates were divided equally among children instead of going to the eldest son, that would place more land on the market at equable prices. And Smith contends that small proprietors are ‘‘generally of all improvers the most industrious, the most intelligent, and the most successful’’ (1784, 411, 426, 423). But should not competition also require a level playing field? Smith undoubtedly takes for granted a society arranged and kept in order by a sense of deference. In book 5 of The Wealth of Nations, he posits that ‘‘civil government supposes a certain subordination.’’ When he goes on to describe subordination, he appeals to vertical respect, respect in the sense of looking up to others and ceding precedence. The tentativeness with which he explores the four ‘‘causes or circumstances which naturally introduce subordination,’’ however, well illustrates Smith’s commitment to empiricism. Subordination is not something commanded from on high but something that occurs quite naturally out of respect of the measurable sort. The four causes or circumstances that introduce this habit of subordination, he suggests, are superiority

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of personal qualifications, of age, of fortune, and of birth. He elaborates on each of the four, but the taxonomy begins to break down when he decides to settle on the last two, birth and fortune, because they are visible, ‘‘plain and palpable.’’ Personal qualities he sorts into ‘‘strength, beauty, and agility of body,’’ and superiority of ‘‘wisdom, and virtue, of prudence, justice, fortitude, and moderation of mind.’’ The latter—classical virtues, for sure—he declares to be authoritative and at the same time invisible. Superiority of fortune, on the other hand, is very visible and, in ruder ages especially, accompanied by power. As for the fourth cause, all families are equally old, so ‘‘superiority of birth supposes an antient superiority of fortune’’ (1784, 710–11, 713). Thus birth also is subsumed by wealth. Smith points out that well-to-do members of society do not differ politically according to different degrees of wealth; instead, they band together to protect their interests against the havenots. ‘‘They constitute a sort of little nobility,’’ which may well pretend to birth or other qualities in common. ‘‘Civil government,’’ he concludes, ‘‘so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all’’ (1784, 715). In this open-ended reasoning, coolly descriptive rather than prescriptive, one can find an abstract of the society depicted in the novels of Defoe and Fielding. Yet social status becomes as significant a goal of human endeavor as wealth by itself. The expression ‘‘to better our condition’’ that Smith uses in both his Theory and his Wealth of Nations comes down to bettering how others see us, and in half a dozen places the annotators of the Glasgow Edition are able to point to parallel arguments in Mandeville’s writings on honor. ‘‘An augmentation of fortune is the means by which the greater part of men propose to better their condition,’’ Smith can write; and note that the two things are distinct: if one is the means to the other, they are not the same. Commercial and manufacturing enterprise thus engages in jockeying for status as well as profit, and in this aggrandizing culture, too, shame can be an important check on behavior. ‘‘Bankruptcy is perhaps the greatest and most humiliating calamity which can befal an innocent man. The greater part of men, therefore, are sufficiently careful to avoid it.’’ And ‘‘some, indeed, do not avoid it,’’ Smith acerbically adds, ‘‘as some do not avoid the gallows’’ (1784, 341–42 and n). The implication here is that to become bankrupt is to lose respect, period, to fall beneath consideration. Small businessmen at least, like small proprietors of land, can be counted on to behave better than this because they need at least recognition respect to keep their heads above water. ‘‘Nothing but the most exemplary morals,’’ the author observes in another context, ‘‘can give dignity to a man of small fortune’’ (1784, 810).

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Smith’s most important application in The Wealth of Nations of his earlier study of respect and self-respect may well be some acute observations on the limitations imposed by the scale and diversity of modern society. Mutual respect, the necessary looking back and forth, more readily involves a coherent group. In a society too large and diverse the impartial spectator simply cannot see far enough. The personal qualities she can perceive are blurred. If such qualities truly are invisible, as Smith suggests in this work of incipient social science, they cannot be mirrored after all. People of greater fortune, perhaps, are still subject to observation and therefore need to keep a close watch on themselves: these fortunate ones become the observed of all observers. But Smith does not put any credence in some absolute standard that such people aspire to: the standard is what ‘‘general consent’’ prescribes at the time. The situation of common people is much different. Besides the spread of middling fortunes in modern times, increased social mobility and above all urbanization render invisible the lower classes as individual persons. A remarkable passage juxtaposes men of high and low condition as they can be found in cities; and nowhere in Smith’s earlier work could it be clearer that morality is a function of respect and self-respect that does not entail subordination. A man of rank and fortune is by his station the distinguished member of a great society, who attend to every part of his conduct, and who thereby oblige him to attend to every part of it himself. His authority and consideration depend very much on the respect which this society bears to him. He dare not do any thing which would disgrace or discredit him in it, and he is obliged to a very strict observance of that species of morals, whether liberal or austere, which the general consent of this society prescribes to persons of his rank and fortune. A man of low condition, on the contrary, is far from being a distinguished member of any great society. While he remains in a country village his conduct may be attended to, and he may be obliged to attend to it himself. In this situation, and in this situation only, he may have what is called a character to lose. But as soon as he comes into a great city, he is sunk in obscurity and darkness. His conduct is observed and attended to by nobody, and he is therefore very likely to neglect it himself, and to abandon himself to every sort of low profligacy and vice. (1784, 795)

The context happens to be a discussion of the role of religion and religious instruction in modern society. Smith distinctly does not believe in an established church and even suggests at one point that more competition among sects might result all round in more rationally held tenets, ‘‘free from every mixture of absurdity, imposture, or fanaticism.’’ At first his approach is sociological, if you like: those seriously motivated by religion, he claims, are to

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be found among the common people. He then extrapolates from this observation a sweeping division of human behavior, more or less representing the fallout of Puritanism in Britain of the time but also reminiscent of Aristotle’s claim that most people act and react in this world out of fear. ‘‘In every civilized society . . . there have been always two different schemes or systems of morality current at the same time’’: these are ‘‘the strict or austere’’ system associated with the common people, and ‘‘the liberal, or, if you will, the loose system,’’ associated with the more fortunate, and notably ‘‘people of fashion.’’ The latter are much more tolerant of levity, luxury, intemperance, and ‘‘the breach of chastity, at least in one of the two sexes,’’ when these excesses stop short of ‘‘gross indecency, and do not lead to falsehood or injustice.’’ The austere morality abhors such excesses. Typically, Smith argues that common people can scarcely afford excess; they need to be prudent, on guard against sin. At the other pole, he fails to connect the liberals with any sort of religion. Religion is close to being fear itself: ‘‘The fears which it suggests conquer all other fears.’’ And, in a shift back to a political context, fear will not work ‘‘against any order of men who have the smallest pretensions to independency’’ (1784, 792–99). The liberal or loose system of morality does seem closer to that of honor codes. Humanity is sorted into those who fear—who indeed have reason to fear—and a more fortunate few who, regardless of their sillier antics, form a sort of nobility. This somewhat inchoate argument includes, however, the passage about urbanization extracted above, and it is worth examining closely what Smith says religion may do for that man of low condition whom the city has rendered invisible and therefore morally at risk. ‘‘He never emerges so effectually from this obscurity, his conduct never excites so much the attention of a respectable society,’’ the passage continues, ‘‘as by his becoming a member of a small religious sect. He from that moment acquires a degree of consideration which he never had before. All his brother sectaries are, for the credit of the sect, interested to observe his conduct, and if he gives occasion to any scandal, if he deviates very much from those austere morals which they almost always require of one another, to punish him by what is always a very severe punishment, even where no civil effects attend it, expulsion or excommunication from the sect’’ (1784, 795–96). One can ask how Adam Smith came to be acquainted with this small religious sect, but he accepts it on its own terms as a kind of elite. The sect is a group of people who do not cower in fear of superiors but do observe one another’s conduct; and the immediate check on deviant behavior is not hellfire but exclusion from the group. Since no impartial spectator appears by that name in The Wealth of Nations, one does not expect to meet her here; yet the

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process of respect that she represents prevails with the sect. Just as more fortunate, fashionable people’s antics are tolerated among themselves provided they do not lead to gross indecency, falsehood, or injustice, our sometime invisible hero’s conduct is acceptable as long as he does not give ‘‘occasion to any scandal’’ in his religious sect. Undeniably—in fact, this is the whole point—indecency and scandal are defined differently by the respective groups. In the total population, the fashionable set is also relatively small, and yet despite its frivolities decency, truthfulness, and justice remain within its ken. The man of low condition belongs to a small sect within the mass of urban dwellers. Smith’s analysis again suggests that morality is a function of scale, a group small enough for its members to look round at one another. Kantian morality, of course, is predicated on universals; and monotheism will have no other gods but one. Honor can think expansively too, as when it holds forth on what it is to be a man. A man: that’s almost half the human race. When all is said and done, our author prefers ‘‘the liberal, generous, and spirited conduct of a man’’ to ‘‘the austerities and abasement of a monk’’ (1784, 771; see also 1759, 134). Though a professor himself, incidentally, Smith thought of universities as medieval institutions that had contributed as little to manhood as to modern science and philosophy. This champion of the Scottish Enlightenment was also loyal to the city of Glasgow—the likely home of that small sect—rather than to Edinburgh. The urban commercial and manufacturing center is key to the future, and caste and hierarchies are already in the process of readjustment. Because of his modernity Smith speaks to a wide audience today. His conception of moral agency does not wrap itself in such a jealous cloak of autonomy as Rousseau’s, nor is it as confined to the noumenal as Kant’s. It seems fitting that in the twenty-first century a team comprising an economist and a philosopher should take up some of these insights and collaborate on a book, The Economy of Esteem. Although esteem is not the same as honor functioning as a moral imperative, Geoffrey Brennan and Philip Pettit share many of the assumptions of my own argument and—though they do not say so—are also employing a somewhat archaic term of the art. Brennan and Pettit invoke an exchange of esteem like that of mutual respect, a ‘‘typical case in which there is a community of individuals, all of whom act simultaneously as both esteem-recipients and esteem-givers.’’ They see this process as ongoing and ubiquitous, yet assorted and operative in distinct groups. In a modern, mobile society, moreover, individuals typically belong to a number of such groups. ‘‘Just as the economy of esteem is not insulated from the material economy or the regime of power, neither is it really a single, homogeneous system in itself. There will be many overlapping subsystems within the econ-

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omy of esteem in almost any contemporary society. And almost every individual will belong to a number of those subsystems, having a stake in how he or she stands in each’’ (2004, 83, 68). Recently economists have become interested in intangible factors, and much as I am enamored of Adam Smith’s impartial spectator, the authors pay homage to our economist-philosopher’s ‘‘invisible hand’’ by dubbing work performed by esteem as that of ‘‘an intangible hand.’’ Brennan and Pettit start by setting forth three characteristics of esteem: ‘‘an evaluative attitude,’’ ‘‘a comparative attitude,’’ and ‘‘a directive attitude’’ (2004, 15–23). By the last, they mean to single out esteem directed toward performance, or toward other persons as moral agents—not merely the agents’ standing in a community but how they act in situations within their control. This comes very close to thinking about honor as it affects behavior. By the first two characteristics, Brennan and Pettit depart somewhat from honor as I have been defining it here—though a process of comparison is essential to the honor relation and many uses of the word do include evaluation. Initially the authors are quite clear about this, because in describing a comparative attitude they contrast esteem with ‘‘recognition or countenance or standing’’ and explain their meaning by citing Stephen Darwall (1977) and Charles Taylor (1994). Darwall, remember, usefully distinguishes appraisal from recognition respect and helps make it clear that Kantian ethics were concerned with the latter; and I have contended that such is also the case with honor that functions as a moral imperative. The agent’s identity is at stake, not quite the same thing as a measure of esteem in the community that results from the action in question. Think of what Smith had to say about the man who would be swallowed up in the anonymity of the modern city if it were not for membership in that small religious sect: for him the threatened sanction of not performing as expected was excommunication, or exclusion from the group in the first place, not simply a lower approval rating. Brennan and Pettit repeatedly write of ‘‘the desire for esteem’’ and ‘‘the supply’’ because their economic model—their intangible hand being analogous to the invisible hand of the market—requires measurable quantities, incremental gain or loss, marginal utility. ‘‘People will compete with one another in the pursuit of esteem and this aggregate competition will shape the context in which they individually pursue it,’’ and so forth (2004, 50). That normative standards evolve from this process as well as guide it is true also of honor; but the main assumptions that keep surfacing here are that esteem is quantifiable and that the desire for it is instrumental. A true person of honor no more calculates on repute than a true Kantian moralist calculates. Yet as Avishai Margalit observes, and many particular situations attest,

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these two conceptions of honor—or of respect—are not always separable. Occasionally Brennan and Pettit stray toward fields of honor, where they encounter something more like recognition respect. It may be true that ‘‘other things being equal . . . agents will work harder to avoid disesteem than to gain positive esteem,’’ and that ‘‘shame is the stronger force for anyone who cares about esteem.’’ But is this phenomenon due to ‘‘the diminishing marginal utility’’ of esteem, or to a potential loss of recognition that is not thought to be recoverable? Surely personal identity is the issue, and not merely the person’s reputation, when it comes to the power of groups to exclude or expel individuals from their midst. Of countercultural groups Brennan and Pettit write, ‘‘It seems likely that there may be pockets of disesteemed groups spontaneously emerging within the esteem economy. These groups are characterized by significant negative esteem externally but no less significant positive esteem internally. They are groups that are explicitly countercultural; and they are groups where peer pressure is likely to be extremely potent’’ (2004, 156, 212, 226). Probably the cohesion of such a group and its defensive posture have far more to do with recognition, respect and self-respect, belonging or not belonging than with compensations meted out as intangible goods. I should like to hear more of peer pressure as it operates in other subsystems of this economy. The authors’ long-range object is to develop an applied science of esteem. Once we understand the supply and demand of esteem better, our knowledge can be put to use improving the economy. The potential utility of this new field for research is always kept in mind. And unlike economics devoted to the realization of material goods, these efforts may enable us to shape and reform normative values. ‘‘We may hope not only to exploit existing norms in the course of institutional design, but also to be able to engineer some beneficial norms into existence—or, equally, to engineer some destructive norms out’’ (2004, 286). The pages of The Economy of Esteem are replete with talk of ‘‘intervening’’ and ‘‘structuring’’—in short, of ‘‘guiding the intangible hand’’ —so it is perhaps lucky that Brennan and Pettit are such well-meaning guardians of the state, and even Aristotelian in their confidence that esteem, like honor, is normally drawn to such virtues as courage and benevolence. But when they propose that ‘‘governments or other collective agencies may explore new ways of ensuring publicity for the performance of agents and new ways of structuring the information publicised,’’ have not governments already figured out how to do something like that? If indeed ‘‘people’s desire for esteem represents a resource that no regulatory regime should neglect’’ (2004, 250, 255), haven’t we been there before? Persons of honor may well resist such tactics. Brennan and Pettit nevertheless represent a welcome change, because they

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insist that other social causes are afoot besides power and property and that esteem, like respect, moves as well as supports people. Dignity and refusal to engage in humiliation are crucial for humanity, regardless of the manners deemed appropriate for particular societies and subcultures (Margalit, 1996). To be sure, Brennan and Pettit for the most part direct their analysis of an economy of esteem toward a single, limited hypothetical polity. They seem actually less concerned with international differences than Smith was in The Wealth of Nations. Nor do moral philosophers regularly concern themselves with the geographic provenance of their studies, whether utilitarian or agentrelative. Yet all too often throughout history peoples make war on other peoples, and when that happens ordinary notions of right and wrong tend to go right off the map. Actions proscribed in peacetime as criminal are regularly exalted in wartime as heroic or patriotic. Since traditionally honor can govern as well as prompt some wartime activity, that is still another reason for pursuing the subject today. In the modern era honor has continued to influence the behavior of a people acting in concert, though mainly in the military and diplomatic spheres. I have long speculated that the word honor has fallen out of use in private life partly because of its nationalization—along with so much else—in the wake of the French and American revolutions. As Geoffrey Best confirms, the last two centuries have marked the discovery of ‘‘the nation as the supreme object of honourable service,’’ and armies developed ‘‘a sense of embodying not just their own honour but also that of the nation’’ (1982, xii, 36). The word that has become archaic in private life can still be heard in the maneuvering of nation-states, especially when the going gets tough for embattled spokespersons: Vice President Lyndon Johnson, for example, pledging ‘‘our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor’’ to Berliners (Welsh, 1961), or President Richard Nixon announcing the goal of ‘‘Peace with Honor’’ when winning the war in Vietnam became out of the question. After the Tet offensive in the spring of 1972, sure enough, the h-word began to be sounded in the president’s addresses to the nation. In announcing the Paris agreement of January 1973, Nixon pronounced honor no fewer than seven times. In Honor, Symbols, and War, Barry O’Neill dishes up a tableful of honor themes, typically stale or tasteless as applied to personal lives perhaps but demonstrably serious for international relations yesterday and undoubtedly tomorrow. The work reads like a sophisticated, mathematical version of a Renaissance courtesy book. O’Neill runs through such diplomatic moves as how to challenge adversaries and how to respond, what constitutes an insult and what insults can be ignored, how to save face and what it means to lose face, when to apologize and when not to. Credibility and promises are taken

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up; the so-called word of honor becomes a commitment between nations. The word of some nations is more trustworthy than that of others, and the conditions for giving their word vary also. All these moves are examined from the perspective of game theory and speech-act theory. O’Neill departs from my readings of the literature when he determines that ‘‘honor reconciles autonomous action with obedience to a hierarchical order by making obedience the individual’s duty,’’ but not very far, since he accepts the basic incongruity of personal autonomy with hierarchical order; and I would accept the substitution of the individual’s will in this sentence. Also, he immediately observes that in international relations ‘‘there can be no duty owed to some higher power, as there is no higher power.’’ This application concedes that nation-states today are treated as analogous to autonomous individual players. Unlike Brennan and Pettit, O’Neill is fundamentally concerned with recognition respect. Thus, according to another of his rules, one either has honor or doesn’t have it. Honor has to do with ‘‘personhood, autonomy, group membership, and sexual identity.’’ Quantifiable esteem—not one of his key terms—is more a matter of prestige and putting up appearances, or indeed of fame once again. ‘‘A person might possess personal honor while others do not know about that quality, but the idea of having unnoticed prestige or face makes no sense’’ (1999, 98, 87, 193). Many would argue that a progressive extension of the rule of law beyond national borders is a more promising way to deal with international conflict than appeals to unwritten conventions of honor. And surely some progress has been made in the application of—as well as theorizing about—international law over the centuries. Skeptics like Judith Shklar, who looked upon the selfenclosed culture of legalism with a jaundiced eye, wonder—despite the Nuremberg and Tokyo experiences after World War II—whether it is really possible to put an entire nation on trial. War is as old as civilization itself and, as Shklar points out, is pretty much accepted as normal. War ‘‘is not regarded as an ignoble activity’’ —an understatement for sure. So ‘‘a mere legal pronouncement that some wars are criminal is not likely to alter the general view that war, as such, is not a crime, or the belief that any war in which one’s nation-state is involved must be supported’’ (1964, 191). Hans Kelsen wrote of international law at about this time, but as he also pointed out, unless and until such law is enforceable, international law remains closer to ‘‘international morals’’ (1960, 62). That moral judgments continue to be made in wartime—both in the field and after the fact, by soldiers and heads of state, governments and their opposition—has best been demonstrated in a literal tour de force by Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars (1977), written in the aftermath of the Vietnam war. Although Walzer usefully begins with the

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medieval distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello and repeatedly touches base with modern war conventions, he eschews theorizing and in effect refuses to define morality. Instead, he provides a wide range of historical cases that perform this work for him. Walzer knows where he stands: again and again he comes down on one side or the other of specific questions about initiating, resisting, and conducting real-time wars. The facts and his careful distinctions of what is at issue are enough to persuade the reader also. Such existing rules of warfare as we rely on—differences between combatants and noncombatants and the rest—result from a consensus of people not unlike ourselves: a consensus that reaches beyond national borders. The field of comparative law can certainly teach us more about honor. James Q. Whitman has been pointing out the extent to which German and French law enforces respect and American law does not. Whereas the legal culture in America designates the person’s liberty as that which must not be infringed on, Continental law makes a point of the person’s dignity. Insulting someone is actionable in France or Germany, and this need not be the same thing as an action for libel. There is indeed ‘‘a legally protectable interest in honor.’’ The interest in reputation is an interest in making sure that shameful or discreditable things about us do not become public knowledge. The interest in honor is an interest in making sure that other people show us respect, not only in the public sphere, but also in private settings. . . . The difference shows itself most dramatically in the existence of what German and French lawyers call the ‘‘law of insult’’—a species of law that the United States fundamentally lacks. . . . In the countries in which it exists, the law of insult is regarded as concerning injuries not primarily to reputation, but to personal honor or dignity. (2000, 1292–93)

Whitman’s broad historical explanation for the difference in the two legal orders is the attenuation of aristocratic mores in both cultures: whereas on the Continent a leveling up of the citizens took place, in America a leveling down occurred. (A better test might be a comparison of France and Germany with Britain, where a titled aristocracy also survived the turn to democracy.) In an eye-opening book called Harsh Justice (2003), Whitman has argued that far less dignity is accorded the inmates of American prisons than those of Europe, that in truth demeaning of convicts is deliberate in this country. Does that outlook also take in the treatment of prisoners in war zones? ‘‘In the United States martial valor is little esteemed,’’ Tocqueville could write. In this hemisphere, he believed, courage was displayed elsewhere: on long voyages, in the wilderness and solitude, in abrupt losses of fortune and

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attempts to gain another. Traditional ideas about honor tend to represent only one species of it; and indeed, in earlier times honor took more narrow forms, according to one’s fixed position in society. Social mobility brings these received ideas into dispute. Some of Tocqueville’s generalizations about America in the early nineteenth century will soon apply to Europe and Great Britain; he has traveled to America, after all, to examine democracy’s effects. There, ‘‘quiet virtues’’ that favor trade and industry are praised, ‘‘and to neglect them will bring one into public contempt.’’ The ‘‘turbulent virtues’’ formerly displayed by men of honor are no longer cared for, and a man who indulges in the same may well forfeit the esteem of his fellows. Rather, ‘‘boldness in industrial undertakings’’ is admired. Speculation is rife, and ‘‘no stigma attaches to the love of money.’’ Tocqueville puts it this way because in the aristocratic code a stigma did attach to money; it was all right to have money, but how would one get money except underhandedly or by working? In modern times, however, ‘‘everybody works, and work opens all doors. That circumstance has made the point of honor do an about turn and set it facing against idleness’’ (1835–40, 621–24). This work ethic has since been shown to have its limits. But so true is it of the industrial age that it is hard to believe that otium, leisure, was once the classical ideal and negotium, business, merely its negation (Welsh, 2005a). Work for glory if not for gain, Jean-Jacques admonishes Emile. This principle made it possible not only for the bourgeoisie but for the working classes to live honorable lives. John Ruskin, an inveterate romantic and generous with images of monarchical being, preached valor in all walks of life. To be sure, when Ruskin directly addresses the needs of workingmen, he can sound as condescending as Rousseau: he will instruct these men how to be independent, if they will just do as he says. Nevertheless, his bitter, impractical opposition to the mass production of anything reflects one kind of commitment to human dignity. Workingmen, unite is not his call, but rather Workingmen, be yourselves. One can teach a craftsman to cut exact lines, he writes in The Stones of Venice, but if you teach him to think for himself with much trial and error, ‘‘you have made a man of him for all that’’ (1851, 191–92). Karl Marx, that other champion of the working classes, also entertained archaic notions of their role. As Judith Shklar wittily put it, ‘‘Marx simply wished upon [the proletariat] the characteristics of the old aristocracy—specifically, an intense class consciousness, military courage, and a willingness to lead and exercise uninhibited political power’’ (1984, 133). Shklar deliberately calls attention to certain snobberies of the left, both then and now. Her inspiration is Thackeray’s The Book of Snobs of 1847, which established the modern meaning of the word and made the case that snobs can be found everywhere. Sharon Krause, who initially buys into the assumption that honor is hier-

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archical, contends that it is vital to democracy nonetheless. Against Peter Berger (1970) and Charles Taylor (1994), she is willing to argue that their understanding of modern dignity fails to account for that vitality. Dignity, she believes, ‘‘is a democratic euphemism for honor, because it is tied to exceptional action, high achievement, and extraordinary character.’’ The recognition due to all members of society is important but cannot by itself motivate leadership or get key actors in the community to take chances. Krause concludes her chapters on the contribution of the philosophes in the same vein: ‘‘The qualities of character that both Montesquieu and Tocqueville associated with honor are as crucial to sustaining individual agency in modern democracies as they were in the old regime,’’ and they are more especially evident ‘‘in the occasional, extraordinary instances in which individuals undertake risky and difficult actions in defense of their principles and their liberties’’ (2002, 16, 96). Note that the actions singled out are defensive—‘‘in defense of their principles and their liberties.’’ Krause does not write about warfare, let alone wars of conquest or aggressive actions inspired by honor. She does acknowledge that slaveholders in the United States believed in their cause and fought for it in the name of honor. She most values the honor displayed by the women’s suffrage and civil rights movements. Indeed, to engage in civil disobedience is to accept the risk of bodily harm without inflicting it on others. If I were a proper social scientist, I would undertake a study of driving on the freeway as a test of the democratization of honor. It ought to be satisfying to think of freeways along with political freedom as products of the Enlightenment. The term freeway came into use in the 1920s and had two meanings from the start: a road for which no toll is exacted from the drivers, and a road with intersections designed so as not to require stopping. Drivers are welcome to take their vehicles on it and to transport themselves to the destination of their choice. None of the petty constrictions of other roads in life apply—the waiting, the stoplights, the pedestrians and cyclists, not to say in this twentyfirst century cows and sheep blocking the path. You get on the freeway and go. In some countries there is not even a posted speed limit, and increasingly in the United States speed is taken to be a matter for collective judgment. Yet the drive is risky, and you are proud that you can manage it—both the risk and the inherent competition for advancement. There are many drivers traveling in the same direction, with many different degrees of power, weight, and armament surrounding them, who are yet all in an important sense equals. One has to respect the others, and to drive so as to be respected, and to endure shame for one’s mistakes—and too often, grief. The drivers traveling in the same direction do not by any means all have the same personality. There are show-offs, misogynists, racists, even a few terrorists, as well as a larger num-

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ber who are contemptibly prudent and slow everyone down. Most of the pathologies associated with honor over the ages can be found here. But despite the occasional hostility, the traffic flow is made possible by mutual respect and occasional gallantry too. Another attraction of the freeway model of honorable pursuits is that all the drivers are technically grown-ups. Learning to drive and acquiring a license are very important rituals of passage—nowadays more determining, one gathers, than having sex. Propelling that vehicle onto the freeway for the first time is a demotic equivalent of Rodrigue’s coup d’essai with his sword in Corneille’s drama. It matters not the least who your parents are, however, and once you are out there everyone is generally treated as an equal. You can be male or female, rich or nearly penniless, funny or humorless, marginal in any number of ways, and still contend as an equal on the freeway. In this country coming of age in this mode literally confers identity, one’s only ID. You can have a tax-identification number at birth, but you must be at least sixteen to receive the invaluable driver’s license. go where you will: the freeway is a Gargantuan scheme for coming of age and going where you like—if you can accept the risk. There are other drivers out there, all in armor more or less. On the freeway it is important to seize initiatives but also to give way sometimes. Respect for other drivers preserves the freedom of all to keep moving. But then why should there be a Motor Vehicle Code to tell us what we are supposed to do? And what is the function of the occasional highway patrol car with its uniformed driver? In every state of the union I am familiar with, it is the law that I must signal before changing lanes. I can be pulled over—with some increased risk to all concerned—and be ticketed for failing to signal. For the overall success of the freeway, however, the code is mainly pro forma. It serves as a handbook of accepted practices to beginners. It also serves as a reminder: that the rules apply to everyone, that the risks in any community— especially a fast-moving community—are shared risks, that there are obligations as well as rights of way. The patrol officers, for the most part, are looking out for contingencies that neither rules nor respect can fully anticipate. The law in most states also requires drivers to be insured for the harm they may do to others around them, and there is such a thing as uninsured-motorist insurance too. For persons of honor the notion of insurance against the risks is very demeaning, no doubt, but insurance never brings anyone back to life. It does not eliminate risk or obviate the need for some rules. And so in other roads of life, both respect and obedience play their part. Much of the time, for most people, it’s just easier to follow some rules than to be making decisions day in and day out. For all the tediousness of its occasional enforcement against us, I haven’t heard anyone urge that we rescind the

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states’ Motor Vehicle Codes. There are all the more reasons for rules and regulations in still higher-velocity activities such as financial markets or missile firings. We have rules even in sports, which some people regard as the purest of honor cultures today. Obedience to rules settles down for the most part into an array of habits that become second nature. Honor tends to sleep until awakened by persons we respect or the exigencies of present events. Moral decisions by whatever name assume a certain level of consciousness, usually aroused by some real or imagined need for action. By way of introducing twentieth-century readers to motives and actions on display in Homer’s Iliad, I.A. Richards once wrote: ‘‘It may help us to compare Achilles not with an individual but with a nation; we may then find that the behavior of most great powers is only too Achillean. This vanity, this tenderness for our honor, which we no longer dare nurse for ourselves, we can still indulge when we have transferred it to our cause or our country’’ (1950, 8). Arguably—however foolishly—honor drove this nation to war against Iraq in 2003. A few months after the American-led invasion, as it happens, a U.S. Army reserve officer was ordered to draw up plans to correct the unruly driving habits of that foreign land. Without more ado, the officer in question decided to impose the motor code of his home state, Maryland, on the occupied country. The plan apparently collapsed in confusion, notably after three or four non-English-speaking Iraqis were brought into the discussion (Langewiesche, 2004, 74–77). Even such a farcical business as this was symptomatic of a basic misunderstanding, obviously: it is chiefly respect, rather than motor codes, that keeps us moving along. Many more disastrous mistakes than this could have been avoided if Americans had remembered to look both ways before crossing international borders.

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In his essay ‘‘The Politics of Recognition’’ Charles Taylor attempts to come to terms with some contradictory desiderata of multiculturalism. ‘‘With the politics of equal dignity, what is established is meant to be universally the same, an identical basket of rights and immunities; with the politics of difference, what we are asked to recognize is the unique identity of this individual or group, their distinctness from everyone else.’’ I accept that these anomalies are experienced by real people and are not just intellectual puzzles. But how true is the premise that two hundred and more years ago in the West ‘‘recognition never arose as a problem’’ as it does now? Taylor’s analysis assumes a dichotomy between honor in ‘‘the ancient regime sense in which it is intrinsically linked to inequalities’’ and what he here calls dignity (1994, 38, 34, 27). Dignity, dignitas, can scarcely be called a new phenomenon. In his magisterial Sources of the Self, which traces such questions of moral concern in the history of Western thought reaching back to Plato, Taylor provided ample testimony to the ancient and lasting importance of dignity. ‘‘The honour ethic,’’ he wrote then, ‘‘has plainly been the background for a very widespread understanding of dignity, which attaches to the free citizen or warrior-citizen and to an even higher degree to someone who plays a major role in public life. This goes on being an important dimension of our life in modern society, and the fierce competition for this kind of dignity is part of what animates democratic

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politics.’’ When Taylor’s survey arrives at the Enlightenment, he portrays Descartes as a precursor to Kant in the internalization of morality, and he links the dramatic presentation of heroic nobility in Corneille with ‘‘the Cartesian ideal of rational control.’’ Like Henry Allison or Paul Guyer on Kant, but more broadly, Taylor finds the idea of freedom responsible for the shift in modern philosophy away from authoritative sources of morality to its grounding in procedure, including the social contract theory. He also remarks a massive shift in the eighteenth century from warrior codes to ‘‘the affirmation of ordinary life’’ (1989, 25, 154, 214). Surely Taylor has latterly, and perhaps too readily, accepted the historical distinction between these terms honor and dignity asserted in Peter Berger’s well-known essay—not cited in Sources of the Self. That essay has obviously helped to perpetuate the historical claim that honor was strictly for aristocrats. Berger formally proposed the term dignity for the concept that has taken honor’s place in the two centuries that have passed since the American and French revolutions. Honor, he claimed, has become as quaint as chastity. This is all very well as far as current English usage is concerned, but it stops short of explaining how dignity affects behavior. If dignity has any moral significance, then it is important to work out its connection to honor—before and after the eighteenth century—as it moves individuals to act. Berger almost renders modern dignity inexplicable, not to say solipsistic: ‘‘dignity, as against honor, always relates to the intrinsic humanity divested of all socially imposed roles or norms. It pertains to the self as such, to the individual regardless of his position in society’’ (1970, 176). Although he never says so, Berger’s historical claim originated with Tocqueville. But Tocqueville’s chapter on honor in the United States, it should be pointed out, never loses sight of the behavioral role of honor. In the long view of that chapter, the ‘‘aristocratic honor [that] sprung up within a feudal society’’ was an exception, and the behavior it dictated was notable because it was exotic and capricious, even though scrupulously spelled out and performed. ‘‘That honor or shame should attach to man’s actions according to his condition’’ is the basic principle of feudal honor, and this, Tocqueville asserted, has ‘‘peculiarities’’ that lingered even beyond the time of writing: thus, ‘‘to debauch a Negro girl hardly injures an American’s reputation; to marry her dishonors him.’’ His perception, in the early nineteenth century, that nationhood could well be absorbing individual honor was brilliant; but he also contrasted the narrowness of feudal society with the patriotism of ‘‘the nations of antiquity’’ that had gone before. Medieval institutions ‘‘let the nation be forgotten in passionate feelings for one man.’’ As always, Tocqueville keeps thinking around the subject and coming up with more insights. On the matter

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at hand, it is this phrasing that seems to me most germane: ‘‘If ever there come to be nations in which it is hard to discover a trace of class distinctions, honor will then be limited to a few precepts, and these precepts will draw continually closer to the moral laws accepted by humanity in general’’ (1835–40, 616–20, 623). That vision of the future recalls Rousseau and Kant among others, and it does not divorce honor from morality past or present. The notion that honor affects motivation only in hierarchical societies distorts how we understand the past as well as how we experience honor now. As we have seen earlier, Berger acknowledges that ‘‘the full code of honor only applies among those who share the same status in the hierarchy’’ (1970, 174; my emphasis). It is the peer relation that gives honor its stopping force. Thus, where political institutions have become more democratic, honor has potentially greater importance now than in the times before freeways and the Internet, when individual roles, manners, dress, and limits were fixed according to status. It is easier to agree with Walzer that in any strict hierarchy rank will be ‘‘dominant over recognition’’: that is, by monopolizing recognition, rank pretty much usurps it and ossifies it for all concerned. One of the relatively few political theorists who seem comfortable with the word honor, Walzer points out that the recognition that individuals need is likely to be stymied by rigid hierarchical expectations. ‘‘One can say of the top of the hierarchy what Lord Melbourne said, admiringly, of the Most Noble Order of the Garter: ‘There is no damned merit about it’ ’’ (1983, 250). So I would be pleased if philosophers would put aside this misleading distinction between honor and dignity and see how far we could get with a much more sweeping dichotomy: that between obedience and respect, with respect the active principle of honor both ancient and modern. This dichotomy also has its political analogue, in the difference between autocracy and government by consensus; and like that between so-called honor and dignity, its historical moment, which I trust is (mostly) still with us. In the history of political thought that moment is characterized by the outpouring of social contract theories in the Enlightenment, and in the history of political action, by the American and French revolutions. One thoughtful student of Kant, for example, puts aside the idea of ‘‘the honorable and the contemptible as categories rooted in class structures’’ and credits Rousseau, Kant, and the French Revolution for attempting ‘‘to shake loose the traditional associations of these ideas by urging the ideas of the honorable citizen, the nobility of labor, and the dignity of humanity’’ (Hill, 1991, 160). It would be highly ironic if honor, so consciously appealed to by the thinkers, politicians, and revolutionaries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, were responsible for its own obsolescence. Literary history by itself is enough to cast doubt on the thesis that honor is a

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factor in the behavior of aristocrats alone. Plays by Lope de Vega and Calderón paid homage to the honor of peasants as well as noblemen; Lessing and Schiller composed prose plays about middle-class honor. Just when Montesquieu was declaring honor to be the principle of monarchy, eighteenth-century novelists began to make a case for the bourgeoisie. Albert Hirschman (1977, 56–63) has remarked the new bourgeois notion of ‘‘le doux commerce’’ that turned a blank stare on military glory and aristocratic bad manners. Historical novelists of the time featured both sides in this contention of new and old honor groups. In the nineteenth century, the opinion on this matter expressed by the character Bailie Nicol Jarvie in Scott’s Rob Roy became proverbial: ‘‘I maun hear naething about honour—we ken naething here but about credit. Honour is a homicide and a bloodspiller, that gangs about making frays in the street; but Credit is a decent honest man, that sits at hame and makes the pat play’’ (1818, 297). In his put-down of honor as a common street crime, the Glasgow bailie easily shows where he stands. But his wit is benign with the historical perspective of his author, not Falstaffian subversion. The joke also has its other side, a homely comedown that is almost concealed by the dialect, since the bailie’s metaphor for tending to one’s profits is to sit at home and make the pot boil. That comedown may portend the feminization of the culture but by no means the end of honor. What after all is this decent, honest Credit, and how far does it differ from Kantian promise keeping? At least some contemporary moral philosophy is concerned with honor in all but the name. The outward sign of this is the degree to which ethics has focused on personal identity—away from consequentialism, as we now say, and toward agent-relative theory. ‘‘What I have done,’’ Bernard Williams reminds us in Shame and Necessity, ‘‘points in one direction towards what has happened to others, in another direction to what I am’’ (1993, 92). In these Sather Lectures, Williams addresses archaic Greek values, and his second vector of ethics—the ‘‘what I am’’—is often the salient one today. To be sure, the present academic phenomenon has more to do with Kant than with Homer. But the resurgence of interest in ethics generally provides the opportunity, and as with history and social science, philosophy would be stronger for addressing honor directly. The achievement of John Rawls has obviously helped moral philosophy attend to ‘‘what I am.’’ One of the striking, as well as attractive, features of A Theory of Justice is Rawls’s insistence on self-respect and his attempt to accommodate it. Self-respect becomes, in a summarizing passage, ‘‘perhaps the most important primary good’’ (1971, 440). Here and elsewhere he takes pains to argue what is at stake by expounding the difference between guilt and shame, and it is probably the latter that emerges from these discussions as the

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more scarifying of the two, precisely because it represents a failure in a higher form of morality. Like Lon L. Fuller (1964) and other mid-twentieth-century theorists, Rawls divides morality between a sense of right and justice and these higher or ‘‘supererogatory’’ forms—the love for humanity and self-command, moralities of ‘‘the saint and the hero,’’ respectively (1971, 479). If self-respect is indeed the most important primary good for Rawls, of course, then heroes top saints. It is in the area of self-command, strength, and courage that failures threaten shame and loss of self-respect. Note that Rawls credits Smith, especially the last section added to The Theory of Moral Sentiments, for the importance of self-command, though he broadly classifies Smith as a utilitarian. The historian Jerrold Seigel has recently followed up this lead on Smith’s idea of the self (2005, 139–67). Rawls is perhaps the most eclectic of twentieth-century philosophers, but he judges that utilitarianism is not strictly compatible with self-respect. In a utilitarian scheme of things, some lives will be cast in a lesser mold in order to serve the good of a greater number; or, if everyone’s happiness weighs the same, the sense of being a distinct person is lost. Rawls therefore looks to Kant to supply a rationale for self-respect, much as I have more broadly for honor. For Kant, acting unjustly is acting in a manner that fails to express our nature as a free and equal rational being. Such actions therefore strike at our self-respect, our sense of our own worth, and the experience of this loss is shame. We have acted as though we belonged to a lower order, as though we were a creature whose first principles are decided by natural contingencies. Those who think of Kant’s moral doctrine as one of law and guilt badly misunderstand him. Kant’s main aim is to deepen and to justify Rousseau’s idea that liberty is acting in accordance with a law that we give to ourselves. And this leads not to a morality of austere command but to an ethic of mutual respect and selfesteem. (1971, 256)

This is a fair summary, and generous to Kant as far as mutual respect goes. Respect was a complicated matter for Kant, which left him comfortable only when he could convert it into respect for law. Both Kant and Rousseau fought back at the idea of comparing oneself with others; they had haughtier ideas of honor, which pretended to do away with comparisons. The disdain for belonging to a lower order that Kant breathes is hardly in the spirit of A Theory of Justice. For Rawls literally to endorse this Kantian notion of belonging, he would have to accept the equivalence of morality to rational being; but he stops well short of endorsing Kantian metaphysics. A philosopher broadly in agreement with Rawls, Thomas E. Hill Jr. ac-

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knowledges Kant’s stridency and dissociates himself as much as possible from the metaphysics, precisely in order to celebrate the commitment to human dignity and adapt it to today’s multiculturalism. Hill explains that he wishes to augment Kant’s ‘‘abstract conception of free and principle-governed rational agents with a conception of culturally embedded social persons who do not so much ‘create’ values as ‘find’ what is valuable to them in their historical contexts.’’ This comes very close to what I have been arguing about Kant and honor: namely, that if one can hold in abeyance Kantian insistence on a priori reasoning and pure morality, a quite remarkable and observable set of relations emerges as to respect and the sense of belonging, with the importance of will and autonomy by no means diminished. From a Kantian perspective, according to Hill, it can be seen that ‘‘although the values of individuals and societies may vary widely, their expression must be constrained by whatever basic framework for human interactions would be accepted by reasonable, autonomous, and mutually respectful persons.’’ This is Kant and very much not Kant, who would scarcely have proposed that ‘‘we work out together what a moral point of view requires in various situations,’’ and would have denied outright that ‘‘what is reasonable is (ideally) to be worked out jointly in ongoing, mutually respectful deliberations’’ (2000, 62, 68, 101). Kantian autonomy and taking action may be the goal, but the method of arriving at a position is more like the open and ongoing debate advocated in Mill’s On Liberty. There are non-Kantians who believe that morality cannot free itself from local contingencies, and some of these philosophers also tend to ground ethics in mutual respect. Of practical judgments in general, Thomas Nagel writes that ‘‘one first must be able to apply [the judgment] to oneself conceived as merely one person among others. Only in that way is it guaranteed that what is judged does not apply only from a personal standpoint’’ (1970, 107). And his essays have continued to ponder the relation of subjective to objective points of view. Duty tends to lie somewhere between, and moral judgments need not exclude either utilitarian or agent-relative motives. Nagel believes ‘‘that the general form of moral reasoning is to put yourself in other people’s shoes.’’ A veritable impartial spectator appears as ‘‘a parallel impersonal concern corresponding to the interests of all other individuals’’; sympathy appears as ‘‘the pressures of congruency’’ with others (1979, 126). But we cannot succeed in moving altogether out of ourselves as long as we are the organism that is doing the looking. There is a kind of ‘‘blind spot’’ in the best objectivity that we can manage (1986, 126–30). The View from Nowhere thus becomes a meditation on the need for combining objective and subjective points of view across a range of philosophical

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problems. According to Nagel, nothing can ‘‘be arrived at a priori’’ about personal identity: ‘‘The concept of ‘someone’ is not a generalization of the concept of ‘I.’ Neither can exist without the other, and neither is prior to the other. To possess the concept of a subject of consciousness an individual must be able in certain circumstances to identify himself and the states he is in without external observation. But these identifications must correspond by and large to those that can be made on the basis of external observation, both by others and by the individual himself.’’ And this said correspondence, however rough it may be, between internal and external observations would seem to be a sine qua non when the problem is to determine values or the morality of actions. ‘‘Values are judgments from a standpoint external to ourselves about how to be and live. Because they are accepted from an impersonal standpoint, they apply not only to the point of view of the particular person I happen to be, but generally’’ (1986, 35, 135). It goes without saying that, in order for a person to make a judgment or take a responsible action, he or she must conjure up that impersonal standpoint, which can be grasped only if one is acquainted with the views of others. Although the blind spot and other questions Nagel raises could serve as a critique of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith’s impartial spectator would be right at home here. Furthermore, Nagel contends ‘‘that impartiality is also egalitarian in itself,’’ an observation that is important if I am right that honor originates with a peer group. The group is necessary to a morality of respect, and the worry about not belonging keeps members in line. Membership depends on being inside rather than outside. In Nagel’s words, identification with one’s own group ‘‘is essentially exclusive. Solidarity with a particular group means lack of identification with, and less sympathy for, those who are not members of that group, and often it means active hostility to outsiders’’ (1991, 65–69, 178). The size of the group is relevant, as a number of observations by Smith tend to confirm. Michael Walzer—a self-styled defender of pluralism—has written positively of the need for membership in a viable community, and he is another who has stressed the importance of respect. Citing David Sachs (1981), Walzer insists on differentiating self-respect from self-esteem. The former is the normative thing, the latter mere vanity; but it is commonplace for honor codes also to distinguish proper pride from vanity. ‘‘I should think,’’ Walzer concludes, ‘‘that self-respect would lead one to want only the freely given recognitions and the honest verdicts of one’s peers’’ (1983, 280). If there were a way of combining the ethics of Kant and Smith, the result might come close to a comprehensive theory of honor. Unlikely as this seems on the face of it, something of the sort can be glimpsed in the debates of contemporary philosophers. A case in point is Christine Korsgaard’s Tanner

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Lectures, published with replies as The Sources of Normativity. Korsgaard by her own account is not a pure Kantian, and where she differs she usually makes note of that. She is very much still a Kantian, but one who stresses autonomy and obligation rather than explicating and refining Kant’s reasoning. A fair sample from the conclusion to her four lectures is that ‘‘nothing can be normative unless we endorse our own nature, unless we place a value upon ourselves’’ (1996a, 165). How we go about that weighs heavily on a kind of reason called ‘‘reflection.’’ Thereby we can conduct ourselves with ‘‘reflective endorsement,’’ which is as clearly distinguishable from inclination or desire as Kant could want it to be. The term is borrowed from Williams, with whom Korsgaard spars a little in her second lecture. Williams used reflection throughout Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, where he defined it at the outset as mentally standing back from one’s practices and arguments (1985, 2). Williams began with Plato; Korsgaard traces the notion of reflection in modern philosophy to Shaftesbury and Locke. It is a capacity that marks us off from the animals and lands us with ‘‘the problem of the normative,’’ since ‘‘our capacity to turn our attention on to our own mental activities is also a capacity to distance ourselves from them.’’ Or, as she puts it twice, ‘‘I back up and bring that impulse into view and then I have a certain distance’’ (1996a, 93). This becomes the method, the scenario—the principle expressed as a metaphor—for guiding the agent’s impulses either to believe or to act. Some reflective endorsement gets the moral agent off and running. Standing back (the only definition, really, that Williams or Korsgaard offers) clearly presumes a visual metaphor to start with, since in order to hear, smell, touch, or taste one needs to stand closer. What we take off from then is scarcely distinguishable from the process enjoined by Smith. Once again, to stand back and gain a certain distance is roughly the same as putting oneself in the position of an impartial spectator. The word reflection also recalls all those Renaissance and Enlightenment mirrors within which heroes can be glimpsed. As it is, Korsgaard’s lucid summary of obligation can stand as a contribution to a theory of honor. With Kant, she believes ‘‘that autonomy is the source of obligation.’’ That difficult, not to say paradoxical, thesis shared by both Kantian philosophy and honor she states as the following universal proposition: ‘‘An obligation always takes the form of a reaction against a threat of a loss of identity’’ (1996a, 91, 102). That is a cogent statement of how honor moves one to act or refrain from acting regardless of other motives. The said ‘‘reaction’’ is distinctly an alertness to shame—aidos, ¯ to give the matter its ancient Greek name—and the threatened loss that of respect and belonging as well as self-respect. Korsgaard wants to think of personal identity as quite singular, but as the voices of Mead,

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Erikson, Habermas, Shakespeare’s Romans, and others cited earlier will confirm, identity always faces two ways, toward oneself and toward the comparison group. Who one is depends on whom one identifies with, self-respect on respect. Korsgaard engages in one bit of hyperbole that would make Falstaff grimace. ‘‘An agent could just as well be dead,’’ she suggests, as lose her identity. Give me honor or give me death. But she also has a lighter touch, as in this argument that initially sets her theory apart from a religious or an honor code: ‘‘The Monk says that lying is sinful, and the Knight says that it is dishonourable. Certainly they do not mean exactly the same thing, for the Monk is saying something about the lie’s effect on his soul, and about how it relates him to his God, while the Knight is saying something about the lie’s effect on his reputation—on his ‘character’ in the older, more public sense of the word— and how it relates him to his social world. But we take both of their remarks to have implications for what we think is a more absolute concept—the lie is wrong, and ought not to be told—and here we find they converge.’’ She employs a classic Kantian wrong for this illustration, but who ‘‘we’’ are—despite the emphasis—is a little puzzling; and what it means for the monk’s and knight’s views to ‘‘have implications’’ for us is unclear, though laudably ecumenical. Yet we are obviously more knightly than monkish, since Korsgaard expounds her ‘‘more absolute concept’’ by adding, ‘‘there are certain kinds of actions which you cannot do without being personally diminished or disfigured’’ (1996a, 102, 73): being diminished or disfigured is something that knights care about but monks (in theory) do not. Like Rawls and like the philosophes, Korsgaard is more comfortable with heroes than with saints. In a reply, G.A. Cohen is critical of Korsgaard’s presumption about identity and argues that her reliance on it would justify the behavior of a mafioso, who ‘‘lives by a code of strength and honour that matters . . . to him.’’ She in turn reminds Cohen that she ‘‘do[es] not believe all obligations are moral’’ but then offers to try to reform the mafioso. ‘‘The rest of us should be trying to get him to the place where he can see that he can’t see his way to this kind of life anymore’’ (1996a, 183, 255–58). In other words, the mafioso needs an impartial spectator to get him to see our view as well as his own—an improvement tantamount to his joining ‘‘the rest of us.’’ It is hard to escape the conclusion that moral philosophy needs to deal more straightforwardly with honor. If honor does not impose the same kind of obligation as morality imposes, how should one decide between these obligations when they conflict? Many would agree that war, even a so-called just war, changes all the rules. A number of Kantians have worried the matter (without recourse to the word honor) precisely because formal Kantian principles are not supposed to alter

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according to circumstances. Hill once devoted an essay to ‘‘How a Kantian Might Think about Terrorism’’ (1992, 196–225). A decade and a half ago, Hill was not yet concerned with suicide bombings or terrorists who kill outright. Rather, he takes up questions of whether security forces can risk the lives of innocent hostages, or whether the demands of groups who merely threaten to blow up a part of New York can be refused. In another essay of about the same time, Barbara Herman writes, ‘‘It is startling to realize how little is said in Kant’s ethics about the more violent forms of immoral action.’’ What might Kant say about murder and mayhem, Herman asks, and she works around to questions of how one may justify killing in self-defense. Such questions betray how pacific both Kantians believe the philosopher’s inspiration to have been, and they are largely right. ‘‘How could killing an aggressor be compatible with the regard we must have for him as a rational agent?’’ Strictly, Herman answers her own question, not because my life is at stake but because it is my agency, my autonomy that the aggressor is about to violate. ‘‘Just as I cannot agree to become someone’s slave, so I must not assent to be the victim of aggression.’’ The argument strains hard to steer clear of instrumentalism: that is, to avoid the obvious hypothetical, If I don’t kill him, he’ll kill me. ‘‘I am not acting to save my life as such, but to resist the use of my agency (self) by another’’ (1993, 113, 128–29). This is also traditionally the position of persons of honor, who will be equally disdainful of the prudent course of saving their own lives as such. Earlier I argued that the second part of Kant’s thought experiment in the Critique of Practical Reason, about the prince who tried to coerce his subject into false testimony against another honorable man (1788, 5:30), was overdetermined, since lying under any circumstances is wrong according to Kant. A silent commitment among men of honor introduced another element in the story and also tended to overdetermine the outcome. A few casually added details thus shape the experiment so that the moral agent has little alternative but to defy the prince. He should do the honorable thing and die rather than offer false testimony against another of his own sort. But was dying the only honorable course of action for a man in such a position? What if he took it into his head to fight back, to begin a revolution against this prince who is little better than a despot? We know, of course, that Kant officially opposed any such action and that, for all its militant expression, his moral vision was pacific. Now change the scene of philosophical work to recent times. Korsgaard happens to be elaborating a thought experiment employed two decades earlier by Williams in ‘‘A Critique of Utilitarianism.’’ How the experiment in question can be used to disable utilitarian ethics will be obvious, for the good of the

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greater number simply does not take into account the individual moral agent’s involvement. Here is Williams’s version, with portions of the narrative that Korsgaard elides enclosed in brackets: Jim finds himself in the central square of a small South American town. Tied up against the wall are a row of twenty Indians, most terrified, a few defiant, in front of them several armed men in uniform. [A heavy man in a sweatstained khaki shirt turns out to be] the captain in charge [and, after a good deal of questioning of Jim which establishes that he got there by accident while on a botanical expedition,] explains that the Indians are a random group of the inhabitants who, after recent acts of protest against the government, are just about to be killed to remind other protestors of the advantages of not protesting. However, since Jim is an honoured visitor from another land, the captain is happy to offer him a guest’s privilege of killing one of the Indians himself. If Jim accepts, then as a special mark of the occasion, the other Indians will be let off. [Of course,] if Jim refuses, [then there is no special occasion, and] Pedro here will have to do what he was about to do when Jim arrived, and kill them all. (1973, 98; brackets added)

Korsgaard thus presents the story in abbreviated form. She says some shrewd things about Jim’s predicament and brings out the repellent nature of a utilitarian solution—that is, to save nineteen Indians by killing one—even though she offers to make this solution less like playing God by having the oldest Indian step forward and volunteer himself as the token victim (1996, 292–99; her essay is primarily a response to Nagel’s A View from Nowhere). It is instructive to study Williams’s original, more ample version. The Hispanic Pedro appears as ‘‘a heavy man in a sweat-stained khaki shirt’’; by implication, the Anglo Jim is lighter in weight, and he is a botanist of all things, or possibly a student accompanying the botanical expedition. The atmosphere is physically ominous for Jim, the ‘‘honoured visitor.’’ If we can trust Williams’s use of the free indirect style of storytelling, Pedro is a scornful type, whose sinister intentions are ‘‘to remind other protestors of the advantages of not protesting.’’ They are cowards, he implies, who calculate advantages and look out for their own skin. But he’ll offer ‘‘a guest’s privilege . . . as a special mark of the occasion.’’ In short, Pedro dares the botanist either to interfere or to share complicity in a brutal put-down of the protest. The plot is a setup for a show of courage. Then why wouldn’t Jim get it into his head—inspired, say, by the Indian who volunteers to die in Korsgaard’s version—to put his own life at risk? In the earlier experiment by Kant, the subject of the despotic prince can at least contemplate dying. Better still, why not pretend to accept the offer, take the rifle, and start by killing Pedro? Or if it is immoral to break an implied promise

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to Pedro this way, just grab his weapon and shoot him? Risky, to be sure, but maybe worth a try. This alternative in truth occurred to Williams, whose version continued as follows: ‘‘Jim, with some desperate recollections of schoolboy fiction, wonders whether if he got hold of a gun, he could hold the captain, Pedro and the rest of the soldiers to threat, but it is quite clear from the set-up that nothing of that kind is going to work: any attempt at that sort of thing will mean that all the Indians will be killed, and himself’’ (1973, 98– 99). Korsgaard omits this thought altogether; Williams, after building suspense for a show of courage, first associates that possibility with schoolboy fiction and then arbitrarily rules it outside the parameters of this experiment. Fair enough—his purpose is to demonstrate a shortcoming of utilitarianism. But why do the philosophers assume that their thought experiment imposes on the agent in the story a similar limitation, as if he also is only to think of what he might do? Why a narrative which rules out bodily risk to the moral agent and merely challenges his moral judgment of himself after the fact? If Jim were permitted his full range of possible actions, there could eventually be consequences, weighed over time by others, to which he never gave thought. Taking the initiative, even if it cost Jim his life, might have inspired the villagers to take action on their own. Perhaps both philosophers would agree that some deliberate attention to honor would help with this ‘‘by now famous example’’ (Korsgaard, 1996, 292). Taking action in this case would not be wholly different from jumping into the sea to save a stranger who is drowning. That kind of action is not ordinarily regarded as a duty except from salaried lifeguards; yet it brings great credit because of the personal risk, and quite a few swimmers would feel ashamed if they had not attempted it when the occasion arose. The crucial difference here is whether an autonomous moral agent may threaten or kill Pedro before Pedro kills innocent Indians. For moral philosophy to cope with this and similar questions it needs to take seriously—what has been implicitly the case since the Enlightenment—that honor is a question for philosophy. What is curious, in Williams’s full narrative and shaping of the experiment, is the implied inappropriateness of actions that appeal to schoolboys and are not realistic, the odds of success being very much against them. The experiment could well take into account Jim’s age and give some thought to what schoolboys aspire to. Yesterday’s schoolboy is today’s botanist, and today’s botanist may be tomorrow’s hero. In sum, recent moral philosophy is much concerned with Who I am as well as What I must do, and usually, What I must do to conform with this identity of mine. The positions argued over thus tend to be agent-relative rather than utilitarian. The revival of Kantian ethics has had most to do with this, but not

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everything. It can also be thought of as a revival of the morality of respect and self-respect. Here the eclecticism of Rawls has played a part; the genealogies of normative thinking recovered by Williams and the willingness of Nagel and others to keep asking questions without the expectation of finding answers valid for all time have been salutary; and these are neither Kantian nor so-called virtue ethics. The mental process called reflection will have to content us, rather than pure reason or infallible virtue. And in moral philosophy, at least, reflection verges on mirroring, the Renaissance’s metaphor for the process of respect. That is why I have turned last in the Enlightenment to Adam Smith—who strictly speaking preceded Kant, not the other way around. Smith came up with the figure of the impartial spectator, but he more and more occupied himself with social science, as we would call it, as well as ethics. The future of society for Smith was tied up with productivity, increasing urbanization, social mobility, the market economy—and hence emerges as something more nearly resembling our conception of the world today. What is honor? The ancient Greeks and Romans were well aware that it provides a powerful impetus to action. In the Renaissance Shakespeare reflected on those times as different from his own and dramatized what honor might, and might not, accomplish. For the Enlightenment Mandeville and Montesquieu reasonably claimed that honor could be more effective than virtue in controlling our selfish and animal-like desires. Rousseau and Kant render this imperative intelligible even as they discourse strictly on morality. Honor competes with love and religion in shaping rules by which we live. It provides a check to blind obedience and authority, and in any of these ways may sometimes save us from error. Of course, it matters to history as well as to our own lives which actions we take and how we dispose of our felt autonomy; but so does it matter which leaders we have and whose orders we follow. And that includes leaders who claim to know what God wants us to do and what is evil. When it comes to actions beyond national borders, for all its readiness to fight, honor holds out a better chance for reaching an understanding with other peoples than brute force, assumptions of superiority, and demands to be obeyed.

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Index

Abrams, Elliott, xii Adair, Douglas, xii Adelman, Janet, 79 agent-relative ethics, xvi, 4, 41, 202 Allison, Henry E., 200 ambition, 93, 108, 140–41, 174 amour propre, 93, 130–34 anger, 28, 38, 79 anthropology, 9–15 approbation, xiv, 26, 85, 169, 171, 175, 179 aristocracy, xi, 13, 23, 93–95, 98, 195 Aristotle, 23–39, 40, 48–49, 55, 90–91, 104, 109, 153, 162, 188, 191; Eudemian Ethics, 30, 33–34, 37; Magna Moralia, 39; Nicomachean Ethics, 24– 26, 27–28, 29, 32–37, 38–39 58, 66, 133, 140, 143; Politics, 19, 37, 39, 58, 66; Rhetoric, 28–29, 37–38, 39, 40 Ashley, Robert, Of Honour, 55 Austin, J. L., 76 autonomy, 8, 15, 19–22, 49, 72–73, 83,

124, 139, 149–50, 157, 163–65, 193, 204, 206 bankruptcy, 186 Barish, Jonas, 125 Barton, Carlin A., 7, 149 Beccaria, Cesare, 144 belonging, xi, 16, 49, 137, 147–48, 150, 158–60, 191, 204. See also exclusion from group Bénichou, Paul, 116, 122–23 Berger, Peter, 12, 200–201 Best, Geoffrey, 192 Bible, 54, 87, 158 Billacois, François, 15 biology, 5, 20 birth vs. merit, 25, 100, 131–32, 146– 47, 186 Bloom, Allan, 131 bodies at risk, xvi, 22, 53–54, 71, 77, 210 Bourdieu, Pierre, 11

223

224

Index

Bowman, James, xiii, 23 Boyle, Robert, xiii Bradley, A. C., 57, 73; Shakespearean Tragedy, 57 Brennan, Geoffrey, 189–92, 193. See also Pettit, Philip Broadie, Sarah, 24, 29–31 Brower, Reuben A., 50, 60, 82 Bullough, Geoffrey, 72, 82 Burke, Edmund, ix, 185 Cairns, Douglas L., xii, 14, 35 Calderón de la Barca, 116, 124, 202; Life Is a Dream, 117–19, 120; Mayor of Zalamea, 126 Campbell, T. D., 177, 179 Cassirer, Ernst, 138 categorical imperatives, 75, 123–24, 139, 146, 155–58 Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de, Don Quixote, 90, 104–6 Chapman, George, 66; Bussy d’Ambois, 129 Charney, Maurice, 72 chastity, 102–3, 108–9, 110, 181–82 Chrétien de Troyes, 98 Christianity, xvii, 23, 90–92, 109, 111, 123, 180, 187–89 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 4, 23, 40–49, 55, 64, 98–99, 149, 168; De Finibus, 43, 44–45, 46; De Inventione, 43, 44; De Officiis, 40–44, 47–48, 129; Tusculan Disputations, 43, 45–47, 87 civil disobedience, 196 Cohen, G. A., 207 coming of age, xvi, xviii, 8, 18–22, 51, 70, 73, 78–79, 114–25, 129–36, 197 commands, 5–6, 8, 21, 84, 95–96, 157– 58 competition, xv, 12–14, 185, 187, 190, 196, 199 Conrad, Joseph, ix–x, 113; Lord Jim, 148–49 conscience, xii, 11, 35, 47, 51, 161, 174, 176

consensus, 5, 21–22, 27–28, 33, 54, 73, 139, 194 Constant, Benjamin, 166 contempt, 37, 74, 89, 132, 139–43, 152, 161, 174, 201 Cooper, James Fenimore, x Cooper, John M., 39 Corneille, Pierre, 116, 124; The Cid, 4, 119–23, 197; Polyeucte, 123–24; Suréna, 124 counterfactuals, 82–83, 152 courage, 5, 33–34, 41–42, 44–46, 53, 89, 100, 104, 170, 194–95, 209–10 cowardice, 48, 89, 99, 114, 139–40 Darwall, Stephen, 3–4, 190 death penalty, 143–45 Defoe, Daniel, 99–102, 186; Colonel Jack, 101, 111; Compleat English Gentleman, 100; Moll Flanders, 101; Robinson Crusoe, 100, 130; Roxana, 101; True-Born Englishman, 100 democracy, 20, 23–24, 74, 195–96 Descartes, René, 200; Passions of the Soul, 84–85 DesJardins, Gregory, 43–44 Dicaearchus of Messana, 42 Diderot, Denis, Rameau’s Nephew, 98– 99 dignity, 2, 140–41, 145, 149, 158–59, 164, 176, 194, 196, 199–201 diplomacy, 1, 42, 192–93 divine law, 85–88, 174 Dodsworth, Martin, 67 driving on the freeway, 196–98 Dryden, John, 124, 180; All for Love, 108; Aureng-Zebe, 125; Conquest of Granada, 124–25, 130 dueling, 9–10, 15, 89, 91, 99–100, 111– 12, 137, 142, 144–45 education, 95, 100, 101, 128–30 Elias, Norbert, 101 Elyot, Thomas, Boke Named the Governour, 55

Index empiricism, 18–20, 147, 168, 171, 178– 79 Empson, William, 110 Engberg-Pedersen, Troels, 28 Enlightenment, the, xiv, xvii–xix, 84–85, 103, 113, 114–16, 126, 147, 168, 196, 211 equality, 6, 8, 12–14, 25, 49, 56, 60, 62, 68, 94, 116, 140, 146–47, 159, 185– 86, 196–97, 199. See also peer group Erikson, Erik, x, 15–17, 55, 134 esteem, 1, 84–87, 128, 131–33, 175, 189–92, 203 exclusion from group, 3, 70, 188, 205 Fagles, Robert, 48–49 Falstaff’s catechism, 1, 52–53, 81 fame, 32, 140, 169, 193. See also honor as distinct from fame Faulkner, William, x, 113 feudalism, 2, 161, 200–201 Fielding, Henry, 98, 186; Amelia, 108; Joseph Andrews, 102–7, Tom Jones, 103, 108–10 Fielding, Sarah, David Simple, 103, 107; Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia, 108 Finley, M. I., 14 Fish, Stanley, 76–77 Fitzgibbons, Athol, 168 Fontane, Theodor, x, 112 Foot, Philippa, 139 Frank, Robert H., 185 freedom, 21, 96, 124, 146, 149–50, 164– 67, 196, 200 Freeman, Joanne B., xii friendship, 37, 58, 143, 162, 165, 172 Fuller, Lon L., 203 Garve, Christian, 43 gender differences, xv, 18–19, 29, 47, 58, 102, 108–9, 110, 144–45, 147, 171– 72 Gilligan, Carol, 19 Gladfelder, Hal, 101

225

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 116, 138 Golden Rule, 180 good will, 75, 151, 153 Gordon, D. J., 76–77 Guyer, Paul, 146, 159, 165, 200 Habermas, Jürgen, 16, 21 Harris, Judith Rich, 18 Herman, Barbara, 208 hierarchy, xv–xvi, 12, 14, 22, 25, 93–94, 184, 193, 201 Hill, Thomas E. Jr., 160, 201, 203–4, 208 Hirschman, Albert, 202 Hobbes, Thomas, 86, 146 Homer, x, 11, 17, 134, 202; Iliad, 14, 33–34, 38, 48–49, 63, 66, 82, 104, 198; Odyssey, 48, 104 Honig, Edwin, 117 honor as distinct from fame, ix, 1–4, 13– 14, 48, 55, 74–75, 84; as external, 6, 9, 10–11, 22, 24–26, 55, 57, 174; as a supposed passion, xiv, xviii, 35–36, 84–85, 92–93 honor group, xi, 10, 25, 37, 72–73, 133, 138–39, 148, 158–60, 183, 188–89. See also peer group Horne, Thomas A., 88 Horowitz, Ruth, xii Howard, Martha Walling, 108 Hume, David, 92, 103, 133, 150, 161, 172, 174; Enquiry concerning . . . Morals, 170–71; Treatise of Human Nature, 169–70; History of England, 183 Hundert, E. J., 88 Hutcheson, Francis, 172 identity, x, 11, 15–17, 88, 105, 190–91, 197, 202, 205; loss of one’s, 3, 14, 35, 70–72, 141, 148, 206–7 information revolution, 2, 135 internalization, process of, 10–11, 59, 89–90, 97, 131, 143, 174, 176 Irwin, T. H., 28, 32

226

Index

James, Henry, 113 James, Mervyn, 13, 54 Jankowski, Martin Sanchez, xii Justice, 8, 37–38, 40–42, 44, 49, 134, 144, 176–78, 180

180, 203; and honor, 54, 58, 69, 108– 10, 112, 118–19, 120–25, 128–29; and respect, 140–43 Lovejoy, Arthur O., xiii–xiv, 16 lying, 114–15, 140–41, 149, 152, 166, 207

Kagan, Donald, xii–xiii Kahn, Coppélia, 58 Kant, Immanuel, xi, 10, 29, 43–44, 75, 114–16, 131, 138–50, 151–67, 201, 203–4, 205–6, 208, 211; Critique of Practical Reason, 147, 149, 161, 162, 165–67, 208; Groundwork, 148–49, 151–59, 163; Metaphysics of Morals, 140–47 152, 159–60, 161; ‘‘What Is Enlightenment?,’’ 114–15, 139 Kateb, George, 5 Kelsen, Hans, 191 Kirsch, Arthur C., 124 Kitto, H.D.F., 82 Knight, G. Wilson, 58 Kohlberg, Lawrence, 20, 21 Korsgaard, Christine, 147–48, 164–65, 205–7, 208–10 Krause, Sharon R., Liberalism with Honor, xii, 90, 94, 135, 195–96 Kuehn, Manfred, 43 Kyd, Thomas, Spanish Tragedy, 62

MacCallum, M. W., 57 MacIntyre, Alasdair, 24 Mandeville, Bernard, 88–93, 98, 186, 211; Fable of the Bees, 88–90; Enquiry into . . . Honour, 91–93, 182 Manzoni, Alessandro, x, 112 Margalit, Avishai, 2–3, 190–91 Marshall, David, 178 Marx, Karl, 195 Mason, Michelle, 141 McAleer, Kevin, 15 McDougall, William, 20–21 McKeon, Michael, 97–98 McNamara, Peter, xii Mead, George H., 16, 21, 55 Miles, Geoffrey, 60, 79 Mill, John Stuart, 204 mirroring, 39, 55–56, 58–60, 64, 68, 169, 173, 176, 206 modesty, 47–48, 59, 75–76, 93, 102, 108, 162 Montaigne, Michel de, 95, 150 Montesquieu, Baron de, 88, 135, 181, 211; Spirit of the Laws, 93–96 Morris, Herbert, 7 Mosher, Michael A., 96 multiculturalism, 199, 204

Lafayette, Comtesse de, Princess of Clèves, 98–99; Princess of Montpensier, 98, 107 Langewiesche, William, 198 law, 20, 49, 85–88, 94–96, 111, 137, 142, 144, 177, 193–94, 197; honor outside the, 55, 66, 95–96, 181–82 Lear, Gabriel Richardson, 24, 31–32 Lessing, Gotthold, 202; Emilia Galotti, 126 Lewis, C. S., 47 Locke, John, 116, 206; Education, 128; Essay concerning Human Understanding, xvii, 85–88, 174; Two Treatises on Government, 19–20 Loftis, John, 124 love, 37–38, 42, 67, 98, 108, 133, 161,

Nagel, Thomas, 5, 204–5, 209, 211 nationalism, x, 54, 136–37, 192–93, 198 nation states, 42, 65–66, 86, 183–84, 192, 200–201 natural law, 66, 87–88, 116, 152 Neiman, Susan, 115 Newton, Isaac, 88 Nidditch, Peter H., 85 nobleness, 28–35, 62–63, 69, 83, 95, 122–23, 145, 170–71 nobility, the, 13, 15, 95, 131, 146, 186

Index North, Thomas, 50, 72 Novak, Maximillian E., 100 Nye, Robert A., 15 obedience, xvi–xviii, 15, 23, 39, 49, 73, 79, 87, 114, 123, 137, 193; vs. respect, 5–8, 18–22, 34–38, 115–16, 124–25, 150, 155, 163, 197–98, 201, 211 O’Neill, Barry, 192–93 Palmer, Kenneth, 66 parents and children, 17–20, 114–16, 117–21, 123, 125, 127–29, 135, 139 passions, 169, 172, 176. See also honor as a supposed passion Pateman, Carole, 119 Patterson, Orlando, 23–24 peer group, xv, 10, 12, 17, 21–22, 37– 39, 80, 134–35, 148, 150, 205 Peltonen, Markku, 15 Pettit, Philip, 189–92, 193. See also Brennan, Geoffrey philosophical law, xvii, 85–88, 174 Piaget, Jean, 18–21, 115, 150, 155, 163 Piers, Gerhart, 7–8 Pitt-Rivers, Julian, 9–10, 55, 72, 149 Plato, 109, 153, 206; Laches, 180 Plutarch, Lives, xvii, 50, 56–58, 67, 72, 81–82, 84, 107–8, 134 political relevance, 8, 18–20, 24, 57–58, 66, 77–78, 89–91, 93–96, 115–16, 119, 135–37, 139, 146, 159, 166, 199–200 praise, xi, 26–28, 30, 33, 75–76, 85–87, 178–79 praiseworthiness, 46–47, 178–79 pride, 25–26, 89–90, 91, 93, 133, 141 promise keeping, 42, 92,151, 181. See also word of honor Proust, Marcel, 113 prudence, 17, 55, 100, 146, 156–57, 175 Quint, David, 105 Rabelais, François, 158, 164 Rabkin, Norman, 61–62

227

Rawls, John, 21, 202–3, 207, 211 recognition, 3, 92, 186, 190–93, 199– 200, 201, 205 Redfield, James M., 6–7, 17 reputation, 2–3, 25, 41, 54, 60, 86–87, 140, 171, 194 resentment, 172–73, 176–78 respect, x, xv, 5–8, 11–12, 18–22, 25, 37, 160–62; as a process, 6, 7, 15–16, 47, 55, 62, 131, 171, 189–90, 211; reciprocal, xix, 3 9, 15–17, 31–32, 55–56, 63–64, 133, 147–49, 173–80, 204–7; recognition vs. appraisal, 3–4, 190–91, 193; as a right, 10, 12, 142, 194. See also self-respect revenge, 14–15, 38, 62, 91, 120–22, 173 revolution, xvii, 15, 51, 66, 116, 146–47, 201 Richards, I. A., 198 Richardson, Samuel, 102, 110, 126; Clarissa, 110; Pamela, 102–3; Sir Charles Grandison, 110–12, 128 risk-taking, xvi, 4, 8, 17, 51, 75–76, 129, 149, 156–57, 185, 196–97, 209–10 rivalry, 14–15, 68, 81. See also competition Ross, W. D., 26 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 93, 125–26, 150, 165, 201, 211; Confessions, 84; Discourse on Inequality, 116, 132; Emile, 100, 112, 115–16, 128, 129– 37; Julie, 112, 127–29, 131, 134; Social Contract, 116, 134 Ruskin, Stones of Venice, 195 Sachs, David, 205 Schiller, Friedrich, 116, 202; Don Carlos and Intrigue and Love, 126 Schneewind, J. B., 138, 150, 163 Schopenhauer, Arthur, Parerga and Paralipomena, 1–2 Schwartz, Joel, 129 Scott, Walter, ix–x, xiii, 105, 113; Rob Roy, 202 Searle, John, 76

228

Index

Seigel, Jerrold, 203 self-command, 176, 180, 203 self-esteem, 84, 128, 131–32, 161, 205 self-respect, x, 3, 11, 57, 98, 141, 160, 187, 191, 202–3, 205, 206–7, 211 Shaftesbury, 1st Earl of, 206 Shakespeare, William, xvii, 16, 50–66, 67–83, 211; All’s Well, 121; Antony and Cleopatra, 50, 57, 67–73, 108; Coriolanus, 45, 50, 57, 70, 73–83, 135–36, 151–52, 163; Cymbeline, 56; Hamlet, 55–56, 62, 67, 80; 1 Henry IV, 17, 50–53, 56; 2 Henry IV, 55; Henry V, 56; Julius Caesar, x, 50, 56, 58–63, 81, 155; Troilus and Cressida, 63–66 shame, xi–xii, 2, 6, 11, 69, 145, 167, 175; avoidance of, 2, 33–37, 45–46, 48–49, 89–91; vs. guilt, 6–8, 22 Shapin, Steven, xiii, 72 Sherman, Nancy, 162 Shklar, Judith, 95, 193, 195 Smith, Adam, xviii–xix, 3, 100, 205–6, 211; Lectures on Jurisprudence, 180– 81; Theory of Moral Sentiments, 168, 171–82, 183, 203, 205; Wealth of Nations, 17, 88, 168, 183–89, 192 snobbery, 102, 195 social class, xvii, 12–13, 97–98, 99–112, 126, 131, 140, 183–89, 195, 197, 201–2 social contract, xviii, 42, 134–35, 201 stages of growth, 16–17, 18–22, 39, 114–15, 128–30 Starobinski, Jean, 134 Stephen, Leslie, 179 Stewart, Frank Henderon, xii, 6, 10–15, 68, 142 stoicism, 40–41, 68, 168, 169, 173, 176 suicide, 63, 70–72 sympathy, 168–72, 204 Taylor, Charles, 199–200 Thackeray, William Makepeace, ix, 102; Book of Snobs, 195

Tillyard, E.M.W., 65 Tocqueville, Alexis de, xi, 194–95, 200– 201 Tolstoy, Leo, x, 112 Trilling, Lionel, 99 Trollope, Anthony, ix, 112 truth-telling, 72, 91, 149, 152 Tyrrell, James, 86–88 urbanization, 187–89 utilitarianism, 203, 208–9 utility, 41, 44, 170–72, 174–75, 180; marginal, 190–91 Vega, Lope de, Fuenteovejuna and Peribánez, 126 virtue, 24–28, 30–32, 41, 44–47, 55, 102, 134, 140–42, 176, 195; as approbation of the tribe, 85–87; as less effective than honor, 90–94 Waith, Eugene, M., 74 Walzer, Michael, 193–94, 201, 205 warfare, xii–xiii, 1, 42, 48–49, 51–52, 137, 146, 192–94, 198, 207–8 Watson, Curtis Brown, 58 wealth, 10, 12, 24, 31, 37, 41–42, 93, 131, 169–70, 174, 184–86 Welsh, Alexander, 14, 73–74, 99, 105, 192, 195 Whitman, James Q., 142, 194 will, importance of, 4, 15, 22, 43, 46, 49, 54, 69, 84–85, 105, 123, 125, 146–47, 151–58, 163–64, 193, 197 Williams, Bernard, xi–xii, 7, 11, 99, 202, 206, 208–10 Wilson, Edward O., 5 Wolff, Cynthia Griffin, 102 Wood, Allen, 147, 152 Wood, Gordon S., xii word of honor, 53, 76–78, 92 work, 134, 184–85, 195 Yeazell, Ruth Bernard, 102