Honor's Paradox
Tuesday, February 8th, 2011 08:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rolanniIf you honorably serve a dishonored master, is your personal honor unsullied?
Discuss, with examples.
ETA: Lotsa people ducking the question here. Interesting.
Discuss, with examples.
ETA: Lotsa people ducking the question here. Interesting.
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honorably serve
Date: 2011-02-08 11:27 pm (UTC)Barb in Bandon
Re: honorably serve
Date: 2011-02-09 12:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-08 11:47 pm (UTC)"A dishonored master" to me means the judgement was made by a third party. If I believed that judgement to be false or in error, then I believe my master to be honorable. My personal honor would be unsullied by serving him honorably.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-08 11:48 pm (UTC)looking up the definition, i find that it can mean 1) shame or disgrace, 2) a lack of honor or integrity, or 3)to bring disgrace upon someone or something
i find that shame is often very personal, and may not have anything to do with anyone's honor than one's own. if one's master is shamed or shameful, then yes, probably one's personal honor is intact.
if one's master has been disgraced or brought disgrace upon someone or something, and you were serving him during the period of his disgrace, you may share some of that, and so your personal honor suffers.
if one's master has a lack of honor or integrity, it is very likely that one's personal honor will suffer due to one's service with him.
going strictly by definitions, it is more likely than not, even though your service was honorable, the character of your master will impinge poorly upon your own it at some point. better to honorably serve only as long as you must, and leave service as soon as possible.
(which is a strong argument for the employees of *several* large corporations to quit en masse...)
Not necessarily paradoxical
Date: 2011-02-09 12:50 am (UTC)Oaths should be kept, or perhaps not
Date: 2011-02-09 02:15 am (UTC)So, the answer really depends on the oath sworn. Generally most oaths of service do seem to bind the honor of the oath-giver to the person taking the oath. I suppose that in some cases it is less damaging to be forsworn than to honor an oath of service. This leads to the various shades of grey that are what we all live with in real life and that provide such interesting conflicts of honor in our favorite fiction.
Personally, I make it all up as I go and hope for the best. Absolutes terrify me when I think too hard about them.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-09 04:36 am (UTC)Bujold said it well (and I've used her example more than once with young trainees), but also don't forget that nothing is permanent - as LMB states elsewhere, everyone has the ability to activate their own personal reset button.
Brom
no subject
Date: 2011-02-09 05:40 am (UTC)On a personal level, I could see a circumstance where I could render honorable service to a... ...OK, lets use the term "prince" here, in the sense that Machiavelli used it, for lack of anything better... ...prince who had lost his own honor, as long as that prince did not require ME to act in a manner contrary to mine own honor.
But, by way of a valid counterexample, in Tokugawa-era Japan, if a daimyo rebelled against or otherwise betrayed his overlord, his vassals were perceived as having been tainted by his dishonor, and in general had the alternatives of either committing seppuku or becoming ronin, because other lords would be unwilling to take such tainted warriors into their service.
The Romans evidently felt that a leaders acts could taint his followers: a legion or smaller unit (cohort, maniple, or century,) which exhibited cowardice in the face of the enemy might find its commander executed and its troops facing decimation: the selection by lot of one soldier in ten for execution, the executions to be carried out by their surviving comrades.
But in Korea in 1950, the US Army just took such units, gave them new officers, and put their former officers to work offloading ships at Pusan. As Napoleon once observed "There are no bad regiments; there are only bad colonels."
Context is important.
And to put things into an entirely different perspective: if one believes that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was illegal, does that make every one of the soldiers, Marines, sailors, and airmen who participated in that operation a war criminal?
Service to the Dishonored Master
Date: 2011-02-09 05:56 am (UTC)There is a problem first off with the word "honor". Honor usually means maintaining the status, pride, tradition of a family or group. There are and have been many systems of "honor" in the world. In terms of 21st Century America some acts which we would consider criminal are considered honorable in some systems. As, it is all right in Arab countries to kill a woman if she has "dishonored" the family according to her male relatives including her own father. In our system of justice in the US such a father would be tried, found guilty of murder and put in jail. Even executed.
Then there is the code of the Samurai. I'm not as familiar with that code. So I can't really comment on it.
When we are dealing with a system of "honor" and not with a system of justice, I probably would not accept that system of "honor". Honor is not justice its a matter of status, keeping face, and tradition. I consider most of those honor systems to be unethical.
Now, in our Anglo Saxon tradition there is the idea of the "honorable man". That's a different ethical system. An honorable man pays his debts, for example. He keeps his promises. His handshake is his bond. This idea of "honor" comes more out of an idea of commerce and business than family matters. Most of us would support the idea of such an honorable man or woman.
I wouldn't want to participate in an Arab system (or ...the Spanish system is similar) all. Our American system would be ok.
Then we have to ask, if such an honorable man is considered to be "dishonored". Is he really? Is what people saying true? Maybe, Maybe not. One shouldn't serve a truly dishonorable man. That would be being dishonorable yourself. One could serve a person who is honorable even if some think that person is not honorable. One would have to make a judgment on that.
Some say that there is honor among thieves. Usually not.
There you go. That's the best I can do. Sorry if I've duplicated what other worthy commenters have said.
Depends on whether you knew the circumstances of the dishonor.
Date: 2011-02-09 05:10 pm (UTC)Was Madoff dishonored? You betcha.
What about his wife, sons, partners, etc? Didn't one of the sons blow the whistle when he heard of the dishonor? I would argue it depends on knowledge of the crime.
My 2 cents
Lauretta@ConstellationBooks
PS I like Bujod's work a lot but I sometimes think she gives away her Christian background. Not that that's bad, it's just kinda obvious to me. Then again, I find Ken McLeod's work to be very Scottish-socialist. Maybe that's just me.
Honor's Paradox
Date: 2011-02-09 07:53 pm (UTC)Hmm . . . . I think respondants are not so much ducking, as they are dissecting the question of the day.
Craig
Re: Honor's Paradox
Date: 2011-02-10 04:40 am (UTC)Perhaps the poser of the question would enlighten the rest of us about the perceived benefit of reading the answers ?
I have found the question "what do you wish to do with that information ?" to be generally useful in framing many answers. I think much of the discussion is noodling around the question of "what do you really want to know and why ?" and being willing to say "could you possibly mean X" then working from there.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-10 06:09 am (UTC)-mac
no subject
Date: 2011-02-10 07:46 pm (UTC)For example, in the movie Serenity - the Operative serves the Alliance (which was responsible for wiping out a planet), honorably even to the point of murdering a lot of people that merely knew the heroes - however his personal honor was unsullied.
At the same time, when the person starts committing those types of acts, it often becomes very difficult for others to see that person as honorable - especially if they lack context.
If you serve 'honorably' your personal 'honor' is intact.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-11 02:26 pm (UTC)With regard to the "honor", I view it as the character's _personal_ honor. He has certain laws, values and oaths he upholds, and his service to the master is just one more oath in his system. So, basically, minus the poetrics, the question reduces to one of the following. It's either:
1) "Criminal orders", when he has a sad choice of breaking your hommage or breaking some other oath of yours. Exactly for this situation, the feudal hommage presented (or so I believe) some honorable way to break free from your master. So, the answer is - no, if your personal honor conflicts with your service, you should leave the service.
Example may be taken from Dilbert: if you sell to a customer an exploding gadget made by your company, you are personally responsible for his death.
2) or "Stupid master", when the character despises his master, but the orders are not particularly bad, it's just not nice to be seen in the master's company. In this case, I believe that not only the personal honor will not suffer from the service, but to leave the troubled master is not very honorable by itself.
Example may be taken from King Lear.
That is to say, there is no paradox, as the vassal oath is itself part of the personal honor.
We still don't know, which of the interpretations you had in mind, though.
:-)
Honor/Dishonored Master
Date: 2011-02-12 07:36 am (UTC)C.
Honor
Date: 2011-02-12 04:32 pm (UTC)Many thanks. Who knew you could learn this reading blogs in the morning?
no subject
Date: 2011-02-20 04:09 am (UTC)If it's an internal condition, behaving in a manner YOU believe to be honorable means that you are an honorable person, no matter whom you serve. It is interesting to note that if this is true, and your personal definition of honor aligns with that society generally considers 'good', honorable service to a master whose own actions are considered 'bad' may mean that you take actions that are not what that master might otherwise desire. Let's take the example of a samurai who serves a master who has become corrupt, greedy, and no longer follows the path of true belief that the samurai still does. Honorable service might demand that he offer the master an honorable death. Not what the master might wish, yet still honorable service. Honor might demand that he continue to serve, above his ethical questions. It would depend on the samurai's internal definition of honorable behavior.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-20 05:30 am (UTC)This of course presumes that your service is within the bonds an honourable master would request. Dishonour can be earned for many reasons, including reasons for which an honourable vassal cannot turn away.
For example: A man may promise his child's hand in marriage to another, but the child may not keep that promise and choose another. The man is dishonoured by his inability to keep his promise, but in no way is he a less worthy man. His public honour is impacted, but his personal honour is intact.
In fact, one can argue that a vassal who has promised service is not able to withdraw that service until given permission from their liege (or their liege's liege). Ironically, only an honourable liege would properly release their vassals from service in the event that their honour was sullied.
Honor's Paradox
Date: 2011-02-27 02:16 am (UTC)Daniel did what he saw as honorable, and within his comfort zone for personal safety, i.e. saved both Sato (Chief bad guy) and a small child who was (for reasons that escape me) up a power pole, while the nephew was too frightened to help either, and was forced to say so in front of virtually everyone he knew.
He may or may not have actually been brave in some other fashion, in some previous situation, but the physical dangers of the hurricane that caused the endangerment of the other characters was outside his comfort zone.
Now, Daniel did not do anything to him directly, but it was still Daniel he blamed for 'dishonoring' him. If his cronies in bullying the village had stayed by him, would they have shared his dishonor?
Frankly, I found he did all the dishonoring himself, including taking the love interest hostage to force Daniel into a "to the death" karate match in the climax of the movie.
Here's a twist on the question; Sato, chief bad guy & uncle, felt himself dishonored from before the story opened. The nephew was raised more or less by him, to serve him, and trained to bully people. When push came to shove, that led to his failing his "lord", his uncle. Does his dishonor, therefore, reflect on Sato? Sato repudiated him as soon as he saw in the hurricane how little physical courage the young man had, and started making some amends for his own previous bullying behavior, but we don't know how much he feels dishonored by the previous bullying by his nephew; how much dishonor does he accrue from that? How can he atone for it? Can he atone?
Okay, that's not probably the definition of 'dishonor' you're looking for, but I think that to a large degree, that's the kind of stuff that messes people up!
I think we have to go to Shakespeare here; "to thine own self be true." Each individual has to take Aral's definition of "Honor is what you know about yourself, reputation is what other people believe about you" and apply it to our own actions and intentions. You can do dishonorable things, in your own service or that of others, for the sake of honor, and feel only mildly sullied if you feel that what you did was right by your own morals or ethics. If you insist on following the letter of an oath in the face of what's pretty blatantly morally or ethically wrong, are you being true to yourself? You may weasel out of legal or "reputation" definition of wrongdoing, but will you be able to live with yourself?
That's if you KNOW about the wrong/dishonor of your lord.
What if you don't know about the dishonor? If you are serving an apparently honorable person doing overtly honorable things, but dishonor is going on 'under the rose', even without your input, and it comes crashing down on them, does it splash you too? Reputation vs. internal knowledge again. You may be branded as dishonored, but feel well in yourself. Or, if you have been brought up in (or considered and decided for yourself upon) a tradition that says you've essentially become a limb of your 'lord' ("the sinews of the empire" on Barrayar...) then you may still feel yourself dishonored regardless of whether you did or did not follow the letter and/or spirit of your oath.
I also considered "Honor's Paradox" from the Kencyr novels by Hodgsell... because of where/how I was brought up, and the opinions I've formed through exposure to such writings, and Liaden notions of honor... I have to say I'm still in the Shakespeare camp; do what's right for your internal equilibrium and let reputation fall where it will. This does mean weighing your oath's worth against the honor/dishonor that your lord is demanding from you.
Whew! Quite a diatribe.