Galun.com - Liberalism with Honor

Notes: Liberalism with Honor

"Honor is a maltifaceted phenomenon that includes (a) public honors in the form of external recognition; (b) codes of honor; and (c) honor as a quality of character."
"Public honors reward excellence. They are pleasant for their (living) receipients and good for the rest of us, who thereby are shown a high standard and given an incentive to pursue it."
The person who follows a code of honor even when it is contrary to her immediate self-interest, "for the sake of her self-respect displays a special kind of independence. She shows herself to be in command of herself and not commanded by her lowest impulses, or the opinions of others, or fear. Her independence is the mark of individual agency, the power to act rather than merely to be acted upon...Honor as a quality of character implies self-command."
"Like virtue, and unlike Kantian autonomy, honor is desirable in the sense that it rewards us with a form of pleasure, and it uses our desire for pleasure as a way of motivating our action. The pleasures produced by honor, like those of virtue, rise above the pleasures produced by the satisfaction of the appetites. It is because of the promise of pleasures that stand above the appetites that honor can sometimes forsake simple self-interest to pursue principled ends."
"Even though the honor code implies a common standard and serves a common purpose, the motivation that drives it is self-serving and its direct aim is individualistic, the personal desire for self-respect."
Honor "implies distinctions between higher and lower, especially the distinction between living free through the power of self-command, or the exercise of individual agency, and acting as the instrument of someone else's will, or one's own necessities, or the impersonal forces of circumstance. There is something intrinsically admirable in the ambitious desire to live up to a principled code of conduct, in seeking self-respect on principled grounds, in aiming to fulfill what one takes to be an important duty to oneself."
"The teleology of honor places self-command above subservience but it does not itself define the ends toward which the self-commanding agent aims."
"Despite our present prosperity, there is a widespread sense today that Americans are losing control of the forces that govern their lives...In the face of a globalizing economy, big-money politics, escalating environmental crises, entrenched racial tensions and disparities, pervasive gender inequities, and the alarming deterioration of public education...We have lost faith in ourselves as the agents of our destinies. Perhaps this partly accounts for the dramatic rise of communities of faith in the United States in the last generation...[which] reflects, at least in part, a lost faith in individual agency and an effort to recover it through spiritual resources. To replenish the faith in our capacity for agency that is the precondition of constitutional democracy and individual liberty, we need new inspiration."
"To the extent that political theorists do attend to the question of motivations today, they divide between the proponents of rational choice theory, who emphasize the motive of self-interest, and those who defend some form of obligations to others...The strict division of motivations ... is not a particularly productive one. Too often today, our thinking on matters of moral psychology is confined within the limits of these dichotomous categories: interests are what we do for ourselves... whereas obligations are what we owe to others. Yet what we do for ourselves out not be limited to our interests, and what we owe to others does not exhaust our obligations. The contemporary dichotomy leaves out a whole class of motives based on the sense of duty to oneself..."
These two theories also lack "an acknowledgement of liberal democracy's need for heroic qualities of character - if only on occasion and only in a few...Civic virtue, liberal virtues, the sense of justice, and the agreement motive are egalitarian, even though they rely on altruism...Exceptional qualities and extraordinary efforts are not thought to be required...These obligations represent societywide ideals, and the regimes they serve can only operate successfully if they motivate all citizens on a regular basis, or at least most citizens most of the time...[But] [w]hen things go wrong, as they sometimes will, and individual liberties come under threat, sometuing more than what is usually expected of citizens may be required of them, or of some of them. In these moments, extraordinary exertions of individual agency may be called for. So even thought liberal democracy normally can get by with good or even mediocre citizens, on occasion it needs great ones."
It is a mistake "to con fuse one type of honor (old-regime or feudal honor) with the whole of it, not seeing the variability of honor, its capacity to adapt and to serve different regimes and the personal identities they inculcate."
"Far from destroying honor, the personal identity of modern man denuded of social roles and institutional positions supports its own form of honor, as the American founders emphatically asserted. In fact, the founders regarded the fixed social roles and political inequalities with the old regime as affron ts to what they called 'the honor of the human race.'"
The concealment of honor today is more habitual than intentional...We have lost the feeling of aristocratic elements in our nature. and not only that, we have so fully embraced the dichotomy between self-interest and self-sacrifice that we have forgotten how to see in ourselves and in others the motives that join personal ambition with principled higher purpose."
"Honor...is tied to what Elizabeth Cady Stanton called 'self-sovereignty,' the proud assertion of one's capacity to rule oneself rather than acquiesce to external rule, whether it be the rule of another person, an overreaching political authority, one's own unreflective appetites, or even the impersonal forces of nature and history...Those with honor above all refuse to believe that they are the victims of their circumstances."
"Honor rests on boastful self-forgetting of its own conditions and an exaggeration of its independence from the power of circumstances. Still, the boastful exaggeration of human independence is an honorable response to the real power of circumstance, because it makes resistance - therefore agency, and ultimately self-government and individual liberty - conceivable."
Key features of honor as a quality of character: 1. personal ambition combined with principled codes of conduct - the ambitious desire for distinction is limited, directed, and elevated by reverence for a set of principles that are independent of will or appetites; 2. the element of courage, especially courageous resistance to encroaching power; 3. the sense of duty to oneself - honorable actions are understood in terms of duties or obligations rather than interests.
"Because it both requires equipment and calls forth heroic qualities, the concept of honor helps us to conceive political agency in ways that avoid what one commentator has called the 'great weakness of the Right - its failure to believe that institutional or social conditions really affect our choices and life changes - and the analogous failure of the Left to imagine how people can nevertheless create a space of freedom within which they act to change their lives.'"
Montesquieu "thought that spirited resistance to the abuse of power was crucial for individual liberty, and he saw honor as the spring of such resistance."
In pre-modern philosophy, virtue led to happiness: "According to Aristotle, political, moral, and intellectual virtue were forms of self-fulfillment, not self-renunciation...Citizens had good reason to make the personal sacrifices that political virtue required of them because these sacrifices opened the door to their own higher well-being. One gave up lower goods for the sake of higher ones. In a similar way, good Christians turn their backs on all that belongs to this world for the sake of the more perfect pleasures of the next world..."
But modern philosophy rejected this: "When Montesquieu identifies political virtue (and implicitly all virtue) with self-renunciation, he suggests that no such rewards await, or justify, the sacrifices...The modern world is distinguished from the ancient world by the fact of plurality in moral and political standards of conduct, according to Montesqieu...[and] pluralism undercuts the teleological assumptions that transform virtue's self-renunciation into self-fulfillment."
Montesquieu sees self-renunciation "as the sacrifice of one's particular self to the common 'self' of the political community, rather than as the sacrifice of what is lower to what is higher in one's soul...from the standpoint of early liberalism...the sacrifices of the republican citizen, the Christian monk, and the ancient philosopher appear to be equally empty."
Montesquieu in fact feared this virtue, writing: "The less we can satisfy our particular passions, the more we give ourselves up to passions for general ones. Why do monks love their order so much? It is exactly due to the same thing that makes their order intolerable to them. Their rule deprives them of all the things upon which ordinary passions rest; there remains, therefore, this passion for the very rule that afflicts them. The more austere it is, that is, the more it cuts out their inclinations, the more strength it gives to those that remain."
For Montesquieu, all virtues "result in the suppression of human particularity and private desires. For the modern subject, they are felt as painful denial of self, because of the skepticism of modern scientific reason and the plurality of modern standards of right, which make questionable the goods that once eased the pain of virtue. And the political effect of the self-denial that virtue requires is extremism, which leads to immoderate government and the insecurity of persons."
In Feudal society, "To be 'noble' was 'to count among one's ancestors no one who had been subjected to slavery.' Where was was an everyday matter and slavery often the result of conquest, the physical strength that enabled one to remain free from servitude was highly prized...[a man's] honor was identified almost exclusively with strength and his external goods...In the following centuries, however, honor was increasingly internalized. The emphasis on physical qualities and external goods gradually gave way to a new understanding of honor as an internal quality of character..."
"Still later, as the noblesse d'epee was invaded by and integrated with the nobless de robe, the internal qualities associated with honor underwent further changes. In particular, the assimilation of the martial and administrative classes within the nobility tended to demilitarize noble mores. As the power and prestige of the robe increased, the ideals of violent mastery and physical prowess associated with the sword were eclipsed by new notions of honorable conduct. Courage continued to be central to honor, but it was combined with qualities suited to the new nobility represented by the peaceful administrator, the moderate judge, teh country gentleman, and the honnete homme. This shift was part of a larger movement that one commentator has called a 'revolution' in the 'political values and practices' of the nobility in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries."
"Montesquieu's concept of honor reflects these historical shifts. It exemplifies the modern domestication of honor in which the martial valor of medieval soldiers was infused with qualities specific to the new administrative class of the noblesse de robe. He notes the connection between honor and soldiering, but his idea of honor also includes the moderate of the judicious administrator, the restraint of the equitable judge, and even the gentle manners and fine speech of the courtiers."
According to Montesquieu, the honorable man is someone "who, being worthy of great things, requires of himself that he be worthy of them." He "aims for superiority" and demands preferences and distinctions.
"While the magnanimous man must do the right thing for the right reason, it is enough for Montesquieu's man of honor to do the right thing, even if his reasons are not, morally speaking, the right ones...The morally mixed character of honor does not mean that anything goes, however. Even though the honorable person's reasons for doing great things may not be morally pure, honor as a quality of character is guided by established codes of honor rather than by arbitrary will. If honor does not require a city of angels, then, neither would it be possible for a race of devils."
Montesquieu believes that because self-renunciation is painful, the state must expend great effort teaching and enforcing virtue. By contrast, the world naturally teaches which actions are honorable, and people are naturally inclined to be concerned for their own interests, and so the state does not need to become involved.
Honor acts as an arbiter between simply doing whatever serves one's own interests (since one can't make up one's own code of honor, one must follow an existing one) and blind obedience to society's rules (since honor is self-regarding).
"There is a paradox at the heart of honor, for it presses conflicting demands upon us. It brings together reverence and reflexivity because it requires both, but it does not dissolve the tension between them. This paradox reveals a fundamental tension within human agency more generally. If one's reverence is too complete, then one's actions are nothing more than obedience and so not free. But with perfect reflexivity, or radical autonomy, one has no good reason to act in one way rather than another, and then it is difficult to distinguish one's choices from mere willfulness or simple impulse. In other words, there is a point at which radical choice fades into non-choice. The unchosen attachments, identities, and obligations that constrain our choices also give us reason to choose one course of action over another. In this sense, they support our capacity for choice and thus for agency. The paradox of honor as both reverent and reflexive captures this deep feature of individual agency. By preserving the tension rather than dissolving it, the concept of honor helps us see why a theory of agency that privileges one at the cost of the other is bound to be incomplete. It reminds us that even the self-determination of the modern subject rests on reverence of one sort or another. Honor balances choice with limits on choice. Our limits make our choices meaningful and effective, and if these limits are not to be coerced from the outside (by God or nature or king), they will need to be revered from the inside."
Honor is "based on affective attachments rather than on a form of reason that abstracts from such attachments."
"Honor is a prejudice because it prejudges the worth of one's principles and one's claims to distinction, rather than arising directly from rational scrutiny of them. The honorable person is self-confident without being particularly self-examining, and perhaps even self-confident because not so very self-examining."
This is not to say that honor codes are not rational or cannot be subjected to rational scrutiny. But in the moment of decision, a decision based on honor is a decision made without recourse to rational analysis. In the "moment of crisis," attachments, not reason, make you act.
"The suppression of human partiality whether by virtue or by reason leads to extremism and so makes for immoderate and unstable politics. Moreover, it is difficult to suppress partiality without forcing the issue, which means relying on fear, which is despotism."
Tocqueville condemned sociali historians for denying individual agency, because belief in the power of political agency is necessary to defend liberty, otherwise we accept what we are told are irresistible social movements.
Tocqueville thought that Americans' individualism and rationalism, within their classless, nationalistic society, could actually be dangerous. Because "A measure of reverence for the authority of principles external to one's will can provide a powerful basis for resisting the pressures of public opinion...By denying the authority of such independent standards, modern democrats unwittingly disable their own wills and undercut the capacity for political agency. Thus Tocqueville suggests that one may widen the sphere of independent action by constraining the individualism that rejects the authority of external standards, because this individualism leads ultimately to conformity."
Tocqueville thought that self-interest could not guard liberty, because people would then worship any tyrant who brought prosperity. Therefore, liberty must be valued as an end in itself.
Tocqueville criticized caste society because each caste can't understand the humanity of the other caste. But at the same time, equality may make us less likely to inflict pain on others, but it also makes us less likely to sacrifice for others as well. We'll show general compassion but shirk from real risk.
"Equality of conditions [in a democracy] makes individuals unwilling to inflict pointless suffering, but also may render them unwilling to sacrifice for one another. In democratic ages, Tocqueville says, 'men show a general compassion for all the members of the human species' but do not have strong attachments between them. Typically, they take pleasure in relieving the pains of another if they can do so without much nuisance to themselves. This general but detached compassion 'renders their habitual relations easier', but it may not accomplish much in moments of extraordinary need and risk. In this respect, it resembles self-interest well understood. Self-interest, like 'general compassion,' can keep I things running smoothly in the ordinary course of affairs so long as no serious conflicts emerge and persons can get along without much bother."
Tocqueville believes that pride was the spring of action, particularly risky and difficult action, and worried that democratic disdain for/fear of pride would end all sense of purpose.
Tocqueville believed that democracy demands humility in our relations to others, yet humility plunges individuals into common obscurity of the crowd - we think of ourselves as nothing special and therefore do nothing special.
Humility can be good in personal relations, according to Tocqueville, but risky in politics, because if we don't demand what we are due, we won't be given it voluntarily.
According to Douglas Afair's book "Fame and the Founding Fathers," the founders were motivates in large part by their love of fame, of history's approval and remembrance: "For the founders, the love of fame pointed to a moderate mean between self-denying altruism, which was too lofty to be reliable and could become excessively harsh, and egoistic self-interest, which was too narrow to support risky and difficult public purposes."
"It should...come as no surprise that the first Americans pledged to defend the Declaration of Independence with their 'sacred Honor.' That document voiced their collective refusal to simply accede to 'the course of human events,' or acquiesce to 'an absolute Tyranny.' And for support in asserting themselves as agents of history rather than its pawns, the American revolutionaries invoked their honor."
"Honor is intrinsically conservative in the limited sense that it always seeks to conserve the principles that guide it. But the conserving character of honor in this respect should not be confused with political conservatism. By conserving the ideal of natural rights, the first Americans brought about a political revolution and then revolutionized the very nature of republican politics."
"Washington's desire to be worthy of the highest honors did not make him unconcerned with actually receiving them...[Honor] never fully turns away from public recognition and never entirely transcends affective attachments to one's principles and one's self-respect. Washington's desire to be worthy of the highest honor does not represent a simple triumph of principle over passion so much as an interaction of principles with passions, in which reason guides and directs but never fully transcends the desiring part of the psyche."
"'Reason is the guide of life,' as John Adams put it, but 'the senses, the imagination and the affections are the springs of activity. Reason holds the helm, but passions are the gales.'"
"The American system as a whole embodies honor as resistance to tyranny...It pridefully asserts the dignity, even the nobility, of humankind in the form of individual and collective self-rule. This is a somewhat boastful assertion, for no one fully resists the power of nature or circumstance...Perhaps, following Marx, we should dress down such braggarts in the name of unmasking the true power of historical forces as against human agency. Yet the boastful exaggeration of human independence is an honorable response to the real powers of nature, circumstance, and tyrants because it makes resistance conceivable. In this respect, it may be a necessary condition of whatever power of agency is possible for us."
Traditional honor has been criticized as nothing more than having someone to look down on. In the democratic context, by contrast, honor preserves a prideful disdain of certain types of action without disdaining any fixed class of persons. To the extent that the honorable person looks down on others, it is those people who engage in what he or she considers to be degrading actions.
"The preference for liberty and self-respect over life is at the heart of the traditional opposition between honor and slavery."
"Mastering the fear of death has always been a central feature of honor, which is one reason for the traditional association between honor and martial valor. In resisting the seemingly irresistible impulse for self-preservation, the soldier shows himself capable of intentional, self-initiated action, or agency, and so is free."
"Jail is traditionally a place of shame and 'dishonor' at least in part because incarceration curtails individual agency and makes citizens into subjects. Jail became a badge of honor for civil rights activists because for them going to jail was a demonstration of agency. It was proof of one's principled ambition and one's courage, and a vindication of one's 'human dignity.' This badge of honor also provided public recognition, an external reward that complemented the internal prize of self-respect."