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

Not necessarily paradoxical

[(Anonymous)]

My answer would be, "of course," unless you take the position that any dishonored person should be wholly shunned. Some real life examples: what about the chef who cooked for Richard Nixon & family after he resigned and returned to California? What about the doctor who cared for Idi Amin as he slowly died of syphilis in exile? It's trickier when the dishonored person still has power -- so how about the Roman freedmen who kept the bureaucracy and empire functioning during the reign of Caligula? Or any civil servant who quietly goes to work and tries to maintain some semblence of civil society under a despot? Sometimes those who honorably served dishonored persons serve the greater good of society by ensuring that the dishonored person leaves the scene with a minimum of fuss. The nature of the dishonor, and the context, will always matter. And must one assume that a dishonorable act destroys beyond redemption the humanity of the person who commits the dishonorable act?