(Aristotle 2)   Aristotle and the Concern with One’s Honor

    I have been trying to formulate the limits to Aristotelian-style ethics in a thesis. Well, here it is: Aristotelian-style virtue-in-a-just-community-as-our-nature ethics is a necessary but not sufficient condition of our full humanity. It falls short of what we think of as “morality.” It doesn’t get us to a common humanity. It leaves no conceptual space for the absoluteness of Good and Evil. It is ultimately grounded in a high understanding of honor but falls short of love. It blocks out the light breaking in from a dimension beyond our interpreted everyday world, without which we must remain rather shallow than ever profound. (Something like this was the thesis of my long-abandoned doctoral dissertation, but I have never been able to stop thinking about it.

   [We cannot completely share Aristotle’s Greek idea of a community, and thus aspects of his picture of a virtuous man and even his understanding of certain virtues. But his basic approach has been translated into terms befitting a certain kind of Christian community by Aquinas and developed into something extremely insightful by Alasdair MacIntyre.]

 

  We all think that a person who does what he does, who lives as he does, just for the sake of appearances and the effects on other people is superficial. Aristotle agreed.

    In the movie Patton, we see General Patton disobeying orders and making his own battle plan to get to Messina before the British Field Marshall Montgomery. In his own mind, his was the better battle plan. Although his army suffered heavy casualties, he was convinced the casualties would have been higher had he just followed orders. But as portrayed, his main motivation was the fame and glory that would go to Montgomery and not him. He would not have wanted the fame had he not been convinced he deserved it. The fame was not an end in itself. But neither would just being a good general have satisfied him, without the fame. The desire for fame was so great we are at least invited to wonder whether it didn’t distort some of his decisions. I think Aristotle would have been critical of Patton’s desire for fame (as depicted in the movie).

    Much worse than Patton was Hitler’s taking the credit and thus the glory for Germany’s victory in the Battle of France (1940). True, Hitler was not happy with the new-and-supposedly-improved Schlieffen Plan; true, Hitler was open to and ultimately approved the actual battle plan. He deserved credit for that. But he took credit for the actual plan itself – which was made by General Erich von Manstein and his staff – so that he could present himself as the second coming of Frederick the Great to the world. He was worse than Patton because – rather like the narcissist Trump – he cared only for appearance without bothering about the substance. [As a teen, I was susceptible to this. On a camping trip with two buddies from high school, I pretended to other boys we met to be a college football player, just to bask in the “honor” of being seen as someone I believed better than myself, a kind of living out of a compensatory daydream. One of the more shameful episodes of my life, if not the most consequential. Utterly trivial compared with Hitler and Patton, but the same underlying structure: a concern for how you appear before others as a primary motive for acts and how you live.]

   In different degrees, both Patton and Hitler cared about how they appeared before others as something worthy in itself, as the highest value. Fame, glory, and honor – taken as ends-in-themselves, as a reason for living and acting – are “a bit too superficial” to be the goal of a good (ethical) life for Aristotle and us.

   Aristotle has been criticized for the importance he places on ‘proper pride’ or the concern about how others perceive you. I don’t think the criticism is justified, not all of it. Some part of ‘proper pride’ or ‘self-respect’ for Aristotle is connected to his immediate culture. But much of what he says about the right attitude towards how others perceive you is right on. In a genuine community, it matters. Honor, respect, and good reputation are the “greatest of all the external goods.” It is something that – as a member of a community (and it is our natural form of being, to be in a political community).

   We see this most clearly in communities in which life and death are at stake: in the army. I have listened to many stories told by veterans of many wars. It is always the same. When, for example, one soldier cannot leave another behind even though nothing of military significance depends on bringing him back and one must risk one’s life, it is never the case that the main motivation for doing so was glory – say, to win the Congressional Medal of Honor. Soldiers don’t risk their lives to save their comrades or brothers as a means to the end of getting a medal and so basking in the glory of being a hero. [If we knew one for whom this was the motive, there would be no honor in it: it would be self-defeating.] Not to leave someone behind is a matter of honor. It expresses a form of love between soldiers (who may not even like each other personally, who may not even be decent human beings in all respects). The lives of every combat soldier depend on the bravery and competence of every other soldier. If one fails, they could all be wiped out. This grounds a mutual respect (love) that transcends everyday morality. It is like an unconditional duty not to leave anyone behind (all things being equal).

    So imagine someone who doesn’t abandon his brothers and at great risk to his own life brings them back. Imagine he is awarded the Medal of Honor. Winning the medal wasn’t any part of his motivation, but a recognition of the significance of what he did. What should his attitude be towards the medal? Toward the honor? Such soldiers have different attitudes towards it. Some don’t place any great value on it because they experience it as so external to what matters to them: the group of soldiers they served with. Some see it as an impersonal honor, given to one individual who sees himself as nothing but a representative of his unit. It is an honor for his unit of which he is arbitrarily the steward. For others, it means a great deal as a proper recognition for what he suffered and did on behalf of others, though getting a medal was no part of his reason for so acting. He did what he had to do.  

   In no case, however, would such a soldier be indifferent to how others treated him. He may well eschew any hero worship. He may well downplay the heroism of his action before others. But if someone treated him as Trump did John McCain, in effect demeaning the significance of his suffering and his bravery, he would not be indifferent. And we – his community – would not be either. That would be treated as a grave insult to him and the community: both at the same time; you can’t separate the individual from the community in this, which was precisely Aristotle’s point. [Trump is not part of the community, not part of any community. He is incapable of community.] There is no prescribed way to react to such demeaning trash. (Had I been McCain, I would have shot the bastard. But McCain had more dignity and sense.) But we know how unbearable it is to witness an honorable person demeaned and humiliated by outsiders.

   I once met my friend’s father, who I knew was a veteran of Korea and Vietnam. He had a photograph on his wall of the President awarding him a medal. Now it didn’t matter that I thought the Vietnam War was a strategic and moral disaster. It didn’t matter what kind of a man my friend’s father otherwise was (how he was as a father, what his politics were, etc.). I spontaneously felt a kind of deep respect because I knew he had experienced something terrible, something that might have broken my courage or most men’s courage, and he had done something noble in the face of extreme danger. That deserves honor. I feel the same in the presence of such soldiers from other countries than my own. [Only war crimes would negate this feeling. If fact, a soldier is deserving of honor partly because they are in a situation in which the line between crime and non-crime is so blurred, a situation in which keeping your decency is a high achievement in itself.] It would be a violation of the meaning of what my friend’s father had suffered and done to have acted towards him as though he were a criminal or a servant or even a person who had never been in such a situation.

      And he would have a real reason to feel demeaned or insulted had I done so. There is such a thing as an appropriate response to the meaning (the reality) of people and their lives. That is what Aristotle meant by proper pride. And this only makes sense in a community. (Again, Trump as the counter-example: everything for him is transactional. There is no honor. The men who died in combat in the service of their country are to him “suckers and losers.” Where there is no possible community, that is in fact an intelligible response. Trump represents the apotheosis of individualism.)

  I used examples from the military because that is what Aristotle himself believed best exemplified what he was getting at. But it applies any area where there is a community. I once witnessed a history teacher remove a disrespectful student from his class. He was a good teacher, always prepared, who cared about his subject. The open disrespect of this student demeaned not only the teacher as an individual, but teachers in general and the subject of history. The teacher’s anger was justified not primarily because the disrespectful student disrespected him as an individual. As a history teacher, the teacher represented the community of teachers in general and historians in particular. Many people can overlook purely personal insults but cannot overlook disrespect to their community. As a representative of that community and its genuine value, the teacher was justified in his anger. Not to have cared would have signaled that he, the teacher, did not care or did not care enough. That would indeed be a defect of the teacher’s character.

  And it is not superficial to care about one’s reputation as a teacher for the same reasons. This proper care – a care that has nothing to do with egotism or narcissism – is not superficial. It is a response to the meaning of, in this example, the teaching of history, perhaps even the love of teaching and history. Love often implies a protective attitude about what you love, and concern with reputation can be part of that. Individualism is blind to such things.

  I could multiply examples from sports, medicine, law enforcement and justice, politics, and so on. This is not alien to us even today. The difference between us and Aristotle is that this community-being structured the best kind of human life for Aristotle. We experience it, if at all, only as soldiers, teachers, doctors, athletes, etc. – i.e. in fragments of our lives. Most of our lives are determined by mass society in capitalism, with its consumerism, subjectivism, radical individualism, narcissism. The marketplace of products or personalities knows no honor – Trump may be taken as a pure example of a capitalist personality, undiluted by any older community ethos (which many of us still have some experience of). And our moral ideas, such as they are, stem from religion, not from Aristotle, a thoroughly worldly philosopher.

    There is an inside-outside dynamic here. Whether a regiment, a basketball team, a profession (e.g. historians, judges, physicians, etc. - any community devoted to any worthy purpose) or what: there are skills, understanding, and virtues required to be a functioning member - beyond that which is required just to be a human being in a sense. Members owe each other respect on that basis alone. And for those who do exceptional things, an added kind of respect of due. The individual is never just an individual here but a member. Outsiders' perceptions - while they may be due - have a different quality than insider perceptions. I suppose for the hero, the probably quiet acknowledgement of his brothers matters most; for the teacher, the acknowledgement of fellow teachers and students matters most; for the judge the acknowledge of fellow judges as well as legal scholars and lawyers matter most; for the basketball player, the acknowledgement of fellow players and coaches, etc. Honor from the outside community is a function of the significance of the practice for the community at large. The honor is grounded in virtue, and exceptional instances of virtue.

     I am still marking out areas of agreement with Aristotle. Now I can go on not so much as to criticize his thought but to argue that it is not the whole story. And also give Plato his due.