Honor's Paradox

[rolanni]

If you honorably serve a dishonored master, is your personal honor unsullied?

Discuss, with examples.


ETA: Lotsa people ducking the question here. Interesting.

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Jockey of Norfolk be not so bold.

It depends on your cultural expectations. Personally, I'd say yes, your honour is sullied. But you said "dishonoured" not "dishonourable".

Let's say I'm a typist and my master is at court and he slips on a banana peel and skids across the room and everybody laughs, and then he gets fired from his position because clearly this slip shows he's incompetent to run a department. This is a dishonour certainly, but it doesn't reflect at all on my honour, and indeed it speaks well of me if I stay by him typing away in his disgrace. If however he's fired for peculation, then my honour does suffer by continuing in his service, even if he never gave me any of the embezzling letters to type, and if he commits genocide and is given a medal I should leave him and work against him.

Somebody mentioned slaves. There's no question to me, if you're forced your own honour isn't in question. But there's a more difficult issue with modern people in low-employment situations -- they can quit and should, but their families need to eat, their families need (in the US) medical care, if they stop typing their lives will be hard. If that's embezzling letters? If that's genocidal letters? Lots of people will keep typing, and some people will say "I still have my honour, I was forced" and others will say "I have compromised my honour and will atone when I can" and others will say "I have compromised my honour anyway, I might as well also..."

I don't see honour as a virginity to be lost, or as something external. But I come from the culture I come from, and people's ideas about honour and duty are stronger cultural markers than anything else I know.