Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 The Two-Collar Conflict
- 2 Our Better Angels Have Broken Wings
- 3 Responsibility for Innocence Lost
- 4 Virtuous Responses to Moral Evil
- 5 Assessing Attempts at Moral Originality
- 6 Public and Private Honor, Shame, and the Appraising Audience
- 7 Torture
- 8 Community and Worthwhile Living in Second Life
- 9 Of Merels and Morals
- 10 Inference Gaps in Moral Assessment
- 11 Blaming Whole Populations
- 12 The Moral Challenge of Collective Memories
- 13 Corporate Responsibility and Punishment Redux
- 14 Mission Creep
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
6 - Public and Private Honor, Shame, and the Appraising Audience
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 The Two-Collar Conflict
- 2 Our Better Angels Have Broken Wings
- 3 Responsibility for Innocence Lost
- 4 Virtuous Responses to Moral Evil
- 5 Assessing Attempts at Moral Originality
- 6 Public and Private Honor, Shame, and the Appraising Audience
- 7 Torture
- 8 Community and Worthwhile Living in Second Life
- 9 Of Merels and Morals
- 10 Inference Gaps in Moral Assessment
- 11 Blaming Whole Populations
- 12 The Moral Challenge of Collective Memories
- 13 Corporate Responsibility and Punishment Redux
- 14 Mission Creep
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, uses of the term “honor” in English date to 1375. All pertain to credit, reputation, and a good name. Honor has to do with being worthy of high esteem, even veneration, and typically privilege, but it can also relate to nobleness of mind; for example, honor as “self-respecting integrity.” I introduced the concept of honor to the chaplains with a Power Point slide containing a quote from Alexander Hamilton: “There is in every breast a sensibility to marks of honor.” Below the quote was a drawing of the duel between Hamilton and Aaron Burr in which Hamilton was killed and Burr's political career ruined. The irony was intentional.
Robert Ashley, the founder of the library of the Middle Temple, London, wrote a treatise, Of Honour, somewhere between 1596 and 1603. Ashley's little book is believed to be the earliest attempt by an Englishman to provide a systematic treatise on the subject. A number of Italian writers tackled the topic before Ashley, but it would be some years later that Thomas Hooker took it up in An Essay on Honour (1741) in English. It would not be a stretch to characterize most of Shakespeare's Histories, but especially Henry IV (Parts I and II) and Henry V, as directly concerned with honor, both as a serious matter and as a source of Falstaff's humor.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- War and Moral Dissonance , pp. 143 - 155Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010