Modern Honor

A Philosophical Defense

Anthony Cunningham

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134058945
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia social

This book examines the notion of honor with an eye to dissecting its intellectual demise and with the aim of making a case for honor's rehabilitation. Western intellectuals acknowledge honor's influence, but they lament its authority. For Western democratic societies to embrace honor, it must be compatible with social ideals like liberty, equality, and fraternity. Cunningham details a conception of honor that can do justice to these ideals. This vision revolves around three elements—character (being), relationships (relating), and activities and accomplishment (doing). Taken together, these elements articulate a shared aspiration for excellence. We can turn the tables on traditional ills of honor—serious problems of gender, race, and class—by forging a vision of honor that rejects lives predicated on power and oppression.

1 The Wrath of Achilles

Homer's The Iliad is ancient, but the tale has timeless human elements that still make it relevant today. The story revolves around honor—honor gained by winning glory and distinction, and honor lost by suffering the shame and humiliation of vice, failure, flaw, or rebuke. Homer's world may seem exotic to contemporary readers, but there is no better place to start when thinking about honor, so let me review the tale.

The siege suffers and the worried Greeks search for an explanation for the terrible plague afflicting their ranks. The gods are against them and the emergency requires attention before all is lost. A soothsayer is called to diagnose the ills, but he hesitates for fear his answer might bring him serious trouble. Achilles promises that no man will lay hands on him. Duly reassured, Calchas says that Agamemnon, the leader of the coalition army, has brought these troubles on them by dishonoring Apollo's priest with his refusal to ransom Chryseis. Not only was her father's ransom an honorable recompense, but Agamemnon's stubborn refusal ignored the consensus judgment of his fellow warriors (“Respect the priest, accept the shining ransom!”).¹ And now all the Greeks pay the hard price for Agamemnon's choice.

Displeased, the Greek king begrudgingly agrees to relinquish Chryseis, but only if another woman takes her place (“else I alone of the Argives go without my honor”).² With no prizes left, Achilles bids Agamemnon to be reasonable, to content himself with a promise of extra booty when Troy falls, rather than insult his companions (“But collect it, call it back from the rank and file? That would be the disgrace”).³ Agamemnon will have none of it. He detects a foul scent of coercion in Achilles’ words and he will not be ordered about. Neither will he go without when those he sees as lesser men have their prizes. In his warrior culture, treasure is a tangible measure of stature: the greater the loot, the bigger the man. Thus, he refuses to suffer a diminution of his rank by losing his woman. As Agamemnon tells them, either the assembled warriors must give him a suitable prize or else he will take another's concubine.

Achilles understands this threat, and annoyed by petty aggression and conceit at a dire time, he reminds the king that his allies are fighting the Trojans for him and his brother, for their honor. Paris has taken Menelaus’ wife, but he has done nothing to Achilles. And yet Achilles insists that he risks his life far from home for these brothers, doing the lion's share of the fighting but enjoying a smaller share of the winnings. By rights, he could demand a larger one, but he does not press the issue. He contents himself with less than he deserves, an outcome likely explained by Achilles’ martial glory being beyond dispute. In this light, Agamemnon's demand is especially galling. If Achilles can do with less, why should Agamemnon insist on more? If this threat is Agamemnon's ungrateful reward for loyalty and sacrifice, if he insists on insulting his allies, then Achilles might take his men and go home. He will not play the fool, piling up spoils and victories for Agamemnon while suffering insults (“I have no mind to linger here disgraced”).⁴ Achilles hopes to shock Agamemnon into sober reconsideration.

The scene is tense. Achilles has answered Agamemnon's threat with a grave one of his own. The Greek leaders watch. Will Agamemnon put aside his pride and calm the waters for the sake of the tenuous alliance? The delicate politics of the coalition army speak for concession. They need a united force for victory and this high-stakes drama could plunge them into discord. A wise, prudent king would reconsider his priorities, but pride can get the better of prudence in men like Agamemnon. His response leaves no doubts.

“Desert, by all means—if the spirit drives you home!
I will never beg you to stay, not on my account.
Never—others will take my side and do me honor,
Zeus above all, whose wisdom rules the world.
You—I hate you most of all the warlords
loved by the gods. Always dear to your heart,
strife, yes, and battles, the bloody grind of war.
What if you are a great soldier? That's just a gift of god.
Go home with your ships and comrades, lord it over your Myrmidons!
You are nothing to me—you and your overweening anger!
But let this be my warning your way:
Since Apollo insists on taking back my Chryseis,
I'll send her back in my own ships with my crew.
But I, I will be there in person at your tents
to take Briseis in all her beauty, your own prize—
so you can learn just how much greater I am than you
and the next man up may shrink from matching words with me,
from hoping to rival Agamemnon strength for strength!”⁵

Agamemnon's riposte is venomous. He invites Achilles to run away, a slap against his courage and a rejection of his importance. He suggests that Achilles is psychologically twisted, at home only in quarrels and battles, good for nothing but war. And despite Achilles’ fabled strength and accomplishments, Agamemnon denies he needs him because he has other friends, better friends. He reminds everyone he enjoys Zeus’ favor, so what need has he of mere Achilles? He gives the knife a contemptuous twist by disdaining Achilles’ outrage: Achilles’ anger means nothing. He even reveals that he hates Achilles “most of all the warlords loved by the gods.” This reference insinuates that Achilles’ strength is a mere gift and his fame and glory say more about the gods and their favor than about Achilles. And yet he insists that even this god-given strength will not stop Agamemnon from taking Achilles’ Briseis. He will come in plain sight and take the woman to humiliate Achilles and to show who is the best man. He will shame Achilles for being so presumptuous.

None of the Greeks can mistake this affront. Agamemnon means to lay Achilles low by smashing any pretense of superiority. The attack on so many psychological fronts drives home Agamemnon's condescension. His lack of respect is meant as a humiliating slap and a warning for all: No man can be safe from Agamemnon's wrath, not even Achilles. Agamemnon sees himself as the alpha male, and he has bared his teeth.

Achilles must respond or suffer disgrace. Agamemnon has challenged his manliness; the affront must be answered or Achilles will lose face. His impulse is to slay Agamemnon, but in the moments he takes to consider how to bridge the physical space between them, he wrestles with the implications of his grave alternatives, and Athena comes at Hera's behest to argue on the side of staying his hand. The enraged Achilles forgoes violence and confines himself to verbal abuse, directing a dire prophecy to Agamemnon, the “Staggering drunk, with your dog's eyes, your fawn's heart.”⁶ The day will come when Agamemnon regrets what he has said and done this day. Hector will wreak havoc on the Greeks and “then you will tear your heart out, desperate, raging that you disgraced the best of the Achaeans!”⁷

Achilles withdraws to his ships with his beloved Patroclus and his band of Myrmidons. He puts up no struggle when Agamemnon's men come to claim Briseis though he cares for her and reviles this humiliation. He retreats within himself and broods on two fates. If he gives up the fight, he might return home to a long, happy life. If he takes up shield and sword, men will remember his heroic name, but he will perish after he kills Hector. His mood darkens as he reflects on his mortality, on his unfamiliar status as an outsider, and on the ultimate value of a warrior's glory. In a rightly-ordered world, glory would be commensurate with a man's abilities and exploits. But such is not the case since Achilles is denied the respect he deserves. Perhaps the whole honor system is rotten and he is mistaken to have devoted himself to this cause.

When Achilles’ prophecy comes true and the Trojans threaten the Greeks with annihilation, Agamemnon sees his folly and professes a terrible madness he conveniently attributes to the mischief of the gods. He does not apologize, and by invoking the gods, he effectively denies personal responsibility. Instead, he tries to fix things with Achilles by sending a conciliatory party with promises to make things up to him. He will return Briseis and many prizes, even one of his own daughters, if Achilles will only take up the fight again.

Yet Achilles wants no part of what he sees as sleazy bribes because impotence rather than penance explains this change of heart. Achilles senses no sign of remorse or apology. If anything, Agamemnon's appeal is a thinly-cloaked call to obedience and Achilles will have none of it.⁸ As for the bribes, Achilles puts it succinctly: “I loathe his gifts.”⁹ Odysseus sees Achilles’ anger (he and the others leave out key elements of Agamemnon's words when they convey the appeal), so he tries another approach, bidding him to forget Agamemnon and to fight for his brothers. Ordinarily, this appeal would have considerable power over Achilles, a man who knows the meaning of brotherhood in arms. Between Agamemnon's gifts and this appeal, Achilles’ visitors believe he should put away his anger and return. But they see different worlds now. Achilles must hurt the man who insulted him, the man who refuses to lower himself by apologizing. He will not be content until Agamemnon “pays full measure for all his heartbreaking outrage.”¹⁰ Achilles’ advice to Phoenix, the old emissary, is as telling as it is simple: “It does you proud to stand by me, my friend, to attack the man who attacks me—.”¹¹

And so it goes until Patroclus ventures forth with Achilles’ permission to drive the Trojans back from the Greek ships lest they burn them and deny the Myrmidons safe passage home. Hector slays Patroclus, the one man Achilles can still love freely in the powerful, single-minded grip of his seething resentment. Once Achilles hears the news, everything changes. He mends his differences with Agamemnon since they are overshadowed by his thirst for revenge. He knows he will die soon after he kills the Trojan prince, but he does not care. Achilles must have his man. And so they meet beneath the walls of Troy after Achilles has waded mercilessly through Trojan blood. In the moments before combat, Hector offers a pact, a sworn promise to give over Achilles’ body for proper burial if he will only promise the same. But Achilles refuses, saying there can be no oaths between men and lions, just as wolves and lambs can have no meeting of the minds.¹² There can be no love between these two. Achilles means to kill Hector, not for prizes or glory, but for revenge. No supplications or agreements can tempt him because he is beyond pity or appeals for honoring the dead. As Hector dies, he makes one last attempt and begs for a proper burial, offering gifts for the favor. But Hector abandons the hope when he hears Achilles tell him to beg no more because mercy is the farthest thing from his mind. Indeed, Achilles says he would like to hack Hector's flesh away and eat him raw.¹³

Yet Hector's death cannot content Achilles. He wishes to defile the corpse. Lashing the body behind his chariot, he drags it before the walls of Troy and its horrified onlookers. For twelve days he leaves it exposed for the dogs and worms, now and again dragging it around Patroclus’ tomb. Disturbed by this behavior, the gods protect the body and allow Hector's father to steal his way to beg for his son, and Priam occasions Achilles’ compassion.

Those words stirred within Achilles a deep desire
to grieve for his own father. Taking the old man's hand
he gently moved him back. And overpowered by memory
both men gave way to grief. Priam wept freely
for man-killing Hector, throbbing, crouching
before Achilles’ feet as Achilles wept himself,
now for his father, now for Patroclus once again,
and their sobbing rose and fell throughout the house.
Then, when brilliant Achilles had his fill of tears
and the longing for it had left his mind and body,
he rose from his seat, raised the old man by the hand
and filled with pity now for his gray head and gray beard,
he spoke out winging words, flying straight to the heart:
“Poor man, how much you've borne—pain to break the spirit!
What daring brought you down to the ships, all alone,
to face the glance of the man who killed your sons,
so many brave boys? You have a heart of iron.¹⁴

Moved by this old man who makes him think of his own father and who conjures thoughts of shared losses, Achilles returns the body and guarantees Priam the twelve days that Troy needs to mourn. Thus, The Iliad begins with one instance of honor and ends with another. Agamemnon's insult, his dishonoring of Achilles, sets in motion a course of events that ends in Achilles giving his word of honor to see to it that Hector can be honored.

With this story in hand, consider some important things about honor as these characters understand it. First, honor matters greatly to them. Shakespeare's “If I lose mine honour, I lose myself” gives voice to their thoughts and feelings.¹⁵ When Achilles endures Agamemnon's insult and withdraws, he experiences an enormous psychological loss. His self-imposed solitude mirrors inner feelings of profound rejection and banishment. He compares himself to an outcast and uses his new perspective to muse on the honors his warrior community has bestowed on him in the past and those that might yet come. Faced with his own mortality, he wonders whether the glory attached to a warrior's name is all it is cracked up to be. The sidelines provide a new view, but Achilles would feel the sting of his dishonoring even if he were to abandon war and return home. Achilles cannot be indifferent to Agamemnon's public disgrace.

If honor is so important, what kind of thing is it? Achilles’ sense of honor has to do with excellence, the fundamental measure of a man. Honor's excellences range over his character and attributes, his relationships, his deeds, and his accomplishments. Not every excellence is pertinent to Achilles’ measure, and those that are relevant aren't all equally important. Honor hinges on the excellences that Achilles and company consider most essential for commanding respect and admiration from others and pride in oneself. These are the excellences that ground a person's worth, both in the inside and outside world. Some of these excellences may be self-evident and require little interpretation, but excellences can also call for reflection and judgment. For instance, one might need to deliberate about what a particular excellence would require, either generally or specifically, or one might need to judge whether someone meets the standard. In this sense, honor isn't always self-evident and neither is it set in stone. Though what these men esteem is not absolutely fixed—witness Achilles’ meditations on a warrior's honor—neither is the vision of an honorable man up for grabs in any capricious or purely individual way. These men cannot decide to look up to or down upon whatever they please. Their standards are not impervious to change, but they inherit a vision of what men must be and do to be great, respectable, or hardly a man at all.

Some examples can illuminate these Homeric excellences. For instance, Achilles yearns to be courageous and steadfast in battle. Were he to run away or give up in the face of a difficult challenges and burdens, he would suffer a serious mark against his character. The same could be said if he were to shirk his disparate responsibilities as a son, father, friend, host, or comrade-in-arms. Like all these warriors, Achilles wants to prevail, to accomplish prodigious feats, the sort that might earn him renown. Achilles yearns to be a particular kind of person, to fulfill his social responsibilities faithfully, and to accomplish great things. He measures himself by what he is, how he relates, and what he does.

One such measure comes against a basic threshold of worth, below which Achilles cannot descend without suffering dishonor. Another measure goes beyond this elemental honor to a higher standard, where Achilles marks himself for special honor. The former grants Achilles membership in the honor community, and the latter measure confers high honor. Every Greek warrior may be honorable in the sense of deserving basic respect, but some may deserve greater honors, and Achilles’ prizes and renown are tangible measures of his greatness. This picture is complicated by the fact that some things that might confer high honor on Achilles might not bring dishonor on him even if he were deficient. Thus, Achilles is highly renowned as a swift runner, but being slow would be no disgrace. On the other hand, Achilles is also greatly renowned for his courage, and falling short here would be a disgrace. In other words, some things function as lines in the sand—there is only dishonor on the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The Wrath of Achilles
• 2 Honor Stories
• 3 Honor's Demise
• 4 Is Honor Inevitably Flawed?
• 5 Modern Honor: Character
• 6 Modern Honor: Relating and Doing
• 7 Shameless Morality
• 8 Whose Honor?
• Final Thoughts
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index